While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Costly stones and votive offerings are visible realities that are meant to point to ones which are invisible. They are not meant to make us so comfortable on earth that we forget about heaven. Rather, beautiful things are meant to awaken in us a longing for the source of beauty. If we fail to realize this, the temporary nature of such beauty has the potential to deeply traumatize us.
Jesus said, “All that you see here–
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”
Why would God allow the destructions of the very temple of his presence in Jerusalem. He would do so only in order that what was merely a sign of his presence, though indeed the chief among such signs, would fade and so that what was symbolized could be realized.
Indeed, what was endowed with glory has come to have no glory in this respect because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was going to fade was glorious, how much more will what endures be glorious (see Second Corinthians 3:10-11)
The temple in Jerusalem was made with human hands, a copy based on the blueprint of the heavenly temple (see Hebrews 9:24). Jerusalem itself was a sign of the true and lasting city whose builder and maker is God (see Hebrews 11:10). There was something about the nature of the signs that could seemingly tame the reality itself, for the signs were static, and could be appreciated on the terms of the spectators. But that to which the signs would give way was not safe or tame. It was a dynamic reality that set the terms with which it would engage the world.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.
The stone was "hewn from the mountain without a hand being put to it", meaning it was something done by the initiative of God himself. It did not rely on the transitory and ultimately fragile power of earthly kingdoms. This was the promise of the Kingdom that Jesus himself came to inaugurate, for he himself was this stone not hewn with hands, not born of a father. To him those transitory realities which merely pointed to the presence of God had to give way. In his own person was the new and heavenly Jerusalem revealed. In him was the true temple in which the presence of God could finally and definitively be entered and enjoyed. What was true of Jesus is now true also of his Body, the Church. She is still seen through the medium of signs, but is nevertheless truly the heavenly Jerusalem and the new temple. Though these things are still veiled to those on the pilgrimage of this life, they realities are nevertheless present with all of their power.
“Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
Do we become so preoccupied with the signs of transitory things coming and going, of unkept promises, and violence, of sickness and disaster, that we forget to anchor ourselves in that which cannot be shaken? Jesus challenges us to make he himself the source of our hope. Let us choose to belong to his Kingdom over and above any earthly kingdoms in which we live.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (see Philippians 3:20).
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