An Ephesian interlude (13): a reflection for Day 23 of Lent

 

“So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” (Ephesians 2.19-22, NRSVUE)

     A religious world.  Where does one go in order to experience the presence and reality of God/the gods?  For most of human history, the answer was – go to a temple.  The ancient world was indeed choked full of temples, much like the modern world is replete with churches, synagogues, mosques, and various places of worship.  The ancient goddesses/gods were believed to “inhabit” their temples in some way; the image of the god in question symbolized the divinity’s having taken up residence in its “home” (naturally, the last step in the construction of a temple was the installation of the god’s statue in a conspicuous place within the shrine).  Interestingly, the Ancient Near Eastern writer who penned the book of Genesis tells the story of the creation of the cosmos in such a way that would have been immediately recognizable to an ancient architect – Genesis 1 describes the creation of the world in terms of the construction of a temple!  What is created on the sixth day?  Of course, human beings who are made in the image of the Creator (cf. Gn. 1.26-31)!  This is a fascinating vision of what humans are – intriguingly, the ancient Israelites were not supposed to fabricate any images of Yahweh in the form of animals or humans (cf. Ex. 20.1-6).  The invisible God of Abraham was to be “seen” in his image-bearing creatures, and in no other way.

     As far as the Bible is concerned, the true God – the Creator – designed the entire cosmos as his “home”, i.e. his temple, with his human creatures as “living images” of himself, the (only) “living God”.  The desire of this Creator-God has always been to “dwell” with humanity, to share life with his people and so doing, impart his own life to them (cf. Ex. 29.46; Jer. 24.7; 31.33; 32.38; Ez. 11.20; 14.11; 34.30; 37.23, 27).  The ultimate dream of the Bible is for heaven and earth to be united in a “cosmic marriage”, symbolically portrayed in the book of Revelation as the “new Jerusalem”[1] descends from heaven to earth to be the place where God will live with his people forever (cf. Rev. 21.1-5, 15-17, 22-27).  So, this is the goal of God’s plan – to live with his human creatures in the midst of his creation, thus allowing the entire cosmos to bask in the glory of his presence (sneak peeks of which were the pillar of cloud/fire: Ex. 13.21-22, 1 Kings 8.10-11).  This had been foreshadowed throughout the Jewish Scriptures.

     God with us.  Not content to remain “in heaven” (cf. Eccl. 5.2), Yahweh – the invisible God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – desired to dwell among his people, that his presence would be part of the daily life of the Israelites.  To that end, Yahweh instructed Moses to construct a “tabernacle” (a large tent) that the Israelites could transport during their 40-year journey through the wilderness.[2]  As it says in the book of Exodus:

“…at…the tent of meeting… I will meet with you, to speak to you there. I will meet with the Israelites there, and it shall be sanctified by my glory…I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them...” (Exodus 29.42-46).

Whenever the Israelites made camp, the tabernacle would be erected in the center, and the 12 tribes would encamp all around Yahweh’s portable shrine.  Yahweh’s “glory” was said to both dwell upon and fill the tabernacle.  At the end of Exodus, after many chapters describing the construction of the Tabernacle, we are given a depiction of the divine glory:

“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” (Exodus 40.34-35).

After the Israelites settled in Canaan, King Solomon eventually constructed the Jerusalem temple.  The Temple would be the central (and only authorized) shrine for the worship of Yahweh, until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.[3]

     Tabernacles and temples – they were always “signposts” pointing towards the hope that one day “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2.14).  Indeed, the Jerusalem temple was condemned to destruction by both Jeremiah and Jesus[4] (cf. e.g. Jer. 21.1-10; Lk. 21.5-33).  As Jesus’ prophecy of doom hung over the (second iteration of the) Jerusalem temple, Paul wrote his letter “to the Ephesians” and tells the Gentile converts of Ephesus that they are now part of the new and genuine Temple, God’s dwelling place (Eph. 2.21-22).  The community of both Jews and Gentiles who are loyal to Jesus as Lord – i.e. the Church – is now the place where the Creator will “live” in anticipation of the day when the whole cosmos will bask in God’s immediate and unmediated presence.  Come Lord Jesus!


[1] a temple-city designed according to the proportions of the “holy of holies” in the temple of the old Jerusalem. 

[2] Cf. Ex. chapters 25—40 (instructions for the construction of the tabernacle); Ex. 33.7-11; Lev. 26.11-13; Numbers 1.50-53; 2.17.

[3] The ark of the covenant (cf. Ex. 25; Rev. 11.19) is presumed to have been confiscated by the Babylonians.  There is no evidence of it after the final deportation of Judahites to Babylon in the early 6th century B.C.  The second Jerusalem temple was built in 515 B.C. and would eventually be destroyed by the Romans in the year AD 70.

[4] Jesus predicted the destruction of the Second Temple within “one generation” of his own death; this occurred in the year AD 70 during the First Jewish War against Rome.

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