Reading: Ezekiel 40-44, Psalm 43

Ever see something that at first glance seems super boring, but when you take the time to really look at it becomes fascinating? Like some M. C. Escher painting, which I guess are never boring but which get more and more difficult to wrap your mind around the longer you stare at them. Or one of those hidden picture posters that were all the rage in the 90s. I remember going to the mall and watching people stare blankly into the hazy orange lines, alternately squinting and widening their eyes, until they either saw what they were looking for or shook their heads in dismay and wandered off, occasionally looking back in suppressed horror at the mysterious picture that had defeated them.

I feel this way about Ezekiel’s vision of the new Temple. On it’s surface, it bears a lot of similarities to the outline of the Tabernacle and the Temple in Exodus and 1 Kings. On the other hand, those were pretty obviously fully constructed buildings, with the ancient equivalent of architects making the whole thing work. Ezekiel’s temple is a massive mountaintop symmetrical fortress building that makes little sense architecturally. The Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple had every detail worked out, Ezekiel’s Temple has whole buildings we are told nothing about, and leaves awkward gaps to accommodate the perfect symmetry of certain other parts. On it’s surface it appears to be the plans for a Temple that the exiles could build when they return to Jerusalem. The exiles built a Temple, at God’s direction, but it was not this Temple. It makes me think there is something going on here behind the scenes. This Temple is perfect in symmetry. It is huge. It sits on a mountaintop, all of which is declared holy. It is inhabited by the glory of God that departed the first Temple earlier in the book of Ezekiel. There is no Ark or lamp stand or incense altar, so important in the Tabernacle and Temple. There are priests, but no High Priest, who was the center of everything in the Tabernacle and Temple. Then there is this character of the Prince, who we heard about yesterday, who is the descendant of David, the promised Messiah, who does some important stuff related to the Temple, but which is not made super clear.

I don’t have a final answer on what this Temple is all about. If I did I’m pretty sure I would be missing at least part of the point. The people of Israel thought they had it all figured out in the days of Solomon. Their Temple worship was perfect so everything would go well for them. They thought they had it figured out in the days of Isaiah. Do the right kind of sacrifices and God will make us prosperous. They thought they had it figured out in the days of Jeremiah. We can worship other gods in the courtyard of the Temple so long as we follow the right processes in worshiping the God of Israel as well. They were all wrong. None of them really had any idea what the worship of Yahweh was really all about. The author of Hebrew, a New Testament book that I am anachronistically referencing today, says that there is a “real” Temple where the worship of the creator God really occurs. Everything done in the Tabernacle and Temples before are reference points. Shadows. Reflections of the actual events that are beyond the fallen human capacity to comprehend.

I believe the Bible is a story that leads to Jesus of Nazareth. I also believe that there are occasions that God pulls back the curtain on greater things going on behind the scenes during the story. Elisha at the gates of Dothan, revealing the chariots of fire. Peter, James, and John witnessing the Transfiguration of Jesus. The last half of the book of Daniel. And, I think, Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple. The prophet is being given a vision to prove that no matter how careful God’s people are to follow all the rules, they are play acting at something much, much bigger than themselves.

The one things that I’m pretty sure about is that the placement of this Temple vision in the book of Ezekiel is no accident. Though we are told Ezekiel sees this vision earlier in his life, he put it here in his book for a reason. I think this is connected to the prior passage about restoration. This transcendent Temple is somehow the means by which the restored creation we read about yesterday will come to pass. The land that gives good food easily, an undoing of the curse, becomes that way because of this huge river flowing out of the Temple. Humans live in the presence of God without dying, because of something that happens in this Temple. The people have new hearts and God’s Spirit because of the work carried out in this Temple. How it will all play out is a mystery to Ezekiel and to the generations that followed him. We are further along in the story, yet should remember that it is all still a bit of a mystery to us.