Thursday, August 22, 2024 | Trey Comstock
My first thought upon entering the men’s area of the Western Wall was that my makeshift yamaka was just a carboard hotdog tray flipped upside down. The western side of the Temple Mount serves as the primary Jewish religious site in Jerusalem, so even weirdo Christian tourist need to cover their heads. The folks running it had no doubt run into thousands of people, who thoughtlessly arrived with no head covering, and thus, the free hot dog tray yamaka was born.
Once I got past my absurd haberdashery, the scene before me struck something deep inside. Everywhere I looked, people prayed, chanted in rhythmic motion, or pressed tiny slips of paper containing their prayers into the cracks in the ancient stones. The wall itself, dating from King Herod’s expansion of the Temple complex appeared as an unshakable bulwark of the ancient stretching far above our heads. When I got up close, I saw every reachable nook and cranny filled with sheets of paper – prayers to God, who dwelled just above our heads for hundreds of years, and maybe still dwells there in some way still. I saw a doorway to my left and wandered into some sort of Orthodox Jewish library and prayer room where men with curls, beards, and hats sat earnestly peering into ancient words on scrolls and in books.
Beating a hasty retreat from the studious zone probably not meant for idiotic gentiles, I again stood in the square looking up. The higher one looks; the utter complexity of the modern Temple comes into view. Sitting atop, near where the Second Temple would have stood before it got knocked over by the Romans, now stands the third holiest site for Islam, where they believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended into Heaven. I feel drawn to the place not only because of the Old Testament history, but also because Jesus, Peter, John, Paul, and most of our New Testament protagonists spent time there sacrificing, learning, teaching, flipping tables, and being put on trial.
History has its own kind of pulling power. The story of Solomon commissioning the construction of the Temple dates to around 950 BC. People have worshipped their ever since. Anything with that kind of continuous occupation and accumulated meaning for so many generations reaches out of future generations pullinh them into the story as well. We marvel at the Pyramids of Giza, the Coliseum, in Rome, the Parthenon, in Athens. In visiting them, we tie ourselves in some small way to our ancestors of thousands of years past. The Temple Mount certainly contains that kind of power.
However, I wonder if something more mysterious still moves among those particular stones.
The telling of Temple’s first days gives an account that feels somewhat at odds with itself. On one hand, with the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant, God’s presence shows up in the Holy of Holies. “And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” (1 Kings 8:10-11 NRSV) Pulling upon some truly ancient imagery for Yahweh, that cloud means that God has taken God’s seat within the Temple’s innermost sanctum. However, over the rest of the chapter, as Solomon prays, he keeps bringing up that God’s true home resides somewhere else. “Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling-place; heed and forgive.” (1 Kings 8:30 NRSV) The presence of God may have arrived, but also, God still resides far beyond one single point of habitation.
Biblical scholars will point out that 1 Kings 8 contains words written by a least a couple of different sources. Each of the separate primary texts that get edited together here have their own views on the Temple and its correct role in religious life. Also, this part of Scripture, the Deuteronomistic History, gets its final assembly during the exile, when the people have neither Temple nor Ark. Thus, we hear two themes that upon first hearing feel in conflict. God sits here. God exists far beyond here.
I also think that whoever that ancient editor, assembling their sources together, was, they fundamentally understood something about that place, and the God who made a home there. We know that God exists in every corner of the universe all at once. God will always be in whatever place you find yourself – on holy hills, in exile, and everywhere in between. Also, we believe that God shows up in special ways at certain times. When we gather around the Communion Table, when we plunge into the waters of Baptism, we understand that God, who exists everywhere, all at once, manifests in a particular way in those moments. The Temple certainly had that kind of power at its consecration and throughout the First and Second Temple periods. Perhaps, that remains true to this day. The Temple Mount has a kind of sacramental power, an outward and towering sign of an inward and spiritual presence.