He Is Not Looking at the Facade

Step toward the light in God’s presence

Ezekiel is looking at a gate that faces east, and through it comes the glory of God, into a new temple raised over a ruined city. It does not seep in gradually. It does not creep closer. It fills the whole space at once, the way water fills a jar the moment it is held under the stream. God sets no probation for the place. He announces that he lives there, “where I will dwell among the Israelites forever”, and that sentence is spoken over the rubble of a city that had been torn down.

On this same day Jesus talks about a different temple, the one where the scribes and the Pharisees sit in the chair of Moses. What he says about them isn't that they are wrong. He says: do and observe what they tell you, but do not follow their example, because they do not practice what they preach. They widen their phylacteries. They lengthen their tassels. Their whole day is arranged around being seen to be religious.

These two temples are not opposites in space. They are opposites in the heart. One is a place where someone lives. The other is a place where someone merely appears. And the line between them runs straight through your own morning, if you look closely: the moment you do something because it is right, and the moment you do it because someone happens to be watching.

A word reached you from somewhere this morning that points at exactly this: fear is one of the enemy's favourite weapons. Not by accident. Someone afraid of looking empty starts decorating the facade. Widening the strap. Lengthening the tassel. Spending more and more energy on how it looks, and less and less on whether anyone is actually home. Fear does not usually make us say false things. It puts a false weight on true ones. It whispers that what you are doing isn't enough unless somebody sees it.

There is another temple the Church remembers today. A young woman who never once widened a strap for anyone to notice, and who was still given the highest seat any creature has ever received. Mary says it herself, the moment she learns that every generation will call her blessed: “He has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness.” God's glory did not look down on her from above. It lifted her from exactly the smallest place she was standing in. The throne wasn't given because she sought it, but because there was nothing in her blocking the gate.

Jesus turns this into today's closing line: whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Not because God hands out punishments and rewards like a judge. Because exaltation and humility are two names for the same motion. Whoever makes himself small clears exactly the amount of room glory needs. Mary's empty hands held the most.