If during Holy Week you were following the events of Jesus’ last week on Earth you may have been struck by how often the Temple features. According to the traditional chronology Jesus visited it on Palm Sunday, ‘cleansed’ it on Monday and frequently taught there probably until Thursday. There cannot be any doubt that despite the way it had been neglected and misused Jesus held the Temple in high regard. It symbolized God’s presence in the midst of His people; it spoke of His forgiveness through the sacrificial system; it called upon the people to give thanks expressed in ritual for His blessings.
When originally built by Solomon the Temple was an impressive place. In 1 Kings 6 you can read the detailed instructions that had to be followed which included much gold ornamentation. It’s one of those passages of Scripture that could make your eyes glaze over in face of all the detail given. Reading it recently I asked myself how I could preach this! Well, you could focus on verse 7:
‘In building the Temple only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being used.’
There has been some scholarly ink spilled over this. What was the reason for this strategy? Many interesting suggestions have been put forward but the question still remains for the preacher as to how this can be applied to the lives of believers.
I recently heard Joni Eareckson refer to this verse in a talk she gave at a conference. She took the quarry to be our present experience and the Temple as the eternal Kingdom of God. The Temple is often used by the apostles as a symbol of the people of God now and what we will be in eternity, a fulfillment of everything the temple symbolized. Joni’s point was that when we are in the quarry we have to put up with the hammer and the chisel in order to be worthy of the peace of the Kingdom. It is through those experiences that batter and dig that we are shaped and moulded according to the pattern of Jesus’ life.
(It has just occurred to me that with this in mind the title of the blog takes on a whole new meaning! But maybe I’ll get back to that . . .)
Joni’s take on 1 Kings 6: 7 resonated in me because over the past year I have been taken down that road of thought, sometimes encouraged, sometimes perplexed. And often I have returned to John 15 where Jesus speaks of Himself as the vine, his people as the branches and His Father as the gardener. Like any gardener the Father cuts off any branch that bears no fruit ‘while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’ (John 15: 2)
In case you missed it this is God with a pruning knife cutting into a fruitful life to make it even more fruitful. That may be a disturbing image for some but something like it has become common in much Covid-19 talk. Without any reference to God hopes have been expressed, and sometimes confident predictions made that these strange and bewildering days will make a positive impact on us to the extent that we will become a more caring people, more ecologically sensitive, more appreciative of the necessities of life rather than the luxuries. So the pain, the isolation, the bereavement, the frustration can work for our good?
This is another example of how Christian truth is being discovered although not necessarily by an expected route.
I mentioned Albert Camus’ The Plague in an earlier blog. At the beginning of the novel he describes the people of Oran before they were overwhelmed by the virus:
‘The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible. They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.’
In other words, they were a people who had lessons to learn, insight to gain, priorities to establish - and the plague was their opportunity. Camus would not describe himself as a committed Christian but this is not far from a Christian perspective. In the suffering of the moment an opportunity had fallen to the people of Oran to make changes. What does a Christian do with these Covid-19 days? Perhaps what God does with us is more important. Quality time in the quarry can mean quality time in the Temple.
