'Dwelling in the Household of God' (Jn 14:2).
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,... all is calm, all is bright...
Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes... Noel, Noel, Noel....
O come let us adore him.... born is the king of Israel.
A cave in Bethlehem echoes with the multi-lingual songs of pilgrims... "sleep in heavenly peace... Christ the saviour is born." While scholars debate the veracity of this place, this cave, the hearts of these pilgrims beat with utter certainty - God is here. God is here.
This same certainty explodes as 'good news' from the pages of the Christian Scriptures as men and women discovered in the life and death of Jesus, 'God is here'; as the fourth gospel states, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us " (Jn 1:14). But can this proclamation still be good-news for us as we stand on the threshold of a new millennium? We have not walked the shores of Galilee with Jesus, nor heard his voice of invitation, 'Come and see' (Jn 1:39). The Bethlehem story is layered with tinselled memories from childhood, and even Calvary's horror pales beside the mass atrocities of our time. Is there a gospel that can speak to our experience now and proclaim in the present tense - God is here?
The author of the Johannine gospel wrestled with this same dilemma, that Jesus was no longer present in the flesh with the disciples. Where once they had known his physical presence, now they know his absence. The heartfelt accusation of the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany echoes the painful cry of all post-easter disciples, "Lord, if you had been here..." (Jn 11:21, 32). In his absence they know only death.
But this story did not end in death. Lazarus walked forth from a tomb (11:44), and a community of faith was born when Jesus returned to his 'father'. The post-easter disciples found a new experience of God still present in their midst and still mediated and understood through their past experience of Jesus. Although Jesus was no longer with them, they discovered that they could still say, 'God is here'. In the telling of the gospel story, the fourth evangelist found a symbol that could transcend the time-bound humanity of Jesus to speak of a presence of God dwelling in history across all time. This time-transcending symbol was the temple.
Israel's House of God.
The temple was the great symbol and physical reality that proclaimed to the people of Israel 'God dwells in our midst.' The very name for the temple, the 'House of God', speaks of God's presence, and in the temple cult Israel was assured of God's blessings (Ps 84; 128:5' 134:3). When the Solomonic temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, the prophets of Israel's exile kept alive a future hope of restoration when once more God would establish God's dwelling in the midst of a renewed people (Ez 37:26-28). This future temple would be a source of fertility and healing for the land (Ez 47:1-12). A new Israel would then settle in a cleansed and revitalised land with the temple as its centre. When the temple was rebuilt by the returning exiles (ca. 516 BCE) it failed to usher in the longed for restoration so Israel's hopes were projected to a future end-time when God would intervene and raise up the eschatological temple in a new and glorified Jerusalem (Zech 12-14).
An aspect of the temple's significance lies in its mythological meaning as the Earth's navel, the very centre point of God's life giving contact with the earth. (1) The mythic understanding of the temple transcends the history of a particular building in Solomon's Jerusalem. The mythic view perceives the temple in cosmic terms as the link between heaven and earth, as the place in this world that corresponds to the heavenly throne of God and where the life-giving waters of God's throne make first contact with earth.(2) Within the Holy of Holies rests the foundation stone, the 'even shtia, which plugs the great fissure that leads down into the deep. In rabbinic literature this foundation stone is linked with the altar Noah erected after the flood (Gen 8:20), the stone on which the ark of the covenant rested in the first temple (1 Kgs 6:19), and even the altar of sacrifice that stood in the priests' court of the temple. The variety of these mythic associations testifies to the sacredness of the temple. As the place of God's numinous dwelling, the temple attracts to it stories and legends of God's presence in Israel's history. The Garden of Eden is thought to be located just beyond its walls, it is the place of Abraham's sacrifice (Gen 22:2; 2Chron 3:1), the site of Jacob's dream of a ladder linking earth and heaven (Gen 28:10-17). The temple, as a cosmic symbol of God's presence, reaches back in time to the first acts of creation, when God's Spirit hovered over the waters of the deep (Gen 1:2) and YHWH caused water to rise and form the four rivers bringing life to Eden (Gen 2:6, 10-14). The temple is the earthly 'House of God' where all creation can acclaim, 'God is here'. "God's abode has been established in Salem, God's dwelling place in Zion" (Ps 76:2).
The Johannine Temple.
The brief description above of the historical and mythic significance of the temple lies behind its use as a time-transcending symbol in the fourth gospel, reaching back to the protological beginnings of creation and its eschatological fulfilment. For Jesus the Jerusalem temple is 'My father's house' (2:16). Where once Israel had called this place the 'House of God', because of Jesus' unique and intimate union with God (1:1, 18), he can rename it in relational terms. The renaming of the temple is the first of a number of changes through which the meaning of the temple, as the place of God's dwelling, is transferred to the person of Jesus and then to the community of disciples. A physical building located in time, with its particular cultural and local facticity, is thus transformed into a reality able to transcend its local, cultural and finite expression.
The first movement in this transfer of meaning is in John 2 when Jesus enters the temple, dispels the sacrificial animals and overturns the tables of the money-changers (2:13-17). The Johannine additions to the synoptic account of this event (oxen and sheep) make it very clear that Jesus is enacting a prophetic critique of temple sacrifice and thereby announcing the temple's end as a place of worship.(3) Israel's sacrificial system and cultic way of coming to God is over. Where once God dwelt in Israel's tabernacle and temple, in the humanity of Jesus God has found a new dwelling place (1:14).(4) This is stated quite explicitly in the dialogue following the temple action when Jesus announces that the temple will be destroyed but he will raise it in three days. The narrator then adds, "He spoke of the temple of his body" (2:21). The temple now provides a major christological symbol and also a major focus for the ongoing plot of this Gospel. In telling the traditional story of Jesus, the fourth evangelist is going to depict it from a new perspective. Alongside the narrative of a death and resurrection, this gospel will narrate the destruction and raising of a temple.(5)
In the festival of Tabernacles Jesus appropriates the key symbols of the feast. He is a source of water for the thirsty (7:37) and light for the world (8:12). As once God cared for the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings by providing them with gifts of water from the rock (Exod 17:1-2) and a pillar of fire to light their way (Exod 13:21-22), Jesus announces that in his person God continues to offer guidance and sustenance to the people. It is during this feast that the temple symbolism begins a second transference of meaning from being the temple of his body to being a future temple of believers.
Verse 7:37 is a notoriously difficult verse to understand because the manuscripts vary in how they punctuate it and so lead to different ways of translating it. It can be read that Jesus is the source of water, and that from the heart of Jesus streams of water will flow.(6) It can also be read that Jesus is a source of water now and that believers who come to him will be in the future channels of living waters.(7) I read this verse in this second way, that while Jesus is present he is the source of living water, but there will be a future time, associated with a future gift of the Spirit (7:39), when believers will be channels of living water.
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the
one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of his
[the believer’s] heart shall flow rivers of living water.’" Now he said
this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified (Jn 7:37-39).
The image I see that lies behind this image of 'streams of living water' is the eschatological temple of Ezekiel 47. While some scholars suggest other possible passages, there are later rabbinic writings that link the water-libation rituals of Tabernacles with Ezekiel's temple vision. Although firm conclusions cannot be based solely on these later writings, the prominence given to temple and cultic imagery in the fourth gospel supports Ezekiel as a likely allusion for the scripture passage which Jesus cites.
The third and final transference of meaning occurs within Jesus' farewell meal with his disciples (Jn 13-17). Jesus is leaving them. The hour has come for his return and the loving intimacy of this meal speaks poignantly into the pain of a future absence. These chapters deal most explicitly with the issue for later disciples - how can post-easter believers continue to experience the presence of God? Is God still with us, or is it all just a beautiful memory?
The New Temple/Household of God
At the heart of the final discourse lie two chapters, 14 and 15, which speak of Jesus' ongoing presence with the disciples in terms of mutual indwelling. The theology of mutual indwelling is introduced in both chapters with an image - the house of my father and its many dwellings (14:2), and the vine and branches (15:1, 5).
Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.
In my father's house are many dwellings; if it were not so, would I have
told you that I go to prepare a place for you (Jn 14:1-2)?
I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. I am the vine,
you are the branches. Those who dwell in me, and I in them, they bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (Jn 15:1, 5) .
While the metaphor of the vine and branches is readily understood as a symbol, since it makes no sense to speak of dwelling or abiding 'in' a vine, the metaphorical use of the term 'my father's house' is not so readily perceived, as it is possible to dwell or abide in a house. Even when the term is understood in a symbolic sense it is taken by most commentators to mean the heavenly house of God.(8) The reading about 'my father's house' and its 'many dwellings' (usually translated rooms), is used very often at Christian funerals, and taken to mean Jesus' return to heaven, and his preparation of a heavenly place for his disciples. But such an interpretation offers little consolation to disciples on the eve of Jesus' departure. It is not enough to promise them (and us) some future heavenly re-union. A gospel that announced Jesus dwelling among us in the flesh (1:14) needs to offer more than an otherworldly spiritualised presence. So I raise the question, what and where is 'my father's house'?
My Father's House.
i) In chapter 14 the phrase in my father's house must be interpreted in the light of a similar expression in chapter 2 where my father's house referred to the Jerusalem temple, the building (2:16). While the scene in chapter 2 begins in the physical temple building, by the end of the chapter the temple has been reinterpreted to mean the body of Jesus (2:21). In this fourth gospel the temple means more than a physical building. Beginning with the announcement of the Word tabernacling with us (1:14) and reiterated in 2:21, the function of providing a place for the divine presence shifts from the Jerusalem temple to the living flesh of Jesus.
ii) The term my father's house is open to further levels of meaning. In the Hebrew Scriptures this phrase usually means the group of people who make up the household, such as, the family and servants, even the future descendants. For example, "So Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's house, 'I will go and tell Pharaoh and say to him, My brothers and my father's house have come to me" (Gen 46:31).(9) It is rarely used in the sense of a building. In speaking of the temple with this phrase in chapter 2, the evangelist began to move away from temple-as-building to something more personal and relational. In chapter 2 the image of temple shifted to a single person, Jesus - the temple of his body, (2:21). In chapter 14 this movement continues and extends beyond one person to a group of people in a household or in familial relationship.
iii) Chapter 14 develops this personal and relational understanding even further with the shift from the word house (oikos), the term used in chapter 2, to household (oikiai). In the Gospel the term oikos is used only with the sense of a building, the temple building (2:16, 17) and also the house at Bethany (11:20). The term oikiai is used with a more fluid range of meanings in that it can mean a physical building (11:31; 12:3 - both references to the house at Bethany), but it can also mean the household (4:53 - the father believed and all his household, and 8:35 the slave does not continues in the household forever). Whereas in 2:16 the initial reference was to the oikos in the sense of a building, here in chapter 14, through the change of the word to oikiai and the possibility that this can mean household and not just a residence, there is a continuation of the movement begun in 2:21 to understand the phrase, 'my father's house' as a quality of personal relationships.
Many dwellings - monai pollai
While dwelling (monai) can mean the physical chambers within a house, and so could at one level be understood as many rooms within a physical temple building, the shift from building to personal relationships suggested by the phrase - in my father's household (oikiai) requires a similar shift in understanding what the evangelist means by dwellings. What are these many dwellings? The chapter itself and chapter 15 provides the best interpretive clue to the particular Johannine meaning of this phrase.
i) Chapters 14 and 15 use derivatives of dwell (menô) and dwelling (monê) to describe a variety of interpersonal relationships between the Father, Jesus, Paraclete and believers. The relationships are usually described with the translation abiding or dwelling. These relationships are appropriately introduced by the phrase many dwellings.
ii) As stated earlier, chapter 14 focuses on a series of divine dwellings:
- the Father who dwells in Jesus (v. 10)
- the Paraclete who dwells with believers, and in the future
will dwell in them (v. 17).
- the Father and Jesus who will make their dwelling with the believer (v. 23)
- Jesus dwells with the disciples (v. 25).(10)
Many commentators would see the metaphor as a reference to God's heavenly dwelling where the believers will abide at some future time. But the subject of the verb dwell throughout chapter 14 is not the believer but God. The action therefore is not the believers coming to dwell in God's heavenly abode, but the Father, the Paraclete and Jesus coming to dwell with the believers. It is a 'descending' movement from the divine realm to the human, not an 'ascending' movement from the human to the divine. Given that the emphasis in chapter 14 is on the Divine dwelling with the believers, it is not altogether surprising to find this theology introduced with an image that draws on Israel's symbol of the divine presence in its midst - the temple, Israel's 'House of God' which had been renamed by Jesus in chapter 2, as my father's house (2:16).
From the above analysis, the phrase in my father's house are many dwellings, is best understood, within the context of this gospel, to mean a series of interpersonal relationships made possible because of the indwellings of the Father, Jesus and the Paraclete with the believer. The divine indwellings in the midst of a believing community makes it appropriate to speak of the community as a living temple, the sacred place where God can now be found. The community is the 'house (household) of God'.(11) David Aune suggests that the term house/household as it is used here and in 8:35, speaking of the Son remaining continually in the household, "reflects the self-designation of the Johannine community."(12)
Supporting the argument that the phrase refers to a 'household' it is worth noting that the discourse uses various family terms - Jesus gathers his own (13:1); they are called children (13:33). The language of family relationships continues in 14:18 with the word 'orphans' to describe a state of Jesus' absence, followed later by the allegory of the woman in childbirth (16:21).
To prepare a place for you.
The second part of the metaphor, also resonates with allusions to Israel's temple. In the Hebrew text, the terminology of a prepared place is used almost exclusively of the ark,(13) and then by extension the temple, "David ... prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it" (1Chr 15:1 also 15:3, 12; 2Chr 1:4 ). "And Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem in the mount of Moriah in the place which David had prepared" (2Chr 3:1)
The task of forming a people is similarly described as 'preparation'. When David had settled in Jerusalem, he desired to build a 'house' for God, instead he was promised that God would build him a 'house'. In response to this promise David recognised the action of God in his accomplishments, "And you have prepared for yourself your people Israel, to be a people forever" (2Sam 7:24). Temple preparation and people preparation are very clearly linked in the description of the temple purification during the religious reforms at the time of Hezekiah. When the temple had finally been cleansed, the first sacrifices offered and the people consecrated to God, the Chronicler records, "Thus the service of the house of the Lord was restored. And Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced, because God had prepared the people" (2Chr 29: 36b, 36). The focus is not on the building but on the worshippers. Preparing a building is temple-building and people-building enable the divine presence to dwell with Israel.
In the ancestral narratives there are two scenes associated with the future site of the temple where the word place features prominently. The first story is that of the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22:3-14). The mount of Moriah, the future temple mount (2Chr 3:1), is the place where Abraham is told to sacrifice his only son. The word 'place' occurs four times in this short episode (vv. 33, 4, 9, 14). The second scene from the ancestral narratives which emphasises the word 'place' is Jacob's dream at Bethel (Gen 28:11-19). "Surely the Lord is in this place... this is none other than the house of God" (vv. 16-17). He called the name of that place Beth-el." (v. 19). In these two narratives, the term 'place' has a cultic significance that receives its full meaning in the Jerusalem temple.(14)
With the experience of the exile, and the destruction of the temple, hope shifted to a future eschatological temple which would be the 'place' for the gathering of the nations (Mic 4:1-2; Is 2:2-3). Such an understanding lies behind the prayer of Nehemiah. Gather together our scattered people ... Plant your people in your holy place, as Moses promised (2 Macc 1:27-29 see also 2 Macc 2:17-18).
From this survey of the background to the words prepare and place it is possible to see in the phrase to prepare a place for you a clear allusion to the Jewish temple traditions, including the later traditions of the temple as the eschatological gathering place which God will prepare for the people.
Taken together, the two key phrases of 14:2 - in my father's house there are many dwellings, and I go to prepare a place for you, show a uniquely Johannine concern with the temple. But the temple is now reinterpreted in a radically new way as the household of God, where the divine presence dwells within the community of believers. When the disciples fail to understand Jesus' words, his explanation leads into the promise of the Paraclete and an indication that the household of my father will be prepared through the indwellings of the Father, Jesus and Paraclete with the believer (14:17, 23, 25). A prepared people becomes a fitting holy place for the dwelling of God, as surely as the prepared building was in the time of Solomon. In some way, the action of Jesus 'going', is simultaneously the action when he 'prepares/builds' the 'place' (temple) for the disciples.(15) The father's house will no longer be a construction of stones, but will be a household of many interpersonal relationships, many dwellings, where the divine presence can dwell within believers.
Faced with the impending death and loss of Jesus, the disciples are offered words of consolation that the experience of Jesus' departure will at the same time usher in a new experience of God's presence. They will not be left orphans (14:18). The divine presence who tabernacled in the flesh of Jesus, will continue to dwell with them. The indwelling relationship between Father, Son and Spirit will become their relationship, creating them into a temple/household of God. The God Jesus called 'father', in the post-easter time will become 'Father' to the disciples, as Mary Magdalene is told, "Go to my brothers and sisters and say to them, 'I am ascending to my father and your father" (20:17). Far from being orphans, post-easter disciples experience a new filial relationship with God and know themselves to be God's children (Jn 1:12).
Why use the temple as the great symbol of God's presence, not only in the life of Jesus, but in the ongoing life of the Christian community? To understand this we need to realise that this gospel was written at a time when the magnificent temple of Jerusalem no longer existed, just as the historical Jesus was no longer present with disciples.(16) At the same time as the fourth evangelist was offering consolation to his community, the Jewish rabbis were trying to understand how they could maintain contact with their God in the absence of the temple, its priesthood and system of sacrifices. Both communities faced the stark loss of their point of contact with God. For both groups the temple represented most dramatically a past presence of God, and evoked the current painful possibility that God had abandoned the world.
The fourth gospel affirms that even though the temple lies in ruins and Jesus has returned to his father the Christian community has lost nothing. Disciples of all ages still have communion with God. No longer need Christians look back with longing to the past, to Israel's traditions of the tabernacle and temple, or to the privileged experience of the first disciples who knew the historical Jesus. Believers are now drawn into Jesus' own relationship with God. In Jesus we are sons/daughters within the new household/temple of our Father.(17)
Silent night, Holy night ...sleep in heavenly peace...
The song continues in the hearts of all Christians, for the cave of Bethlehem we now carry within. The holy place of Israel has become the holy place of our own lives. When we enter this sacred place with the longings and hopes of pilgrims we too can find the Christ of God born ever anew. In the silence and stillness of our own Bethlehem, our voices can sing with the voices of pilgrims through the ages, God is here; God is truly here.
References.
1. See S. Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1983) 192. For further discussion on the image of the navel see J. D. Levenson, "The Temple and the World," Journal of Religion 64 (1984): 284.
2. A very helpful introduction to the myths and symbolism of the temple is Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven: The History and Symbolism of the Temple in Jerusalem (London: SPCK, 1991). A more scholarly review of Jewish literature on the temple can be found in Jeffrey Rubenstein, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).
3. According to Jacob Neusner, Jesus' action "represents an act of the rejection of the most important rite of the Israelite cult ... and therefore, a statement that there is a means of atonement other than the daily whole-offering, which now is null." See J. Neusner, "Money-Changers in the Temple: The Mishnah's Explanation," NTS 35 (1989): 290.
4. John 1:14 literally reads, 'The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us'. "Where the prologue proclaims that the Word made his dwelling among men [sic], we are being told that the flesh of Jesus Christ is the new localization of God's presence on earth, and that Jesus is the replacement of the ancient Tabernacle." See R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John. 2 vols. Anchor Bible 29-29a. (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966 & 1970) 1: 33.
5. The full development of this narrative plot lies beyond the scope of this chapter. It is the theme of a future publication. See M. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Collegeville: MichaelGlazier Liturgical Press, forthcoming).
6. This christological interpretation is followed by Brown, Bultmann, Moloney, Schnackenburg and others.
7. This translation is the more traditional approach taken in Patristic writings and has the support of the oldest manuscript tradition P 66. Modern commentators who take this approach include Barrett, Lightfoot, Leon-Dufour, Kysar and Lindars.
8. The most complete analysis of John 14:2 is a work by J. McCaffrey, The House With Many Rooms: The Temple Theme of Jn 14, 2-3 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1988). He identifies the father's house with the heavenly temple, "Jesus enters through his passion-resurrection into the heavenly temple of the Father's House by the sacrificial transformation of his body into the New Temple of his risen body in which believers have permanent and abiding at-one-ment with God" (p. 256).
9. For other examples of this phrase meaning the entire household see, Gen 7:1; 12:1, 17; 18:19; 24:38; 28:21; Exod 12:4; Lev 16:6; Num 16:32; Deut 25:9; Josh 2:13; Judg 6:15; 9:18; 16:31; 1Sam 2:35; 22:15; 2Sam 14:9; 1 Kgs 2:24; 1Chr 17:10, 25; 28:4. Often the expression 'father's house' is translated as 'family' in the RSV.
10. The imagery of many dwellings continues into chapter 15 where the verb dwell is again used to describe the believers dwelling in Jesus. The shift to the community of believers is reflected by a shift in the metaphor from 'house' to 'vine' since the vine was a common image for the community of Israel.
11. To ensure that the term 'house' has the more personal sense of family rather than building I will use the word household which is the more frequent meaning of oikiai in the fourth gospel.
12. D. E. Aune, The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity (NovTSup 28. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 130. Other N.T. passages that reflect the use of oikos as an image of the community are 1 Pet 2:5; 4:17; 1 Tim 3:15; Heb 3:2-6.
13. The only exception is a reference to the land (Ex 23:20). All other references are to the ark.
14. See McCaffrey, The House with Many Rooms 98-109, for a more detailed discussion on the cultic significance of the term 'to prepare a place'.
15. This simultaneous activity occurs at the cross when one temple is destroyed (the temple of his body), and a new temple/household of disciples is created (Jn 19:25-30). The detailed discussion of this scene in the Passion will appear in my forthcoming title, God Dwells with Us. In this current chapter I can only indicate where the promise made in 14:2 will reach its conclusion.
16. The gospel of John is dated toward the end of the first century, around 95 C.E. Jerusalem and its temple had been destroyed by the Roman army in the year 70 C.E.
17. The gospel of John, more than any other gospel, names God as 'Father'. Mark, the earliest gospel only uses this as a title of God on 4 occasions, Luke 11 times, Matthew 36 times and John 93 times. The growing frequency of this title reflects the developing understanding of the early Christians that they now shared in Jesus' relationship with God. They too could be called children of God, sons and daughters of God. It is also important to realise that the 'father' in the fourth gospel displays none of the characteristics associated with a patriarchal head of the household. I draw attention to two articles by Dorothy Lee which argue that the fourth gospel contextualizes the 'father' image in such a way that it in fact subverts it as an image of a patriarchal father-rule-figure. See D. A. Lee, "Beyond Suspicion? The Fatherhood of God in the Fourth Gospel," Pacifica 8 (1995): 140-54; and "Abiding in the Fourth Gospel: A Case-study in Feminist Biblical Theology," Pacifica 10 (1997): 122-36. The father-son metaphor also reflects the cultural pattern of a male son being an apprentice and continuing the work of the father. Jesus, the apprentice/son doing the work of his father is a dominant theme of Johannine Christology (5:36; 9:4; 10:25; 14:10). On this cultural pattern see C. H. Dodd, "A Hidden Parable in the Fourth Gospel." In More New Testament Studies, 30-40. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968) .