The True Temple

Do we worship the place where God dwells or do we worship God who dwells with us? Is it possible to confuse our religious form, practices, and places with our relationship with Jesus?

When Jesus came into the temple complex at Passover and cleansed the temple, he was purifying the focus of the pace and pointing people back to God. Our object of worship should always be God himself. Our focus on worship should never be our religious practice or the place of our worship. Our focus should be God.

When the Jewish leaders questioned Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, their line of questioning highlighted that they had made an idol out of their religious practices, and the many benefits they had brought them, and it highlighted that they had made an idol out of the temple itself.

After Jesus made a whip of cords and drove out the money changers and released the animals caged for sale and sacrifice, the Jews said to him, “‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:18-22, ESV).

Jesus the Messiah is God. The true dwelling place of God was right there before the people in the temple and they missed him. We can also miss God in the business, and in the busyness, noise, and distraction of our religious forms, practices, and places of worship if we are not careful.

We must guard ourselves against the idolatry of religion, religious place, and religious form. We must beware of form over substance. We must be careful that the form of our worship and the places of our worship do not take the place of God in our lives.

May we discover true relationship with God, in form, in practice, and in place, as we trust in Jesus and keep Jesus as the central focus and orbit of our lives.

A Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent: “Heavenly Father, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you: Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Christ Jesus; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer, 2019).

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