In the second temple
period, we find the theme which I have come, in recent years, to regard as the
major clue to all the early Christian accounts of God’s action in Jesus. Ezekiel
tells of the divine glory, riding on the throne-chariot, abandoning the temple
to its fate because of the persistent idolatry of people and priests alike. But
in the final dream-like sequence of the book the temple is rebuilt, and in
chapter 43, the divine glory returns at last.
This is the point, as
well, of the whole poem of Isaiah 40–55: The watchmen will see the divine glory
returning to Zion, though when they look closely what they will see is the
figure of the Servant.
The point is this: In
two of the major so-called post-exilic books, Zechariah and Malachi, the Temple
has been rebuilt, but the promise of YHWH’s glorious return remains
unfulfilled.
The prophets insist
that the Spirit will return, but that it hasn’t happened.
YHWH will indeed
return, but that very insistence is powerful evidence that he hasn’t done so
yet. Of course the people are offering sacrifice and praying in the newly
restored temple, because that’s how sacred space works, as with the Western
Wall in Jerusalem to this day, where devout Jews and even visiting presidents
go to pray even though no Jew supposes that Israel’s God is really in full and
glorious residence on the old Temple Mount.
But when the later
rabbis make a list of things that Solomon’s temple had which the second temple
didn’t have, they include the Shekinah, the glorious divine presence. The whole
New Testament, Mark as well as John, Luke and Paul alike, insist that this is
how we are to see Jesus, as the living embodiment of the returning, living God
of Israel.
Understanding
a the Messiah in Second-Temple Theology
The place to start if
we are to understand New Testament Christology, I suggest, is with the
second-temple narratives in which Israel’s God had made promises about the new
temple, which I have said before, is obviously the sign and means of new
creation, with the way in which the logic of that temple-discourse works in
terms of the simultaneity of the returning divine glory and the appearing of
the true divine image.
The coming of God and
the appearance of the truly human one seem to be literally made for each other.
These are the themes which harmonize in the music which is the food of love.
Those whose ears can only hear one note at a time will find it strange to be
told that all these notes—temple, image, divine glory, high priest, messiah—can
somehow come together.
In John we should not
be surprised that, even though this temple-theme has not usually been explored,
people have nevertheless seen chapter 17, one of the climactic moments of the
whole narrative, as a ‘high-priestly’ prayer.
And just as other
themes are fused together, like the varied rainbow colors brought back into the
pure white light from which they came, so Jesus turns out to be both the true
temple and the true image within that temple and the high priest and, of
course, the victorious Messiah.
Remembering
the Romans
Arms and the man I
sing.’ That is the classic Roman ideology, the song of a nation whose vocation
was war.
Throughout John’s
gospel, but reaching a peak in chapter 12 and then again in 16 and the dialogue
with Pilate in John 18 and 19, John presents Jesus as the one who, like David
confronting Goliath, is going out to do battle with ‘the ruler of the world.’
Most have taken this as
a reference simply to the unseen forces, the dark satanic power that must be
dethroned. That is certainly part of it, but I think that John, like other
writers of the time, doesn’t make so clear a separation between what we call
‘spiritual’ and what we call ‘political’ powers.
When Jesus says that ‘the
ruler of this world is coming,’ (14:30) he seems to mean troops, not demons,
though it is the satan entering into Judas that will ‘accuse’ him, that will
hand him over (13:2, 27, 18:3).
The theme is stated
most clearly in 12:31–32. Some Greeks at the feast have asked to see Jesus, and
Jesus appears to regard this as a sign that the last battle is near: if his
message is to bear fruit in the wider world, the grain of wheat must fall into
the earth and die: the dying fall, perhaps, of the music of love. What is
required, for the whole world to be able to receive, and respond in faith to,
the news of God’s kingdom is for the dark power that has kept the whole world
in captivity to be overthrown.
This is new-Exodus
language: Pharaoh must be defeated for the slaves to be freed.
And this will happen
through Jesus’ death: ‘Now comes the judgment of this world! Now this world’s
ruler is going to be thrown out! And when I’ve been lifted up from the earth, I
will draw all people to myself.’