Look Out, Pilgrim II

...(N)othing could hide the essential business of the Temple, which was the ritual slaughter, consumption and combustion of sacrificial cattle on a gigantic scale....To the unprepared visitor, the dignity and charity of Jewish diaspora life, the thoughtful comments and homilies of the Alexandrian synagogue, was quite lost amid the smoke of the pyres, the bellows of terrified beasts, the abattoir stench....

-Paul Johnson

Last week I read Ezekiel's vision of the eschatological Temple, and this quote from Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity came to mind. Johnson reminds us of the grubby and gory work that actually occurred on the grounds of Herod's Temple. It is easy to be fascinated with the death and carnage that the worshipper passed through on his way to prayer, and to draw analogies to the difficulties and suffering of the Christian life. But Johnson missed something in his description. Above all this bloody activity stood the Temple itself, calm and majestic, so bright that a pilgrim coming over the Mount of Olives had to shield his eyes when the sun reflected off its gold and polished marble.

I remember a member of our church years ago who was planning to go to South America as a medical missionary. He became an EMT because his ambulance took him to places where he could experience "real life." One of our mentors reminded him that pain and suffering were not "real life," but the results of the fall. "Real life" was the healing he brought to those in need. (And ultimately "real life" is the resurrected life of the future.) He was focusing on the carnage of the court yard, not the quiet power that rose above it.

When I was in college, I went through a particularly tough time my senior year (career, etc.). I remember finding comfort in looking at the stars. They never changed, the familiar constellations were always there. They transcended the confusion and fear that were part of my state of mind--a reminder that their was Someone out there who never changes.

Though Herod's Temple was destroyed, the "concept" of Temple has not changed. Ezekiel's vision of a glorified Temple was of an eschatological reality toward which we are drawn. As Rosenstock taught, the future is not a fearful unknown, but a living reality in the mind of God that shapes the present and helps us define who we are. Past, present, and future are one in Christ. We taste that future in our best and highest moments: in worship, in our stained glass sanctuaries, in our fellowship meals together. Those are the times that the future world and this world overlap. The Temple is a symbol of that future into which all the world is moving.

Pilgrim, the way through the Temple is a glorious business.