Temptation Transcended: Part Two: Temple and Cross

The Second Temptation shows Jesus set by the devil on top the Temple in Jerualem: 'if you are the son of God, cast yourself down, for it is written: 'He will instruct his angels to attend to you, and they will bear you up in their hands, lest you should dash your feet against a stone.'
(Matthew 4.6, Psalm 91.11).

The Temple was, in the time of Jesus, the most extraordinary sacred building in the classical world. Josephus, who gives a careful description of its history, its construction, and its function, writes with pride of the labour required to create the platform: those who visit the titanic retaining wall which survives as the so-called 'Wailing Wall', or who pace the enormous, barren platform which surmounts it, can still share the jewish historian's sense of stupefaction.

The site had orginally stood on the narrow summit of the hill known as Zion and the immense platform for the later Temple had been constructed by walling this hill on three sides, and filling in the space from the valley bottom to the summit. The foundations 'where the ground was lowest had to be built up 450 feet, in some places even more... unlimited funds and popular enthusiasm resulted in undertakings beyond belief, and a task with no end in sight was through patience and the passage of time completed.' (Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 5.188-189).

The effect of the Temple when viewed from a distance was just as imposing: 'The outside of the building lacked nothing to astonish mind or eye. It was clad about with massive plates of gold, and as the sun came up it shone with such a blaze of light that people looking at it were forced to look away. To travellers approaching from a distance, it looked like a mountain covered with snow, because every part not covered with gold was whiter than white. There were sharp gold spikes on the roof to prevent birds perching there and fouling it (Josephus, BJ.5.222-223). Such was the 'Mountain of the Lord' : the place where it, was believed, the God of Heaven, deigned to alight upon earth, and dwelt in the Holy of Holies, a place so sacred that no one was permitted to enter it except the High Priest, once a year, for the rituals of the Day of Atonement.

Immediately at the foot of this sacred, silent and inviolable space was the area in which man sought to impress, propitiate or gratify the divinty by the sacrifice of bulls, sheep, goats, pigeons grain and wine as prescribed by the Law (Leviticus 1-17). Josephus tells us that the altar on which these sacrifices were perfomed was 22 feet high, 75 feet long and 75 feet wide, with four corners jutting out like horns, and with a gentle slope leading up from the south.

Apart from the daily rituals of ceremonial sacrifice, there was the constant slaughter of animals in fulfilment of the Law's requirements in respect of expiation and thanksgiving. Here, at the Passover, every family in the country was required to bring a lamb to be slaughtered, roasted and eaten on the same day, and the Solitude of the Holy of Holies was in extraordinary contrast to the crowds of men and animals thronging the outer court, and against splendour of the imposing courts was enacted the uproar and the bloody squalor of unceasing sacrifice.

The Temple was the visible expression of the grandeur of God, and also to the pride of his chosen people: a symbol, in one sense, of unity, grandeur and the covenant between God and Man. But the Temple was also the embodiment of the glory of the kings who had built it, and the legitimacy of the priesthood who mediated betwen God and Man.

This was an ideal beyond time, but with the passing of time it had compromised with earthly powers.

In the time of Solomon, the Holy of Holies had housed the Ark of the Covenant, the seat of the Law, and the living presence of God, but in 587 BC the Temple was sacked by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnessar, and the Ark disappeared for ever. There were many Jewss who believed that this disaster reflected the dissolution of the covenant between God and Israel, and that the dissolution was a proper judgment on the pride, stupidity and godlessness of the kingdoms.

But the Temple had always been at the centre of disagreement and division. King David had first resolved upon its construction, but was forbidden to proceed with it, and though the words of the Prophet who brought word to the King suggested that David's own son, Solomon, might build such a Temple, they pointed also towards a fulfilment of a different order: 'I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me'. (2 Samuel 7.12-14).

And there is a strong current in the Old Testament, which questions the acceptability of sacrifice, where it is offered without, or instead of, obedience (1 Samuel 15.22), humility (Psalm 51.16-18) and mercy (Hosea 6.6).

When the Babylonian Empire fell, the Persian Emperor Cyrus authorised the reconstruction of the Temple, and a number of Jews returned from captivity in Babylon so as to attempt the reconstitution of a theocratic state: but there was to be no Judaean King, and in the period that followed, the priesthood that had long been vested in the House of Zadok fell into the hands of whatever priestly family proved from time to time most adept in managing the interests of the dominant foreign power. In 39 BC this earthly mimicry of the sacred paradigm achieved even more substantial embodiment in the person of Herod the Great, a non-jewish usurper who achieved kingship by subordinating himself to the interests of Rome.

So, by the time of the incarnation, the earthly splendour of the Temple described by Josephus owed very largely to the earth-bound ambitions of Herod 'the Great' , and the priesthood, which officiated there could perfectly reasonably be regarded as part of a system founded on the betrayal of God's people - a new bondage unto Pharoah or Babylonian Captivity

Furthermore, the life of the Idumaean king had proved as scandalous as that of any of his Old Testament predecessors, and the priesthood could not but be discredited by their association with his régime and by their hostility to any current of religious idealism that threatened an established order which relied for its survival on mediating uncertainly between the Jewish people and the power of Rome.

Here, now, swept up to the pinnacle of this system is a nobody, remarkable only to an entity that has some undefined sense of an as yet undefined potential to reconfigure the spirituality of Man.

The prophet had proclaimed that 'the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to the Temple' (Malachi.3.1), and he went onto predict a purification, a refining fire, a return to the pristine establishment, and the arrival of Elijah, 'the prophet of the great and dreadful day of the Lord' (Malachi 4.5).

Jesus' attitude to the Temple, like his attitude to the Law, was essentially in line with the prophetic thread that ran through it's history.

Having been circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, Jesus was brought to the Temple on the 40th day after his birth for the ritual of purification, which involved the sacrifice of a pigeon as a sin-offering, and a lamb, or, in the case of poor people, such as Mary and Joseph, a second pigeon as a burnt-offering (see Luke 2.22-24, Leviticus 12) and the ritual of redemption of the first born, which involved a payment to the priests of 5 Temple shekels Exodus 13, Numbers 18). It was on this occasion that Simeon spoke the famous prophecy in which he announced that Our Lord should be the salvation of all people - 'a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel,' adding ' Behold this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel' (Luke 2.29-34).

Luke tells us, too, that Mary and Joseph went annually to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. The evangelist does not say whether Jesus was taken too, but records that this did occur when the boy turned twelve: this was the age of bar mitzvah when Jesus became ' a son of the Law' and responsible for his own religious observances (Luke, 2.41-42). Jesus, missing for 3 days, and found at last in the Temple, 'sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions,' emphasised his intimate connection with the Temple, asking his perplexed parents 'Did you not know that I must be in my Father's House.' (Luke 2.49).

This harmonious picture of the son of Man in his Father's House, communing with the teachers of the Law was to be in sharp contrast to the posture adopted in the run up to the Passover and the Crucifixion, when Our Lord scourged the money changers from the Temple with the words of the prophet Isaiah: 'my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people' - but you have made it a den of thieves' (Matthew 21.12-13, Isaiah 56.7). Jesus was, to go on to prophesy not only the physical destruction of the Temple, but to a new dispensation, in which his own death and ressurection was mystically contrasted with that destruction, thereby symbolising the replacement of a Temple Worship centred on animal sacrifice as prescribed by the Law with his own redeeming sacrifice and the establishment of the great sacrament within the framework of his Church: 'I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days' (Matthew 26.61).

The juxtaposition of Jesus and the Temple in this, the Second Temptation, is therefore fraught with historical and prophetic significance.

And yet, as in the case of the First, the nature of the Second Temptation is curiously banal. The Temple becomes no more than a backdrop to a cheap and pointless stunt, in which the Saviour is himself saved by the ministration of the Father, and the people acknowledge his elect status accordingly.

But here, as in the case of the First Temptation, what unfolds is a much greater and tremendous mystery. Our Lord is lifted up on the Cross to save others in a manner which Jesus, as reported by St John, expressly compared with Moses 'lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness' to save the repentant Israelites from the consequences of sin (John 3.14-15, Numbers 21.5-9). He is, on the cross, mocked and taunted by those who, referring to the accusation made at his trial, cry 'Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross (Matthew 27.40)and there is a grim irony when they add, at this salvific climax, the words 'He saved others; himself he cannot save' and 'If he be the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him.' (Matthew 27.42).

On the pinnacle of the Temple, Satan had quoted scripture: 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone' (Matthew 4.6, , Psalm 91.11). These words appear in a Psalm which promises salvation and deliverance, saying 'Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he has known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be deliver him, and answer him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.' (Psalm 91.15-16).

As to the angels, Jesus had, at the moment of betrayal, referred to them, and rejected them: 'Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be,' (Matthew 26.53-54). And yet the words of the Psalm, however, justified by the resurrection after three days, must have seemed bitterly contradicted at the supreme moment of the Passion, when Jesus, rejected as God, King and High Priest uttered those chilling words - 'Eli, Eli, lama sabbachtani... My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me,' (Matthew.27.46)And even at the moment, the Saviour was misunderstood, and thought to be calling, and calling in vain, on the prophet of 'the great and terrible day of the Lord.' And yet, at the moment of his death, 'the veil of the Temple' which is said by Josephus to hve represented 'the whole vista of the heavens' was 'rent in twain' (Matthew.27.51) - truly, a new heaven, and a new earth (see Revelation 21.1).