huh?

Church II: You

Life as church.

Church as life.

1 Cor 6:19-20
19 Or don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
NLT

It seems to me that the writers of the New Testament were consumed by the concept that we ARE the church.  The church is not a building, it is YOU.  That makes the life that you live life as church.

What an odd concept: life as church.  What does THAT look like?  Do we have to start carrying around pulpits everywhere that we go?  Or how about giant Bibles that serve only for display?  Or maybe, instead of just having certain friends to go places with, you should replace them with a choir that will burst into song every time something you say references something “Christian.”

Somehow I don’t think that this is what Paul was talking about when he said that you are the temple of God.

Perhaps, in order to understand this concept, we should discuss what a temple is.

According to the dictionary (www.dictionary.com) a temple is an edifice that is used for public purposes of worship.  It also says that a temple is any place or object in which God dwells.  I like this definition better.

We are quite literally the dwelling place of the Almighty God.  We are the place that He has chosen to place His throne in this world.  We are walking, talking, laughing, dancing, loving, hating, running, sitting, breathing “places of worship.”

Hmmm, I think it is starting to settle in…

Yes, we are, in the most literal terms, the earthly homes of God.

We hear this very frequently, so most of you are probably thinking “And this is supposed to be inspiring to me how?”

Well, I think it has to do with the kind of homes that God has dwelt in before He decided to dwell in us.

Look back at Genesis.  God’s homes: Heaven and the garden.  Exodus: Heaven and the Ark.  Chronicles-New Testament: Heaven and the temple in Jerusalem.  New Testament: Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Did you catch that last home?  The first homes of God were “in” Heaven and “in” boxes, tents, and buildings.  Then, He became “God with us.”  This is the personification of God: Jesus.

Jesus was quite literally the first living temple of God.  The example that the rest of us would follow.  What did His life look life?

For one, He was constantly on the move.  It seems that God likes to travel.  He enjoys new places.  Why?  I think that it has to do with the people.  Jesus was consistently going where the people were, new people, people He had yet to meet.

This brings me to the second point: Jesus was always at parties.  He was always surrounded by other people, so much so, that He asked twelve guys to travel with Him.  So, we can see that the life of Jesus was intensely social.

This draws me to the thought that He was concerned with people, not just that He had a need to be surrounded by them, but that He was genuinely in love with people.

We are starting to to see life as church…

I think it is interesting to note that the majority of Jesus’ teachings did not take place in the synagogues or the great temple in Jerusalem.  They were usually outdoors or around a dinner table.  Outdoors because there wasn’t enough room inside for people, at the dinner table because His teachings were intimate.

This illustrates two points: the things that God does are so BIG that we cannot contain them in our beautiful churches and yet they are so intimate that they happen around the sacred family altar (see my blog on communion, www.myspace.com/pastordudley), in the place where we find our secret identity.

It seems to me that most people, probably including myself, have two separate identities.  One is very public, the other very private.  God speaks to us in both of these places.

What does that have to do with “life as church?”

Everything.

Just like Jesus, you are the living temple of God.  What is amazing is that God will move IN you in the private moments and THROUGH you in the public moments, in spite of your humanity. 

In fact, it seems as though He prefers your humanity to your sense of spirituality.  I would argue that your humanity is actually your spirituality and that your traditional “spirituality” is a facade, much like the stained glass of our houses of worship: they are pretty, but they change the light that is trying to shine through them.

God desires those that will worship (isn’t that what we do “in church?”) in spirit AND in truth.  The two cannot be separated.  Yet, for some reason we think that being spiritual separates us from being human, which separates us from being truthful.  Spirituality should make you, for lack of a better word, MORE human.

And this is what life as church looks like.

It is 1) loving.  Just like Jesus was genuinely in love with people, we should be also.  This will cause us to (sorry for sounding so churchy here) express the kingdom of God on earth.

And, 2) it is honest.  Living as chruch requires us to take very deep, long looks into our owns souls, and into the world we live in, and it causes us to ask the very difficult questions about who we are and who God is. 

There is good news though: God dwells in you.  When you take a deep, long look inside, He will guide you.  He lives there, in fact, it’s His house.  He’ll be your guide.