The Temple in the temple
Jesus began to speak to the world in the temple, the historical, intellectual and theological centre of the people and history of Israel. He was sitting among the scholars and biblical experts, he listened to them and asked them questions, and from that moment on, he replaced them and the temple itself, revealing humanity to be the only real source and place of wisdom, knowledge and truth. Actually Jesus is the Temple, the Temple that teaches, guides, illuminates and reveals.
In the temple - the building that housed the Holy of Holies, the place where, according to the Jewish people, God had pitched his tent - and in a very specific point of the temple, the pinnacle, i.e. the highest point, where the priests played the shofar, just on that place, Satan tempts Jesus.
Satan meets Jesus right in the very heart of his people, meets him in the place which represents the spiritual essence, the earthly tent in which God meets his people and they meet their God, and of this place he chooses the highest point.
Here, on the pinnacle, Jesus overcomes Satan and every possible temptation, here, on the pinnacle, Jesus forever replaces the old temple and he becomes the living extraordinary place where people can meet God and God can meet his people, the place where humanity can learn to recognize evil and to defeat it by doing loving and good deeds. Now Jesus is the Temple, the Temple of the meeting.
At the end of his earthly life, Jesus is condemned to death by the priests of the temple, and when he dies on the cross, at that very moment, the world and the time of the priests of the temple end. At the time of Jesus' death, in fact, the veil of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27.51), which means that the "wall" of division is torn forever, the barrier that was between men and the place where God lived, the room of the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could enter the day of atonement, is torn. That piece of cloth symbolized the veil of ignorance that separated man from God, it was not a symbol of union but of division between God and man and between man and God. Now Jesus, the new Temple, broke the veil, dissolved the cloud, crushed the wall of separation which man had erected between himself and God, which the priests had erected between themselves and the people, which the people had erected between themselves and other peoples.
After Jesus' visit on earth, the priests of the temple, the temple itself, the leaders of the Jewish religion belong to an old story, a story of the past that no longer makes sense and where the new people of God can find nothing vital, nothing really useful and able to give them real spiritual progress. One thing is for sure, none of the men that Jesus chooses to lead the coming of the new people, belongs in any way to the old world, to the religious hierarchy of the temple, nor to the various groups of the religious and political leadership of any time. Jesus is the Temple and He no longer needs any temple nor the men of the temple, who in this generation have become ravening wolves and have poisoned God's people. Jesus does not let the fate of his people be in the hands of these leaders, who are thirsty for power and wealth, who use God's name to improve their benefits and deceive the minds and hearts of the people. Jesus is preparing a new people, and the leaders of the temple, who cannot recognize the signs of the times and embrace with love and humility the newness of the Spirit of Jesus, will not be part of God's new people, and will be as old stones under the sun to signal a road where no one wants to go along.
Jesus is coming and He is preparing a new people, ready to love him and follow him with love and dedication, and no one, absolutely no one of the old temple, of the old hierarchies of power will be part of this new birth, because they are too busy in maintaining their power and prestige as to be completely unable to grasp in an intelligent and humble way the power and the life of the Spirit's steps and the new time which is about to start.