Torah and Temple. These were the twin pillars of Jewish faith and life for the thousand years between King David and the Lord Jesus, and we find both of them today in the readings for this Third Sunday of Lent.
The word Torah means teaching, and it most often refers to the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch. At the heart of the Torah is the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai as we just read in Exodus, a law which began with ten commandments and was over time expanded by the Lord into a total of 613 ordinances or mitzvot.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gave these precepts to the children of Israel first to lead them from slavery to freedom and then to help them abide in freedom rather than returning to the base condition of slaves by surrendering to their own sins.
Then three centuries after Moses received the Law from the Lord, King David planned the Temple as both the home of the Ark of the Covenant and the sole setting of sacrifice for sins. The Temple in Jerusalem was designed to replace the movable Tabernacle that had served these two purposes from the time of the Exodus. But while David planned the Temple, it was built by his son Solomon, and Solomon’s Temple stood at the center of Jewish life until its destruction by the Babylonians about 586 years before the birth of the Lord Jesus.
Construction of the Second Temple began seventy years later, around the year 516 BC, and at the time of Christ it was this Second Temple which Herod the Great had transformed into one of the architectural and engineering marvels of the ancient world. Herod’s Temple in turn was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 AD, and on the Temple Mount today stands the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, built thirteen centuries ago on the very spot of the Temple’s Holy of Holies.
The Second Temple was not home to the Ark of the Covenant because the Ark was lost after the destruction of the First Temple, but the Second Temple remained the privileged place of sacrifice for sin. And like Solomon’s Temple before it, Herod’s Temple was the center of both political and religious life for Jews during the time of the Lord Jesus.
A faithful Jew relied upon both the Torah and the Temple to draw close to God and learn to live in righteousness. To read and study and pray with the Word of God given to Moses was the way to piety and virtue, and that is why the Psalmist sings today: “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul; the decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple.” (Psalm 19:8)
And the primary pathway to holiness was to offer right worship in the Temple for the cleansing of sin. That is why going to the Temple in Jerusalem was so central to divine worship, especially at Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Pesach is Passover in the Spring; Shavuot is the Feast of Weeks ending in Pentecost fifty days after Passover, and Sukkot is the Feast of Booths at harvest time.
Saint John the Evangelist tells us today in chapter two of his Gospel that the Lord Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem at Passover just after the wedding feast at Cana. Recall that Christ revealed the first of his signs in Cana by changing water into wine, and in this way he began to unveil the truth of his divine nature and awaken faith in him among his disciples.
The very next thing described by John in chapter two of his Gospel is this Passover visit to the Temple, which was the first of three Passover celebrations that occurred during the public ministry of Jesus. But Matthew and Mark both place the cleansing of the Temple in the final days of the life of Christ during Holy Week, while John places it here at the beginning of his ministry.
We cannot be sure if the cleansing of the Temple happened twice or whether for narrative reasons the three evangelists differ on the timing of the same event, but we do know this: the cleansing of the Temple by the Lord Jesus points to the startling revelation that would be understood only after his Resurrection: namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ is himself both Torah and Temple.
Christ is God the Father’s eternal Word who became the incarnate Word. He is both the one teacher of the New Covenant and the divine Word which is taught to deliver us from slavery to sin and enable us to live in the freedom of the children of God.
And Christ is also the one and true place where right worship of the living God is possible. He is the only priest of the New and Eternal Covenant, he is the one sacrifice offered to God the Father for the expiation of sins, and he is the Holy of Holies in whom and by whom that sacrifice is offered.
What Torah and Temple were for faithful Jews, Christ himself is for all his disciples until the Last Day. That Day will come, Saint Paul teaches in his Letter to the Romans, only when the full number of the Gentiles have been brought in by grace through faith and grafted on to the olive tree of Israel.
And thus we see, as Paul teaches in the second lesson today, that for Jew and Gentile alike, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. In other words, for the entire human race, the Lord Jesus is both Torah and Temple.
Friends, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. In one month we will celebrate the Passover of the Lord Jesus: the Paschal Mystery of his suffering, death, and Resurrection. And during our celebration on Easter Sunday we will renew the promises of Holy Baptism in anticipation of the explosion of missionary faith which we will celebrate fifty days later at Pentecost.
In preparation for these sacred moments of grace let us allow Christ to cleanse our hearts as he cleansed the Temple and to enlighten our minds with his holy Word as it was given on Sinai.
We open ourselves to this divine renovation by going to Confession whenever needed and at least once each year, by praying every day with Holy Scripture, by serving those in need as we would serve the Lord himself, and by worthily assisting in the Most Holy Eucharist every Sunday and all other Holy Days.
By all of these means of grace, we grow in our capacity to lead others to the Torah and Temple in whom alone we find everlasting life: the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily for the Third Sunday of Lent.
Fr Jay Scott Newman