My husband Hal and I had the pleasure of going to the Holy Land with a group of church colleagues and friends. We started in Galilee, green and fresh with spring. Then at the mid-point of the trip, we went up to Jerusalem, a beautiful, sophisticated ancient/modern city, built of golden Jerusalem sandstone. At the National Museum of Israel, we saw a glorious outdoor topographical model of the city before its destruction in 70 AD. At its pinnacle was a model of the Temple, perfect and surrounded with its courts and colonnades. But just at its side, dwarfing it, was a huge foursquare structure that I never heard of: the Antonia Fort. It was an immense sign of Rome’s power and occupation, hulking right next to the Temple. Seeing it reminded us of the fact that Rome not only occupied their country and capital, not only taxed them at 75% (!), but in 70 AD, the Romans also sacked the city, killed many inhabitants, and tore down the Temple, just as Jesus said would happen. Rome got tired of Jewish rebellion and wrecked their holy city and its pride and joy, the Temple.
In many ways, the Jewish citizens of the city of Jerusalem are still in mourning over the destruction of the Temple (and also the later occupation of the Temple mount by two Islamic worship sites). You can see the feverish prayers of observant Jews at the Western Wall and know that they are praying fervently that the Temple will somehow rise again, above their heads.
But when Jesus foretold the fall of the Temple, he was not speaking with great regret. He considered that the Pharisees and Sanhedrin who controlled the Temple had made it a place of disgrace, a “den of thieves and robbers.” He had just sharply decried the Pharisees for ruining the faith for themselves and everyone else. Jesus saw that after the Temple leadership put him, God’s own Messiah, to death, God would let them and their empty temple be overrun. On the day of Crucifixion, when the curtain of the Holy of Holies was torn in two, from top to bottom, God would be utterly free of the Temple, and its destruction would inevitably follow.
Followers of Jesus believe that Jesus is our new temple, and on him we center our worship and faith. In Jesus, God and humanity meet and dwell with us forever. And as the church, the body of Christ, we are a part of that meeting place of heaven and earth.