Jesus shares some terrifying news: before the end of the temple comes, there will be wars and famines, natural disasters and fearful events.  Worse, we Christians will be arrested, betrayed by loved ones, and persecuted.  “Everyone will hate you because of me,” Jesus says.  And yes, the temple, the place where God’s glory dwells, the place first built by Solomon in our earlier readings, then rebuilt by Ezra, then again by Herod, this temple will be destroyed.

But this is typical of Jesus’ message to a suffering population.  And it is not bad news for a few reasons.  First, they were all facing these realities already.  Rather than a warning of loss as we take it today, this is an assurance that though they are persecuted, it is not because God abandoned them but is rather the necessary activity of God’s great change.  And second, though things are and will continue to be hard here, there is a better life awaiting.

Our culture has shunned the message of relief in heaven and focused more on a lived-Kingdom message in the here and now.  Ours, it says, is not to endure and wait for a better tomorrow.  Ours is to make a better today right now.  And this message is a good one for the wealthy, the comfortable, the all-together.  We in America don’t need to await a future paradise: by most accounts and figures, we already have one here and now.  We have plenty of food, health, medicine, luxury, power… we are “living the dream”.

But to a culture like Jesus’, a culture like that of most of the rest of the world, a culture that faces persecution and poverty, sickness and toil, the image of enduring until a blessed tomorrow is a blessed one.  And it is to that audience that the bible was written.  When we get confused by Jesus’ message, we should always remember that it was not written to a culture like ours.

There have been a number of temples built for God.  Today’s reading is about the first, Solomon’s Temple, but that temple was destroyed when the Hebrews were taken to exile.  When Ezra returned from exile, he oversaw the construction of the second temple.  But that temple, too, was destroyed.  So Herod, the Roman ruler of Judea, spent 42 years building the next temple, the one we know from Jesus’ life and Paul’s letters.  This temple was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans.

But there is one more temple that still stands today.  Paul states in 1 Cor. 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that His Spirit dwells within you?”  We are the fourth and current temple of the Lord.  This image has a lot of implications for us as believers.

The temple is where God lives.  With the promised Holy Spirit living within us, there is no longer a need for the earthly temple.

The temple is where the regular sacrifices were offered.  Jesus, dying on the cross, was the final sacrifice, atoning for our sins once and for all.  There is no longer a need for animal sacrifices.

The temple was divided into courts to keep uncleanness away from God.  In level after level of concentric circles, the courts of the temple (gentiles, women, men, priests, Holy Place, Holy of Holies) were meant to only allow the worthy to get so close to God.  Through Jesus Christ, everyone gained direct access to God, and the courts are no longer necessary.

Since we are now the temple of God’s spirit, we have the ability to bring God with us to this world.  And in fact, we are commanded to do just that.