Following Jesus in the Holy Land

Pathways of Discipleship through Advent and Lent

Stephen Need

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781789590418
• eBook ISBN: 9781789590432
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Reflecting on the key places in Jesus' life, ministry and death, Following Jesus in the Holy Land is a study course on Christian discipleship that can be used by individuals and groups during the seasons of Advent and Lent. Each chapter considers one of the main locations of the Gospel story, including Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Judaean desert, Mount Tabor and the Sea of Galilee, and invites readers to reflect on the meaning of discipleship today. Each chapter includes questions for reflection, Bible readings and suggestions for worship as well as ideas for "things to do" as a disciple of Christ.

Part One: Advent to Christmas

Chapter 1

Jerusalem: Jesus the “New Temple”

We begin in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives looking west across the Kidron Valley. A scramble of golden limestone buildings, ancient and modern, comes into focus in the bright sunlight revealing a Middle Eastern walled city in the desert. In the background, new high-rise hotels provide a contrasting skyline. Hills and valleys surround the broad picture. Churches, synagogues and mosques provide the contours. In the foreground, you can see over three thousand years of history at a glance. This is the Old City of Jerusalem.

As you look more closely, your eye is drawn immediately to the striking golden Dome of the Rock. Standing on a stone platform easily discernible and the size of twelve football fields, its octagonal structure exudes bright blue and green colours. Other buildings and archways nestle close to it. There’s an overwhelming sense of presence, as if something has come from outer space and settled on earth. The atmosphere exudes history and eternity, mystery and enigma, as one reality seems to break in upon another. It’s as if heaven and earth have met here in this strange location, in a stunning encounter.

None of this is surprising when you come to know the place. For the Jews it’s the Temple Mount, for the Arabs the Noble Sanctuary. Here the ancient temples of Judaism stood for over a thousand years. And here the colourful Muslim shrine still stands. There’s no wonder the place is unusual: it’s where God has been experienced for millennia; where sacrifice was offered thousands of times; and where the Call to Prayer has rung out for centuries. From the Mount of Olives, you’re looking at a God-inhabited, God-soaked and God-trodden landscape; a sacred space where God was said to make his dwelling and where he was thought to live on earth.

After a few minutes’ reflection, we’re off down the mountain road into the Kidron Valley below. There are churches scattered about and cars trying to get along a narrow street. On one side a huge graveyard appears, the resting place of Jews waiting to enter the Holy City at the end of time. On the other side, a wall conceals the Russian Orthodox Church of St Mary Magdalene, its dazzling, golden, onion-shaped domes shining in the sun. Below, in the floor of the Kidron, is the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night before he died.

We continue to make our way, following the road around outside the city wall and then up through the Dung Gate into the Old City itself. After queueing near the Wailing Wall, a ramp takes us up through military security onto the platform of Herod’s Temple. We’re now actually standing on the plateau we saw from the Mount of Olives. In Jesus’ day this was the Temple Precinct with columns and gates all around. Today, political tension is tangible as religious ideologies compete for pre-eminence. Even so, an overwhelming sense of the presence of God persists.

The Jerusalem Temple

In this first chapter we take the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as a lens through which to look at Jesus. We think about where God dwells and where God might be found in our own lives today. In John’s Gospel, Jesus himself speaks of his body as the temple (2:21), suggesting a way of thinking of Jesus as God’s dwelling place. In this first week, we focus on the Jerusalem Temple and then on Jesus as the “new temple”.

First of all, let us look at the Jerusalem Temples which stood on the platform still visible today from the Mount of Olives. Over a thousand-year period, two main temples stood on this site. Our primary interest is in the Temple that Jesus knew and visited more than once for major Jewish festivals. Started by Zerubbabel in the sixth century BC it was extended by Herod the Great from 19 BC onwards and is the setting in the Gospels for the famous incident known as the “Cleansing of the Temple”. It is known as the Second Temple. According to the Jewish historian Josephus this massive building was constructed in white marble reflecting the bright sunlight and dazzling onlookers.2 There was silver and gold decoration and the impact of the whole building would have stunned onlookers on the Mount of Olives opposite.

Herod’s Temple complex consisted of a series of graded courts leading from an outer court up to the Holy of Holies, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity. First, there was the Court of the Gentiles into which both Jews and Gentiles could go. This was the largest area, occupying most of the space seen on the Temple Mount today. In this area Jesus confronted the sellers and money changers. But Gentiles could go no further and an important wall separated this court from the next one, the Court of the Women. The wall displayed notices in Latin and Greek, warning Gentiles to stay away on pain of death. The Court of the Women was open to all Jews but women could go no further. Then followed the Court of the Israelites open to all male Jews but only priests could go further into the Court of the Priests.

After this was the Temple Court which housed the Holy of Holies, the sacred inner sanctum where God himself dwelt. Only the High Priest could go into the inner space and he only once a year on the Day of Atonement. It was in front of this inner sanctum that the “veil of the Temple” hung, the curtain separating the inner from the outer, the heavenly from the earthly. Thus, the structure of the Temple was a graded hierarchical series of stages before reaching the ultimate holy place. Herod’s Temple, the so-called “Second Temple”, was considered so holy that it was thought of literally as God’s dwelling place on earth. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.3

The other temple, the First Temple, was the Temple of Solomon. This stood on a much smaller platform in the same area a thousand years earlier. There are no remains today but we know it was different in design from Herod’s Temple. A courtyard surrounded the main building which had three sections: the porch, the sanctuary and the inner sanctum. In the courtyard were the furnishings for sacrifice. The inner sanctum of this temple contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant brought up from the desert by the Israelites. In the desert the Ark had been the sign of God’s presence with his people. In Solomon’s Temple the Ark now also symbolized the divine presence. Although we don’t know exactly what the Ark looked like, it was a golden box with two cherubim on the lid or mercy seat and four larger ones on the corners. Whatever the differences between the First and Second Temples, they were both seen as God’s ultimate dwelling place on earth.

In Jewish thinking, the temples in Jerusalem were the place where heaven and earth met. The specific purpose was blood sacrifice. In offering the blood of an animal to God, the Jews maintained they were giving back to God what he had created. The many types of sacrifice are detailed in the Book of Leviticus (1–7). Their purpose was to bridge the gap that had opened up between humanity and God and to mend the broken relationship. The sacrifices were carried out continuously, with the offering of a great deal of blood. As well as being the house of God, therefore, the Jerusalem Temples were houses of sacrifice and atonement.

The Old Testament scholar Margaret Barker likens the experience of God at Solomon’s Temple to Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel in Genesis 28:10–17. Of Bethel Jacob says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (v. 17).”4 This was also true of Herod’s Temple in the time of Jesus: it was the gate of heaven, the gate to God’s house, the entrance to the place where God could be known, experienced and worshipped.

Jesus in the Temple

In one of the most dramatic events in the Gospels, Jesus enters the Jerusalem Temple and overthrows the tables of money changers and those selling animals. Usually known as the “Cleansing of the Temple”, the incident is in all four Gospels, and New Testament scholars believe it has a strong basis in history. It certainly has a strong theological significance. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the story occurs towards the end of the Gospel, giving a dramatic start to the last days of Jesus’ life (Matthew 21:12–17; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48). But in John’s Gospel it occurs near the beginning, adding a flavour to everything else Jesus says and does (2:13–22).

As we have seen, the temple setting is significant. The more immediate context is the moneychangers and the buying and selling of animals for sacrifice. These would almost certainly have occupied space in the huge Court of the Gentiles. It is Jesus’ encounter with these that forms the pivot of this story. All the accounts tell us that Jesus enters the temple and drives out the buyers and sellers, and all apart from Luke tell us that he overturned their tables. There is then the quotation that seems to give the event its meaning: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

The longest version of the incident comes in John. Here Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives out the moneychangers. And when the Jews ask him what sign he has for doing this, he answers, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19). Only John’s Gospel includes the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, and only he comments that the temple Jesus is referring to is his own body (2:21). As we shall see shortly, this detail is of major importance.

The incident in the temple is clearly one of Jesus’ main prophetic actions, but it has had many interpretations.5 On the face of it, it looks as though Jesus is challenging the temple system of sacrifice. His confrontation is with those who are selling animals for sacrifice and changing money to enable people to buy an animal. It is often thought that Jesus is acting here against the system of sacrifice and in favour of a pure religion of the heart. Others have read the whole event as indicating that Jesus was in some way against the temple, like the Essenes of Qumran and others. In this view, he is inaugurating a new religious movement. But none of this seems likely given Jesus’ own Jewishness and his behaviour in the rest of the Gospels. He might, of course, be a radicalizer objecting against the corruption of the temple system of sacrifice rather than being against the temple as such.

But there is another more likely interpretation. In overturning the tables of the moneychangers, Jesus is demonstrating his own role as a prophetic figure ushering in the last days. In the Judaism of Jesus’ day it was believed that at the end of time the temple would be renewed and God’s purposes would be carried out for both Jews and Gentiles through the establishment of a new temple (see e.g. Zechariah 14:20–21; Malachi 3:1). The idea that Jesus himself is the new temple arises out of this. His action in the Court of the Gentiles is symbolic of God’s new relation with his people, and in the new context he himself replaces the old temple as the place where God is known. This is the line of thought in John’s Gospel when we are told that Jesus was speaking of his own body when he spoke of the destruction of the temple.

This theology of Jesus as the “new temple” can also be found in the Letter to the Hebrews and in the Book of Revelation. In Hebrews, Jesus is the high priest of the temple who has passed behind the curtain and opened up the way between humanity and God. The Gospels already use this image when they say that at the time of his death “the curtain of the temple was torn in two” (Mark 15:38). Jesus is also the last of the priests offering the last of the sacrifices (Hebrews 9:11–14) and is himself said to be the temple curtain (10:20). In the Book of Revelation the symbolism of the temple is intertwined with that of the lamb and of the city of Jerusalem itself (5:6–14; 11:19; 21:2). The lamb is the symbol of Jesus, but in Chapter 21 there is a vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven and there is no temple in the city, “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (21:22). Now, God himself coupled with Jesus the lamb is the real temple. In all of this, temple imagery is used to show that for Christians Jesus opens up the way to God and is now the new dwelling place of God.

And so, the real thrust of the incident in the temple is not that it somehow “cleanses the temple” from its corruption but that Jesus announces the coming of a new age when the temple will be renewed and replaced. Although there are different emphases among the writers, the New Testament shows us quite clearly that Jesus is now the real temple, the old one has passed away. He is the renewed temple expected at the end of time. In this picture, the Jerusalem Temple works as a powerful metaphor for Jesus himself. He is the one in whom God’s presence now dwells and the place where God may now be encountered, worshipped and known. And he is the one in whom the sacrifice for sin will now take place.

This “temple theology”, therefore, refocuses our understanding of Jesus and in Advent helps us ask where we find God in our own lives. It helps us look again at the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and see in them the dwelling place of God.6

Jesus is the temple

With this discussion of the Jerusalem Temple and Jesus’ actions in the Temple in mind, we turn now to our own situation today: Where might Christians look for God now? Where might we expect to find or experience God? In Advent, at the beginning of the Church’s year, it is particularly important to ask this question. And at a time when we are thinking of the coming of God into our own lives it’s useful to focus on the image of the Jerusalem Temple and on Jesus as the new temple. Just as the Jews of Jesus’ own day found God in the Temple, so we can find God through looking at Jesus now.

The question about where we find God usually receives varied and quite personal answers. For many people, especially churchgoers, the answer might be “in church during worship”. That’s often why people go to church, to get in touch with God and to get close to God. In searching for something beyond their everyday lives, people find what they’re looking for in church. There is certainly a good case for saying that God should be experienced in church, for if he cannot be found there, where can he be found?

But there are those, churchgoers among them, who might experience God more in nature, in the garden or in a sunset.7 After all, is God not the creator of all things? And as part of that, others might say they experience God in art, music and architecture, and in the creative processes of life. A stunning Caravaggio painting, a Mozart symphony, a glorious cathedral like Chartres or Lincoln carries the human spirit up to God. In poetry and in film, in sport and in photography, and in every kind of creative process, God can be found. And we might wish to say that we find God most of all in our families and in all the goodness of human community. Indeed, for Christians this brings us back to the church and all that it is intended to be.

But there is more for Christians than the God found in nature, art, family and friends, however important these might be. People of other faiths and people of no particular faith find God in nature and even though that is fundamental to Christian faith it is not its defining feature. It is, rather, Jesus who is the focus for Christians. We see God in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, in what he did, taught and stood for. It is in his particular life that we see God dwelling, just as the Jews saw him dwelling in the Jerusalem Temple. The experience of God in other places is filtered through Jesus. It might be difficult to be sure about some of the historical detail of Jesus’ life but the gospel picture characterized by humility, compassion and healing is fundamental here.8

The notion that God dwells in Jesus is, of course, the beginning of what we call “Christology”. This is concerned with who Jesus was and is and how we are to think of God dwelling in him. From the very beginning Christians have spoken of Jesus as their saviour, they have called him Messiah, Son of God and Son of Man and have acknowledged him as Lord. For centuries they have used the idea of the Word or logos of God dwelling in Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is the place where “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (1:14), hinting alre...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Part One: Advent to Christmas
• Part Two: Lent to Easter
• Afterword
• Notes