This day in history. . .

Unless I am mistaken, and I often am, it was on this day in 70 AD that a Roman assault during a revolt of the Jews burned the Second Temple burned to the ground.  It is no small day.  When we attempt to date the books of the New Testament, we look for signs that would either address the Temple's destruction or give, by silence, the testimony to its continued existence.  Furthermore, it was the sign that Jesus Himself pointed out as the end of one era and the beginning of another.  Jesus did not equivocate. The Temple would be destroyed “with not one stone left standing upon another” making this an unmistakable sign of a profound moment in history.  Billy Joel said he didn't start the fight but somebody did and it was always burning until it was no more.

The Temple was simply a piece of real estate esteemed by the Jews.  It was the House of God, symbol and instrument and locus of God’s presence on earth. Jesus Himself called this “my Father’s house” on two occasions recorded by the disciples and perhaps more often (Luke 2:49; John 2:16).  He jealously cleansed the Temple when it had deviated from its purpose for the Divine Service and become merely a place of commerce, even holy commerce.  This place figured large on the day of Jesus' death, with the record of “the curtain of the temple,” which veiled the innermost place of God's dwelling literally “torn in two” to expose there the mercy seat which had been revealed upon the cross.  This is, at least, how the writer to the Hebrews describes Christ's opening of the sanctuary “through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.”  A new Temple not made with hands rose up on Easter and made us living stones of its continued construction.   Yet that structure in Rome did not fall down all at once but seemed to continue on for nigh onto forty years, even refreshed in its appearance along the way.  Then, following Christ’s Ascension to the right hand of the Father, the place that had been the meeting place of Jews and Jewish Christians literally had to give way to the prophecy of Christ.  The Temple burned and fell.  (See Luke 24:53; Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:21; 21:26–30)

The priestly ministry of the Old Testament is described in Hebrews 6 -- including the lampstand (menorah), table, and altar of incense.  With the destruction of the Temple, the building was stripped of all its adornments and the Temple’s menorah was carried by its conquerors processing into Rome.  These adornments had become the spoils of victory in the conquest of Judaea by Titus.  The celebration was not about a building brought down by fire but an end to the pesky people who had been a thorn in the side of Rome more irritating than their size or importance belies.  The history of the Jews was not over but the Old Testament people of God whose identity included a priestly caste to sacrifice (the Passover lamb, for example) was done and would never be the same.  The Sadducees also came to the end of a line and the Pharisees gave birth to rabbinic Judaism as a replacement for their own dominance.  And the Christians also were sent forth from the Temple along with everyone else.  It was not only an end to the Jews as we had known them but the first step of Christians beyond shadow of their spiritual forebears.  The next mention of the lampstand and the altar would be in the book that proclaims the future to come when everything is brought to its ultimate consummation.   The Revelation to St. John picks up the story not in Israel or anywhere on earth but in the heavenly gates, with the heavenly liturgy, where the saints and all who have loved His appearing are gathered unto Himself eternally.