The Temple of the Risen God
Where is the dwelling place of God on earth?
Christ is Risen! Aleluia!
I often find it difficult to write about the Resurrection. While the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a public event, seen by many and bound in the story of human sin and passion, the resurrection of Christ was hidden, and His risen body was even unrecognized by some of his closest disciples when He appeared to them after rising from the dead. It’s as if heaven so infused the body of Jesus that the ordinary human perception of the disciples could not comprehend His presence - at least not initially. Yet, in each Resurrection story in the Gospels, Jesus continues to reach out to His loved ones, making Himself known. Mary Magdalene’s eyes are opened when Jesus calls her by name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus recognize Him when He blesses and breaks bread . Peter and his companions recognize Jesus on the shore when they haul in a miraculous catch of fish.
Likewise, I stumble at first when I try to speak of Christ rising from the dead. I believe, and I rejoice, but the Life I feel rising in my heart when I contemplate the Resurrection is not easily translated into words. I ask your patience as I try to bring a few thoughts forward from pondering this most glorious and mysterious reality.
Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”The Judeans1 said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking about the temple of His body. - John 2:19-21
Where is the dwelling place of God? In the ancient world, the gods of every nation had their temples - the places where the deity was supposed to make their most direct contact with earth. In polytheistic cultures, this meant many temples, each dedicated to a particular god - a god of war, a god of love, a god of agriculture, and so on. The pagan nations understood that these gods could manifest and interface with humans in other places, but the temple was the epicenter of their contact with the human world.
The Jews began differently, but after the construction of the Ark of the Covenant following the reception of the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, they too had a particular, most sacred ‘dwelling place’ for God on earth. They carried the Ark as a locus of divine-human contact in a large tent while wandering through the desert, as well as in the first years of dwelling in the Promised Land. Roughly 1,000 years before the coming of Christ, King David promised to build God a proper house - a temple - and his son Solomon delivered. When the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon, their first major work was to rebuild the temple, to allow God to again dwell among His people in a particular, localized way. The second Jerusalem temple, or at least the remaining Western Wall of the Temple Mount, remains a sacred site in Judiasm to this day.
In the Gospels, Jesus’ Incarnation marks a radical shift in the locus of the divine-human interface. Jesus predicts the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, which comes to pass roughly four decades after his Crucifixion and Resurrection. Jesus teaches forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God outside of the system of worship in the Jerusalem temple, and finally disrupts the temple system by driving out the money changers. Finally, in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of His own body as a new temple, and also as bread from heaven that people can eat and live forever. He promises that He will dwell in those who believe in Him (Jn 14:20, 15:4, 17:26), and that those who believe in Him (Jn 6:47) and eat his flesh (Jn 6:48-51) In the Gospels, the locus of divine-human interface has shifted from the Jerusalem temple to the body of Jesus.
Then, Jesus willingly suffers, is crucified, dies, and rises from the dead. His body is now glorified, and freed from ordinary earthly limitations. He walks through walls, and appears and disappears at will. He body transcends the limits of space, and time, united with heaven and able to appear and disappear at will in the physical realm. Jesus’ resurrection body remains a human body, yet is unbounded from the limits of bodies as we ordinarily know them.
In this new reality, where is God’s particular, dwelling place on earth? It is no longer in a temple or any fixed location. While God can never be confined to a particular place, the New Testament does suggest a preferred dwelling, or ‘temple’ in which God abides in a particularly intense way. This dwelling place is the bodies of those who believe in Him and eat His flesh and drink His blood - a practice affirmed by the ancient church as the Eucharist. We, members of the Body of Christ that is the Church, have become God’s favored temple on earth.
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.” I Corinthians 6:19-20
In the new Christian reality, every human body is a potential ‘temple’ of God’s indwelling Spirit. It is up to us to prepare and honor the temple, and to receive the gift of the Divine Indwelling in faith and in sacrament. This has radical implications for how we live in the world, how we treat ourselves, and one another.
What does it mean for our bodies to be the dwelling place of the Risen Christ and God’s Holy Spirit? Among countless implications, it means:
The human body has inviolable dignity. As the potential locus of the Divine Indwelling, the body is worthy of incalculable honor. It can never be reduced to the status of machine, mere instrument, or resource for exploitation.
Deep respect for human life from conception to natural death is a natural outflow of recognizing the sacred potential of every human body.
Similarly, human society is a collection of potential ‘God-bearers’. Social or government structures are most just when they honor and support the dignity of each member. We are individually sacred and worthy of respect, never to be reduced to cogs in a machine or cast aside as worthless in some totalitarian endeavor.
No living human being is ever completely ‘lost’ in God’s eyes. No matter how obscured the image of God within us, our bodies remain potential homes for God’s indwelling and further manifestation on earth. Those of us in ministry must never despair of the potential for the restoration and re-inhabitation of any of God’s temples.
Any medical system that treats the body as a machine or operates on strictly deterministic principles is incomplete, and will inevitably fail to create the optimum conditions for the health and flourishing of the body.
Treating the body as as machine or computer to be ‘hacked’, or a set of re-arrangeable raw materials to fulfill subjective desire will lead only to misery. Human fulfillment emerges from a deep acceptance of the body, trust in its innate goodness, training to support its natural capacities, and the harmonizing of body, soul and spirit in relationship with God.
The human body realizes its greatest potential not through the mere absence of disease or life extension, but through the awakening of the human soul and spirit in Christ, and the deepening unity of body, soul and spirit in God.
So long as a single human being remains united with Christ, God’s dwelling is with the human race. Churches can be built and destroyed, Cathedrals can rise and fall, but God’s primary temple will always be the bodies of His holy ones.
The epicenter of Christianity cannot be located geographically - not in Rome, Jerusalem, Mt. Athos, Yoido Full Gospel Church or Lakewood Church2. Christ is fully present in every heart, every body, awakened to faith and love in Him. This is, in orthodox Christianity, literally the dwelling place of God.
The human body is not a mere ‘vessel’ to be used in this life and cast aside, but an essential aspect of our personhood, destined for eternal life (and indeed, resurrection) in God. Christ’s body is the ‘first fruits’ of the resurrection, and our bodies await a similar ultimate destiny.
"You... are stones of the temple of the Father, prepared for the Father's building, and drawn up on high by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross…. You, therefore, as well as all your fellow-travelers, are God-bearers, temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of holiness, adorned in all respects with the commandments of Jesus Christ." ~ Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st/ early 2nd century)
“Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one” - I Corinthians 15:49
I believe it’s entirely appropriate, and possibly more accurate, to translate the Greek Ioudaios as ‘Judeans’ in most circumstances where the word occurs in John’s gospel.
The last two are the largest Protestant churches in the world and the United States, respectively. Yes I had to look this up. :-)
Thank you so much!