We Are God's Temple
/This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, and honestly, when I began to prepare the reflection this week, I kind of groaned. What kind of feast is this? It’s not even about a person. I know the Lateran Basilica has significance for the Church, but with everything going on in our world these days, it’s hard to really care about a building.
However, as always happens, the Spirit invited me deeper, and when I looked at the readings for this feast, I noticed that there’s a lot here. First, we encounter this idyllic scene in Ezekiel, the temple surrounded by water and every kind of creature, this place of abundance where everyone is provided for. But then in the reading from First Corinthians, we’re told very clearly that “you are God's building.” The rest of the reading is about being God’s temple. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? We have a feast about a building, but it’s not really about the building at all but about us, God’s Holy living temple.
I do love the idea that we are the temple of God. Not only because God’s presence, God’s dwelling, is everywhere, but because this idea shows us our own holiness. It reminds me of when people ask me where God Space is. My answer tends to be, “God Space is everywhere,” or “God Space is within you.” I don’t mean it in a cute or snarky way because it’s true. God Space is a house in College Hill in Cincinnati, but we’re also a community that extends far and wide in all the different ways that people connect. And, especially when we sit in contemplation together, even if we are in our house in College Hill, the reality is that God Space is within each one of us. Whether you come to every event and small group or not, God Space is within you. It’s not about the ministry but about God’s presence within you and me and everyone. (And of course you should come to everything God Space offers!)
So, God’s Space, God’s temple, is within us, and knowing ourselves to be God’s temple carries an invitation with it to take care of this temple. In my younger years, I felt great consolation when I first encountered this reading about being God’s temple. In those years, I didn’t take great care of my temple of God but spent a lot of time fretting about my body size and doing all kinds of things to try and shrink it. There were moments when I even felt betrayed by my body. Unfortunately, there are lots of reasons why people feel betrayed or ashamed of our bodies. We live in a culture that has a lot to say about how our bodies should look and function, and it can be easy to feel bad when we feel like we don’t measure up to the ideal. However, we are God’s people and God dwells within us, and we do not need to conform ourselves to this ideal secular body image. We are the temple of God and God’s spirit dwells within us. We are given no instructions about how the temple should or should not look or feel or be. In fact, God affirms the lovely dwelling that we are as God’s own temple. Therefore, we’re called to care for ourselves as the holy and sacred dwelling place of God. And I hope we do. There’s no room for shame in that.
We move from enjoying this temple of abundance in Ezekiel to being affirmed as the living temple of God in First Corinthians to meeting Jesus in a real brink and mortar building in the passage from John. This is not the Lateran Basilica, but the temple in Jerusalem, the sacred site revered by Jewish people. In this reading, Jesus goes ballistic in this sacred place. But that’s not really about the building either, is it? The vendors are desecrating the holy place, not just because they’re ruining everybody’s prayer with their noisy marketplace vibe, which they probably are, but because they’re exploiting people. A lot of people appreciate this reading because it shows Jesus’s humanity as he gets angry and loses his temper on the people selling things. And that’s fair. I appreciate that too, but I mostly appreciate the deeper reason that he loses his temper, and that’s the exploitation of these vulnerable poor people. Yes, they can purchase something to sacrifice to God, but God doesn’t care about the sacrifice. God certainly doesn’t want poor people to spend all their money while some grow rich off the expectation to sacrifice in the temple. The temple should be about the worship of our loving, compassionate God, who is not only accessible to everyone but especially close to the vulnerable, the orphan and the widow. Selling all this stuff has no place in the temple.
This reading is about the temple but also not about the temple building, right? It’s not subtle. When Jesus tells his objectors that he’ll destroy the temple and raise it up in three days, we’re told, “But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.”
What do you make of all this? I think these readings are not really about buildings so much as they are about holiness. We long for beautiful spaces to experience God, and we know that we bring the sacredness of God with us wherever we go. God dwells within each of us, and so we, as well as our communal spaces, are imperfect but beautiful and sacred and holy. So, we respect ourselves and each other in our worship too, never exploiting but always uplifting, supporting and feeding and caring for each other. And when our spaces, even our sacred spaces, become places of exploitation that harm the poor and the vulnerable, the widow and the orphan and immigrants and people of color and indigenous people and people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people and women and children, we must push back on their behalf. If we are the living, breathing temples of the Holy One, then we advocate on behalf of the Holy One for the lovely and oppressed people around us. We flip all of those tables and keep flipping them until everyone has a place at the table.
And may that time come, that idyllic time where we’re surrounded by beauty and joy, and there is in fact a place at the table for everyone. Holy One, please make it so.
For Reflection:
What does it mean to you to be the temple of God? How well do you care for this sacred space where the Holy One dwells?
How easy or hard is it for you to notice the indwelling of God in other people? What helps you to have this awareness?
What fills you with righteous anger like Jesus in the temple flipping over the tables? What’s God’s call or invitation in that anger?
Let’s take a little time to sit with God and see what God has to say in all of this.
by Sister Leslie Keener, CDP
Leslie is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She enjoys music, dancing, and meaningful conversations.