Destroying the Temple
"Now at the festival the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas. So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?" For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, "Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him." Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, "Which of the two do you want me to release for you?" And they said, "Barabbas." Pilate said to them, "Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" All of them said, "Let him be crucified!" Then he asked, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Let him be crucified!"
So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Then the people as a whole answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” So he released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”
Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their headsand saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way.
From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
There are a number of answers
to the question: why did Jesus die?
The church has long had a theological answer for that question:
Jesus died for our
sins.
But I have a hard time
believing that God controls people to accomplish divine ends, so there had
to be some reason that the Romans went along with this, no? I mean,
Christian faith intersects with the world, ought there not have been a real-world
motivation for the crucifixion?
The gospels record
multiple objections among the Jewish religious leadership to some of the claims
Jesus made about himself. His
claim to be the messiah, referring to himself as the son
of God might have offended Jewish sensibilities. They might have even
risen to charges of blasphemy. We can see why some might have believed
that Jesus deserved death under the Jewish law (especially if they didn’t believe
his claims).
But what was the reason
that the Romans gave to themselves?
After all, it was they who would actually have to crucify him.
They didn’t care about
Jewish religious disputes. Blasphemy would hardly have mattered to Pilate,
who enjoyed blaspheming.
One leading New Testament
scholar, E. P. Sanders, points out that in the accounts of the crucifixion,
it is noted that bystanders said, “You who would destroy the Temple and build
it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross.” The
reference to destroying the temple comes back time and time again.
The scriptures refer to
Jesus’ prediction of destroying the Temple and raising it in three days as
being about his body. And of
course, from a theological perspective this is indeed what he is talking
about. Sanders says that Jesus may
have been making an apocalyptic prediction about the destruction of the Temple
in order to make way for the glorified Temple of God.
Whether Jesus was merely
talking about his body or if he was making an apocalyptic prediction about
the Temple, we can be fairly certain how the Romans would have interpreted
such a statement—rebellion.
The Temple was the
headquarters of the priestly aristocracy, the very priests who were allied
with Rome—a threat to the Temple was a threat to the civil order and
to Roman rule. That alone would have raised
Roman concern. That alone would
have been enough.
The Romans would have
found such statements to be threatening.
But so do we, don’t we?
We have all kinds of temples
that we have constructed for ourselves. We have constructed temples of
our own sin. We have become so used to our own limitations and
shortcomings that we’re quite comfortable where we are.
We know we don’t do all
the good that we could do. We know
that we do things that we shouldn’t. But we’re comfortable in staying
right where we are.
And Jesus threatens to
destroy those temples.
We are comfortable in the
temples of our own fear. We are
comfortable in the temples of our own preconceptions, our own
presumptions. We are comfortable
with those attitudes of mind or heart that have guided us for so long.
And Jesus threatens to
destroy those temples, too.
And we react much the way
the Romans did. We are complicit
in handing Jesus over. We are
complicit in his crucifixion. We
are complicit in crushing that which threatens to undo the lives we are used
to.
Because if we were to
heed the Gospel, to live what it really meant for us to live, we would have
to give up everything. Give up our
complacency, give up our fears, give up our
anxieties. Give up our
idolatries. Our sin. Our guilt.
We’d have to live our
lives as lives of love. We’d have
to stick our necks out. We’d have
to be willing to give of ourselves for others. To change the way we’ve
been living, to lives the abundant lives that Christ calls us to have.
But the power of Good Friday, is that Christ takes
our rejection. Christ takes our scorn. Christ takes the brunt
of our sin and dies with it.
But Christ does not leave
us there. The death Christ dies on
Good Friday is not the final word. There is, after all, still one more
chapter to this story. We are not left in our brokenness. We
are not left clutching onto those temples of fear and doubt and sin.
Christ calls us out of
our fears. Christ seeks to destroy
out temples. Christ hangs upon the
cross, arms open wide, summoning us out of our
temples. Calling us through the
darkness of Good Friday and into the light of Easter.
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Copyright © 2008. Mark A. Schaefer.
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