It is funny how growing up changes things. When I was in school, I hated biology. I cannot draw to save my life and so my paramecium did not only look like it was slipper shaped, it actually was a slipper, I think. I did not like having to memorize random Latin words used to classify various species, nor assorted facts about each plant or animal. But now, though I still do not love biology as a whole, I love the field of genetics. I love reading up on it and gaining knowledge. But I still do not like memorizing facts.
Perhaps, this is why I also hated history. Facts, facts, facts. There is only so much one can stand. But, as George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” History is all important if we do not wish to repeat the errors of previous generations.
And this is crucial for the passage we are dealing with today. Very early in the history of the church we somehow forgot the history of the books we call scripture. The idea of timeless truths crept into our way of thinking about scripture. And we then forgot also what these books were trying to tell us. And so we think that Jesus’ words to Thomas, “Stop doubting and believe” characterize this disciple as the doubting Thomas, even though all the disciples doubted.
This passage does speak of Thomas’ doubt. No doubt about that. However, this is not the reason for its inclusion by John through the Spirit. If you do a simple word search for Thomas in the New Testament, you will come up with 12 occurrences. There is one in each of the other three Gospels and one in Acts.
In all these four passages, he is simply listed along with the other disciples. He does nothing in the other Gospels or in Acts, is not even a bystander for the events of Jesus’ life.
But there are 8 verses in John’s Gospel that mention Thomas. These are in 4 stories. The first is in John 11.16, where, in response to Jesus’ declaration that Lazarus was dead and his intention to go to Jerusalem, Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Keep this in mind. We will return to it shortly.
The second story is in John 14. The chapter starts with Jesus saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” To this, Thomas asks, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Keep this also in mind for a bit.
The third story is our passage for today, the passage that, over the centuries, has unfortunately characterized Thomas as a doubter. The last mention of Thomas is in chapter 21, where he is fishing with the other disciples. He is only mentioned here and does not participate in the story.
But the main thrust of the passage for today is not Thomas’ doubt, but something else. To understand this something else, we need a chronology of the New Testament books. The 5 books penned by John are probably the last of the books to be written, very likely in the last decade of the first century AD, closely following each other.
And in 1 John 4 we read, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
Unlike some groups of Christians that like to think of the Antichrist as some individual who will terrorize the world prior to Jesus’ return, John tells us that the characteristic of the antichrist is not terror, but denial that Jesus was fully human. Looking at it from a historical perspective we can conclude that, at the time John was writing, there must have been reason for him to write this.
And there was. Early strands of Gnosticism had sprouted in the early church toward the end of the first century AD. You have heard the term Gnosticism before from Uncle Ken and from me.
What were some of the characteristic beliefs of Gnosticism? First, a hatred of the physical body. The goal of every human, according to the Gnostics, was to escape this evil, deceptive shell so that one’s spirit could return to the realm of the spirit.
Second, according to the Gnostics, Jesus only appeared to die on the cross. According to them, Jesus was not a human, but the manifestation of a divine spirit, who appeared to be human to those around him. And at the cross Jesus’ spirit returned to the realm of the spirit, thereby stopping the appearance of his being human.
Third, the Gnostics believed in secret knowledge to those who were initiated. This is where they get their name, for the Greek word γνῶσις (gnosis) means knowledge. The Gnostics believed that outsiders could not understand the gospel because it was special revelation given only to the insiders.
Fourth, the Gnostics believed that Thomas, and not Peter, James or John, was the foremost of the disciples and that Jesus gave him this secret knowledge just before doing his magic trick at Calvary.
So four beliefs – hatred of the physical body, Jesus only appearing to be human, special knowledge and primacy of Thomas.
To understand scripture, we need to remember that the books of scripture were not written in a vacuum. Rather, scripture directly addresses issues that were relevant at the time of writing. The Gospel of John tackles all four Gnostic beliefs specifically through its portrayal of Thomas. John, through the Spirit, recalls and includes episodes in Thomas’ life that directly confront and demolish the key beliefs of the Gnostics.
First, Thomas, far from being the foremost of the disciples is shown to have been missing on the day when Jesus met the other disciples. Thomas was not there and Jesus still met the others despite Thomas’ not being there.
Second, Thomas is shown to not possess any special knowledge. He asks, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” He has no secret knowledge of the things Jesus was telling them about. Rather, he is as ignorant as the others.
Third, in chapter 11, Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Thomas did not believe or expect Jesus’ death to be fake. He did not believe that Jesus was simply a manifestation of a divine spirit, but rather a full human being. He expected Jesus to die and invites the other disciples to join him in a suicide mission.
Fourth, Thomas, far from expecting Jesus’ spirit to be liberated from his body, states clearly that he wanted to touch Jesus and his crucifixion wounds.
Thomas, unlike the Gnostics, was not expecting some non-corporeal existence but a fully corporeal one in which Jesus would bear his scars physically.
But why does Thomas want such a proof? Is he simply a skeptic, as many have argued? Is he just a doubter with no way for us to explain his doubt? From many sermons and studies of Thomas you would think that there is no more to his doubt, no explanation and that he was just a person riddled with doubts and skepticism, unable to accept the resurrection.
But John goes to great lengths to tell us that this is not true, that there is something else behind Thomas’ skepticism. Three times he refers to Thomas with the additional clause “also known as Didymus” or “also known as the twin.”
As I read for today’s message I came across so many theories about why Thomas has this nickname. Each theory was wilder than the next.
What I could not find was the simplest of explanations, the one that explains his doubt as well. It seemed as though everyone writing about Thomas was determined not to see what John was telling us to see.
Thomas was a twin. Thomas, being a twin, was probably used to being mistaken for his twin. Very likely people would have claimed to have seen him somewhere when they had actually seen his twin. And vice versa.
And so this Thomas, subject to mistaken identity for all his life, was keenly aware that if you hope to see someone, you could easily see another person but assume it is the person you want to see.
Now Jesus very likely had a lookalike. That is why the Jewish leaders needed a close associate like Judas to identify him with confidence despite the fact that Jesus spoke openly in the temple.
And so Thomas wondered if the others had seen this lookalike and mistaken him for Jesus. How could he be sure? What would distinguish the two if they looked alike? Nothing short of the wounds inflicted on Jesus when he was crucified. Jesus would have the wounds and the scars, once again challenging the Gnostic belief that the goal is to escape this physical body. But the lookalike would not have had any scars.
This encounter between Jesus and Thomas demolishes the Gnostic beliefs and restores the orthodox belief in the bodily, physical resurrection of Jesus.
At the end of the encounter between Jesus and Thomas, Jesus looks ahead to us. We are those who have not seen him physically. We are those he blesses. We are those who have not had the opportunity to touch his wounds. We are those who could be tempted to think that the resurrection of Jesus simply means that his spirit is alive and well. We are those who, however, believe that Jesus has been raised bodily and can be touched. And we are those who daily yearn for and wait for that touch.
For this Good Friday, I wish to meditate on Jesus’ words from the cross. The first of these words is, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” found in Luke 23.34. The last thing we hear Jesus say in Luke’s Gospel before this is, “For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.31) The women of Jerusalem were mourning for him and Jesus says this as a warning to them. What did he mean? Pilate had declared that Jesus was innocent (Luke 23.22) but had still gone ahead and sentenced him to be crucified. Jesus was declaring his innocence in the face of the sentence he was about to endure. And on the cross, he declares clearly that his crucifixion was a result of the ignorance of those who were carrying out the sentence.
When the first humans were tempted, they gave in and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to be like God, possessing the knowledge of good and evil. What does this mean? The person who possesses the knowledge of what is good and what is evil is a person who needs no guidance in her life for she is fully able, due to the knowledge, to make the correct decisions in all situations. The knowledge of good and evil is something that God possesses. He knows, in every situation, what is right and what is wrong, in other words, what the wise course of action is. By reaching out and eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first humans were declaring their independence from God. They wanted to be those who possessed this knowledge. They wanted to be those who could infallibly decide what was right and what was wrong in all situations.
Alas, when it comes to Jesus’ crucifixion, his words reveal that this human experiment had failed drastically. Not only did humans not know what is good and what is evil, but also, even when they know what was evil, they do not possess the moral fiber to refuse to go down that path. Pilate had declared Jesus innocent. His soldiers knew that he had declared Jesus innocent. Yet, here was Jesus, crucified by the very people who knew him to be innocent.
This first word from the cross is a stark indictment against human justice. Due to all the political machinations, the humans forgot the basis of justice and put to death a man they knew to be innocent. Pilate did not want an uprising on his hands. The Jewish authorities did not want someone in their midst who subverted the central symbols of Jewish life – Torah, Sabbath, and Temple. So despite knowing that Jesus was innocent, they chose to do what was most expedient and sentenced him to death. This is the nature of human justice – expedient.
Jesus’ first word from the cross tells us that human justice is not to be trusted because it is most often driven by expediency. However, his word also hints at a justice that remains to be uncovered and discovered – God’s justice. Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who were crucifying him.
What did this mean? Jesus was relinquishing his claim as the wronged party. He was the one who was facing the grossest injustice. And he could have been the one crying out for vengeance and retribution. However, with his first word, he relinquishes this claim and lays it at the feet of the Father. He knew that his Father is the source of justice and the one who has covenanted to set things right for all of creation. And so he gives up the demand for vengeance and retribution, trusting that, come what may, the Father would not allow this injustice to stand. The Father would overturn this injustice and set the record straight.
The Assurance of God’s Justice
To the dying brigand crucified along with him Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23.43) In the preceding word Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who were crucifying him. They were unrepentant, but Jesus was relinquishing his desire for vengeance and retribution, trusting instead in the Father’s justice. But here we see a different side of the crucifixion.
Crucified with him were two brigands. Only Luke tells us that the responses of the two brigands to Jesus’ crucifixion were different. One ranted at him just like those who were crucifying him. But the other recognized that Jesus was innocent. His words to the first brigand are telling. He says, “Don’t you fear God since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” (Luke 23.40-41)
What is it that this second brigand was trying to say to the first? They and Jesus were suffering the same sentence. All three of them had been crucified. But crucifixion was exactly the punishment that the two brigands deserved. But Jesus was innocent. Yet he too had been placed under the same sentence.
If crucifixion was something that Jesus was facing though he was innocent, the question arose, “What kind of punishment would God mete out to those who were guilty?” If Jesus, though innocent, had been crucified and if God did nothing about it, then what horrors awaited those who had actually been criminals?
The second brigand recognizes that Jesus’ crucifixion raised two possibilities. Either there was no God of justice, which is why an innocent man like Jesus was bearing the same punishment as two guilty men. In this case, there was no justice one could hope for. On the other hand, there was a God of justice. In this case, the crucifixion of Jesus was a huge miscarriage of justice that this just God could not overlook.
What he believed about Jesus is something we will know only when Jesus returns! But he makes a last ditch effort after recognizing the incongruity of Jesus’ crucifixion. If there was a God who was concerned about justice then this God would not allow the injustice meted out to Jesus to stand. He would act to remedy this injustice. And the brigand threw himself on that understanding of God’s justice. In desperation, he pleads, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23.42)
I think of another occasion in the bible where someone in dire straits asks another to remember him. When Joseph had interpreted Pharaoh’s cupbearer’s dream indicating that Pharaoh was going to restore the cupbearer, he told the cupbearer, “But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison.” (Genesis 40.14) The cupbearer, of course, forgot and Joseph had to rot in the prison for some years after that.
But Jesus’ words are telling. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To the brigand’s ‘when’ Jesus answers ‘today’. Unlike the cupbearer who forgot Joseph, Jesus would not forget the brigand. And unlike Joseph who had to wait years before he was elevated, the brigand would find himself in paradise that very day.
But we dare not forget what Jesus was responding to. When the brigand had made a request about ‘when’ Jesus would come into his kingdom, Jesus had responded that it would be ‘today’. That was the very day when Jesus was going to receive his kingdom! Too many of us think that Jesus is going to return to receive his kingdom. However, the Gospels are clear that this has already happened. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. In other words, he had already received his kingdom! The crucifixion was, in a very real sense, his enthronement. The word to the brigand builds on the first word. While the first word was a plea for justice, the second is an assurance based on the knowledge that the plea had been granted.
The Justice of Relationship
“When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” (John 19.26-27)
Jesus has been crucified and his battered and bruised body is straining against the nails that hold him to the cross. Some people taunted him, reminding him of how he had saved others and challenged him to come down from the cross so that they could believe in him. What would that have accomplished?
Well, for one thing, he would have been been there to take care of his mother! Mary was at the foot of the cross, watching in agony as the life drained from her son. Given the lack of references to Joseph in the Gospels after Jesus began his ministry, it is quite likely that Joseph had died prior to this – perhaps when Jesus was still a boy. To him, as the eldest son, had fallen the responsibility, in that patriarchal society, of caring for the family – his mother and sisters and brothers. And if he came down from the cross, he could resume that responsibility. He could once again care for his mother.
But that would mean turning his back on the task set for him by his Father. It seemed that he had to choose between the will of his Father and caring for his mother. A difficult choice in any circumstances and Jesus was on the cross!
And Jesus saw his mother. What was she thinking? Did she think back on the prophecies of Simeon and Anna when Jesus had first come to the Temple? They had spoken of how a sword would pierce through Mary’s own heart. Surely this was the occasion they were speaking of. All the other instances when Jesus hadn’t fit her expectations paled into insignificance in the face of this atrocity before her. What was she to do? Soon her son would breathe his final breath and she would be completely distraught. She had borne him into the world and now her world was being torn away from her. Jesus would have seen the despair in her eyes. Those eyes that had always loved him would now have reflected the emptiness of death. How could he leave her like this?
But Jesus, creative as he always is, saw a solution. Mary was not alone at the foot of the cross. The disciple he loved was also there. What was this disciple thinking? The Gospel does not identify the disciple, but Church tradition has held that it is John who, though a prominent figure in the other Gospels, is not named in this one. So I will assume it is John. Some years back he had been fishing with his brother when Jesus strode along and called him to be his disciple. He had left everything then to follow Jesus. But never in his most bizarre nightmares did he see anything close to what was before him. This Jesus, in whose love John had lost himself to such an extent that he could only refer to himself in terms of that love, hung from a brutal cross, the life slowly draining from his body along with his blood. Jesus would have seen the horror in his eyes. Those eyes that had received his love with joy were now forlorn with anguish. How could he leave him like this?
And so he does not leave either of them without someone as support. He entrusts his mother to this disciple he loved and entrusts him to her. Why? Easter was less than two days away. Why did he have to entrust them to each other? We, who live on this side of Easter, know that it was less than two days away. But neither Mary nor John knew it. For both of them, this was the end of the Jesus they had known and loved. Perhaps the two of them needed the support of each other even if only for the crucial next two days. Since Jesus entrusted them to each other from the cross, this became his dying wish and neither of them would have taken it lightly. And so because they had each other there was less room for despair. They had to hang on because of the other – Mary because of John and John because of Mary.
Jesus’ wisdom here is remarkable. Most of us cannot boast such wisdom even when we are in a good situation. And Jesus was on a cross! Yet he realized the need for both Mary and John to not sink into the despair brought on by a relationship that had prematurely ended. And so he gives both of them a new relationship with a new purpose. This is not a denial of the ending of their relationship with Jesus nor a minimization of its importance nor a rejection of the loss they are experiencing. Rather, this is a redirection of grief toward another similarly grieving person so that the shared grief can be experienced but not allowed to dominate. Jesus does this because he knows that, as persons created by relationship for relationship, we can find the hope of justice only in relationship.
The Justice of Abandonment
Midway through our meditations this Good Friday, we have reached the fourth of seven words spoken by Jesus from the cross. Commonly called the ‘cry of dereliction’, we read this in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, the only word to appear in multiple Gospel accounts. Hanging from the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Of the seven words spoken by Jesus from the cross, this one is the most problematic. Do we or do we not affirm that Jesus is fully human and fully divine? Do we or do we not affirm that in Jesus these two natures – human and divine – were perfectly united? Then what would it mean for Jesus to say that God had forsaken him? These questions are so embarrassing for later Christian doctrine that the only reason the words appear in the Gospels must be that Jesus actually spoke them. But we are still left with the question, “What does it mean?”
We need to avoid the trap of suggesting that Jesus was merely quoting Psalm 22.1 and pointing out that the contents of the psalm were being fulfilled. That would render Jesus’ word empty and make them ring hollow.
The way Matthew and Mark narrate the events leading up to the ‘cry of dereliction’ is telling. Pilate is unable to identify a crime to charge Jesus with. Nevertheless, the innocent Jesus is handed over to be crucified. While he was hanging from the cross, the jeering onlookers speak about Jesus’ words concerning the temple. As if in response to this, darkness – the darkness of judgment – comes upon the land.
Jesus had been crucified as ‘king of the Jews’. This was a show of brute strength on the part of the Romans. This is what they did to any so-called king of the Jews. It was a way of deterring other potential revolutionaries. Crucified as ‘king of the Jews’ Jesus was there on the cross as the representative of Israel. He was bearing, in his body, the punishment that Roman would mete out to anyone who dared challenge Roman authority.
And as the representative of Israel he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, Jesus was not stating that he himself had been forsaken by God. That line of thinking requires a God who turns away from the one who is most faithful to him. That line of thinking, in other words, requires a god who is not the God revealed in and through Jesus.
Rather, Jesus, as the representative of Israel, was declaring the judgment that was now descending on the people of Israel. Israel’s temple would now be forsaken by God. Jerusalem would be abandoned by God. And the Jewish people would face the hammer of God’s judgment. Just as God was not coming to rescue Jesus and take him down from the cross as required by the onlookers, so also, God would not come to the rescue of the Jewish people and their temple.
The Jewish people, in crucifying Jesus, had demonstrated that they could not recognize the way that made for peace. They chose instead the path of bloodthirsty revenge. And so God would give them their just desserts.
The ‘cry of dereliction’ then is not a cry about some strange dynamic within the Godhead – the Son forsaken by the Father. Such a view is not orthodox since it proposes that there could be a rift between God the Father and God the Son. Unfortunately, too many teachers teach this view without even reflecting on how it cannot be considered an orthodox belief. Neither is it a declaration of what Jesus was feeling – abandoned by God. Despite the pain and anguish he was experiencing, it was his immense faith in the faithfulness of his Father that had brought Jesus to the cross. To now posit that he forgot this central and centering belief of his life would be to render his entire life pointless. Just as the early martyrs proclaimed their faith and trust in Jesus while they were being killed, so also it is most likely that Jesus knew that his Father had not abandoned him. Rather, the unfortunately named ‘cry of dereliction’ is the pronouncement of judgment on the people of Israel in general and its temple in particular.
The Justice of Divine Yearning
“I thirst.” (John 19:28) A single word in the Greek text of John’s Gospel. Very often this word from the cross is taken to be a proof that Jesus is human. His being thirsty is considered a sign of his humanity. However, after having gone through the first eighteen chapters of John’s Gospel, which begins with the central claim that “the Word became flesh” no one should have any doubt that Jesus is fully human. And therefore such a sign would have been superfluous.
On the other hand, because John adds the comment that Jesus said these words “so that Scripture would be fulfilled” many Christians look for a scripture passage that refers to this event in Jesus’ life. And they likely go to Psalm 69.21 which reads, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” I do not care much for such ‘proof texting’. Indeed, the rest of Psalm 69 is so general that pointing to v. 21 as the scripture that is being fulfilled seems to be special pleading.
However, it seems better to think that what John means here is that Jesus was bringing scripture to its climactic goal. I think Jesus is pointing out to the first question God asks in the bible. We find it in Genesis 3.9, where, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit and had hidden themselves, God asks, “Where are you?” Human sin had driven a wedge between themselves and God. Humans now felt inadequate and exposed in God’s presence. And while God knew what had happened, his question, the first first question, reveals God’s desire, God’s thirst.
After pronouncing judgment on the people of Israel and the temple in what is normally called ‘the cry of dereliction’ Jesus now reveals that God’s thirst for his human creatures has remained unquenched through all the centuries that had passed since humans first turned their backs on him.
In other words, rather than revealing Jesus’ humanity, the words “I thirst” reveal Jesus’ divinity! Through them Jesus tells us that the goal of scripture – revealing the origins and depths of the human problem and the solution – was at hand and that God’s thirst for his human creatures was about to be quenched.
John also perhaps intends us to see the irony in Jesus’ words. In chapter 4, while speaking to the Samaritan woman, and then again in chapter 7, during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus had announced that he had access to unquenchable streams of living water. To the Samaritan woman he had declared, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” (John 4.14) And at the Feast of Tabernacles he proclaimed, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7.38) What had happened to those promises? Were they empty?
In chapters 4 and 7 the living water refers to the Holy Spirit. This is made clear in chapter 7. Jesus reveals the thirst of God for his human creatures, but, ironically, this thirst will be quenched beyond his death when, after he is raised, he gives the Holy Spirit, the living water, to his disciples. God’s thirst that Jesus reveals, in other words, will be quenched when the Holy Spirit reveals to the disciples how thirsty they themselves need to be for him! And since God has created us for a deeply refreshing relationship with him, Jesus’ declaration of God’s thirst for us and his revelation of our response in thirst for him is what will finally be satisfied beyond Jesus’ resurrection.
The Justice of a Mission Accomplished
Jesus has just revealed God’s thirst for humans to be reconciled to him. Misunderstanding his declaration, someone gives him wine vinegar. According to Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, Jesus is offered the drink twice. The first time, he refuses to drink (Matthew 27.34). The second time, he drinks (Matthew 27.48). John only records this second instance at which Jesus accepts the drink. And immediately after Jesus accepts the drink, he says, “It is finished.” Why did Jesus accept the drink the second time? Matthew tells us that the first time the wine was mixed with gall, an analgesic agent that would have served as a painkiller. Since he intended to experience the injustice of the crucifixion, he refuses the wine mixed with the painkiller, but willingly accepts the pure wine later offered to him.
Now, in Luke’s Gospel we read that, during the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22.17-18) Yet, at the cross, Jesus clearly drinks the wine vinegar, which, being a derivative of wine, is a drink that comes from the fruit of the vine. What sense can we make of this?
There are only two possibilities. On the one hand, we could say that Jesus intended not to drink the wine vinegar, but because he was on the cross and in immense pain, he either forgot about his earlier words or decided that they were not important. That is, we could admit that there is a dissonance between Jesus’ earlier words and his actions on the cross. I don’t know about you, but this is not a Jesus I could follow for he shows us that, when the going gets tough, we can simply contradict our earlier commitments.
On the other hand, we could say that Jesus intended to be true to his earlier words and that he was! What this means is that, he drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. This may be surprising for us, because many of us think that the kingdom of God will come in the future. We are led to believe that this is something that is only a future hope.
However, if Jesus’ earlier words and his actions on the cross are not contradictory, then the only conclusion we can reach is that he drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. At some instance between the two occasions on which he was offered the drink the kingdom of God had come.
This should not be surprising. The Gospels clearly indicate that Jesus began his ministry with the announcement that the kingdom of God was near. It was imminent. It was being brought close in and through his ministry. When he began his ministry he clearly indicated that bringing the kingdom of God was the task with which he had been charged. It was his divine vocation.
However, if we believe that the kingdom of God is only a future hope, then we must conclude that Jesus was mistaken when he claimed that the kingdom of God was at hand. We must conclude that his life and death did not accomplish the task he claimed to have been charged to do. We must conclude that he was horribly wrong about his divine vocation. We must conclude that he was mistaken when he claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given him. If this is where our beliefs lead me, why am I still a Christian? Therefore, I’m not comfortable going down that rabbit hole!
The only possibility then is that Jesus drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. He had finished the task God had assigned to him. He had brought to fruition his divine vocation. And indeed, this is precisely what he says in this sixth word from the cross. After all, what else could he have meant when, right after drinking the wine vinegar, he declared, “It is finished”? We often take it in a very self-centered way. We say that ‘it is finished’ refers to what he had to do to provide forgiveness for us. This self centered approach to Jesus’ work is, ironically, exactly what the first humans did and we reveal that we have not learned from their mistakes.
But Jesus’ mind and heart were always primarily concerned with doing the will of the Father who had sent him. And so when he says, “It is finished” the primary meaning should be that he had finished the task given to him by his Father. And that task was to bring the kingdom of God.
Trusting in God’s Justice
With this seventh word from the cross found in Luke 23:46 we are reaching the end of our reflections for this Good Friday. Jesus has just announced that he has finished the task entrusted to him by the Father – the task of bringing the kingdom of God to earth as in heaven.
In his ministry he had demonstrated the prodigious love of God and his unimaginable acceptance and welcome of all kinds of humans. He had shown that God is a God of mercy and justice and not of petty law observance and retribution. And in a divine irony, it was precisely showcasing this character of God that had led to his being crucified. But in a double irony, it was precisely the move to silence him by crucifying him that had led to him completing his vocation of ushering in the kingdom of God and transforming the words nailed to his cross (Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews) from word of derision and mockery to the deepest of truths. This Jesus of Nazareth, who hung from the cross, was now, having completed his Father’s task, indeed the king of the Jews and the lord of the earth.
But this king was dying. He hung there, his physical thirst only matched and superseded by the thirst of God for his human creatures. And he hung there, each moment bringing him closer to the moment of death. On the cross, he had been enthroned as the sole legitimate ruler of all the earth.
However, none of the witnesses to this horrific event would have told you that at the time. His disciples – both female and male – and his mother were in shock. His opponents were in a celebratory mood. None of his friends or foes would have been able to understand then that this was not the moment in which Jesus was defeated, but the moment of his victory. To all appearances he was the one with the battered and bruised body and therefore the one who was in despicable and detestable desolation.
Jesus knew that he had won the victory. That is why he had cried, “It is finished.” The work of redeeming the old creation and of beginning the new creation was complete. But he also knew that he was going to die. And to all appearances he had been a failed messianic pretender, a wanna be deliverer, who had been revealed as a fake.
But without the knowledge of his victory, the world would continue to live in darkness despite being rescued into the kingdom of light. And so the world needed to know that the cross was Jesus’ enthronement, not his defeat. They needed to know that he had succeeded and not failed. They needed to know that his way was the way of God.
And Jesus knew that the Father knew this too. So, having declared his victory with the words, “It is finished” he now entrusts himself to the hands of his Father. His Father knew what needed to be done to reveal to the world the truth about the cross. His Father knew what needed to happen so that the people would see the truth behind the mocking words nailed to the cross – that Jesus was indeed the king of the Jews. Jesus had done what his Father had sent him to do. Now it was up to the Father to reveal to the world what had been done. And so, as his final act, Jesus entrusts himself to his Father, ending as he began by trusting in God’s justice.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures” goes the aphorism. When a person finds himself backed against a wall, with no way of escape, he might do things he would otherwise never consider doing. We must keep this in mind as we consider the involvement of Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas in the crucifixion of Jesus.
We Christians have had a tendency of portraying these two men as evil or weak or vengeful, people who target Jesus because they were jealous of his increasing popularity. And as a result, even non-Christians who know something about Caiaphas think of him as someone keenly concerned about his popularity ratings.
In the words of the song ‘This Jesus Must Die’ from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber: ‘How can we stop him? His glamour increases by leaps every minute, he’s top of the polls.”
But if we stick to what scripture tells us about Caiaphas we will find a different picture. First, we must understand that Caiaphas was not a common Jew who happened to be in an influential position. He was the High Priest, which at every point since Aaron became the first High Priest was not just a religious position. It was a thoroughly political position.
This does not mean that the High Priest indulged in what we nowadays disparagingly call ‘politics’ – or perhaps even ‘dirty politics’. If the position was a political position, he would automatically be involved in politics!
This simply means that, unlike the decisions made by a commoner, the decisions made by Caiaphas affected the lives of all the Jews in Ancient Palestine.
Moreover, under Roman occupation, the High Priest, as the head of the ruling body, known as the Sanhedrin, was responsible for keeping the volatile Jews under check.
In the passage we read we see this concern at the forefront of the arguments made by the group headed by Caiaphas. They say, “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
They agree that Jesus is performing signs, meaning that he is doing something genuine, things that point beyond themselves. If this continues, they argue, too many will get convinced about what Jesus was saying. They do not object to this in principle. What they have a problem with is what would happen if Jesus gained too large a following.
Their final argument is ‘the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.’ Entrusted with the welfare of the Jewish people and the symbols of Jewish religious life, primarily the temple, the group headed by Caiaphas display exactly those concerns. They are not against Jesus as a matter of principle, but because of what his increasing popularity might imply for the Jewish nation.
Once we understand this we can understand also why Caiaphas allowed Jesus to be tried illegally. There are many aspects of illegality in Jesus’ trial but we need not go there. It is just that Caiaphas found himself backed against a wall. These were desperate times for him. And so he accepted desperate measures.
So what was it that Caiaphas feared Jesus might do? Look where John places the passage we just read. It is right after Jesus raises Lazarus. And in chapter 12 we read that the chief priest, Caiaphas presumably one of them, wanted to get rid of Lazarus so that there would be no evidence that someone had been raised from the dead.
Something about the raising of Lazarus had pushed Caiaphas against the wall, forcing him to resort to desperate measures.
Caiaphas believed that Jesus could do something that would bring the Romans into Jerusalem in force and make them drive the Jews out.
It is no coincidence that Jesus was crucified during the Passover festival. The Passover was the prime time for Jewish rebellions. And in an attempt to dissuade the Jews from rebelling, the Romans scheduled a lot of crucifixions during the festival. This was their way of showing the Jews who was in charge. Obviously, at least from the Roman perspective, the Romans were in charge because they wielded the power of death over the Jews.
But what if….
But what if Jesus decided to repeat what he had done with Lazarus? Remember, this is the third recorded occasion on which Jesus raised someone from the dead – Jairus’ daughter and the Nain widow’s son being the other two. This meant that raising people from the dead was no fluke as far as Jesus was concerned. He could do it on a whim.
But what if his whim led him to raise people who had received the death sentence at the hands of the Romans? Remember, he had among his disciples Simon the Zealot and Judas, a member of the Sicarii, both violent revolutionary groups. Perhaps Jesus was sympathetic to their causes. Many Zealots and Sicarii had been crucified by the Romans.
What if Jesus went around raising all of them? The Romans would not have taken that lying down. They would have crushed the Jewish nation, destroying their temple and dispersing the Jews throughout the empire. And if they did that, Caiaphas would have failed at his task of protecting the Jewish people.
And so Caiaphas says, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” Caiaphas wants to protect and safeguard the Jewish people.
And the irony is that in order to stop a potential epidemic of raising people from the dead he decides to put to death the one responsible for raising people.
In other words, from Caiaphas’ perspective, Jesus’ death removed the threat of destruction to the Jewish nation. This actually does come to pass.
But God had a deeper purpose and even in death Jesus proved to be the author of life as experienced by millions of people down the centuries, including us today.
The word ‘Armageddon’ has captured the imagination of many people around the world. Commonly taken to refer to a war of unbelievable magnitude, Movie Flavor reports that there are 29 movies that have the word ‘Armageddon’ in their titles. They have overcounted, but the point still stands. And the question must be asked: What is it about this word that has scriptwriters, directors and producers reaching out for it?
The word ‘Armageddon’ appears only once in the bible, in Revelation 16.16, where we read, “And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” Here note that the word ‘harmegedon’ is a transliteration of the Greek in Revelation 16.16. Most English translations, following the King James Version, render it as ‘Armageddon’. Since the most common usage of the word in English is ‘Armageddon’ and since nothing significant is lost by using this rendition, I will follow suit in this post.
The most common interpretation of the significance of Armageddon is that it will be the location of the final battle between the returning Jesus and all his enemies. However, is this actually borne out in the text of Revelation? In order to answer that question, we need to determine the place of this solitary mention of Armageddon in the narrative of the book and interpret is carefully from within that context.
The book of Revelation is famously characterized by references to or sequences of sevens. The reference to Armageddon comes in the sequence of the seven bowls of the wrath of God. As usual, interpreting any part of the bible (or any text for that matter) should take into account as much of the context as possible. Since the whole set of seven bowls comprises one single movement in the narrative, it is unhelpful to interpret any of the bowls apart from the others. Hence, I ask the reader to indulge me as I quote the entire 16th chapter.
The Seven Bowls
Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”
So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the brand of the beast and who worshiped its image.
The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.
The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, “You are just, O Holy One, who are and were, for you have judged these things; because they shed the blood of saints and prophets, you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” And I heard the altar respond, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just!”
The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire; they were scorched by the fierce heat, but they cursed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.
The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness; people gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.
The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great River Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east. And I saw three foul spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet. These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.(“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame.”) And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.
The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine cup of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found, and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail, so fearful was that plague.
The Theme of the Bowls
If there is a theme to the seven bowls it is that God’s wrath is poured out on those who are allied with the beast with the intention of rendering them unable to function. Bowl 1: Painful sores would incapacitate them. Bowls 2 and 3: Blood in the seas and the rivers would affect their water supply. Bowl 4: Hot sunlight would scorch them and make them unable to function. Bowl 5: Darkness would place them in an environment deprived of light. Bowl 7: Lightning, thunder and earthquakes would threaten their lives. In other words the six bowls other than the sixth are all about frustrating the plans of those who have decided to rally against God and the Lamb. This must be the governing principle which should guide our interpretation of the sixth bowl.
In other words, any attempt to interpret the sixth bowl without looking at the overarching theme of the cycle of bowls itself is misguided at best and intentionally misleading at worst. Of course, there are many examples of the latter approach, primarily from preachers in the affluent Western countries who erroneously think that their affluence automatically places them on God’s side. And many of them are so committed to militarism that I seriously wonder if they are reading the same book as I am!
Coming back to the bowls, each of them makes it difficult or impossible for the humans who have sided with the forces of evil to function adequately. While the language used does describe some damage being brought upon the earth, the focus is not on this environmental damage but on how this damage adversely affects those who have declared themselves to be God’s enemies. It is this, then, that must guide us as we attempt to understand the sixth bowl and the role of Armageddon in the narrative.
However, before we proceed to look more closely at the sixth bowl, let us take a brief excursus as look at the last part of Revelation 19, where most people think the battle of Armageddon takes place because what we will discover there will help us in our interpretation of the sixth bowl.
The Non-Battle of Armageddon
In Revelation 19.19-21 we read, “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the brand of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.”
Did you see it? Did you see the great description of the battle? We read that the beast and the armies of the kings of the earth were gathered to wage war. The next thing we read is, “And the beast was captured.” Where is the battle? We read only of a gathering to wage war and then of the capture. What is conspicuous by its absence is any mention of any actual warfare.
This is a common strategy in Revelation. John builds the tension and anticipation of the reader with indications to look here or see something. But when John actually looks he sees something completely different. The pre-eminent case of this is in chapter 5, where John is asked to look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah only to find the Lion conspicuously absent and only the slaughtered Lamb present.
In chapter 19 too, ever since chapter 16 and the mention of Armageddon, the reader is expecting there to be a great showdown between the Lamb and the beast with each of them having their armies alongside. The interlude in chapters 17 and 18 describing the fall of Babylon only increases the anticipation with the destruction of one of the lesser, though not inconsequential, actors. When the rider on the white horse shows up in the middle of Revelation 19, the reader would surely be thinking that the battle, which was put off for the interlude concerning Babylon, would now be the focus of the narrative.
However, if that was what the reader was expecting, she would be sorely disappointed because John only tells us about the capture of the beast and the false prophet without even one word about the actual battle? I know I am speculating here, but I can imagine that those who first heard the book being read aloud would have asked the reader to do a double take here to confirm that there was no description of this greatly anticipated battle. And I’m sure they would have been confused about this seemingly unacceptable omission. However, if they had the opportunity to go back to chapter 16 they would have been able to understand that, from what John has written in chapter 16, we should not have had any expectation of a battle!
The Non-Place of the Non-Battle
As mentioned earlier, John tells us in chapter 16 that the demonic spirits assembled the armies at a place called Armageddon in Hebrew. Most often this is taken to mean ‘mountain of Megiddo’. However, Michael Heiser objects to this in The Naked Bible Podcastepisode 392. Since his argument is quite involved, indulge me while I quote a large chuck from the episode. Heiser says, “Har Magedon means ‘mount of’ something. And it can’t be Megiddo, because there is no mountain there. Anyone who’s been to the site, the first question should be to your tour guide, ‘Where is the mountain?’ Because there isn’t any. It’s a plain. So Kline thought, ‘What if we’re not dealing with Hebrew M-G-D (the first three consonants of Megiddo)?’ What if instead we have har and then mem, ’ayin (the other Hebrew consonant that has that G sound). Like Gomorrah is actually not spelled with Hebrew G (gimel); it’s spelled with ’ayin (’amorah). It has that back of the throat G sound. So Kline’s like, ‘Well, what if we have mem ’ayin daleth? And we have har mōʿed?’ And as soon as he came to that observation, the whole thing opened up. Because har mōʿed is the mount of assembly from Isaiah 14. This is where God rules. It’s Zion. It’s Jerusalem.”
The last claim, however, is patently false! Isaiah 14 does mention a ‘mount of assembly’. However, the parallel in v. 13 is with Mount Zaphon and not Mount Zion. And Mount Zaphon was on the eastern side of the Jordan between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, in other words, nowhere even near Jerusalem. This kind of misleading of readers or listeners to make a point is really sad and I have to admit that I have lost quite a bit of respect for Kline and Heiser because of this. Unfortunately, there are so many sites online that seem to have not bothered to check either the text of Isaiah or the geography of the region and who have bought hook, line, and sinker into what Kline and Heiser have proposed. It’s time we stop being gullible consumers!
Anyway, since Heiser is speaking off the cuff here, the sentences are all broken and disjointed and not entirely coherent. So let me explain his point. He recognizes that there is no mountain in Megiddo because it’s a plain. So he concludes that it cannot refer to Megiddo. What then could it refer to? He picks up an argument from Meredith G. Kline, which goes as follows. There are two Hebrew letters that could have the ‘g’ sound. One is obviously the gimel. The other is the ‘ayin. Kline observes that the place name ‘Gomorrah’ is spelled with a leading ‘ayin in Hebrew but is pronounced with a leading ‘g’ sound as indicated by the word itself, i.e. Gomorrah. Hence, Kline suggests that when John writes ‘harmagedon’ and refers to a Hebrew place name, he intends us to understand that the first three consonants are not mem (‘m’), gimel (hard ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’) but mem (‘m’), ‘ayin (guttural ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’). Kline then proposes that this indicates the Hebrew word har mo’ed, which means ‘mount of assembly’. He then claims that this is a reference to Jerusalem, a point that I have strongly disputed above.
Granted that Greek has no way of rendering the Hebrew ‘ayin, the above argument about ‘har mo’ed’ might make sense, except for three glaring reasons that both Kline and Heiser fail to observe, even though these points are glaringly obvious. First, the Hebrew text during the first century did not have any vowel pointing. Hence, any reference in the Old Testament to the assembly would have read ‘mw’d’. Note, that I have added a ‘w’ to indicate the ‘waw’ that always appears in the Hebrew and indicates the initial ‘o’ vowel sound. However, if John intended magedon to refer to assembly in Hebrew, why did he not write mogedon, with an initial ‘o’ vowel sound? After all, Greek has the letters omicron and omega that could provide an ‘o’ sound. Yet, John chose to write magedon, with the first vowel being an alpha rather than either an omicron or an omega, strongly suggesting he was not thinking of ‘mo’ed’.
Second, relying on the leading consonant in Gomorrah is worse than circular reasoning. We have already admitted that Greek has no way of rendering the ‘ayin sound. Hence, any alphabetic rendering of it must be ad hoc in nature rather than universal, especially since ‘ayin itself was known to have multiple sounds. We ourselves know that ‘g’, for example, can have a hard sound as in ‘gut’ or a soft sound as in ‘giraffe’. Finding that it has a hard sound in any particular word does not tell us anything about how it should be pronounced in another word. In fact, this view is further undermined by the fact that ‘mo’ed’ is pronounced without the guttural sound! (See this video and pay attention to the reading of v.14. at the 3:58 mark.) In other words, even if ‘ayin is sometimes pronounced with a ‘g’ sound, it is not in the word ‘mo’ed’, which is the only word that matters for this argument. So this seems to be a reasoning from absolutely nothing!
Third, John was writing to Greek speaking people, most of whom were probably Gentiles. The book is already quite cryptic and would have required the hearers to spend quite a bit of time trying to understand it just as twenty centuries later we are still attempting the same. Which is more likely, that he expected them to know obscure idiosyncrasies of Hebrew pronunciation, which are accessible only to native speakers of the language, or that he expected them to know or get to know the topography of a well known place in the Jezreel Valley? I submit it is the latter because the former stretches all bounds of imagination.
Proof by Contradiction
Suppose, however, that Kline and Heiser are right. Maybe they are seeing something that eludes me. How would that fit in with the rest of the bowl cycle? We have the first five bowls, all introducing some kind of obstacle or difficult situation for those who are against God. And we end with a grand earthquake, which would hinder any plans the forces of evil would have. Just before this we are told that the demonic spirits assemble the armies at Jerusalem (according to the view of Kline and Heiser). How is this a hindrance to these forces? According to the book, Jerusalem is already under the control of the forces of evil. These armies would be gathering at their headquarters. This is not a hindrance of any sort.
To the contrary, if we say that the armies would gather at Jerusalem, we are saying that they already have a preferred base of operations and are gathering there. Their plan would then be to launch their assault against God and the Lamb from this base of operations. Far from being a hindrance of any sort, this would actually align exactly with their plans. In that case, we have to ask ourselves how this sixth bowl actually fits into the bowl cycle. If the first five and the seventh bowls all present a case in which the forces against God are hindered or thwarted, how would the sixth fit into that scheme when it does exactly the opposite?
It is quite clear then that any suggestion that Armageddon refers to Jerusalem is based not on anything inside the text but on some quite esoteric considerations from outside the text. While taking cues from outside the text is not necessarily poor hermeneutics, when this goes against the thrust of what is in the text, it should be a warning about these external considerations. This warning is amplified when the considerations themselves are so esoteric that they require, in this case, the implausible expectation that Gentile Christians would know the variability of pronunciation of Hebrew consonants when the vowels themselves do not point in that direction! It is for these reasons that I think Kline’s and Heiser’s proposal actually carries very little water.
An Alternate and Subversive Interpretation
Now, we saw that Heiser admits that there is no mountain in Megiddo. He concludes then that this must mean that John did not intend to refer to Megiddo. But what if we take it the other way around? Megiddo was a well known place in the Jezreel Valley and had been the site of many battles. In the imagination of the Old Testament, Megiddo played a significant role because it was where the last ‘good’ king, Josiah, was killed in 609 BC. Since Josiah was the last king who was not a vassal of any foreign kingdom, it is technically with his death that the independent kingdom of Judah ceased to exist. Hence, the place of his death, Megiddo, carried enormous significance in the imagination of the exilic and post-exilic Judeans. Because of its significance, the terrain of Megiddo was also well known. Everyone knew or could easily get to know that there was no mountain there.
I can imagine a scenario where the scroll of Revelation was being read out to the first recipients. When the reader got to Revelation 16.16 and mentioned Armageddon, someone may have asked, “I thought Megiddo was a plain. Are you sure John wrote Armageddon?” When the reader checked and responded in the affirmative, someone may have asked, “But then where is this mountain?” The reader may have then checked with the courier who had brought the scroll from Patmos. He might have been carefully instructed by John concerning some of the more gnarly parts of the narrative.
“Where is this mountain?” the reader would have asked the courier. And the courier, with a wry, knowing smile and a carefully timed wink, would have replied, “Precisely!”
Just like the conspicuously absent lion of chapter 5, a conspicuousness that we have done our very best to forget through art and song, the mountain of Megiddo is also not something that actually exists. In other words, when the demonic spirits are assembling the kings of the earth at Armageddon, they are assembling at a ‘non-place’. What this means is that these spirits will do their very best to assemble their forces but will never find a suitable place where they can take their stand against the truth speaking white rider. This fits perfectly with the idea of hindrance or obstacle that characterizes the other six bowls. What could be a greater hindrance or obstacle to an army than that it cannot find a place at which to organize itself for a battle? What could be more devastating to an army than the truth that, in the face of God’s wrath on them, they will never be able to extricate themselves from chaos and achieve even the slightest bit of organization that a headquarters could facilitate?
What we have seen is that, not only will there not be any actual battle between the Lamb and the forces of evil, but also there is no place at which the forces of evil can make muster! Hence, contrary to being the scene of the most cataclysmic battle in history, Armageddon is actually a word that spells the final defeat of evil precisely when evil is shown to be powerless even to organize itself against the truth speaking white rider. Armageddon, then, is not something that the people of God need to fear. It is not the site of some upcoming battle that we should hope God would spare us from, as expected by those who adhere to the odious doctrine of the Rapture. Rather, it is the non-site of the upcoming non-battle between the Lamb and God’s enemies, who cannot even find a place from which to attack the Lamb.
We should have expected this if we took the book of Revelation seriously. The book was written to seven churches in first century Asia Minor. These churches were facing different levels of opposition and the book was written to demonstrate that the slaughtered Lamb is still in control despite the opposition that the people of God were facing. It was a book written to comfort and reassure Christians who were increasingly pressured to think that the opposition they were facing meant that the Lamb was no longer in charge of putting God’s plans into effect.
But Revelation was also written to convince those persecuted Christians that violence is the tool of the dragon, utilized by the beast, and sacralized by the false prophet. That is why there is no Lion in the book of Revelation. God does not work through a Lion but only through a Lamb. And that is why there is no place called Armageddon for the dragon, beast, and false prophet cannot even take a stand against the truth speaking white rider.
If this second purpose was not crucial to Revelation, John could well have portrayed the white rider wielding a sword in his hand rather than in his mouth. He could have described a Lion with a luxuriant, flowing mane instead of a Lamb standing with its throat slit. It is precisely because of these features of the book that we should reject all views that give violence a divine imprimatur. Of course, Revelation is a book that contains a lot of violence. However, the elusive-because-illusive Lion and the non-site of the non-battle of Armageddon should be the interpretive lenses through which we interpret even those passages that describe violent action, especially violent action purportedly committed by God.
It seems clear to me that it is our consistent refusal to accept the way of the Lamb that makes many of us salivate for a final bloody battle between Jesus and the dragon’s forces. I would go so far as to say that those Christian teachers who actually teach that there will be such a battle are the antichrists of our time, causing the great apostasy that Jesus did warn would precede his return. But if you have reached here, you have no excuse. You can no longer rely on an empty hope.
Call me Ishmael. Almost to this very day ten years ago happened the things about which I now tell you. A bright day it was, warm and sunny. I had gotten up early in order to go to Jerusalem for the festival, the great Passover.
Now, by my name you would probably realize that I am not a descendent of Isaac. Rather, his elder brother Ishmael, from whom I take my name, is my ancestor. Why, then would I want to celebrate the Passover? For many years I have been what you might call a proselyte.
And a critical role in my journey was played by a famous text from the prophet Isaiah—a text that showed me that, despite some trends among the Jews to restrict the Holy One’s blessings to the Jews, the Lord was eager for all to worship him—even one like myself a hated descendent of Ishmael, who even bears that despised name.
And that text became a kind of life verse for me. And, like every day since my becoming a proselyte, I began that day ten years ago by reading that very text.
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”… the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
What a glorious text! What a vision! And for many years, I had started every day with those words that promised me acceptance before the God of Jacob. And finally, after many years, I was about to go myself to the mountain of the Lord to offer my sacrifice.
How I had waited, eagerly, expectantly, for this day. And as I thought of these things, I heard the sweet music of the pilgrims pass outside the inn. And they were singing, “Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of our God… And the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
When I heard those lilting sounds, how could I not go outside and join the holy procession?
And so I too began to sing, raising my voice and joining in the fanfare. The procession was much larger than I had imagined and it kept getting bigger and bigger for at every house, every inn, and every crossroad more people streamed in and joined in the festivities. I had timed my entry correctly for I was just about thirty yards from the head of the procession. And behind me the throngs extended as far as the eye could see.
At the head of the procession I could see a man, quite stately, riding a horse. He looked regal, to say the least. The people around him were waving palm branches and throwing the branches or their own robes on the road in front of him. What a sight! And soon the song changed. Now they sang another of the traditional processional songs, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Who was the man at the head of the procession? I had to know. So I tapped the man in front of me on the shoulder. He turned, singing the song with every ounce of his being. “Who is the man riding on the animal?” He looked at me bewildered at my ignorance. “Do you not know?” he replied. “This is Jesus the one who is going to deliver us from the Romans.” I was taken aback. “You mean he is the Messiah?” I asked the man. “Yes,” he said, “The Lord has finally heard our cries for deliverance. As in the days of Moses and Joshua and Judas Maccabaeus he will set us free with a mighty hand.”
We were speaking quite loudly in order to hear ourselves over the singing. Jesus, it seemed, heard us speaking, for he turned and looked in our direction. Yes, he did look so regal. And so commanding was his look that the man and I stopped our conversation and once again joined in the singing.
A few minutes later I heard, over the singing, a faint voice. “Could someone please help me? Please take my hand and lead me to the temple.”
I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a frail old man. He was blind and I wondered why no one would help him. I wondered why Jesus would not stop or at least tell his disciples to help the old man. But I realized that the singing was so loud that Jesus probably could not hear the whispered shout. Not wanting to bring the whole procession to a halt or to disrupt the celebration, I left the procession. I just had to help the man.
I walked over to him. “Here, father, let me assist you. Take my hand and we will go together to the temple.”
He turned in my direction and ran his hand over my head, felt the coarseness of my yamaka and then ran his fingers through my beard. “Ah! My son,” he said, “I am so glad you are a son of Abraham. Yes, take me to the temple.”
I knew what he meant. He had taken me for a Jew. And though I was not a descendent of Jacob, I shared in his faith. So I did not think it necessary to correct him. “Yes, father,” I replied. “Let us both go to the house of the Lord.”
When we rejoined the procession we were quite far behind Jesus. And as we hobbled along singing the festival psalms, we were passed by another extremely large group of people waving palm branches and singing, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” In the midst of them was a man riding a donkey. He was deep in thought. “Stragglers,” I thought to myself. But anyway, it was good company to have for the rest of the journey. This group was processing much slower than the group headed by Jesus. And their pace was perfectly suited to the blind man whom I was leading.
In a couple of hours the blind man, the large group of stragglers, and I entered the gates of Jerusalem. “Ah!” I thought to myself, “I am finally here in the great city. Soon I will also enter the gates of the holy temple and offer my sacrifice.”
As we processed toward the temple a few men, who I later realized were an odd mix of Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes, halted the group of stragglers. They were having an argument about something. Since the blind man and I were not part of that group, we did not bother to wait with them.
Here we were, a blind man and his guide. Neither of us knew the way to the temple—I having never before been to the city, the blind man having never seen anything in his life. Yet I decided to follow the teeming hordes of people. Where else could they be going except the temple itself? And sure enough, in a few minutes I could see the temple. It was marvelous, built of huge stones and reaching up to the sky, its height apparently increasing as one drew nearer and felt dwarfed in its presence. This truly was the house of God.
When we entered the gates of the temple we once again heard the beautiful song, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” I wanted to sing but my eyes were drawn to a magnificent figure in the temple courts. It was Jesus, who I had seen riding on a horse. And he was addressing the huge crowd gathered in the court. Both the blind man and I wanted to get closer so we could hear what Jesus was saying. After all, if he were the Messiah, we could do no better than to listen to his words.
“Make way,” I said, “I am with a blind man and we want to hear the words of Jesus.” No one seemed to hear me. So I raised my voice and shouted, “Please let us through. I am with a blind man. We want to hear the words of Jesus.”
My words were heard and by none other than Jesus himself. He turned to me. My heart became light with expectancy. And he spoke: “No blind man may enter the temple and no one who is lame or deaf or in any way unwhole. This is a sacred assembly and no one impure may enter.” Then he fixed his eyes on me and said, “But you, you are whole. You may enter the assembly.”
“But,” I protested, “I cannot leave the blind man now. Not after having been with him so long.”
“Go on, my son,” said the blind man. “It is enough for me that I have reached the temple. Go on without me.”
Reluctantly I went on ahead. As I was about to enter the court I heard someone call my name.
“Ishmael? Is that you?”
I turned toward the voice and saw the man responsible for my becoming a proselyte. “Samuel!” I exclaimed. “Yes it is I. It is so good to see you after so long. Come with me into the temple courts.”
“What!?” I heard Jesus say and turned toward him. “Your name is Ishmael!? Then you are not a Jew. You cannot enter the courts for you too, like the blind man, are impure.”
I had, by now, stepped into the courts. Jesus’ eyes burned with anger. He charged toward me reaching for the sword in his belt. He would have killed me I think had Samuel not pushed me.
The sword struck my right leg. I felt a piercing pain shoot through the entire right side of my body and I fell to the floor. I grasped my leg and covered the gaping wound. Samuel came to my aid and tied a piece of cloth around my thigh. That would stop the bleeding for a while.
What was happening? Why could the blind man and I not enter the temple? Was Isaiah wrong about God’s graciousness?
Was my birth as Ishmael, the descendent of Ishmael, to be held against me forever? Was my faith in the God of Jacob not enough? Was there no salvation for me?
All these questions welled up inside my heart. But I had no time to ponder them for a big commotion had started in the courts. The man I had seen riding a donkey came into the courts and began to overturn the tables of the moneychangers and set free the animals that were there to be sacrificed.
“Who is this?” I asked Samuel. “This is Jesus,” he answered.
“Jesus?” I replied quite confused. “But isn’t the man who attacked me Jesus?”
“Oh yes” said Samuel. “Both are named Jesus. The one who attacked you is Jesus Barabbas. The man now disrupting the temple activities is Jesus from Nazareth.”
“And,” I exclaimed, “both of them are doing things so I will never be able to make my offering. The one refuses me entry into the temple courts. The other is doing away with the sacrifice itself. Where then is there hope for me?”
Jesus of Nazareth had finished setting free the animals. Then, glowering at Jesus Barabbas and at the temple authorities who stood motionless, he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, but you have made it into a den of inhumane nationalists.’” Jesus Barabbas and the temple authorities slunk away arguing among themselves. Though I could not hear what they were saying I presumed that they wanted a way to get rid of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus of Nazareth came toward the entrance to the courts where I was lying. He passed me and went to the gates. The blind man had made his way to the gates.
Jesus addressed him, “Come into the courts, old man.” The blind man came in. Jesus asked him, “What do you want most?” “That I might see,” he replied.
“Then go,” Jesus said, placing his thumbs over the blind man’s eyes, “you can now see.” He removed his thumbs from the man’s eyes.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” exclaimed the man. “I can see! I can see! I am no longer blind. I can see!” And continuing to shout, he left the temple precincts.
“See,” said Samuel. “Jesus of Nazareth is compassionate.”
“Sure,” I muttered to Samuel, “and his words sounded great. He, unlike Jesus Barabbas, would let me enter the temple. But, after his disruptive actions, how could I make the sacrifice?”
Jesus heard my words. He turned toward me and said, “What is it you want most?” “I came here to offer a sacrifice,” I answered, “but you have stopped all sacrifice.” “Then go,” he said, “there is nothing for you here.”
I was amazed at his sharp words. But his words rang true – there was nothing for me here anymore. I tried to get up, but couldn’t feel my right leg. I tried again to no avail.
Jesus stood towering over me. “Well,” he said. “Why are you waiting? Don’t you see there is nothing for you here?”
“I cannot get up,” I replied. “My right leg is paralyzed. Heal me like you healed the blind man and I will leave.”
“Is that what you want me to do?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “I want to be able to walk again.”
“And you believe that I can do this?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe.”
“Then,” he said bending down and taking hold of my right hand, “arise! Your faith has healed you.” He pulled me to my feet and I realized that I could feel my right leg. Jesus went down on his knees and unwrapped the piece of cloth around my thigh. The bleeding had stopped. Moreover, there was no sign of the wound either.
“Then I will leave,” I said to Jesus.
He looked at me, his eyes filled with compassion and said, “As you go remember that your faith is accepted as the appropriate sacrifice.”
I left with thanks. The temple in which I wanted to make my sacrifice could no longer accept it. But, in some strange way, I had, nonetheless, made a sacrifice and it had been accepted. A sacrifice, not of animals, but of faith, accepted, not by the temple, but by Jesus.
Today is Palm Sunday. And you have just heard a dramatic presentation of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his actions in the temple as recorded by Matthew. Jesus’ actions on Palm Sunday constitute probably the most misunderstood part of his ministry. Having said that, please turn to Matthew 21:1-17.
At the time of Jesus, part of the Passover celebrations involved joyful processions into Jerusalem that ended with sacrifice at the temple. So we should not think that what sets Jesus apart is his procession. That was quite normal.
Also, Jesus was not the only person who claimed to be Messiah. Quite a number of Jews did that and the most opportune time for them to assert their right to rule was during the Passover celebrations. In the same year that Jesus rode into Jerusalem there might have been a few others who also did the same.
In fact, the first century Jewish historian Josephus indicates that around the early 30s one Jesus Barabbas proclaimed himself Messiah only to be summarily thwarted by the Romans. It is quite probable that this happened the same year that Jesus was crucified.
One thing that set Jesus apart from the false Messiahs was the fact that he rode on a donkey and not on a horse. Matthew indicates that this was to fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah. The lowliness of the Messiah was something that the other messianic claimants were not willing to display. And this was one reason why the Jewish establishment felt threatened by Jesus. But there is another more incisive reason.
Now as I said the Passover processions normally ended with a sacrifice in the temple. This is another way in which Jesus differs. Rather than offer a sacrifice, he puts an end to sacrifice. In the story I reported that Jesus said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, but you have made it into a den of inhumane nationalists.’”
You will have noticed one major difference in this from most translations. Most translations would have “den of thieves” instead of “den of inhumane nationalists” and I believe the translations are wrong. In the passage Matthew uses the Greek word λῃστής (lays-tays), which in common Greek referred to violent nationalists who financed their revolutionary activities through banditry.
In other words, the primary characteristic of a λῃστής is violent insurrection with thieving being only a secondary quality. The same word is used to describe Barabbas and the two men who were crucified with Jesus. And crucifixion was not the Roman penalty for thieving but for revolt.
That Jesus has violent nationalism in mind is evident when we realize that he has merged Isaiah 56:7 with Jeremiah 7:11. In Jeremiah God asks, “Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?”
The Hebrew word translated “robbers” is פְּרִיצּ (preetz) which means violent person. In Jeremiah’s day the temple had become a symbol of Jewish nationalism and the same was true in Jesus’ day. Because of this the prophecy of Isaiah could not be fulfilled. Isaiah had announced that Gentiles would also worship God in the temple.
However, because the temple had become a symbol of Jewish nationalism, Gentiles were automatically excluded from worshipping there. And that is why Jesus announces the destruction of the temple in Matthew 24. And here in Matthew 21 Jesus announces that the temple had gone so far in its nationalism that it could not be the place where Isaiah’s prophecy would be fulfilled. Because of this he puts an end to the entire sacrificial system.
It is for this reason that the Jewish authorities decide to kill Jesus. While they cherished their temple worship to the point of excluding the Gentiles, Jesus valued worshipping Gentiles more than the temple sacrifice. According to the Jewish leaders, Jesus had wrong priorities that resulted in his blaspheming the temple of God by stopping sacrifice. And the due punishment for this was death.
Now Jesus could not just stop such an important part of Jewish life without offering a replacement. The main task of the temple was to accept sacrifices and to pronounce healing. Having stopped these two important functions, Jesus takes them on himself. It will be he who will become the one accepted sacrifice. And he himself heals others.
It is in this context that we need to understand the New Testament metaphor of our being the temple of God. While it is certainly correct that this implies that God dwells in us, it also means that we are now the place at which God accepts sacrifices of praise and faith and where God heals people in every way.
And since it is we who are the new temple of God, it means that worship of God does not happen in supposedly holy places but where at least two Christians meet in the name of Jesus.
In recent weeks, especially following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing genocidal response of Israel, Christians around the world seem to have awoken to the reality of a ‘Jewish’ people around the world. What with the scale of Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians, many Christians are now wondering about the place of the modern state of Israel in God’s plans. There are some leaders among Christians who have an unhealthy and voyeuristic preoccupation with divine violence, often seeing themselves as being spectators from the clouds when Jesus returns to defeat his enemies. In the period before he returns, some of them believe that they are free to take violent action and they even laud those who do so. Now, the belief in a secret ‘Rapture’ is not only unbiblical but is, ironically, also one of the main doctrines that fuels modern anti-Jewish1 attitudes, even as its proponents vociferously and unthinkingly support the current apartheid state of Israel, while undermining all efforts to secure a lasting peace in the region. I have cited three articles that tell us about John Hagee’s positions because he is currently the leading proponent of all these odious views. Since, I have addressed the issue of the secret ‘Rapture’ elsewhere, I do not wish to address this issue here.
However, one additional belief that many who accept the doctrine of the secret ‘Rapture’ also accept is that a third temple2 will be constructed around the time when Jesus returns. The various schools of Dispensationalism differ in the sequence of events. Some believe that Jesus will return prior to the construction of the temple, others, once it is completed. But almost all of them link the two events in some way.
I do not wish to debate whether or not a third temple will be constructed. I wish to address whether or not the bible prophesies a third temple. For me the fact of a third temple is beside the point. The only thing that matters with respect to any temple is whether it is a temple that features in the purposes of God. And as we prepare for Palm Sunday in six days, it helps to understand what the temple was, what it was intended to accomplish, and how what Jesus did on Palm Sunday affects how we understand the future of any temple.
Honesty and Consistency with Scripture
Now, it is true that, following the destruction of the first temple, Ezekiel and Haggai predict that the temple will be rebuilt. Despite the fact that the second temple was a massive let down for the people of Israel, Jesus calls it God’s house when he predicts its destruction. In other words, we have it from Jesus himself that the second temple did qualify as a valid temple. Hence, it must follow that the second temple was the fulfillment of the prophecies in Ezekiel and Haggai. Indeed, it is disingenuous to think that either of the prophesies applies to a third temple, especially if that claim is made based on an idea that these prophecies need to be fulfilled in a literal manner. Let me explain.
I concede the point that the prophecies in Ezekiel and Haggai were not fulfilled to the letter. However, let us be consistent with what we read in the bible. By common consensus, the Babylonian exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC. The Persian emperor Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to the land in 538 BC. This equals a period of 59 years. However, Jeremiah said that the period would be 70 years! Even if we start counting from the first siege of Jerusalem in 607 BC or when Judah became a vassal state of Babylon after Jehoiakim began paying tribute in 605 BC, we do not get an exact 70 year period for the exile. Hence, it is duplicitous to expect a to-the-letter fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the temple when the prophecies surrounding the period of the exile, which, mind you, only involve one number, can evidently not be taken literally. This one instance itself should be convincing enough for anyone who is honest to agree that biblical prophecy is not intended to be taken literally. But then, some of us are married to our views. And we know that God hates divorce!
Recovering Biblical Symbolism
Moreover, the dimensions of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 48.30-35 are tiny compared to the dimensions in Revelation 21.16. Both of them cannot be literally correct since, with a literal hermeneutic at least one must be false! Actually, Ezekiel’s number is tiny by any measure since 18,000 long cubits is less than 10 km, making it less than 100 sq km in area! In contrast, the New Jerusalem in Revelation measures 12,000 stadia in length, which is around 2,200 km, giving an area of about 4,840,000 sq km. There is no way except through deceit that we can conclude that both of these are true literally. Now, since the New Jerusalem in Revelation clearly refers to some reality in the future, the Jerusalem in Ezekiel cannot refer to the same thing! Only someone with the express intention of misleading will ever claim that both are to be taken literally and that both refer to the same thing.
The only honest alternative is that one or both of the dimensions are to be taken as symbolic. In fact, Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is smaller even than today’s Jerusalem, which has an area of about 125 sq km! Moreover, Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is a square, which has never been true about the real Jerusalem. So it is clear that even the dimensions and shape of the city cannot be taken literally! In fact, only if we understand that both Ezekiel and Revelation are using numbers and shapes in a symbolic manner can we ever hope to understand what they were trying to say.
Indeed, the powerful symbol of how the city and the temple will be perfect, communicated through their dimensions and shape, is lost if we take the numbers literally. In that case, we fail to see that the cubic city in Revelation 21.16 is actually a symbol of how the entire city of the New Jerusalem replaces the only other cubic structure in the bible – the holy of holies! Revelation 21.1-2 makes it clear that the new heavens and the new earth is synonymous with the New Jerusalem. Hence, in v. 3 we read, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” Now God’s presence is no longer confined to a small space inside a physical temple. Rather, all of creation would now function as the holy of holies where creation can live alongside the living God. A desire for a third temple rejects this glorious vision and instead settles for another physical structure in which God’s presence is localized. This desire is a sign of a great apostasy in which some who claim to be God’s people would rather settle for a local presence of God rather than the prophetic vision of God’s glory filling the whole earth to overflowing.
Jesus and the Second Temple
If the period of the exile and the dimensions of the city are clearly not to be taken literally, on what basis do we say that the dimensions of the temple should be taken literally? But more crucial, if the dimensions are not to be taken literally, on what basis do we say that this prophecy was not fulfilled when the second temple was constructed? If Jesus himself accepted the second temple as the house of God, then saying that the Ezekiel prophecy is not about the second temple would be an argument from silence because there would have to be a second temple about which Ezekiel was not informed even though it was to him that the vision of the departing glory was given. It would mean that Haggai was given a vision of a third temple while almost all of his ministry was to encourage the Judeans to finish the construction of the second temple! Could there be anything more damaging to the vocation of the prophet? The more reasonable interpretation is that Ezekiel’s and Haggai’s visions are about the second temple and that it was fulfilled in a non-literal manner.
But someone may say that Ezekiel had prophesied that the glory of God would return to the temple. And there is no evidence that the post-exilic Jews ever saw the glory returning. Indeed, Ezekiel 43.4, Isaiah 40.5, and Haggai 2.7 predict the revelation of the glory of Yahweh, which clearly did not happen in a literal sense during the post-exilic period. And Malachi 3.1 says that Yahweh himself would come into the temple, another thing that did not happen in a literal sense in the post-exilic period. So would that not mean that a third temple is needed to fulfill both these prophecies?
Absolutely not! The New Testament presents Jesus as the person and presence and glory of Yahweh. Hence, when he comes to the temple on Palm Sunday, it is the fulfillment of the prophecy in Malachi. And when Jesus is crucified, this is the revelation of Yahweh’s glory. In other words, all the prophecies about the temple given to the Old Testament prophets were fulfilled in and through the person and work of Jesus.
Now, it is clear that the New Testament also presents Jesus, the fully divine and fully human person, as the place where heaven and earth full intersect and intermingle. And this was what a temple was supposed to achieve. Hence, the temples of the Old Testament were only pale shadows of the reality that would finally be revealed in Jesus. John makes this clear in his Gospel when he has Jesus speak of his body as the temple. And the Synoptic Gospels are clear that Jesus did announce the destruction of the second temple.
If Jesus is the temple that superseded the second temple and if he is the fulfillment of what the temple was supposed to achieve, namely, the unification of heaven and earth, then any future temple that’s build will be done as a repudiation of what and who Jesus actually is. In other words, anyone who hopes for a future temple, explicitly denies that Jesus is the true temple that the previous two temples pointed toward. What this means is that, from a properly oriented Christian perspective rather than one that takes prophecies as stand alone features pulled apart from the contexts of the biblical narrative, it is a denial of what Jesus has done to claim that there is any role for a future temple in God’s purposes.
Inconsistency and Special Pleading
Now, since the Jewish people, for the most part, do not accept Jesus as their Messiah, it stands to reason that they would reject his judgment of the temple. In other words, for them the destruction of the temple in AD 70 is an event that needs another explanation. However, there is no text in the Old Testament or in the extra-biblical second temple literature that promises the destruction of the second temple. In that case, without a promise of the destruction of the second temple no text in the Old Testament can be taken as promising a third temple because that would just be illogical to promise a third temple without the destruction of the second. The Jewish people, therefore, have no option but to think that the prophecies about the destruction of the temple had dual fulfillment and applied to the first and second temples, leading to them applying the prophecies of the rebuilding of the temple to the second and future third temples.
Since we Christians do see dual fulfillments (e.g. Isaiah 7.14 and 2 Samuel 7.12-13) we cannot deny the Jewish people the right to propose multiple fulfillments. However, we must be careful because any such view is based on a rejection of Jesus as the Messiah and, hence, cannot be a properly Christian view. Just because the Jewish people share the Old Testament with us does not mean that we should be dictated to by their interpretation, especially when an interpretation denies what we believe Jesus has done.
Nevertheless, the view of Judaism is inconsistent and involves special pleading. The prophecies of the destruction of the first temple were given in specific contexts. The context was that Israel and/or Judah had Israelite kings ruling them. And these Israelite kings were held responsible for not being faithful to Yahweh. Their unfaithfulness, either through idolatry or through promoting injustice, was the reason for which the exile happened and the first temple destroyed. However, neither of this was true in the first century. In fact, if Jesus is to be taken seriously (and I hope Christians are willing to do that!), it was the Jewish rejection of their Messiah and their preference for violence that resulted in the destruction of the temple.
Therefore, to take the prophecies of the destruction of the first temple and blindly apply them to the second when the contexts were utterly different reveals a deep inconsistency and case of special pleading on the part of Judaism. In fact, Judaism cannot explain why the temple was destroyed in AD 70. They may claim that they were unfaithful to Yahweh but will be unable to point to anything specific that would qualify as supporting this claim of unfaithfulness. Indeed, there is nothing in the Old Testament that even suggests that, after the Judean exiles returned from Babylon, they would enter into another period of unfaithfulness that would require a second exile.
Some Jews today may argue that the second temple was destroyed because the Jews took up arms against the Romans. This would be consistent with what many of the prophets said, namely that Yahweh’s people are not to resort to military action. However, if you ask the Jewish people for any prophecy concerning this destruction in the context of the first century, they will not be able to do so. Ironically, it is the Christian tradition, which is an outgrowth of the Jewish tradition, that has a prophet who does announce the destruction of the second temple in the context of the first century – Jesus.
Anti-Messianic Jews?
Now, it is not only Judaism that looks forward to a third temple. I cannot skirt the fact that many Messianic Jews also believe that there will be a third temple and that it is crucial to God’s purposes. How is it that they have such a different perspective than the one I am presenting here. This article3 is revealing. It admits that the temple was destroyed about 40 years after Jesus’ death. However, it crucially (conveniently?) forgets that Jesus had announced the destruction of the temple, as we have seen earlier. In fact, given the role the article claims for the third temple, I must, with great despair, assert that, if Messianic Jews are driving or hoping for the reconstruction of the temple, then this is one of the greatest acts of idolatry the Jewish people have ever been engaged in, since they claim that the third temple will fulfill the purposes that the New Testament clearly declares have been fulfilled in Jesus. I would like to focus on two.
First, they claim that the third temple will “bring the Light back into the world,” which they clarify is a reversal of what happened when the glory departed the temple. Now, as mentioned earlier, there is no non-Christian Jewish text from the second temple period that claims that the glory of Yahweh returned to the second temple. However, the utter failure on the part of Messianic Jews to see that the Jesus’ Transfiguration, entry into the temple, and crucifixion are how the New Testament authors present Jesus as the revelation and incarnation of the divine glory is perplexing to say the least. I seriously wonder if such Messianic Jews are followers of Jesus or of some twisted and revivified version of Moses!
Second, they claim that the third temple will allow the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood. The article claims, “The Temple Institute’s School is training certified, DNA-tested Cohen (descendants of the High Priest Aaron) to perform the Temple duties.” This is one of the most mendacious and untruthful statements ever. Do we have the DNA of Aaron so we can verify someone actually is his descendent? The present day claim to be a descendant of Aaron is based on self-reporting of Jews. This is a circular argument. Without Aaron’s actual DNA to compare with, how can anyone be certified, especially for something as important as this? In fact, a recent study argues that those who self-certify as descendants of Aaron actually have multiple lineages! In no other area of life do we allow self-certification, but require documentary evidence, especially when the certification grants privileges. This is just certified madness, an ideology gone awry, with absolutely no controls to ensure that truth is pursued. But then perhaps truth is not what they are after!
However, even if we are, by some strange and miraculous twist of fate and statistically improbable occurrence, able to identify a descendent of Aaron, is the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood not a rejection of the priesthood of Jesus? If Jesus’ priesthood was needed because animal sacrifice could not procure the forgiveness of sin, is it not a return to what did not work to try to rejuvenate the Aaronic priesthood? According to Hebrews, this would be tantamount to saying that we need Jesus to be crucified again because we have failed to understand that and the ways in which his offer of himself is far superior to anything that existed under the Aaronic priesthood.
The Third Temple Apostasy
In other words, the only tradition in which the destruction of the second temple is explicitly announced is the Christian tradition. But in this tradition, the destruction of the temple is announced precisely because the temple was being replaced by Jesus. Moreover, any tradition based on multiple fulfillments of temple related prophecies must rest on a denial that Jesus is the true temple.
Despite this, there are quite a few Christian pastors who teach that there will be a third temple in the future. This is a great apostasy since this teaching can only hold water if we deny what Jesus has done. Such teachers, from the perspective of the Christian faith, are false teachers who are leading people astray with their misguided views and all too often abhorrent position that has Jesus return to inflict the very kind of violence he rejected at his first coming.
Unfortunately, one factor contributing to the popularity of such teachers is precisely their claim that, when he returns, Jesus will do so in a violent way, thereby catering to the bloodlust that has infected humans ever since Cain slew Abel and since his descendant Lamech glorified and institutionalized violence. Also, since these teachers cater to the almost universal human desire to think our group is special compared to other human groups and that, therefore, we must be given privileges that should be denied to those on the outside, they accumulate many followers who are led astray by their appealing but seductive and gospel-denying teachings. For, if the god we believe in is a god only for a select few and not for the whole world, then there is no good news that we can proclaim since a parochial god can never be concerned about the wellbeing of everyone.
Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount with the words, “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock…And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” The rock on which to build is not the Dome of the Rock, but Jesus’ teachings! Any Christian teacher who has forgotten this and is focused on the building of something whose time is past is rejecting Jesus and his teachings and building not on something sturdy but on shifting and unsteady sand. When Jesus returns, they may find themselves saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” only to receive the response, “I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.” After all, if God has given his Son to and for the world out of his overflowing love, placing one’s hopes in the reconstruction of an inanimate and inorganic building is nothing less than rejecting the gift that has been given.
Recovering Sacred Space
To the contrary, Paul and Peter describe the people of Jesus as the new temple made not with lifeless stone but with living bodies and beating hearts. It is in us now, as God’s image bearers and extensions of Jesus on the earth, that the reunification of heaven and earth is being established. Each of us individually is and all of us as a group are the temple of the living God. It is to this task that Jesus has called us. We are to bring to life what we have seen in him – the perfect unity of heaven and earth, the divine and the human. We are to become persons in whom the Holy Spirit is gloriously welcomed to dwell, creating his sacred space within and around us.
But if we place our hopes in the rebuilding of the temple, that is a rejection of our vocation to be the new creation sacred space with which God is invading the earth to dispossess the forces of evil. When Jesus sent his disciples to go to all the earth with the message of the gospel, he was creating a mobile temple that could exist without the need for physical foundations because the foundation on which this new temple was built was his teachings. He was creating an enduring temple can cannot be destroyed because, as the nation of Israel is discovering, you can destroy all the buildings you want, but you cannot destroy an idea.
Unfortunately, the majority of the Christian Church only thinks that the purpose of the Christian faith is to provide passage out of hell and intro heaven. With such a truncated view of God’s purposes for his creation and creatures, it is no wonder that the majority of the Christian Church has failed to grasp how crucial the idea of being the temple of God is for the life of the Church. Instead, we too cling to our structures as though it is through them that we find salvation and in them that we receive our identity.
It is time we recovered the grand vision for the human race and for the Church as God’s representatives of the human race that we find in the bible. Humans were created to be the bridge between heaven and earth. We were created to be mobile outposts of God’s sacred space. It is time we recovered this rather than continue to abdicate responsibility and expect lifeless bricks and stone to achieve what can only be achieved in and through humans – individually and collectively – who have been renewed by the breath of God’s Spirit.
Am I saying that a third temple will never be constructed. No! I have no position about whether or not the temple will be rebuilt. What I am claiming is that, since God has now established his temple in Jesus and his body, the Church, there is no place for another temple in God’s plans. Hence, any temple that may be constructed in the future will be constructed against God’s will and will be a sign of deep apostasy on the part of those either directly or indirectly involved in the construction. Since Jesus announced the destruction of the temple with his image of no stone remaining on top of the other, any hope for a future third temple is a hoping for the rubble.
I have decided, against the common usage, that I will no longer allow my language to be co-opted by a virulent Zionism that does not represent the God I believe in. The term anti-Semitism should include hatred of any ethnic group that descends from Shem like Arabs, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Syrians, among others. The convention that uses anti-Semitism only to refer to hatred of Jews is itself anti-Semitic since it excludes non-Jewish Semitic people from the umbrella. ↩︎
Note the clear anti-Palestinian perspective of the article, which presents the conflict in the region as an ‘Arab-Israeli’ one, without any mention of Palestinians. These kinds of views seep in with their insidious vocabulary and do not allow us to see the current state of Israel as an occupying power whose existence should be questioned. ↩︎
Note the clear anti-Muslim nature of this article, which fails to recognize the injustice that the Israelis have forced on the Palestinians and exonerates them from all blame. ↩︎
For good or for ill, some parts of the bible have infiltrated many cultures and many languages. Many people would perhaps know that the Ten Commandments are from the bible, though most of them would probably not be able to tell you even one of the ten. Our passage for today has contributed three idioms to the English language, each based on one of the situations Jesus mentions. However, in all three cases, the meaning of the idiom is contrary to what Jesus was saying.
Jesus begins with a quote from Exodus 21.24, which is the lex talionis, or law of retaliation. This limitation on retaliation is not unique to the bible. The Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Old Testament, also has a similar law of limitation where the punishment could not exceed the crime. This is Jesus’ starting point.
Then Jesus mentions three situations, each of which has given rise to an idiom in English. I am sure you have heard of the idioms ‘to turn the other cheek’ and of ‘give the shirt off my back’ and of ‘go the extra mile.’ Yes? Of course you have.
But each of these means something quite different to what Jesus meant. And so, while Jesus is actually giving us strategies for non-violent action, most people conclude that he is simply advocating a submissive attitude, an attitude in which his followers welcome abuse and become doormats. But this is not what Jesus meant. So let us see what he actually meant.
So to the first. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek. This is a culture in which one did not use the left hand in public. Being left handed, I find such norms quite ridiculous and oppressive.
Nonetheless, this was a culture in which one did not use the left hand in public. So one would use the right hand. If I used my right hand, how would I slap someone on the right cheek? Would I twist my arm around and slap him? Ridiculous! I would become the laugh of the town!
The only way to accomplish this is to slap with the back of the hand. But the back handed slap was an insult in that culture. If I slapped you with the back of my hand, then the cultural norms required that you be a slave. I was not permitted to slap a free person with the back of my hand. If I did, then I was insulting you.
So how does Jesus tell us to respond? Show the left cheek he says. Now I am in a quandary. With your left cheek facing me, I can no longer slap you with the back of my right hand. And I cannot use my left hand.
So I have only two options. I either refrain from slapping you further or I slap you with the palm of my right hand. In the first case, you have stopped my violence against you. In the second case, you have forced me to accept you as my equal. In both cases, you have reclaimed your dignity without retaliating. Is that ingenious or what?
So to the second situation. Jesus is referring to the situation in Exodus 22.26-27. “If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in?” This was a peasant culture. A person would have an inner garment in which he would work and an outer garment which he would use to keep warm when he slept.
So if I took your outer garment as pledge, it could only be while you worked. At sunset, I had to return it to you so you could be warm.
Because of this restriction, people turned the spirit of the law upside down. They argued, I cannot keep the outer garment during the night. So I will keep the inner. So I would force you to come to me and give me your inner garments during the night while I returned the outer garments to you for the night. And presumably there was a judge also who would say that I was doing the right thing by the law.
So what does Jesus suggest we do? He says that if they are going to ridicule the spirit of the law, then give them both garments. So now you would be standing naked in front of me and the judge.
And in that culture, this brought shame not to the naked person, but to the person who saw another person naked. Remember the case of Ham? He sees Noah naked and does nothing about it. And so he and his descendents are cursed because of this.
Jesus is telling us to act proactively in order to expose a system of injustice. Bring shame on them in a shame based culture. Act in such a drastic way that they have two options. They could either keep the clothes and invite a God’s curse and people’s shame on them. Or they could return the clothes. In either case, the wronged person has retained his or her dignity without resorting to violence.
And finally to the third situation. If someone forces you to go one mile. Why one mile? To us distanced from Jesus’ context, this seems contrived, arbitrary. But in that context it was a real situation.
In order to maintain a bloated empire consisting of conquered peoples, Rome had to recruit locals to be soldiers. They were not given all the privileges that a Roman legionary would get – retirement benefits, housing, vacations, etc. Instead they were paid well and given some benefits of a different sort. A soldier was allowed to force a civilian to carry his load for a maximum of one mile.
This was a great benefit when one considered that a soldier had equipment that exceeded 30 kg in weight. That is a lot to carry for an entire day. And so any reprieve would be more than welcome.
The soldiers used this benefit regularly, as you might expect. After all, if I can get you to carry my 30 kg for one mile, why would I not do it?
So what does Jesus tell us to do? He tells us to carry it another mile. Now one mile was the maximum distance a soldier could force another person to carry his load. And in order to keep the conquered people from revolting, the Romans were very strict about this limitation. Soldiers who violated the limitation were punished severely.
So imagine the situation. I am a soldier. I see you across the street and tell you to carry my load. You come over willingly and carry it. At the end of the mile, I ask you to give it back to me, but you tell me you will go another mile.
My centurion is somewhere close by. What does he see? He sees us talking, but cannot really hear us. But he sees you carrying the load beyond the maximum. He cannot conclude that you did this willingly. Who would do this willingly? So he can only conclude that I have forced you beyond the maximum.
I know this. And so what do I do? I beg you to return my load to me. Not because I care about you. But because if you do not do this, I will be severely punished. A soldier begging? Not quite dignified right? But once again the dignity of the oppressed party is intact.
In all three cases, Jesus tells us to be proactive and creative. To act in a non-violent way so as to force the oppressor to treat us with dignity. To turn the tables on the oppressor so that we are calling the shots and not the oppressor.
Many times I have stressed the importance of context. Not just textual, but also chronological, geographical, historical, cultural and linguistic. The bible is not a book dropped from heaven but a collection of books written within specific contexts to address specific issues faced by specific people. If we ignore these contexts we will have an interpretation of our scriptures that is at odds with the original intent.
Our passage shows this very clearly. Ignoring the contexts within which Jesus was speaking we have portrayed him as being one who promoted docility, passivity and a resigned attitude. However, when we read his words in context we see that he was promoting creative non-violent action that oppressed people could use as a means of recovering the initiative from the oppressor.
But in the hands of those in power, these threatening words become toothless and lose their edge. And then they can be used to make Jesus the one who supports oppression.
I have spoken before about how Friedrich Nietzsche rejected Christianity because he thought it was a religion of slaves. And with the normal interpretation of today’s passage who would say it wasn’t? If you are just turning the other cheek or giving the shirt off your back or going the extra mile, then you would never end up on a cross. But Jesus did! The person who spoke these words ended on a cross because words like these are threatening to those in power. And we must retain their edge and see that they remain threatening. For only then are we faithful to the one whose speaking of such words took him to the cross.
Note: This post contains some strongly worded views. While I may disagree with people over their actions and/or policies, those who know me know that I am a proponent of nonviolence. I do not believe there is any situation in which violence is justified. In addition, the call of Jesus to love my enemies means that, no matter how strong my disagreements with someone may be, my approach to them is one of love. I will not harm them and will not support any action that harms them. Rather, my views are a result of my convictions that they have betrayed the call of Jesus to love our enemies and I hope to call them to repent of that betrayal. However, I pledge no loyalty to any human institution. Despite this, while I may advocate protesting policies of institutions, I will never advocate any violent protests. With that in mind, read on…
Preamble
We were there when it happened. And everything changed after that fateful day. Now, all discussions centered around the event and the responses to it. Every conversation was infused with the pain of the event and the anguish of those who had lost family members or friends, colleagues or acquaintances. It seemed that the horror had left no one unscathed. Indeed, the scars of that day are still unhealed for many, driving them to actions that I can only label ‘insane’ for it stems from the madness of a desire for revenge rather than reconciliation, fratricide rather than forgiveness.
I had woken up a little late that morning. Prayerna had had a restless night and I, being the stay-at-home dad, had the ‘night shift’ with her. Alice had to leave for work by around 7:15 AM (Pacific Daylight Time). After my ‘night shift’ I woke up around 8:00 AM, Prayerna snuggled against me, safe against my body. But though she was safe, everything around us felt quite eerie. I got out of bed and went to the balcony to check on this eeriness. As I opened the balcony door it hit me like a punch to the stomach. If ever it was true that silence could be deafening, it was on that day. The usual sounds of cars up and down the street were strangely absent. And while our apartment complex was normally a commotion in the morning, given the huge number of kids leaving for school, on that day you could hear the gentle rustling of the leaves in the trees with no human voices drowning it out.
Something was clearly wrong. My first instinct was to call Alice to ensure she was safe. Thankfully, she answered. I later understood that there were no customers at the bookstore. I asked her what had happened. She sounded shaken up and just told me to turn on the TV.
I was shocked at what I saw on the screen. Was that footage of a plane flying into a building? And another? And was that a third plane that crashed in a field? Yes! Yes! Yes! I was aghast while I watched. Right away my thoughts went to those who had died in the attacks. They had left their homes in the morning, kissing their wives or husbands, daughters and sons goodbye with the full intention and expectation of returning for the evening meal. But their lives had been snuffed out.
Fallout
And my next thought was, “Great! Now the wonderful Evangelical preachers will say that this is God’s punishment because America was tolerating homosexuals or because they were allowing the eroding of ‘family values’.” And my third thought was, “Now the ‘beast’ has been shaken awake. Its coat of scales had been shown not to be impenetrable. And it will retaliate with a vengeance never seen before this.”
I waited eagerly for Alice to return home. She came early. Everything had shut down around 10:00 AM. We sat in silence, drinking coffee, while Prayerna played in blissful ignorance, unaware that our world – and here I mean not our world as in ‘Earth’ but our world as a family – had changed.
You see, till then I had been the foremost candidate to become the Senior Pastor of our church, the then Senior Pastor having planned to relocate in 2002 to Thailand for ministry there. But now my skin color would prove to be an impediment to my candidacy. No one would want someone with dark skin color. Of course, we knew that the real reason they would give would not be my skin color. That would be discrimination! So instead they would give me the excuse that my views were too ‘liberal’ for the church.
Absolute hogwash! The church was composed of mostly students from the University of Southern California for whom my exploration of new ideas with faithfulness to Jesus was refreshing. During my one year there, during much of which the Senior Pastor had been in Thailand preparing for his future move, the congregation had grown so much that we had to relocate from within the campus to a significantly bigger facility just outside it. But, as we expected, I was told that my views were not conservative enough. When that happened, I knew something was festering not just within that church but also within the soul of America.
I drove back home after the meeting with the elders in which they said they were willing to keep me on as the Assistant Pastor, but had to look for a more conservative Senior Pastor. I called Alice from the car and gave her the news. She told me we would talk when I reached home.
Rumination
And talk we did. Well into the night. Since she had to work the next day, Alice went to bed, leaving me alone with my thoughts in the living room. Prayerna slept well that night. But I didn’t. I stayed awake for most of it ruminating over what had happened. I knew that, whether the elders would admit it or not, my theology was not the issue, it was my skin. Oh, who am I kidding! My theology gave them an excuse. So at some level my theology was an issue. And both reinforced each other quite well!
After all, with the warmongering that ensued in America you did not want a brown skinned pastor preaching a message of peace! Especially when he wasn’t even a proper green card holder, let alone a citizen! That would call into question the loyalties of the church. After all, he could very well be a plant of those hated ‘brownies’, charged with ensuring America did nothing but roll over passively! During those days any call to peace was seen as a rejection of American sovereignty, a denial of the hurt that ensued from the attacks, and an indication of a lack of loyalty to the nation.
And the ‘beast’ is not forgiving toward those who cannot give it their complete loyalty. Any appearance to the contrary could result in ostracism at best, or worse a smear campaign, or at worst the loss of life. Eventually, after a long search, the church capitulated to the ‘beast’ and chose a white man who had sons in the military. What better way to prove its allegiance.1
I would say, what better way than to reject the way of the Lamb and adopt the way of the Lion! What better way to assert our enslavement to the domination structures of the ‘beast’. I knew that I could not continue at that church anymore. Not with that warmongering ethos entering it. It was then that we decided it was time to plan our return to India.
Prophecy
But at the same time, I received a thought from the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Ever since 1999 I had been gripped by the last book of the bible and the figure of the slaughtered and victorious Lamb. And the result of the Lamb’s victory today resounds in the refrain: “Fallen is ‘Babylon’.” I pondered those words for many days before I revealed it to Alice along with what I thought was my ‘interpretation’ of it.
I told her that in about 15 years we would see the downfall of the USA. In the years that followed she often would joke to me about my ‘prophecy’. She knew that I was wary of prophecies but still had uttered one to her. Over the years, however, she stopped ribbing me about it and I actually forgot about it.
That was until Donald Trump became the Republican candidate in 2015! Alice asked me if I remembered the prophecy. And knowing how much I detest how Trump conducts himself, she asked me if I thought this was a fulfillment of the ‘prophecy’. I took a few days’ time and then answered in the affirmative.
When Biden was elected in 2019, Alice asked me what had happened to the ‘prophecy’. It was mostly in jest, but I think she really wanted to know what my take on it was almost four years after the supposed ‘downfall’. I really wish she were around now because I have ruminated over this for the past years and especially over the months since October 2023. So what is my take?
Interpretation
I believe that the downfall actually began with the lies of the George W. Bush administration regarding Afghanistan and Iraq. But I believe that the downfall was revealed when Trump was elected as President. That is, the downfall became evident as people, notably Evangelical Christians, were willing to overlook the man’s moral failing just to ensure that a woman and a Democrat would not come to power. Don’t get me wrong. I have no sympathies for Hillary Clinton. She is one of the worst kinds of white supremacists around, who speaks with a forked tongue every opportunity she gets.
However, if you are presented with a wolf and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it does not help to exonerate the wolf! When Evangelical Christians elected Trump they sent a clear message to the world: “Even though we are short sighted and cannot really see that the gospel has political implications, we will not even ensure our truncated vision is upheld. Rather, we are willing to elect a misogynistic, hateful person who will ensure our white supremacist agenda moves forward.” That message was the final revelation of the turning away of the American Church. And it was when the downfall became evident.
Four years of Trump’s insanity made the Democrats wake up, go to the poll stations, and elect Biden. They hoped that Biden would undo the damage that Trump had initiated. However, Biden has proved to be ineffectual on most domestic fronts. But most damaging has been his willingness to support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Now the people of the USA have two prime candidates both of whom will eagerly support Israel without question. And if it’s a question of choosing the lesser of two evils, however you define evil, it is just an assurance that evil will win. If this is not a downfall then I don’t know what is.
The reader may ask me whether my current interpretation aligns with what I originally thought. I have to confess that it does not. I thought of a political dismantling of the USA. I know that will come as all empires are doomed to implode because “fallen is ‘Babylon’.” However, just as Isaiah’s original prophecy about a ‘young woman’ was later interpreted as a reference to a ‘virgin’ so also I think the meaning of a prophecy could become more nuanced or clear as we get closer or past the fulfillment. Now I am not claiming the same status as Isaiah! I am not that deluded. However, the rot that has been growing within America over the past centuries, since its violent founding to its support of violence around the world, from its belief that might makes right to its willingness to force its will on others through violent means, was revealed without doubt in its elections of Trump in 2015 and Biden in 2019.
Two years after taking on the new Senior Pastor, the church shut its doors. In 2006 the elders wrote to me apologizing for what they had done and admitting that they had made the wrong choice for that church. ↩︎
Among the many traditions of Christian faith, I have great admiration for those in the traditions known as the Radical Reformation. The denominations like the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers and Plymouth Brethren – collectively known as Anabaptists – fall in this group of traditions. Two of the professors at Fuller Seminary with whom I interacted with a lot were David Augsburger and Nancey Murphy – both Mennonites – and my appreciation for this often misunderstood group of Christians developed mainly through my interactions with them. I disappointed both of them by becoming a pastor and then returning to India rather than pursuing a Ph.D. in Theology.
One of the key traits of the Anabaptist groups is a very strict, almost literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.
Whereas most mainline Christian denominations will tip their theological hats to the Sermon on the Mount and then dismiss Jesus’ words in favor of some passage in the Old Testament or in Paul’s letters, the Anabaptists believe – and I think rightly so – that since Jesus began his teachings with the Sermon on the Mount, so should we. And since this is the first lesson, it must be lessons such as those taught to children – literal, plain, unadorned, undecorated, simple and to be taken at face value.
And so while most Christians would not shy away from taking an oath in a courtroom by placing their hand on a bible, an Anabaptist would refuse to do so. Instead they would make a solemn affirmation.
However, I do wonder what the real difference between an oath and a solemn affirmation is. Is there any difference?
From a literal standpoint perhaps there is a difference. But we want to uncover the meaning and intent of Jesus’ teachings. Mind you, I am intentionally not saying the spirit of Jesus’ teachings lest we end by spiritualizing them and rendering them meaningless in our lives – as we unfortunately do, unfortunately too often.
So we want to uncover the meaning and intent of Jesus’ teachings. Now I have often said, and hopefully have been able to show, that Jesus was a remarkable teacher. Two Sundays back we saw that a single word was filled with meaning and purpose for both women and men. Last Sunday we saw that a phrase added as commentary on the institution of marriage actually changed the meaning of a passage often considered to be about divorce.
The placement of today’s passage shows us Jesus’ real meaning. He places it after the passage about marriage. Mind you, the early passage is not about divorce but about marriage.
And a wedding ceremony in Jesus’ day was much like the one Alice and I had. We said very little. In fact, I don’t remember saying anything! But Jesus was clear in last week’s passage that a marriage, as God intended it, was to last till the death of either spouse. Why so binding when neither party had made any verbal commitments? Because, as far as Jesus is concerned, if you showed up at the altar on your wedding day, that was an expression of commitment. You did not have to say anything. If you were there, you were making a commitment to the other person – a commitment that had the longest possible tenure – a lifetime.
So having dealt with marriage, Jesus moves on to oaths. Mind you, he is not talking about conversational swearing. I have heard many well-meaning Christians say that one should not say ‘what the hell’ or ‘O my God’ as exclamations while speaking. And they point to this passage. Whether or not we should use such phrases while speaking is one thing. But this passage is not talking about it. This passage is talking about giving testimony or providing evidence or making a verbal commitment.
This is like the time when Jesus is on trial. He was silent until the High Priest placed him under oath with the words, “I charge you under oath by the living God.” Once placed under oath – even if it were actually illegal – Jesus spoke.
But note his words there. He does not say, “By the living God I testify that I am the Messiah.” Rather, he simply says, “You have said it.” He stays true to his words in the Sermon on the Mount! And the remarkable thing is that, though Jesus does not utter the words of oath taking, the High Priest takes his testimony as valid. His ‘yes’ was enough to incriminate him!
The final words in today’s passage, “anything beyond this comes from the evil one” is something many of us might have experience with. Perhaps when we were growing up and on the playground? Someone cheats. Maybe the ball actually bounced and he claimed a catch. Maybe the bat did not cross the crease and it was a short run. In the absence of the third umpire, what do we do? “God promise, yar!” “I swear on my mother!” “I swear on the big mole on my left forearm!”
Or whatever. And you know – we knew – intuitively we knew that the more vociferous the claims were, the more likely they were to be false.
A friend of mine at seminary habitually did not lock his car. And he had a high end stereo installed in the car as well. Mind you, we were in Pasadena, just a few miles from Los Angeles. Theft of car accessories was high in the area. Yet, he kept his car unlocked. His rationale was that, if someone were intent on stealing his car stereo, they would do it anyway, even if the car were locked. Strange reasoning, I know. And I think he came around when he realized that the insurance would not cover any damages if the car were routinely left unlocked.
But my friend’s curiosity does hit at exactly what Jesus is telling us here. A person who needs to be put on oath in order to tell the truth will lie if needed while on oath. This is precisely why there is the crime of perjury! It recognizes that placing someone under oath is not a foolproof process. So, if you are not sure if a person is telling the truth and you think you can gain certainty by placing him or her under oath, think again.
So here Jesus seems to be saying we should never take oaths. But look at Matthew 23.16-22:
“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?
You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it.And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.”
So what do we make of it? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to speak clearly against taking oaths. However, in Matthew 23, he seems to be saying there is a place for taking oaths. Are these two different contexts that he is speaking to – one in which we should not take oaths and one in which we are allowed to?
Since in neither passage Jesus mentions a context, we can conclude that he is giving us instructions that do not depend on the context. So is he contradicting himself? But a Jesus who contradicts himself is not someone you or I would be comfortable following for without consistency of the teacher there can be no meaningful discipleship. We would never know when we are following him and when we are not.
So it must mean that Jesus is not contradicting himself. Most commentators recognize this. However, most commentators, not being Anabaptists, resolve this issue by giving primacy to the passage in Matthew 23. This is something I have mentioned before. When in a quandary, we are quick to jettison Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount because they do not seem too practical.
The great French Reformation theologian Jean Calvin – or English, John Calvin – in his magnum opus Institutes of the Christian Religion, has this to say about our passage for today:
“[Christ’s] purpose was, neither to relax nor to curtail the Law, but to restore the true and genuine meaning, which had been greatly corrupted by the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees. If we attend to this we shall not suppose that Christ condemned all oaths but those only which transgressed the rule of the Law. It is evident, from the oaths themselves, that the people were accustomed to think it enough if they avoided perjury, whereas the Law prohibits not perjury merely, but also vain and superfluous oaths.
“Therefore our Lord, who is the best interpreter of the Law, reminds them that there is a sin not only in perjury, but in swearing. How in swearing? Namely, by swearing vainly. Those oaths, however, which are authorized by the Law, he leaves safe and free.”
Much as I admire Calvin, I cannot but see special pleading in his argument here. Jesus never once in our passage speaks of oaths authorized by the Law. Yet, in order to make both passages conform, he brings in the idea of ‘swearing vainly’ and of oaths ‘authorized by the Law.’
A lot of commentators, not in the Anabaptist tradition, resort to this sort of argument, giving the later passage primacy and using an interpretive scheme that allows them in the end to say that our passage for today fits well with the later teaching in which Jesus presumably permits oath taking.
But does Jesus really permit oath taking in the later passage? Certainly not! Jesus is simply correcting the erroneous teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. They told people that taking an oath on the temple itself was not binding, but that taking an oath on the gold of the temple was binding. Jesus is merely pointing out that it is the temple that makes the gold sacred and that, therefore, oaths taken on the temple were more binding than oaths taken on the gold of the temple.
Jesus is pointing out how the teachings of the religious leaders actually profaned what is sacred – here the temple and the altar. He is telling people, “If you take an oath on the gold of the temple you are taking an oath on the temple itself.” But then we are supposed to be reminded by the earlier teaching in our passage and conclude, “If that is the case, I cannot take an oath on the gold of the temple.”
Jesus is correcting our tendency for sidestepping discipleship with carefully nuanced mumbo jumbo. “I swore on the gold of the temple. It is binding. But I did not profane the temple itself!”
Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is telling us the characteristics that his people should have. We have many jokes about the character traits of groups of people. Sardars, we are told, are slow witted. Sindhis, we say, are stingy. Etc. etc. What is the trait that should characterize Christians?
According to the Anabaptists it is that Christians should not take oaths. According to Calvin and most other commentators it is that Christians should not take oaths in a frivolous manner.
But Jesus is not speaking to non-converts. He is speaking to his people. And he ends with the words “all you need to say.” All I need! I do not need to be placed under oath. And neither do I need to refuse to be placed under oath. All I need is for my yes to mean yes and my no to mean no. All I need, as the disciple of the incarnate Word, is to be a man of my word. In other words, can it be said of Christians that our defining trait is truth telling? I wonder.
You must be logged in to post a comment.