On Tuesday I sent an email to the members of my Parochial Church Council. In it I explained to them that I had arranged for the removal of the ornate gold cross which crowns our church’s Georgian portico and looks out over the impassive white-fronted terraces of Belgravia. I further explained that in order to demonstrate our commitment to environmental sustainability it was to be replaced by a wind turbine. Tuesday was, of course, April the First. Unfortunately I had misjudged the capacity of some of my colleagues to appreciate a joke.
Buildings are very dear to us, sacred buildings particularly so. Their roots are deeply entrenched in our architectural and imaginative landscapes. Their imagery is pervasive, and it dominates this afternoon’s readings.
Paul’s words to the Corinthians seem subtler than those of the prophet Haggai, and perhaps intellectually preferable to them. For whereas Haggai records God’s approbation of a sacred building built in stone and wood, Paul recalls his readers to their own flesh and blood. God’s sacred building is here, says Paul: God’s temple is you.
This subtle substitution of the exterior by the interior is seductive in our age, suspicious as it is of authority, unconstrained as it is by geography, and (all too often) careless as it is about humanity. If you and I are the temple of God, the seat of God, then we are licensed to interpret the longings of our own hearts as the longings of God. If you and I are the temple of God, then we are licensed to locate God in whatever place we happen to be. And if you and I are the temple of God, then we are licensed to overlook his other temples, his other seats, those that surround us and press their claims upon us.
Haggai understands the temple built in stone and wood as the place where God will be glorified, and we misread Paul if we attribute any different understanding to him, however liberated and post-modern we may think we are being. Paul and Haggai are united in their witness to a God to whom authority, geography and humanity matter; to a God of promise, of place and of people.
They both write of God’s covenant, albeit a covenant understood and expressed differently in their different contexts. Through Haggai, God promises to restore the fortunes of Israel. He has not forgotten them and will no longer neglect them. Israel is still God’s people; he is still Israel’s God, eternally faithful, eternally loving, patiently awaiting their return to him and ready to celebrate that return. Paul does not serve a God whose character has changed in the years that separate him from his prophetic forebear. He writes to a community in whom God’s own Spirit dwells, a community chosen and called by God. Our generation is convinced, sometimes justly, that ‘they’ are out to get us, ‘they’ being management, or government, or business. Haggai and Paul remind us that God is never out to get us. He is perpetually for us; he is always on our side, loving us into perfection.
They both write of God’s concern for the particular. It is the neglected, ruined temple of Jerusalem that God pledges to build again. His mind is turned to a specific place and to a specific set of historical circumstances. He gazes upon the rubble, upon all that is left after the years of exile in Babylon. This will be the place where he is revealed. The same is true of Paul’s God. His letter is written to a distinct group at a distinct time. Read it in full and it is littered with references to men and women known to him, Apollos and Timothy, Stephanas and Fortunatas, men and women active in the community of Corinth. To our generation much of life is virtual, lived at arm’s length from reality. Time and place mean less and less. Yet it is here and now that God cares about, real places and real situations. His glory will be revealed in Westminster or Harare, in Beijing or Tibet, in April 2008, or it will not be revealed at all.
And they both write of God’s care for people. Haggai’s prophecy is directed at named individuals just as Paul’s letter is. Through Haggai God addresses the high priest Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and the governor Joshua, son of Jehozadak. To these are entrusted the remnant of Israel. God deals not with patients or clients, not with customers or consumers, not with projections or trends. He deals with human beings, not human resources, human beings in all their fragile vulnerability and imperfection.
Promise, place, people: such a God calls you and me to be his temple, the place where he is glorified. He call you and me to be nothing less than a house of splendour and a source of prosperity for the world. So to him be glory, in this and every place. Amen.
Evensong at Westminster Abbey,
Sunday 6 April 2008
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