Today we are celebrating the afterfeast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple. The feast commemorates an event, (not recorded in the Gospels but embraced by the Tradition of the Church), when Joachim and Ann brought their small daughter, Mary, to live in the Temple. She stayed there, living in the Holy of Holies, until she was a young teenager. She left the Temple – and became herself the Temple of the Incarnate Christ.

This feast ponders deeply on the mystery of the presence of the Christ in Mary’s womb and is packed with biblical themes:
giving the thing you most want in the world to God - as a fulfilment of the gift

the presence of the glory of God in the Temple
the presence of the glory of God in the Creation
the call to become ourselves, living temples of God
It is these last three that I would like to concentrate on today.

At Vespers last night each of the three biblical readings ended with the descent of the Glory of the Lord in the Tabernacle or Temple: And a cloud covered the Tabernacle of the Testimony and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the Tabernacle of the Testimony, because the cloud overshadowed it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34 – 45)
And the priests were unable to stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord God Almighty filled the house. (I Kings 7:11)
and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord; and I fell on my face. (Ezekiel 44:4)

But while we reflect on the presence of the glory of God in the Temple, it’s important to remember that God’s descent in glory is not automatic. We don’t just build a beautiful temple and expect that God’s grace will automatically descend on it as if fulfilling a law of nature. Solomon knew very well that God did not dwell in a building out of any necessity on God’s part.

In fact, alongside the importance of the Temple in the Scriptures, we are reminded that great moments of transition and revelation happen out in the desert - where there’s nothing. God’s life can’t be contained. Jacob in a desert place finds himself in God’s place. He wakes from his dream and says: “The Lord was in this place and I did not know it.”

Jews and Christians are radically different in not filling their temples with “stuff” that a god might want or need. The Emperor Pompey in the first century BC was astonished to find, when he barged into the most holy place of the Jerusalem Temple, that there was nothing there! (Except an antique box with a curiously shaped lid.) No statue, no gifts, no treasure. God’s glory is utterly transcendent; it doesn’t depend on anything created and it can’t be manipulated.

And yet, God’s creation, which is so utterly “other” to God himself, is and will be transfigured by the glory of God. He made it to fill it with his love and glory. We can point to the great prophecy in Isaiah 11:9, where we read: the whole earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

The Church gives voice to the praise that creation offers to God and the texts of our feast are no exception: In the Kontakion of the Forefeast we sang: The universe is filled joy today, preparing for the glad feast of the Mother of God. All creation cries out: This is the holy Temple.

This verse brings together the theme of creation crying out in praise to God and the theme of the Mother of God herself becoming the temple of Christ. The Mother of God is par excellence the temple of Christ, but all Christians are also called to be so.

There are many references in the epistles to the fact that we are living temples, but I am particularly struck by the epistle set for today, which fits so well with the themes of the feast. It comes from the book of Ephesians, whose theme is the bringing together of everything, including heaven and earth, man and woman, slave and free, in Christ.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

The prayer we use for our own church building reminds us that we are called to be living stones of a temple in which Christ is himself the chief cornerstone. As I said earlier, God’s presence in any temple is not automatic. It comes from a direct act of grace – and paradoxically – repentance and prayer. Jesus’ most dramatic interaction with the Jerusalem temple was a radical and shocking cleansing. To receive God’s grace we may need to have animals chased out and tables overturned. We need to bring our freedom, our foolishness and our suffering into God’s presence.

But, when God’s grace does bless a temple it is to be a blessing and sanctification for the world, to give a voice to the world to glorify him.

Given by Mother Sarah