La prédication de la ruine du Temple (1886-1894) by James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum
We are the Temple
“We are the temple of the living God,” says the Apostle Paul at the beginning of the Epistle Reading for today.
He says “living God,” because he is striking a contrast to the cult of idols that he just described:
Be not unequally yoked
“Do not be mismatched [or ‘unequally yoked’] with unbelievers. For what partnership does righteousness have with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial [i.e., Satan]? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Corinthians 6.14-16a).
The cult of idols is the negative meaning of the word “world”: “... the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4.4). The Apostle Paul describes that cult as “iniquity,” “darkness,” “unbelief,” “temple of idols.”
The directive to “be not mismatched” does not refer here to marriage – that is, between a believing spouse with an unbeliever. It is often interpreted just that way, but there are few, if any, Church Fathers who make that interpretation.
This call to separation for the sake of holiness is deeper and wider than the issue of spouses with different faiths (actually, such a problem was dealt with in 1 Corinthians 7.13-14 and 1 Peter 3.1: obviously, such marriages were already a reality and not forbidden).
This was a call by St Paul “to come out from them and be separate from them” (2 Corinthians 6.17).
Recall (pardon the pun) that “call” is related to the New Testament word for “church”: ekklesia. This is from the Greek verb “ekkalein” – which means “to call out.”
So the word “Church” itself is a calling to move out from darkness, to rise into the “fellowship of the Light,” to assemble together as the “Temple of the Living God.”
Bad paths of separation
But what does this separation mean?
In the long history of Christianity there have been many different answers to this question.
Some have taken this very literally. The Amish are an obvious example. They move into their own communities, physically separate from general society. They reject modern technology and choose instead a simpler life.
Others have interpreted this same call “to come out and be separate” in a far more individualistic sense. Revivalists and preachers in the last 200 years, from Charles Finney to Billy Sunday to Jerry Falwell, focused on a number of individual sins: like smoking, drinking, playing cards, going to the theater, gambling, and others.
According to this view, avoiding these sins – rather than fighting the passions behind them – was the “separation” that St Paul called for.
And there are some in the Orthodox world who make these same interpretations. Some think that moving into an Orthodox culture (like Greece or Russia or a community near a monastery) would make it easier to be Orthodox, to be “separate.”
Some take the Orthodox call to asceticism – the fight against the passions – and turn it into the same legalistic set of individual behaviors. Instead of avoiding smoking and drinking, some have turned fasting into a rigorist, fundamentalistic regimen. Some have even changed their appearance, growing long scraggly bears, becoming partisans for Russia against Ukraine, abandoning friendships and family – all in the name of “separation.”
Needless to say, Orthodox asceticism was never meant to be turned into a fundamentalist, Pharisaical legalism.
All Orthodox asceticism – fasting, Psalmody, almsgiving, quietness, prayer – has one purpose, and that is to love the Lord God better, and to love one’s neighbor better.
If Orthodox asceticism does not produce love, it might be asceticism, but it is surely not Orthodox. And, even more importantly, if Orthodoxy itself does not produce love, it might be a partisan ideology or an ethnic club or a cultural museum, but it is not Christian.
And there’s a lot of self-styled Orthodox chatterers (e.g., “Orthobro’s” and “radtrads”) on social media who need to take this to heart.
Temple of the Living God
What the Amish, the revivalist preachers, and Orthobro’s seemed to have not done is to read closely our Epistle reading.
In the Apostle’s words, God Himself has made these promises. Promises, after all, are a good thing. And promises from God are bright and hopeful, optimistic and joyful.
“God has said ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (2 Corinthians 6.16, quoting Leviticus 26.12 and Ezekiel 37.27).
“Therefore come out from among them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean” (2 Cor 6.13, quoting Isaiah 52.11).
“Then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters” (2 Cor 6.13b-14, quoting 2 Samuel 7.14).
These Old Testament passages are important. Why did St Paul quote them? Because these are all passages that prophesy about the presence of Jesus Christ as King in His people.
This “presence,” this intimate closeness and fellowship of the Father with us His people who are “the Temple of the Living God” is accomplished by Jesus Christ becoming and remaining incarnate, Who died on the Cross, rose on the third day, and ascended to the right hand of God the Father.
And His presence is realized, actually enfolding us into Trinitarian community, by the Holy Spirit.
This is a glad, happy thing! This is cause for great rejoicing!
Isn’t it clear that when St Paul quotes God as saying “I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you,” that we should immediately have the Prodigal Son’s reception leap into mind? That God the Father has been always waiting at the doorway of our heart, waiting for us to open up and come home?
This call, all these verses of promise, speak to the realization of the restoration of Israel, the return of the captives from exile in Babylon.
The exiles are not just the Jews.
The exiles are all of humanity, all of Creation.
Different from the inside out
So of course we, as the Temple of the Living God, are going to differentiate from the dark culture of idols.
And that differentiation is not superficial. It will be deeper than skindeep, or appearances. Anyone can pitch a fit about smoking and drinking. Anyone can grow a long beard and wear a cassock (ask Rasputin) and spout venom on the internet. Anyone, Jesus said, can become a “whitewashed mausoleum” (Matthew 23.27).
But not everyone is clean from the inside out:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean” (Matthew 23.25-26).
“Inside cleanliness” is the only possible answer to the call of “Come out from among them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean.”
No, we don’t follow the exterior laws of Judaism anymore (most of which are summarized in Leviticus 11).
We follow the deeper and more real invitation to the heavenly Temple that was always the one all physical temples point to, the one that the Jersusalem Temple always anticipated.
That preparation, that way of cleansing, is the way of “seeking first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness” (Matthew 6.33). It is the way of “Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And loving your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22.37-40).
Love in the ruins
Love in the Ruins is a masterpiece written by the great Southern Catholic novelist, Walker Percy.
Written in 1971, the story is set in an America that has become so divided, with parties so extreme and anger at each other, that society seems bent on collapse.
Percy wasn’t so much a prophet as he, a practicing physician, was simply a good diagnostician. He could see, even fifty years ago, the way things were going.
And here we are.
There are not a few Christians who want to run away into their own fabricated fantasies of “better worlds.” Maybe if they could create a Holy Russia, a Byzantine Empire around them, or maybe just an America of the good ol’ days, then things would be all right.
But no. Jesus tells us to get real. We should separate ourselves from our fantasies of wishing for a different society, another government.
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10.16).
“You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world … Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in heaven” (Matthew 5.13-15).
The Apostle Paul knew, all too well, what "love in the ruins" was all about. In just a few paragraphs before our Epistle Reading, he writes these poignant words:
"Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in any one’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger; by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Corinthians 6.2b-10).
Purity (vs desire for power). Knowledge (vs conspiracy theory and grievance). Forbearance (vs retaliation). Kindness (vs rage vulgarity). The Holy Spirit (vs the spirit of antichrist). Genuine love (vs condescension and manipulation). Truthful Speech (vs throwing red meat at rallies and ginning up the crowd). The Power of God (vs self-aggrandizement).
Jesus sends us into the world, into our America, as it is right now.
He doesn’t ask us to change the nation and society.
He calls us to change our hearts, ourselves, our home, our neighborhood.
From the inside out.
✾
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