Worshipping in God’s Temple
Dedication of Saint John Lateran Scripture Readings
You might think it odd that the liturgy today celebrates the dedication of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome. Yet today’s feast is so significant that it displaces our regular Sunday liturgy. Why is this so important that the focus of the Roman Catholic world should be turned to it? Did you know that Saint Peter’s Basilica may be the largest Catholic church in the world, but it’s not the most important? That honor falls to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. It all has to do with the Pope. The Pope owes his position of primacy among all the bishops in the world to his role as bishop of the most important Christian Community in the Catholic world, the diocese of Rome, the diocese with the Apostle Peter as its first bishop. The cathedral church, literally, the seat of that diocese, is not at Saint Peter’s Basilica, but at Saint John Lateran. For well over a thousand years, that was the residence of the popes. The inscription over the door of the Basilica reads, “Mother and Head of All Churches.” Since it was also the first of the major churches to be built in Rome and dedicated in the year 324, it’s also a symbol of the Christian Community’s coming-of-age: its ascendance from a persecuted minority to a position of respect and honor.
That’s why our attention is being drawn there this morning. We’re asked to look at the position and role of Christ’s Church in the world. Frankly, it’s a role far too often throughout history overshadowed and eclipsed by extraneous concerns. And now, in our own day, it’s being perverted by those who mistake the kingdom of God for an earthly kingdom. Both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are very clear about what the Church is, what its role in the world is, and what it’s not. This year, when the Feast of the Dedication of the Mother Church in Rome falls on a Sunday, we’re given the opportunity to meditate on those realities.
On a personal note, I can’t help but feel that the dedication of this Basilica was a mixed blessing. From a symbolic standpoint, it does mark an important milestone in the growth of the early Christian Community into a powerful instrument for good. However, at the same time, it indicates the beginning of the capitulation of the Christian Community to the secular trinity of wealth, power, and prestige. It could even be seen as the first of the great monuments to God in the Christian world, a public statement of pride in the wealth, power, and prestige of the community that erected it. As such, we might even say that it marks the shift in its understanding of itself as the Body of Christ, alive and leading the people of God into God’s kingdom, to a political organization concerned with self-preservation and expansion. In a sense, current Christian nationalism could be seen as the inevitable end result of a process that began with the dedication of the Church of Saint John on the Lateran Hill in Rome, the seat of Roman Empire and power.
That said, let’s turn to the Scriptural messages our Church provided for us this morning. We can start with the second reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Church at Corinth. Remember that Paul himself was from the Pharisee party, whose lives centered around the Jerusalem Temple and maintaining strict fidelity to the Law of Moses, the Torah. For them, Jerusalem was God’s hometown, and the Temple building was God’s home—his palace—where he dwelt in person in the Holy of Holies. When Paul experienced his conversion, like the moment of Christ’s death when the curtain in the Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom, Paul’s whole spiritual world was broken open, and God was set free. That enabled him to say to the Community of Believers at Corinth, “You are God’s building.” That building was founded on the rock of faith in the resurrection of Jesus—the foundation laid down by Paul’s own preaching—and embodied the Spirit and works of Christ carried out in and through their community.
That’s the Holy of Holies where God has taken up residence. So then, Paul can say, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Please note that the original Greek is clear that the “you” in that statement is plural. The temple where the Spirit of God dwells is to be found in the community of those who believe in the death and resurrection of Christ, and who trust that his words and actions were true. When Paul says, “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person,” he’s referring to those who would attack the Community of Believers from outside, as well as those who would pervert its message from within.
If we want to know how Jesus understood the Temple of God, we can look to today’s gospel reading. Jesus expelled the sellers and moneychangers from the temple precincts. Keep in mind that they had permission to be there, the temple itself benefited from their commerce, and they were essential to the functioning of the Temple. Although other religious functions were carried on in the Temple—like prayer and instruction on the Law and the Prophets—the primary function of the Temple was worship, and, from the beginning, even before Abraham, the nature of worship was the offering of sacrifice. Sacrificial worship was the exclusive work of the Temple, and that required blemish-free and rabbi-approved sacrificial animals that could only be bought with special, temple-issued coinage. That was the vital contribution of the sellers and moneychangers.
Jesus did much more than the so-called “cleansing” of the Temple. Jesus halted its functioning. Worship stopped: obligatory sacrifices, thanksgiving offerings, and atonement offerings all ceased. The Pharisees and temple officials were aghast. This was serious business, and they recognized that no one would attempt this unless it were meant as a prophetic gesture like Jeremiah and Ezechiel performed to get the people’s attention. They therefore asked Jesus to justify this sign. Like all prophetic gestures, this one had multiple layers of meaning. On one hand, it was a prediction of the destruction of the temple by the Romans. On the other hand, it was, as the disciples learned, a prediction of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But most importantly, it was a sign of the transference of worship from the physical temple to the temple incarnate in the Christian Community, and from worship in the form of physical sacrifice to worship in and through spiritual sacrifice.
What was that “spiritual sacrifice” to look like? In other words, how did the Christian Community’s worship function? For clues, we might look back to today’s first reading from the Prophet Ezechiel. Water flowed from God’s temple through the Arabah—the arid region south of the Dead Sea—and into the Dead Sea itself. The effects of this outpouring from the temple were threefold. First, it purified the waters of the Dead Sea, turning the deadly, salty water fresh and capable of life. Second, it provided unfailing nourishment for the life that sprang up from what was once lifeless. Finally, it provided healing for wounds and ills that threatened that life. The work of the Temple, then, was the fostering of life. Can we apply this to the mission of the Church?
The accumulation of wealth, power, and prestige, along with the political influence they purchase, devalues life and, therefore, is contrary to the mission of the Church. Like the Temple in Ezechiel’s vision, the Church is to bring life where this is lifelessness. The Church is to bring nourishment to the hungry in body, mind, and spirit. The Church is to bring healing to the sick and wounded in spirit, mind, and body. We are the Temple in which God’s Spirit dwells, and these things constitute our function, our mission, our worship, and our Eucharist.
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