“I Will Raise It Again”
‘‘…‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in
three days.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six
years to build this temple, and you are going to
raise it up in three days?’”—John 2:19-20
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ust before the busiest and “holiest”
time of the year, Jesus went to the
temple and encountered big-business
religion. Restored and renovated by Herod
over a period of forty-six years, the temple
in Jerusalem was the crown jewel of the religion that held sway over the immediate
culture to which Jesus came.
Jesus confronted the money-making
schemes of religion by overturning the tables of the money changers in the courts of
the temple. Jesus, the epitome of holiness as
God in the flesh, publicly challenged the
authenticity and credibility of the religious
status quo in its most “holy” place. The religious authorities were not happy campers.
After turning the business of religion every
which way but loose, Jesus then told the
audience he had already angered and scandalized that if “this temple” were destroyed
he would rebuild it in three days!
Jesus was, of course, speaking symbolically
of his own body as a temple rather than the
ornate building which represented the center and core of the accepted religion of that
day. When his original audience heard him
speak of a temple, they took his words literally. Like Jesus’ original audience, many
today, in devotion to literalism, completely
miss the truth of what Jesus conveyed by
metaphors, symbols and parables. Wooden
literalism still litters the religious landscape
today!
The original audience missed the point of
what Jesus was saying, but by the time the
Gospel of John was written, their revered
temple had been destroyed. Benefiting from
the 20/20 vision of hindsight, readers of Jesus’ words have had an easier time than
those who originally heard the words of
Jesus, understanding that Jesus was speaking
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SPRING 2011
of the temple of his own body, and thus predicting his execution and his resurrection.
Jesus himself is exhibit “A” proving that
no one confronts big business religion without paying for it. In Jesus’ case, he paid with
his life. My favorite Irish theologian, Bono
of U2 once said, “Religion is the temple after
God has left it.”
When Jesus was tortured and executed,
suffering a humiliating death, the disciples
were overwhelmed with despair. Jesus’ death
demoralized them. Death overwhelmed
them — as it does you and me. But death
does not have the last word—it is not the
end. “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it
again in three days.”
The resurrection of Jesus is an invitation to
you and me to life, to hope and to belief.
Jesus invites us, as a result of his resurrection,
to believe in life, not death. The resurrection
affirms and underwrites the eternity of the
kingdom of God, in direct contrast with the
futility of the kingdom of religion, which is
subject to death and decay.
The resurrection meets you and me at our
most vulnerable and lowest of places. The
resurrection meets us in our despair and our
pain, in our loss and in our grief. The resurrection meets us at those times when we
throw up our hands in defeat—for death is
having its way with us, or perhaps has just
had its way with a loved one.
Jesus’ resurrection is a trumpet call, across
the pages of history, resounding throughout
all the blood-soaked battlefields—a clarion
call of life and hope to cemeteries and cancer wards, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise
it again….”
When your life seems hopeless, when the
walls of fear close in on you, when death has
claimed the life of a loved one, never forget
that Jesus is risen. God can and does bring
life out of death and destruction. Our faith
is not in vain! He is risen! “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again….” ❑
—Greg Albrecht
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