Do buildings and bodies matter?
1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11, 22-30, 41-43;
The Church has always taught the importance, and even the sacredness, of creation. We haven’t always lived up to that teaching, but the teaching is ancient, nonetheless.
The Early Church faced the Gnostics (a complicated and diverse movement) who believed that the material world was evil and that we had to learn to be freed from this material ‘prison’. They even denied that Jesus had a physical body because they couldn’t imagine a divine being dirtying themselves by getting mixed up with physical matter, and the bodily functions that would come along with that. So, for them, Jesus only ‘seemed’ human. To them, he was a kind of hologram produced for our benefit, but not a real human being.
The Early Church fought this Gnostic tendency. They asserted that Jesus did have a physical body, and that his physical body was resurrected and ascended into heaven. They asserted that God created the world and called it good. They acknowledged that sin has infected the world, but that the world is originally good. Some of them even spoke about demons as being good in their nature, as created beings (angels), but it was their rejection of God that made them evil.
Our readings today are interesting to think about in this light. First, Let’s look at our reading from Ephesians, which (on the surface) might seem to lean towards a Gnostic way of thinking. Paul says that we should put on the armour of God, not literal physical armour, but a kind of spiritual armour, to fight a spiritual battle. He says,
“our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (6:12).
This might seem to be denying the physical creation because it focuses on the spiritual rather than the physical, but it is actually affirming of the the physical material creation. Your struggle is not actually against the person across from you. The person across from you is someone made in the image of God, who was loved so much that Jesus was willing to die for them. That is our primary lens to look at people with. Our true struggle is against unseen spiritual powers. The Early Church saw these demonic forces as whispering lies into people’s ears. They tempt people to envy, lust, violence, and all the evil motives that do violence to God’s good world. So, the Early Church would see this battle as a battle against the temptation to sin, and against ideas and lies that have destructive consequences in the world. Your battle is against your enemy’s sin and the lies they have believed, not them. The battle is against the sin, not the sinner. This spiritual battle affirms the goodness of the physical creation. The sinner is one worth saving. They have been caught up in something bad. They have been fooled and taken hostage.
Next, I want to look at our reading from 2 Samuel. The son of King David has now built the temple, which will replace the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was the tent that housed the Ark of the Covenant and moved with the people in the wilderness. Now that the people are no longer nomads and have a capital city, it makes sense that the house for the Ark of the Covenant would have a permanent place as well. … But King Solomon is under no illusions that this Temple can contain God. He says,
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (8:27).We say something similar about the Church. The church is bigger than the church building. The church is not the building. … During the pandemic we have lived a kind of experiment that has stretched the limits of our thinking about “church”. We have stretched our thinking regarding what it means to be a gathered community. While we are incredibly thankful for the technology that has allowed us to gather, most of us have felt that there is something missing. It is an impaired way of gathering. … It has allowed us to remove the limits of geography, so many of us have joined in diocese-wide gatherings for worship, and some of us have joined the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral for Morning Prayer. Still, with all the gifts that come along with meeting electronically, we have felt that there is something missing. … This is true even of our building. Yes, there is a danger that we can make too much of church buildings, but they are also an incredible gift to help us worship when we gather. It is a space that has no other function but to assist us in worship. For 2000 years Christians have gathered, first in house churches and then very soon started building their own buildings for the specific purpose of helping the gathered community worship. Those spaces became special. It was almost as if those buildings absorbed something of the energy of the prayer and worship, perhaps even something of the presence of God. … There is something about walking into a thousand-year-old church where prayers and hymns have been sung to God over many generations- where the stone steps have been worn by the many feet of the faithful as they have come to worship. We don’t want to make too much of church buildings, but we should also recognize the incredible gift that they are to unify us in worship and help us draw our hearts to God.
The church teaches about incarnation. We say Jesus was “Incarnate”. To be incarnate is to have flesh and bone. The church is called the body of Christ. We are not Gnostics, so being with other flesh and blood people matters. Being in our building, that represents and aids our worship, matters. We don’t want to make our building into an idol, obviously, but something can be important to us without it becoming an idol.
Did Solomon need to build the Temple? Maybe not. Abraham and Sarah didn’t have a Temple dedicated to God to experience God. Moses heard God through a burning bush and on a mountain top. They knew God was experienced in creation, in their prayer, and even in their dreams. But the creation of the Temple focused the people’s worship like a magnifying lens focuses the sun. It created a place for the community to gather to place themselves under God. In unity, to learn and to be guided. As human beings we need physical symbols and reminders. We often place a cross, or a picture, or a scripture verse on the wall in our house as a way of bringing our mind back to God. I have a picture of Rembrandt’s painting of Jesus sleeping in the boat in the storm, and it reminds me to trust him when life feels stormy and chaotic.
We are physical people who live in a physical universe and God also uses the physical universe to interact with us. We mature in Christ (or not) often based on how we interact with other physical people. … We are a sacramental people. We use real water in baptism. We eat real bread and drink real wine when we celebrate the Eucharist. As Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith says, ‘we are not brains on sticks’. We are more than containers of ideas. We are embodied. We are lovers.
It is maybe worth pointing out that Jesus drew a parallel between himself and the Temple. In Matthew 12:6 Jesus boldly refers to himself when he says,
“I tell you, something greater than the temple is here”.
In the Gospel of John (2:19-21) Jesus says,
“‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”
And when Jesus dies on the cross we read in Matthew 27:51 that,
“At that moment the curtain of the temple [that hid the Holy of Holies] was torn in two, from top to bottom.”Clearly the early followers of Jesus drew a connection between the temple and Jesus. Jesus seems to replace the Temple as the physical connection between God and creation. He is the new Temple. He is the place where people go to encounter God. But the Temple isn’t replaced by an idea. It is replaced by a physical person- the incarnate Son.
In our reading from John we have a fairly graphic image used by Jesus, that likewise offended some-
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever" (6:56-58).
For his Jewish audience, who were very conscious of kosher dietary restrictions, and were especially concerned to not consume blood, this would be outrageous. The idea of consuming a human being is beyond what they could handle. Indeed, many of his followers left him after this.
We can get a bit squirmy about this as well. An invitation to eat someone's flesh and drink their blood outside of a church setting is likely to raise more than an eyebrow. ... Even in a church setting, I've met life-long Anglicans who can't bring themselves to pray the Prayer of Humble Access in the Book of Common Prayer-
"...Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, So to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, And to drink his Blood, That our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, And our souls washed through his most precious Blood, And that we may evermore dwell in him, And he in us. Amen" (p83).
So we should be careful about thinking too badly of the disciples who walked away after this teaching. It is a scandalous teaching.
To those who were originally reading the Gospel of John they would obviously see Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood as referring to the Eucharist- the body and blood of Christ which we mysteriously receive in the bread and wine.During the pandemic, we have refrained from receiving the Eucharist when we haven’t been gathering in-person (except for last Easter). The reason for this was to recognize that to receive the body of Christ, it was important to gather the body of Christ as the church. St. Augustine once said in a sermon,
“’You are the Body of Christ and individually members of it’ [1 Cor 12:27]. If you are his body and members of him, then you will find set on the Lord’s table your own mystery. Yes, you receive your own mystery.”[1]
… We had entered into a kind of Eucharistic famine to recognize that our gatherings are impaired gatherings. We are missing something when we can’t be together, and as an expression of that lack we have not been receiving the bread and wine. We are a sacramental people. A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. There is a physical piece and that is tied to a spiritual piece. … God’s people gathered physically together, matters. Bread matters. Wine matters. The water of Baptism matters. The physical presence of the body of Christ matters. These aren’t unnecessary extras. We aren’t brains on sticks that just need the right thoughts inserted. We are so much more than that. … Perhaps a grace that will come from this time is a renewed appreciation of our embodied spirituality. Amen
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