The Temple He Had Spoken Of Was His Body

We are made of stuff. The universe is full of stuff. We see things in our context: rocks, trees, homes, people. Some of us look up and wonder, what are those dots in the sky? Then we see big things: stars, planets, solar systems, galaxies. Some of us look down and wonder, what’s this stuff on the lake? So then we find bacteria, cells, chemical compounds, atoms, particles, quarks and quasars.

We live in the context of all of this. Sub-atomic things to distances measured in light-years! It’s all a mystery. But it’s something we start to know that spawns more questions which spawn more discoveries which spawn more questions.

We started messing around with electricity. We invented light bulbs, electric power, stoves, microwaves, TVs, and now cell phones which can do everything but cook your food, but you can order through mobile apps, so it’s sort of the same thing.

We live in this information age. All this digital everything. And yet we still don’t understand human intuition. Sometimes we just know without knowing how we know.

It was spring of 2016, and my life was great. Kids were great. Relationship with Kate was great as was the circle of friends. Church was really humming along with a speaker series and some great things happening. I just remodeled our master bathroom. But I felt depressed. Something was off. I had no idea what it could possibly be.

I went and saw a therapist and it turns out, my call was ending at the church. I am not a youth minister. That’s not my gift. Stacie has those gifts. She is a natural, she has the gift and the calling. I am not Stacie. I have a different set of gifts. I was grieving a move that hadn’t happened yet. I was entering in the liminal space… liminal is neither here or there, it’s in between.

All this to say that sometimes the Spirit knows before the mind does. I addressed it with help from a professional therapist. It’s no shame to see a professional therapist. If we get a cut on our body, we put a band aid on it. When we are mentally wounded, what do we do? Many of us shrug it off. Or there’s a stigma attached. Why? That makes no sense. Stop the mental bleeding. Seek help.

I did and it was one step on my path to becoming your pastor. We’ll hit 4 years here this Easter and what a ride! Feels like I’m just getting started! Yet when I look at all the ground we’ve covered… WOW, church! God had a good idea in bringing us together!

Not all ministers are so lucky to have found a good fit. A good call. A healthy congregation.

Rob Bell tells of his time as a minister in his new book Everything is Spiritual. After learning under a great mentor, he starts a church in Grand Rapids, MI that explodes into a mega-church. 4,000 people attending, they can’t hire staff fast enough. It’s all due to Rob’s amazing preaching. His experiments. How he questions and creates and teaches. The books, short films, articles and worship experiences. That’s what drew people to the church in the first place, the creativity and willingness to experiment and experience worship and community and life and this mystery of life where we have questions and answers that lead to more questions and so on.

One day, Rob finds himself in a fetal position in his office. He has to preach to all these people and he just can’t do it.

Church leadership complained that he wasn’t leading them. He wasn’t in enough meetings. He sits in those meetings, and he’s thankful for their work, it’s needed, but there’s a sense that it’s not his work. His work is somewhere else. Something else.

But church culture in the 21st century says PASTORS MUST DO THIS. Why? Rob grew a church from nothing to thousands by ignoring the conventional wisdom. Yet here it is trying to make Rob conform.

And he’s curled in a ball, unable to move, on the floor of his office. Sometimes the body knows before the mind does. Rob left his church. He’s now in LA making books, films, and has a renowned podcast. Still ministering and doing the work. Part of me feels like the church really missed out. Conventional wisdom ran off quite the gift.

Jesus must have felt that way, too. He was frustrated by the conventional wisdom of the religious culture of his time. All the rules and what animal should be sacrificed when and we can’t use Roman coins, we have to change those out for our own coins… Oh, but they can do an upcharge and service fees and really make a tidy profit… Instead of being curled up in a ball, Jesus drives them out. Overturns the tables. Has a holy tantrum.

He protests how religion is done in his day. And the religious say, “Why are you doing this?”

Jesus is super cryptic here, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

The religious wisdom of his day says back, “This temple has been under construction for 46 years, and you will raise it up in three days?”

Then John writes, “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

WHAT. DOES. THAT. MEAN?!

Sometimes the body knows before the mind does. It’s hard to say sometimes how we know what we know.

Malcolm Gladwell tells the story in his book Blink of antiquities experts who recognized a fake at a glance. All these experts from the museum were saying it was legit, but she came in a blew it all away. Challenged the conventional wisdom. Overturned the tables. How did she know? She just did! Turns out, she was right. This leads to Gladwell’s theory that there are those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing” which is filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables. The antiquities expert found little flaws and details overlooked by museum experts that showed that the piece was a fake.

Sometimes the Spirit knows before the mind does. Something feels off. Something doesn’t feel right. Sometimes this is the hair standing up on the back of your neck. Sometimes it’s a muscle cramp or an upset stomach. Or we feel depressed and we have all the logical reasons to be happy. Something is off, and we don’t know how we know.

Christianity is an embodied religion. It is about flesh and blood. The whole Bible is! Leviticus is a whole book about what to put on your body, what to put in your body, and how to look out for other bodies in the world by ensuring they have enough to eat and that creation is cared for. Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.

Here is where the spirit dwells. Not in this building. The building is built to point to God, God doesn’t dwell just here. God is within and among us. Within our bodies. Our bodies are the temples. Because we’re adopted into the family of God through Jesus who is our temple. Our faith is not in the ritual it’s in the relationship with God and our neighbor. The rituals should support the relationships.

We can lose that narrative. When pastors have all the answers and you have none, abuse can happen. When church is the only institution where God is and has a set of pre-approved content, abuse can happen. When the prevailing wisdom is focused on meetings and profit margins and metrics and saving more souls, abuse can happen.

I can honestly say that I have not saved a single soul in my entire ministry. 10 years, almost 4 of which with you… and counting the 3 years of seminary and 3 years before that in my local UCC church… that’s 16 years without a single soul saved.

Because that’s not my job. That’s above my pay grade. I’m not the Good Shepherd, I’m just the sheep dog pointing y’all there. Jesus saves souls. Only Jesus has the power to save. But I can help. I can listen. I can help figure out what’s up in our body and souls to help our minds be able to articulate what’s up.

My call is not to be in meetings. Or to talk budget. Or metrics. Or social media reach. My call is to help us be better humans. That’s the call. That’s it. I do care about those other things, but they’re not my main call. Maybe that’s your call. As congregationalists, we each have the freedom to pursue our individual calls in covenant and community with one another.

Rob Bell understood that when he thought about the sacrament of communion. This mysterious ritual where we remember the story of Jesus whose body is broken and blood poured out for the healing of everything and how we’re setting the table for the whole world because Jesus came to tear down the dividing walls between all of us so we can reclaim our bonds as one human family.

People would ask, Who is this ritual for?
Rob would say, Everybody.
They’d follow up, Who do you mean by everybody?

And on and on it went.

This caused Rob to realize, “I come from a world where the job of the spiritual leader was to have the last word on things. To explain it. To tell people what it means. To teach people how to do it. I was coming to see that my job was to have the first word. To start the discussion. To set the words in motion, so that they could do that mysterious thing [that words] do in all of us.”[1]

I like that. I have the first word. These sermons are preached not as a final word, but as a discussion starter. I use stories from my own life that I hope you can relate to, and I hope you respond by sharing your own. It’s why I so love our Wednesday Night Lenten Zoom Discussions. They are fascinating! People share their stories and experiences and thoughts and opinions. We won’t agree on everything! That’s what makes it interesting!

We get a chance to see the big events and the small events and everything in between and maybe, just maybe, get a little better at saying what it all means… Which leads to more questions and stories and epiphanies and more answers and stories and disagreements and reconciliations and new perspectives!

Yeah! That’s where the energy is. That’s what I’m interested in. If it takes a meeting or two to figure out how to do it, then so be it! And I also trust our council and teams to do their work and live out their passion. If they need me, they can request that I be at their next meeting for advice.

Let’s be honest though. What am I going to tell Darlene about hosting and decorating? She’s got the gifts! She’s amazing! She can walk into a room and thin-slice it and make the minor and major adjustments that make it look beautiful.

Or Kelly can look at our budget and say, “This doesn’t feel right over here.” What am I going to tell Kelly? She’s got the gifts! She’s amazing!

Or Crell when he comes up here and tells a story for stewardship? I get the final word vs that guy? No way!

But Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.

God dwells here. All of this church stuff can end. I know we’ve been here for 202 years. I love this building. I love our history. I hope it will be around for 202 more years. All of this can be torn down or changed or restructured and it doesn’t change the fact that God lives within each of us. In three days, Jesus can raise it up.

The UCC has held that the Holy Spirit has the freedom to move and has resisted the definition and enforcement of doctrine by coercive denominational structures.[2] God dwells within and among us. It is our job to point one another to the divine.

We start with our humanity only to be surprised by the divinity. The God who is at our peripheral vision. Who undergirds us in ways we don’t see… But sometimes the body and the spirit know before the mind does.

Maybe today, you go for a walk. Or a jog. Or exercise. You spend a few minutes in prayer during the postlude and after worship to just be. Just be in your body. With all its aches and pains, parts loved and unloved. Listen to what it’s telling you. It has something to say.

For God is still speaking and residing in the temple. But I am speaking of the temple of your body. That’s the first word. You have the last word. God be with you, until we meet again.

Works Cited

[1][1] Page 123

[2][2] Lee Barrett paraphrase from “Theological Worlds in the UCC: Collison, Chaos, or Complementarity.” in Prism, a theological forum for the United Church of Christ, Volume 21, Number 2, Winter 2007, page 75-76.

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