Scripture: John 10:22-30; Acts 9:36-43; John 9:25; 1 Kings 6; Exodus 26; 1 Maccabees 4; 2 Maccabees 1 Series: Easter
The crowd at Solomon’s Portico wanted to know whether Jesus was the Messiah without having to believe, but Christ the gate and shepherd offers life only through the act of faith, so we must keep seeking and loving rather than use questions to avoid belief.
Illustrations: pre-internet-world, 28k-modem-download, mainframes-switchboard, college-quad, house-closing, augustine-love-me, pascal-console-yourself
May 11, 2025
Mother’s Day
The Portico of Solomon
Acts 9:36-43
John 10:22-30
Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile, he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner. - Acts 9:36-43
At that time the Festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, in regard to what he has given me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” - John 10:22-30
It is difficult to convey things of the past to people in the present. It is difficult to convey corded telephones to our kids. They don’t get it. Or what the world was like before the Internet. You had a question about what other movies this actor was in, and then you just let it go away, because it was impossible to answer. We just got new internet at the house, I was trying to explain what a 28.8 modem was like and how long it took to download a 3mb song.
For me, it’s like how it was difficult for the generation before me to convey what mainframe computers were or switchboard operators. It’s challenging to describe it. It is difficult to describe what the Temple meant to the Jewish people two thousand years ago.
Jesus walked the earth during the time of the second Temple. The first Temple was built during the time of Solomon in 1 Kings 6. Solomon builds it, because God tells David that he can’t. David is not going to be able to build the temple because of his great sin with Bathsheba.
Solomon builds the temple on the Temple Mount. It is partially on the location of Mount Moriah, where Abraham took Isaac to make a sacrifice.
At the time of its original construction, the temple is not the large location it will later be during the Second Temple period. It did not fill what is now the Temple Mount. It is the place to house the Ten Commandments, the tablets from Mount Sinai, to keep the holy of holies; to have a permanent tabernacle on earth. The tabernacle was the tent of worship the traveled with the Hebrew people throughout the wilderness.
We have a description of the tabernacle, the traveling tent of worship at the end of the Book of Exodus in Chapter 26. It starts with: “Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim woven into them by a skilled worker.”
The point of the temple was to be a permanent tabernacle where Torah could be followed fully.
It was like this until generations later the exile to Assyria and the exile to Persia, when the Temple went into disrepair because no one could care for it. The temple was moderately rebuilt by Zerubbabel and then built and expanded by Herod Antipas, the first Herod. This is the Second Temple that Jesus knew and that was then destroyed by the romans during the Manassah uprising of 66 AD.
The temple was an important place, a holy place, a special place. But some people took it for granted that it would always be there. They spent time at the temple in the afternoons like college kids spend time on the quad or the south mall.
One of the best places to spend time was the Porch of Solomon. The Portico of Solomon or Solomon’s Porch was on the east side of the Temple Mount. It was basically a patio that would block the setting western sun with the main structure of the temple so the heat of the day would not invade it. This was a place where people gathered to pray and to discuss the faith.. This was a place where Jesus gathered his disciples and visited with folks when he came to Jerusalem.
Jesus is in Jerusalem for the festival of the dedication which we know today as Hanukkah, which means dedication in Hebrew. After the occupation of Babylon, when the temple was rebuilt years later, Alexander the Great swept through and conquered the Holy Land. When he died as a young man, his great kingdom was split among his generals. The man who took over the Holy Land was named Antiochus.
And during the reign of Antiochus there was a rebellion led by Judas Maccabius. You can find accounts of these events in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees, found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.
Now there are two great acts commemorated with the feast of the dedication. The first is the Cleansing out of the temple of Antiochus and his cronies. So they’re no longer there and no longer. Getting the Temple ready for worship again. This is worthy of a feast day. From 1 Maccabees 4
Then Judas detailed men to fight against those in the citadel until he had cleansed the sanctuary. 42 He chose blameless priests devoted to the law, 43 and they cleansed the sanctuary and removed the defiled stones to an unclean place.
The second act is found at the beginning of 2 Maccabees but refers to an earlier incident with Nehemiah about how oil from the original temple had been hidden by the priests and discovered when Nehemiah rebuilt it. The 8 days comes from a connection with the festival of booths or Sukkot, which lasts 8 days. 2 Maccabees 1 puts it this way.
Since on the twenty-fifth day of Chislev we shall celebrate the purification of the temple, we thought it necessary to notify you, in order that you also may celebrate the festival of booths and the festival of the fire given when Nehemiah, who built the temple and the altar, offered sacrifices.
So Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate Hanukkah. It is not a high holy day. It is not one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar. It’s kind of grown in importance, especially in the United States, because of its proximity with Christmas, so that Jews could have a comparable holiday to Christians. It doesn’t have the importance of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, or Rosh Hashanah, the New year, or Passover, the holiest day. But Jesus is a good Jew and he is there for the Feast of the Dedication. He is in the portico of Solomon. The Jews who are there ask him, can you just tell us, are you the Messiah? We’ve been waiting for a while and just want to know if it’s you. Can we stop with the suspense? And Jesus replies, I’ve already told you guys, But you don’t believe. The works I do testify about me. They witness about me.
In John, chapter nine, Jesus heals the blind man. This man is confronted by others in town and asked if the man who healed him was a sinner. The healed man responses: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”1 The works testified to Jesus.
Earlier in chapter ten, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd who will lay down his life for his sheep. Here, Jesus says, my sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. The voice of Jesus is another work that testifies to who he is. Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon, and there are people there who just want to know. They want to know without having to believe. That’s it. They want to know without having to believe. They want it to be finished. It’s like when you buy or sell a house, how you want to just get to the closing and move on with your life? They want to get to the closing: is he the Messiah? Is he not the Messiah? Can you just tell us and then we can adjust our expectations.
For us, we may not be walking in the portico of Solomon, but we are walking in a real concrete place like it: in our work, our homes, shopping and eating and all these things. We live in a concrete world. And sometimes we, too, can get exasperated by the world and tell Jesus, can you just talk to us plainly? Are you the Messiah? I mean, I have been following you my whole life. I’ve been following you since my conversion. I just want to know.
To us today, Jesus has words. I have already told you, my works testify to who I am, and my sheep hear my voice.
Now, there’s a way, especially with this language of sheep, that we can kind of fall into a exclusivist cul de sac. That is, thinking about what happens if we don’t hear his voice. Does that mean we’ve failed and God doesn’t love us? Are we unlovable? A. Is there an in crowd and an out crowd? But to understand the language of sheep, we have to go earlier in chapter 10.
Jesus not only says that he is the shepherd. Jesus says that he is the gate. We are sheep through him not despite him. We are included through him and by him. As Augustine says, “God offers us a short route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already.”
Or as Pascal puts it, “console yourself: you would not seek me if you had not already found me.” God offers us life, but we can’t short circuit ourselves by skipping the act of faith.
God does not offer Godself as another object to be known and understood like other objects of the world. This is what the Jews of the portico are seeking. They are seeking a God of answers not a God of power. Honestly, they want to be done seeking. They are tired of it.
Many of us may think we are tired of seeking. We want to get to where we are going. But the reality is that our world is not where we are going. Our world is not finished. Our world is in need of redemption. It is broken in so many ways and God does not wish us to settle for it. God offers us a way to seek beyond the visible and the broken and to see the love of our creator for us in the redemption promised by Jesus Christ.
No one will snatch us away from God’s love. Nothing will separate us from the love of God. May we be consoled in this, but may we not stop seeking. May we not use questions to avoid believing and loving our neighbor. May we start today. May we not wait around to love our God. May we not wait around to love our neighbor. May we not wait around to love our family. May we not wait around to love ourself. May we let go of the guilt that keeps us from love. May we let go of the sin that blinds us from love. May we hear the words of the shepherd and receive the life that we are offered.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
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John 9:25. ↩