Holy Week: Tuesday

Not One Stone Shall be Left upon Another

(Matthew 24:2)

Jesus spends Tuesday “teaching in the temple and preaching the gospel” (Lk 20:1). It’s a big, long, exhausting day. The chief priest and the elders question Jesus’ authority. Herod’s people question Jesus about taxes paid to Caesar. The Sadducees make fun by questioning who’s married to whom when we get to heaven. And the Pharisees test Jesus with the most memorable question of all: “Which is the greatest commandment?” To which, Jesus answers,

You shall love the Lord your God

                        with all your heart and soul, and

                        with all your mind, and strength; and

You shall love your neighbor

                        as yourself.

“On these two commandments,” Jesus concludes, “hangs all of the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 22:40). If you don’t get that right, you won’t get anything right.

By the end of the day, as they head back home exhausted and seeking some rest on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple; the disciples marvel at the massive stones and wonderful temple buildings. Jesus says to them, “Not one stone shall be left upon another.”

From the first day of Holy Week, the temple had been in Jesus’ sights. As the day comes to a close, Jesus tells his disciples that this magnificent temple will be torn down. Its days are over. There will be a new center where God has dealings with his people. Since the days of Solomon, who built the temple nearly a thousand years before Christ; there was always the danger that one could presume that the temple had captured God—that the temple and all its apparatus could manage God’s presence and distribute God’s grace. Jesus brings an end to it. Wherever Jesus is, God is present—Immanuel: “The living stone” (1Pt 2:4).