“As some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, Jesus said, As for these things, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
I wonder if you have ever asked: why were the Gospels themselves written? This event, which in the Gospel narrative Jesus is predicting (in 33 AD) as happening in the future, had probably just happened when Luke wrote his Gospel down.
And it was probably because of this event that Luke (following Mark’s lead who may have even written his version on the eve of the Temple’s destruction and mirrored by Matthew) felt the need to write it down. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70, was so cataclysmic, so much a sign that Jesus’s words were coming true, so reminiscent of comparable moments of crisis in Israel’s past that truly the literati of late 1st c Christianity had to make some sense of these terrifying and portentous events.
It’s worth quickly considering the history: Rebels had defeated Roman forces under Cestius Gallus in AD 66. This encouraged wider rebellion. Rome retorted as thwarted mighty empires do; Nero appointed Vespasian, a highly competent general, with his son Titus, as second in command, to crush the revolt.
Rome subdued the northern territories. Josephus, the Jewish commander in Galilee, was captured – he turned coat and becomes an advisor to Vespasian. His history is a vital record of the events.
Nero died in June 68, and so began the Year of the Four Emperors. Vespasian was proclaimed emperor in 69 AD and returned to Rome, leaving Titus to conclude the prosecution of Judaean War.
Civil strife undermined the city’s defence. Titus laid siege between April–September of AD 70. And in August the Temple was burned to the ground.
It’s hardly possible for us to imagine what the ramifications of this destruction were. Herod’s Temple was comparable to the great Pyramid at Giza. As a place of pilgrimage there was nothing to rival it. The Jewish faith was unique in Rome as having a licit status outside Paganism. To destroy such a monument, and its depiction on the arch of Titus, still there today in the Roman forum, was to make an ultimate of the subjugation of any who considered rebellion.
Judaism’s central place of encounter with God was gone, destroyed.
Jesus could see the dangers these beautiful precincts were in 40 years or so before they were no more. And his words were remembered and appropriated and crucially committed to the literary form we know as the Gospels between AD 70 -90.
Today is safeguarding Sunday. It’s also the anniversary of Archbishop Justin’s resignation last year. I don’t propose to rake over old and sad coals. But putting trust in edifices and institutions which seem immutable is understandable. Today’s Gospel helps to remember words from the hymn, Tower and Temple are sadly prone to fall to dust.
Beauty, longevity, or sacred status do not guarantee safety, however much we may have wished they might.
As we reflect on making the Church a safe good and dependable place, let us be extremely mindful of the terrible failures to protect vulnerable people in the life of the Church.
We have to ensure that the heart of our ecclesial life is an inherent honouring all people as created in the image and likeness of God. As we develop a culture of Safeguarding in the Church, we are paying attention to terrible failures to have lived up to these expectations in the past. Too often the culture of the Church, despite its doctrines, has harboured and not critiqued very bad behaviour, often towards the weak and vulnerable. As the Church learns from appalling abuse in the past, it wishes to be ever more intentional about connecting how it orders itself with consistently good training and patterns of behaviour that allow no room for any form of abuse, and a conscious way of being with one another which honours the likeness of God we each reflect.
My sense is that all in the Church are working together to foster an atmosphere of confidence in one another, which means our interactions are safe and healthy, and where trust can be placed in those in authority.
Malachi foresaw the destruction of the Temple four centuries before Jesus did. For Malachi God’s judgement is the dawning of justice, with healing in his wings – words reminiscent of the carol Hark the Herald Angels sing. The “wings” are either rays of the sun, or metaphorically as the edge of a garment for either they are to seen God’s desire for protection and justice.
I was struck by a Theological reflection we were sent to consider by a Theologian called Dr Krish Kandiah:
“Safeguarding must never become synonymous with an obligatory bureaucratic tick-box exercise… Theology is as vital to the church as a compass is to sailors in a storm. Safeguarding is the true north of all service the church has to offer.”