Wailing Walls and Cornerstones
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Editor's note--Today's devotion will be last one for a while as we will be taking a break for the summer. Thank you to everyone who has contributed over the past year or two, whether in writing devotions or organizing them. We hope to return with more in a few months.
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
In the year 70 A.D. in response to Jewish uprising the occupying Romans, under the General Titus (later Emperor Titus), leveled the Temple on Mount Zion. The Romans, as Jesus had prophesied, left no stone unsettled. The religious and psychological damage this event has had on the Jewish people is incalculable. My brother only years ago when he was in Israel saw a Jewish man ferociously approach a statue of Emperor Titus and bark angrily at it, “We got our city back,” then he spit viciously upon the stone face. Today, nearly 2,000 years later, if you go to the Western Wall, perhaps the holiest site in Jerusalem you will see the Jewish people collected together to pray, mourn, and above all weep and wail. And the wall, the wall upon which they weep is not even the temple wall. It is the wall that held up the platform upon which the temple stood. It is all a moving sight. Tragic in more ways than one. But most tragic because one thinks, “they’ve missed it!” You see, the temple symbolized the presence of God, God with us. And so when it was torn down it was as though God was evicted. It was as though God was exiled. It was as though he had departed. And they are still waiting for him to come back.
But John says in his famous prologue “the Word became flesh and built his tabernacle amongst us.” John is telling us that Christ is the true temple. Christ is Immanuel, God with us! And in the next chapter of his Gospel John recounts Jesus promise to tear down the temple and build it up again in three days. And in case his listeners are a bit dense, the Apostle clarifies that Jesus was talking of himself, his own body. And so he does, true to his word; he himself the true Word.
And so, when the women go to weep at the wall of the tomb they don’t weep long for they find the temple standing tall and strong again, more glorious than before. And we today, as Paul teaches us along with the Corinthians and Thessalonians, do not mourn as the pagans, as those who have no hope. For though every tombstone is itself a wailing wall we know those temples torn down, those temples in which the Holy Spirit dwelt, will be raised up again together with Christ. Paul encourages the Romans and us, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
So though you are a temple brittle and broken the Holy Spirit takes up his home in you. Take today the peace of Christ. Peace, Peace, for fallen temples stand up again. Peace, peace, for the dead get back up again. Peace, Peace, for Christ is no wailing wall but a cornerstone strong and sure.