The Christian Edifice Complex: Body as Temple of the Holy Spirit

3 Lent B      March 11, 2012

Exodus 20:1-17  Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 1:18-25   John 2:13-22

 Lectionary Link

  Doctor Freud was one who reached into Greek tragedy to name unconscious and repressed forces of what he called the Oedipus Complex.  Being one who is too easily entertained by puns, I, of course, can not resist naming the unconscious forces that influence what we feel about buildings.  That unconscious force would be called, with all apologies to Doctor Freud, the Edifice Complex.  Certainly architects in their love of buildings could be said to have an Edifice Complex but when we look at the history of Israel, we might notice an Edifice Complex in how the people of Israel have felt about their Temple.

  We might pose for us the question?  What is that makes a place, a building or a location sacred or special?  Why is that people have psychological and spiritually moving experiences in certain places or buildings?  We can talk about the sense of natural awe of places; the majesty of the ocean or of the mountains or of places like the Grand Canyon.  Nature awe makes certain places special because they can evoke a feeling of the sublime, a sense of our own smallness in contrast with great expanse and great power.  The sense of being dwarfed by a place makes a place special.  But what about things made with human ingenuity and hands?  What about a building?  What makes the Capitol building in Washington D.C. special?  What would Rome and the Vatican be without St. Peter’s Basilica?  What is it that makes us stand in awe when we enter a great Gothic Cathedral Church?  A Church building or Temple or Mosque is made with human ingenuity and craftsmanship and they create an enclosed environment that seems to be a microcosm of the great expansive universe.  When they are built and when they house the human activity of both private and corporate prayers they come to be called sacred space, and a place where prayers seem to have a greater sense of apparent validity.  And becoming sacred space, such buildings become very important symbols in the identity of the community of people who come to these spaces.

  If a place can become a sacred space, can it lose its sacredness?  What has happened to old stately Gothic church buildings in city neighborhoods that no longer have members to attend the building?  If they can’t become historic protected sites, they can become “secularized” or made non-sacred spaces, even though there may be people still alive who still regard their sacred experiences in those place.

  What is the nature of sacred space?  Is sacred space the special dwelling place on earth of God in a temporal location or building?  Or is it designated as sacred because of the experience of faithful people who come to gather to prayer in a certain place?  Historically probably both have contributed to the designation of a place being sacred.

  There is also something very practical about sacred places; they come into being because of what we call human institutions; such institutions are the overall organizations that can finance and develop the sacred building and provide for its up keep and for the worship activity associated with the sacred building.  Today, tourists can become very cynical when visiting the sacred places of the world.  Why?  One can go to Rome or Jerusalem and be put off by the apparent crass commercialization of all of the Holy Places.  Everything has a price and there is an entire trinket industry that lives off crowds who come to visit the sacred spaces.

  For the people who came to inhabit Palestine, Jerusalem became a holy city and what made Jerusalem a holy city was the Mount Zion where Solomon built the first Temple on the place where they believed that Abraham had been asked to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice.

  The Temple was completely destroyed when the Israelites were carried into captivity to the conquering lands of the East.  It was rebuilt under the direction of Ezra.  It went through many renovations and during the era of Jesus it was expanded as a part of a public works project supported by the Roman government.  So, lots of employment was provided for the people of Jerusalem in the Temple complex construction projects.

  Judaism and modern rabbinic Judaism had to develop different religious expressions in times when the Temple had been destroyed.  The followers of Christ developed into being able to thrive as a community of faith when the Temple was destroyed for the last time in the year 70 of the Common Era. 

  What did the sect of Christian Judaism become after the Temple was destroyed?  How did they understand themselves surviving without a Temple?  They understood that just like the Jews in a former time of being without a Temple, that God’s presence could not be limited or localized to a building.

  In the Gospel of John which was edited several decades after the Temple of destroyed, Jesus is presented as being offended by the crass commercialism of the Temple Complex.  Economics and Institutional politics were detracting from the worship focus of the Temple.  By protesting in such a way, Jesus was hitting at the source of revenue of many people in Jerusalem and such a protest would have offended both the Jews and Romans.

  Beyond our ability to know exactly what happened in the cleansing of the Temple, what we might discern is the purpose of reporting this event by the writer of John’s Gospel.  What this author is writing about in the early part of the second century is the process of mystification that took place in how the person of Jesus of Nazareth became the social reality of what we know to be the body of Christ or the church.  Here is the progression; the Temple of God’s dwelling on earth was transferred to the body of Jesus of Nazareth.  God’s presence dwelled most intensely in the body of Jesus whom Christians proclaimed as Messiah and Son of God.  And when the body of Jesus was no longer seen his body was mystically transferred to the fellowship or community of people who knew themselves to be in a continuing relationship with Jesus as the Risen Christ.  The Gospel of John states that Jesus is the Vine and his disciples are the branches as a metaphor for the inner relationship between Christ and the church.

  Today, we need not worry that much about our edifice complex with our holy places, unless they are distraction from the goal of being in communion with the risen Christ who dwells within us in a mystical way.

  Today, we are invited to know and experience the presence Christ in all of the times and places of our lives.  And following St. Paul, we are to know our own bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit.  So get used to being a nomadic temple to carry the presence of Christ into our world.  Amen.

Body of Christ; Temple of the Holy Spirit

3 Lent B      March 11, 2012

Exodus 20:1-17  Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25   John 2:13-22

 Lectionary Link

  What is the United States of America?  Is it a geographical location?  Is it the citizenry?  Is it the sum total of the historical events of all of her people?  Is it the flag and all of the symbols of this corporate fiction?  America is nowhere specifically but everywhere in general and as such is a mystical body.  How do mystical or corporate groups come into being and become even more than the sum of their parts?

  The earliest writings of the New Testament are the writings of St. Paul.  In his writings one can find the development of the symbolism of the “body.”  For St. Paul, the individual body of the believer is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  Remember St. Paul’s writings were written before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70.  St. Paul also wrote that together, the followers of Jesus were being built as a holy Temple unto the Lord.  St. Paul also wrote that the church is, “The Body of Christ.”  The Eucharistic bread is the body of Christ, and when we partake of the Eucharistic bread we are participating in the dynamic process of mystification whereby we constitute the continuing body of Christ.  The symbolism of Paul and Peter and other

Christians were then placed into narratives of the life and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth.  This narrative or story was an effective way of teaching the beliefs of the early church about Christ and about the identity of the church.  These teaching narratives are what we call the four Gospels.

  This is but a prelude for understanding our Gospel reading from John.  The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written with portions of it coming from perhaps as late as the first two decades of the second century.  Since it is the latest, one can expect that the theological reflection and symbols of John’s Gospel are most highly developed.  The writer uses the same technique as a historical novelist; the writer writes later practices into a former narrative as a way to illustrate and explain the origins of certain practices.  The writer of John’s Gospel already knows what has happened in the 6-8 decades after Jesus lived.

  What did the church of John’s Gospel know?  They knew that the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed.  They knew that Christians had separated from the synagogue around the year 80.  They knew that their community consisted of both Jews and Gentiles.  They knew that they could no longer see and touch Jesus, but they were fascinated and baffled that his teachings and his Spirit could still be a current reality in their lives.  They were trying to make sense of how Jesus, who had died and could no longer be seen, could be such a vital part of their experience.  They were trying to teach and explain why the reality of Christ was so real even though Jesus of Nazareth could no longer be seen.  So they used the narrative and the sayings of Jesus as a way of teaching about the reality of their current experience of the risen Christ.

  The temple in Jerusalem was the sacred dwelling place of God.  If God resided anywhere on earth, in the Hebrew religion, God resided in the holiest of Holy in the inner sanctum of the temple.  But God’s people had to face a rather stark question?  Why would God let the residing place of God on earth be destroyed?  Why would God not protect the divine place of residence on earth?  The answer to this question had been given before by the prophets.  They said if God’s priests and people profane God’s house then God would not honor them with the divine presence.  In some way, when an old paradigm in religion does not work, then an explanation must be given for a new vision of faith, a new vision of what God is now doing in this world.

  So how do we understand the symbolism in the narrative of Jesus cleansing the temple?  The Body of Jesus of Nazareth was the place where the fullness of God’s dwelling could be found; and when this body was destroyed, it was rebuilt in three days.  The body of Jesus was resurrected and became known in the experience of each follower of Jesus, who knew his or her body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.  And collectively, the early followers of Jesus knew their gathering as the continuing presence of Christ on earth, because he was resurrected and alive in their midst.  Is this myth or fiction?  I would say it is mystification.  No less than the fiction of the reality of our country, but this is the spiritual reality of the church.  How can one deny the reality or the realness of this experience if we and billions of others throughout the age have partaken of this reality of the risen Lord?  If this is but myth and fiction, then it is pretty powerful stuff.  There has been no more powerful trans-historical reality than what we have called the body of Christ.  One may deny its relevance but it is sheer denial, because one is born into the reality of risen Christ whether one knows it or not.  Two thousand plus years of the realness of Christ in the lives of people from all around the world cannot be dismissed simply by personal denial.

   Today, you and I may not teach the reality of the risen Christ in our lives in the same way in which the early church did.  And we are free to look for new metaphors and new language to tell about the reality of how God’s presences have touched our lives.  Some people use the Bible to limit how we can talk about God and Christ; I believe that Bible provides us with early models of how to talk about the reality of Christ in the hope that you and I will be inspired to find the reality of Christ in our lives within the very tapestry of our history and life experience in our time and place.

  If this Gospel teaches us anything, it teaches about God doing new things.  The temple building may have been destroyed, but God’s residence within human experience did not pass away with the destruction of temple building.  The body of Jesus was crucified on the cross and placed in a tomb; where did God reside more intensely than in the body of Jesus?  But when the body of Jesus was taken from this life, did God lose the divine residence in life forever?  Indeed not, in fact a new understanding of God was born and in that understanding God resided everywhere but especially intensely in the lives of those who intentionally invite God to be found and known in their lives.  And so God dwelling in the temple in Jerusalem, gives way to God residing in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, gives way to God residing everywhere but especially in hearts that wish to overcome estrangement from God.

  I believe that this new teaching was the old teaching; why?  Because God’s residence with us has been from creation; it has just taken a very long time for us to come to know it.

  Jesus Christ made this intention of God from creation fully known and that is our Gospel truth.  God wants to make the divine reality known in each and everyone of us.  Let us today in this Eucharist be renewed in being the body of Christ, the continued presence of Christ in our time and place.  Amen.