Robert Barron - God Returns to His Temple
Peace be with you. Friends, we have the good fortune this year that the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord falls on a Sunday, so we can reflect on it perhaps a bit more deeply. It’s easy enough to sentimentalize this feast. It’s lovely. The parents of the Lord bringing the child into the Jerusalem temple. Simeon and Anna, these two old… The prophet and the prophetess, and then they predict these marvelous things about the child and the pain that the mother will endure.
Now you let your servant go in peace, your word’s been fulfilled. The nunc dimittis of Simeon, which the church repeats in its night prayer every day. There’s so many wonderful features of this story. But I think we oughtn’t to sentimentalize it, because it’s getting at, if I can put it this way, a hard truth. And the clue is given to us in the first reading, and the church gives us this passage from the prophet Malachi. Malachi is so interesting, because in both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures, it’s the last book of the Old Testament. Arranged that way not so much chronologically, but theologically. There’s something about Malachi that’s giving us the last word, preparing for the New Testament.
Well, listen now to this passage. «Thus says the Lord God, lo, I’m sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. And suddenly there will come to the temple, the Lord whom you seek». Well, the attentive reader might say, «Wait, I don’t get it. I thought the Lord’s always in his temple, that’s where the Lord resides». Why would Malachi say, «Well, the Lord will come back to his temple»? Well, the truly attentive reader would remember from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, we hear in the 10th chapter that the Shekinah the glory of the Lord, because of the corruption of the temple, because of the corruption of the people of Israel, the glory of the Lord has up and left the temple.
There’s a vivid description of the Lord’s glory rising and then going east over the Mount of Olives, leaving the temple. It’s, I think, one of the most extraordinary passages in the whole Bible. Why would God do that? They established the temple to be his dwelling place. He wants his people to come there to meet him. Why would he leave? And then is he coming back? Well, Ezekiel does. Now fast-forward to chapter 43, he does predict one day the Shekinah will return to the temple. And when it does, the temple will become filled with the glory of God and will become a source of life for the whole world. Indeed, great streams of water flowing forth from it for the renewal of the world.
So that’s Ezekiel, the dark side, the Shekinah, left. And then the positive side is we hope that one day it might come. So now Malachi. Suddenly, there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek. Okay, he’s going to come back. He reiterates the prediction of Ezekiel. With that in mind now, how do we read this child Jesus? Son of David, the angel says. He’s going to rule of the house of Jacob forever. And Mary, his mother, carries him in her arms, and they enter into the temple of the Lord. Well see, what is that? Not just a sentimental scene. Parents even now, bringing a child to church to bless and dedicate the child. Beautiful. But there’s so much more than that going on. It’s the God of Israel returning to his temple.
Now it’s anticipating the definitive return, which will take place, and I’ll get to that, it’ll take place on the cross. But now it’s a kind of foreshadowing of the return of the God of Israel to his temple. Now, here it’s really interesting. How does the Lord return to his temple, in vengeance, and with mighty displays of power? No. No, no. He comes back as this little, tiny, helpless child. It’s some of the great poetry of the New Testament, I think here. See, what is it about a baby, about a child that’s just irresistible? A couple brings a newborn baby into a room full of people, and they’re all talking to each other and they’re all distracted, and maybe some are getting angry and they’re arguing and so on. But the baby comes in.
Well, right away, everyone’s drawn to the baby. Everyone wants to look at the baby, everyone wants to hold the baby. There’s something to me that’s just so poetically right about this, that the Lord has always wanted to attract his people to himself. That’s the whole point of the Old Testament. He wants humanity to come back to him. Well yes, we had covenants and laws, and we had thundering prophets and all of that. But how wonderful that the Lord chooses in the fullness of time to return to his temple precisely as this helpless but irresistible baby. His point is to draw the whole world to himself. Though he wasn’t in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped at, but rather emptied himself and took the form of a slave, St.Paul says.
Well, that’s the whole form of his life. But look here, this little helpless infant, drawing the whole world back to the temple. Okay, fair enough. But lest we get a little too squishy about all this, go back to Malachi for a second. Yes, he’s coming, says the Lord of Hosts. But who will endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears, for He’s like the refiner’s fire or like the fuller’s lye, he will sit refining and purifying silver and he will purify the sons of Levi. Okay, that’s not a sentimental or squishy message. No, no, the contrary. That when the Lord comes back to his temple, he will do so in this somewhat ferocious way.
Well, how do we interpret this imagery? The God of Israel wants his people purified. So think of the refiner of silver. He has to use fire to remove the baser elements so as to allow that silver to shine. And so yes, the God of Israel comes back as this baby that’s meant to draw people to him, but then his work with them is a refining work. See, God has never satisfied with us the way we are. Don’t believe that God loves me any old way I am. No, no. God loves me, and he wants me fully alive.
And so this little baby, yes, drawing people irresistibly to himself. But the work of the Lord having returned to the temple is a purifying work. Or the other image there maybe not as familiar to us, the fuller’s lye. Well this is a bleacher, a cleaner of linen. And what’s lye, but this very harsh soap? They say that the smell of lye was overwhelming, and that’s why people who did that work were outside of the city. It’s a harsh, stinky business. Well, often it goes, doesn’t it, everybody, in the spiritual order? Is that when we come to the Lord, and he has work to do with us, he finds that he wants us to be clean, he wants us to shine. But that’s going to require some fuller’s lye. And it might be a pretty unpleasant business.
Talk to anyone who’s dealt with an addiction, who’s dealt with a chronic sin. Someone who’s caught in a self-destructive pattern. If you want to get out of that and you say, «Lord, please help me,» well then you are accepting the purifying work that he’s going to do. Okay, you left me here with a bit of a puzzle, because you’ve told me the Lord’s come back to his temple. Okay, I get that. And he’s come back as both a baby and this ferocious purifier of silver, and the fuller with his harsh soap. So which one is it? Well, the answer is both. The answer is both, and here’s the clue. The clue is the cross. Remember when Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he’s in the temple, he’s entered the temple again. He says, «Oh, this’ll be torn down, this whole place, and in three days I’ll rebuild it,» referring to the temple of his body.
See, what’s the temple to which the God of Israel returns? It’s not finally that building in Jerusalem. Finally, it’s the body of the Lord Jesus. The word became flesh, and pitched his tent among us, St.John says. That’s a little code, by the way. He tabernacled among us. That’s what the Greek means. The tabernacle in the desert was the primordial temple. And so the real place where the God of Israel returns to his temple is the body of Jesus, and more precisely the body of Jesus on the cross. And what do you see in that crucified body of the Lord? Well in a way, he is like a little baby, isn’t he? Helpless, powerless, vulnerable. Literally, he’s filled with wounds.
There is something. Yes, that’s why for all these centuries, people have been so attracted to the cross, and to the image of this childlike figure, this figure of weakness on the cross. That is Yahweh, the God of Israel returning to his temple. But now look at the other side, refining and purifying. What’s going on on that cross, but all the sins of the world… I’ve said before to you, when you read the passion narratives, and you see cruelty, and you see violence, and injustice, and hatred and stupidity, everything wrong with the human race is as it were placed on him. And now it’s consumed in a holocaust of the divine mercy.
That’s why the cross is terrible. It’s terrible to look at. It’s awful to look at, because what you see there is the refining work of God. It’s the purifying work of God. Paul says on the cross, Christ became sin. That’s what he means. Not that he’s a sinner. He’s not a sinner, but he becomes sin on the cross that the sin of humanity might be burned away in the holocaust of the divine mercy. See, that’s what this Feast of the Presentation finally is about. The God of Israel returning to his temple as both child and as fiery refiner. And both of those are summed up on the cross of the Lord. That’s where we see what the God of Israel looks like as he does his work.
One last point. Remember I told you Ezekiel prophesied that when God returned to his temple, water would flow forth from the side of the temple for the renewal of the world? Well what do we see in the Gospel of John, that when the soldier pierces the side of that temple, out comes blood and water. That’s the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Having purified us of our sins, now water comes forth from the side of Christ for the renewal of the world. Friends, I think that’s the richly powerful theological meaning of this wonderful Feast of the Presentation. And God bless you.