Safeguarding Sunday 2024

“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” say Jesus’ disciples, in awe at the sheer scale of the walls of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Walls can be wonderful, protecting and sheltering, or they can be obstacles, things that cut us off from one another or are used to conceal and hide. The Temple walls were no different. There had been a Temple in Jerusalem from the time of King Solomon – before that they had worshipped God in a tent, and God had been quite happy with that. But that didn’t seem right to the great and good of Jerusalem, so a Temple it had to be, built of stone and cedar wood, and it was a very fine Temple.

Solomon’s Temple stood until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC, and then after the exile a new Temple was built. It wasn’t as splendid as the old one, as there weren’t the resources to build it as Solomon had done. Around the time of Jesus’ birth, plans were in place to extend it and beautify it. Those plans were the idea of King Herod the Great and it was more of a vanity project than a genuine spiritual enterprise. He wasn’t even considered properly Jewish – he came from a neighbouring tribe which had converted to Judaism out of convenience, and he’d been put on the throne by the Romans. So, he needed to find all the favour he could, and what better way than by starting a huge, building project. Unfortunately, the building works over ran by several decades, and it was only just finished by the time Jesus spoke these words to his disciples.

As you can imagine then, the idea that this grand new building was going to be thrown down, didn’t exactly go down well with those who overheard him saying it. In fact, it was one of the things that got Jesus crucified.

Jesus was quite right though. Herod’s Temple was reduced to rubble by the Romans in AD 70 – only part of the Western Wall remains, a place of prayer for Jewish people to this day. But Jesus wasn’t really just talking about the physical building when he said these words. It was the whole system of Temple worship which he could see coming to an end.

The thing about the Temple was that its walls had become a bit of an obsession among those who built it and ran it, in a way that wasn’t always helpful at all. As I said earlier walls can make a home, providing shelter and protection. Or they can be obstacles across our way. The Temple was constructed as a series of courtyards, one inside the others. At the very centre was the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest could go and then only once a year, screened off behind a curtain. Beyond that was the court of the priests, then one for Jewish men, then one for women, then one for Gentiles. Some people – those who were ritually unclean – couldn’t enter it at all. That included people with disabilities and diseases. The Temple was the place where you went to encounter God, so the walls which kept people in their place – or excluded them completely – also cut them off from God. Gentiles were forbidden from going any further in than their own court.

It may have been an impressive building, but for many people – especially those who were already marginalised – it’s walls were more of an obstacle than a home.

Jesus’ words here, though, pointed forward to something the early Christians were keen to bear witness to. They had found a new Temple, a new way of encountering God. They had found it in Jesus himself, and they found it in one another as they gathered together in the Christian community. They were living stones in a new Temple, one in which there were no dividing walls. The walls of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, men and women had been broken down. The sick, the poor, the sinners – those who had been excluded from the old Temple – were explicitly included here. All could have “confidence to enter the sanctuary by …the new and living way that he opened”. All could find within the walls of God’s love the safety and warmth they needed, a home in God’s heart.

So on this Safeguarding Sunday in a week where the large stones of the church have tumbled, where walls of the large buildings have remained up by the lack of reporting and response, where walls have been ignored as to what is going on behind them and where walls have prevented the voices of victims and survivors to be heard, let’s think about the walls in our lives, the church and the world; the walls that are obstacles to us and to others, blocking the way, cutting us off from one another, hiding what is really going on, and the walls we long for, welcoming, protecting safe walls that give us the shelter we all need. Let’s pray too for all who need strong walls around them at this time – those who are homeless or refugees and especially remembering all the victims and survivors of abuse from within the church. And let’s pray that those of us who call ourselves Christian, part of God’s living temple, would always build walls which aren’t barriers but make safe and open places for all.

Amen