Why would we want Mashiach (Messiah) to come? Actually, I'm going to ask you another question: do we want Mashiach to come? Let me ask it differently: are we interested at all in having Mashiach come, or maybe are we afraid of the time of Mashiach? See, it's the unknown. And, like anything unknown, it's normal not to feel comfortable about it. The problem is that the Rambam tells us we had better believe in Mashiach's coming, because not believing in one of the 13 principles of faith would make us heretics. One of them is that Mashiach will come, and we're waiting for Mashiach every day for him to come. So again, why would we want Mashiach to come when we don't know what it is and don't have much information about it?
A third Beit HaMikdash (Temple)—very nice—but a third Beit HaMikdash is going back to services that are not part of our understanding of service to God. See, the way we serve God is based on the mitzvot (commandments), on what we know. It's not about bringing an animal to the Beit HaMikdash for a sacrifice, sprinkling blood, eating the meat within a certain amount of time, and bringing the bread. These are not things that we are connected to. Whether that's sad or not, it is what it is. It's just a fact. If somebody tells you, “Oh, I'm craving, you know, to the Beit HaMikdash; I'm bringing my lamb in the morning to be able to bring a korban (sacrifice) for God,” it's very unusual. It's the unknown. It's the disconnection. We have 2,000 years of not having sacrifices in our religion. It's very difficult to connect to that. So why would someone want Mashiach to come and these services to come back? It's normal to feel a sense of distance between ourselves and these kinds of services that we haven't done and haven't been exposed to for such a long time. So I believe it's normal to feel a little bit of distance.
However, the problem is that, again, the Rambam says that we're supposed to feel that we want Mashiach to come every single day of our lives. So I'd like to suggest the following. Maybe we got the approach a little bit wrong. Let me tell you this. We are in a full-on relationship with God. God is not just this God who is imposing things on us while we are just the avadim—we're just servants and slaves. Do what He did. No, no, no. There is a full relationship. The Midrash (rabbinic teaching), left and right, everywhere, compares HaKadosh Baruch Hu and Ben Yisrael to a couple. Why does it compare Ben Yisrael and HaKadosh Baruch Hu to a couple? Because it is a relationship that we create. And because of that relationship and the depth of that relationship, we have to act as such.
I'll give you an example. In a relationship, if both are trying to pull their own way, just taking what they can from the other, it will not work. It will not last. It's about the opposite. I would like to make this relationship work. I care for the other person, so I'm doing for the other person what I don't want to do. If I want to do it, then I'm not doing it for the other person; I'm doing it for myself. It's when I don't like it, when I don't understand it, and I still do it, that it is valued. It's like, for men, taking out the garbage. For some reason, men take out the garbage. No men like taking out the garbage. But we do it, not with pleasure, because we have to do it. We don't understand why it's on us. We don't understand certain things. We definitely don't enjoy it, but we do it because we do it for the relationship. Of course, this is a simplistic example, but in every aspect of a relationship, the healthier the relationship, the more a person does it just out of love.
And here is something interesting: if you do it out of love, out of commitment for the other person, you don't have to enjoy it. You don't have to understand it. You don't have to have any connection to it. You just do it because the other one wants it. And this, my friends, I think, is what this Mashiach is and this Third Beit HaMikdash. Maybe we don't understand. Maybe we're very disconnected from it and from the reality of what a Third Temple and Mashiach would mean. And quite frankly, we don't really know what it is. You could look through Masechet Sanhedrin, the last Perek (chapter), and there are so many opinions that clearly we don't really know what it is. And the Pesukim (verses) that say—we don't know what it is. The Rambam says that the time of Mashiach is considered Olam Abba (World to Come) already. We don't know what it is. So anybody who claims that they know exactly what it's going to look like, it's not true. Nobody knows what it is. And possibly for a reason: if we knew what it is, if we knew how beautiful it is, then we wouldn't want it because God wants it. We wouldn't want it because we want it. Now, for a relationship, that doesn't work.
Because, see, we broke a relationship on Tisha B'Av. We broke a connection that we had with God. And we're trying to resolve that and come back. And for it to come back, it cannot be something that I enjoy, something that I want. It has to be something that I don't know. But my claim now to God, my offer to God, is: God, I don't know what it is. But the one thing I do know is that you want it. And if you want it, I want it. Not because of me, but because of you. And that's why the less we know, the better it is. That's called a true commitment.
So don't be afraid. We don't know what the time of Mashiach has for us, and we don't know what the third Beit HaMikdash is. But if He wants it, we want it. And when we'll understand that, that's when Mashiach will come. Not because we want it for ourselves. We want peace and we want good and we want Refuah (healing). No, no, no, no. Leave all that on the side. That's the reason why we got into the first and second time. Now we need to change that. I want it because He wants it. And I don't know what it is. If you trust someone and they tell you, “Come with me,” you go with them.