Word to the Wise
Monday, February 10, 2014 - Monday in the 5th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Kgs 8:1-7, 9-13 and Mark 6:53-56]I have truly built you a princely house, a dwelling where you may abide forever.
FEBRUARY 10 ST. SCHOLASTICA, virgin
Temples are always complicated realities. Solomon's temple, a wonder of the age, was no exception. It was not just a gorgeous place of worship, it was a political symbol! It represented the consolidation of political, religious and military power in the area of what we now call The Holy Land. He nearly bankrupted the kingdom to build it and caused lasting resentment by the taxation and labor (most of it slave labor) required to accomplish the project. Even so, the first scripture for today describes the dedication event and Solomon's prideful statement, quoted above, is the sort of thing one might hear at any church dedication! However, the Lord would turn out to be a very demanding tenant!
A temple is really only as good as the people who use it! We cannot "put God in a box" to keep as our personal treasure! Solomon's temple would be torn down by the Babylonians. By the time they came, his kingdom had long since been divided after his death. When the exiles returned from the "Babylonian Captivity," they rebuilt the temple, and not long before Jesus' time, Herod the Great "restored" it to what was thought to be its original glory. But the Romans came and tore it down, and it has never been rebuilt. Only the "wailing wall" remains to remind not just Jews, but all the world about trying to "put God in a box."
Sacred space is important for worship but it is made sacred by the act of worship. The prophet Jeremiah warned the people about putting their trust in the words, "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!" [Jer. 7:4] If that act of worship is betrayed by conduct elsewhere, the very temple becomes a place of corruption because the people have become corrupt. As long as we ignore the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed and injustice in the land, we are coming to the temple under false pretenses! The Eucharist is about recognizing Christ wherever he may be found, and not just in the tabernacle. AMEN