Posts Tagged ‘Hebrews 2:12-18’
A Temple Built for All – Br. Sean Glenn
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Malachi 3:1-4 | Hebrews 2:12-18 | Luke 2:22-40
“When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.”[1]
Today, with St. Luke the Evangelist, the church recalls Jesus’ presentation in the temple at Jerusalem: the place where the presence of YHWH was understood to dwell, where heaven and earth overlapped in perfect resonance. This was YHWH’s chosen dwelling-place.[2]This was the site of prayer, sacrifice, and pilgrimage, rebuilt by Herod to “recapture the glory of the Solomonic temple.”[3]
The temple, temple language, and temple imagery likely do not resonate with us in the same vivid ways they did for the faithful of antiquity. The distances of time and cultural ethos have changed our relationship to temple language in deep, subconscious ways, but the image hangs over Luke’s gospel from beginning to end in ways both subtle and obvious. Mentioned more than seventy times, the temple features prominently within the vocabulary of Luke’s text when compared with the other gospels. Luke draws our attention to it at specific points in the narration of his gospel, and it comes to occupy a place of importance in his account of Jesus’ work, ministry, and self-understanding; destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.[4]