With Jesus having entered Jerusalem, He journeys to the temple and fulfills the promise of Haggai that the “latter glory of this house” will be “greater than the former.” Jesus, as the incarnate, eternal Logos of God, is the most intense expression of the presence that is possible- far more than had been present in Israel even in the days of Moses. Moreover, Jesus is not limited to the Holy of Holies, but is present for all to see in the Temple area. This is the return in glory which was promised. Given the link between 2 Samuel 6 and this event, this is the fulfillment and undoing of the loss of the ark of the covenant. Yet, if this were all to the promise, then the Gospels should end here- Jesus personally dwelling in the stone Temple on Moriah. But they don’t end here.
Given the association of the Lord’s coming with inspection and judgment, Jesus enacts a parabolic judgment on the temple by flipping its table. In Mark, Jesus quotes the word of Isaiah that the temple is to be a “house of prayer for all nations.” In Haggai, the return of God in glory is the time when the “treasures of the nations shall come in.” Likewise, in Zechariah 2, the coming of God to Zion means that “many nations” turn and become the people of the Lord. By excluding the Gentiles from the liturgical life of Israel, the Jewish leadership has attempted to hoard the blessings meant for all the families of the earth and been profoundly unfaithful to their calling. Malachi, which ends with the sun of righteousness rising and setting ablaze the unfaithful, begins with a prophecy of the nations offering a “Tribute Offering” from the “rising of the sun to its setting.”
And so we see that the return of the Lord to Zion does not end at the Temple. Jesus, having examined the temple and judged it, departs and leaves it desolate. As in Ezekiel 10, the glory of God has departed. But there is again more to the story. As Jesus overturned the table of sacrificial food in the temple, Jesus will set up a table later in the Gospels. He does so in the “Upper Room.” The Holy of Holies signified the top of Mt. Sinai, and the repeated emphasis on the “Upper” nature of the Upper Room is not accidental. This room signifies the Inner Sanctuary where the presence of God dwells- this is also where Pentecost happens.
It is at this new “table” that Jesus provides the Eucharist as His body and blood. This is the enduring form of God’s presence in Zion, the ongoing sign of His fulfillment of the prophetic word. Isaiah 25, describing the glorified Mt. Zion, filled with the presence of God and crowded with the ingathered nations, tells of a “feast of well aged wine” where the glory of God is “before His elders”, an allusion to the covenant meal of the Seventy Elders on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24. It was in this context that Moses sprinkled blood on Israel and said “this is the blood of the covenant”- words quoted by the Lord at the Last Supper. 2 Samuel 6 is followed by the institution of the Davidic covenant wherein the dynasty of David is given an eternal place in the divine economy. This covenant is the context for the construction of the temple, which is the purpose of David’s “son”- to build a “house for my Name.” And as Malachi 1:11 pointed to the Gentile offering of “Tribute”, the Eucharist is described as a Tribute Offering. Like the Tribute, it is of Bread and Wine, and like the Tribute, it is described as a “Memorial.” This does not so much mean something which provokes the people of God to memory as it means a ritual wherein we call on God to remember His covenant with us in the blood of Christ.
This is what happens at the Eucharist. The God of Israel, in the face of Jesus, has returned to Zion and gathered all nations to His table. It is therefore altogether appropriate that we say at the beginning of the Anaphora: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!” These are the words with which Jesus was greeted as He entered Jerusalem to fulfill the promise of God’s glorious and permanent return to the temple. We sing these words as we participate in the fullness of that return in the offering up of His Body and Blood.