Being a dwelling place for God
What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do?
Sometimes, that’s a difficult question to answer. You’ve seen it being asked a lot, I’m sure, and you might well have asked it yourself. One man who asked it was a Congregationalist Minister from the United States - a man called Charles Sheldon, who, in the late 19th Century, was the minister of a church in the state capital of Kansas, a not especially well known town called Topeka, almost exactly slap-bang in the middle of the United States, and approximately twice the size of Kettering. He preached a series of sermons in the 1880s, that pretty much asked this question, and they had quite an impact on his hearers.
Sheldon was interested - passionately interested - in asking hard moral and social questions, and doing so from the perspective of Jesus’ take on the subject he was considering. He really and truly wanted to know What would Jesus do? And, judging by the impact he made in his preaching, he wasn’t alone in this. Indeed, in a remarkable career development, he took up newspaper journalism, and in 1900 he became the editor of that well-known paper, the Topeka Capital-Journal, which, back then, had a circulation of about 12,000. Applying his by now well known principal, Sheldon decided that newspapers should be operated as Christ would operate them, and within a very short period of time, that 12,000 circulation had gone up a bit.... not double... not triple... not four- or five-fold. It had gone up by over 32 times, to a circulation of 387,000. All because Sheldon had, in effect, wanted to know What would Jesus do?. And - and this is important - this is, if you like, literally at the crux of the matter - Sheldon wanted to know what Jesus would do about real, concrete issues that affect every day life.
If you want to get a feel for what I mean, I should also tell you that Sheldon wrote a book - a novel, that was about a clergyman who wanted to know the answer to this big question. The book was called In His Steps - What would Jesus do?. It was published in 1896, and has sold more than 30 million copies, making it easily into the chart of the 50 best-selling books of all time. In the opening of the book, the minister encounters a homeless man, who speaks to him:
I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night,
All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being's ransomed powers,
All my thoughts, and all my doings,
All my days, and all my hours.
and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it. It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin.
Now, I’m prepared to bet that none of you had ever heard of Charles Sheldon until this morning - and I say that freely because I’d never heard of him until yesterday. But I’ve heard the question What would Jesus do? on any number of occasions, and I’ve seen some of the younger members of this church wearing those ubiquitous wristbands with the letters WWJD on them at events like confirmations and the like.
And, in truth, the idea is even older than Charles Sheldon - way back in the Pentateuch, in the book of Leviticus, one of the opening books of the Old Testament, the people of Israel are told to be holy because the Lord their God is holy, and Jesus takes up the the idea in the Sermon on the Mount and it has knocked about throughout Christian history ever since. But Sheldon found a catch phrase that ignited his own generation in and around the state of Kansas, and which in recent times, owing to the power of marketing, has re-ignited many young people seeking to follow Christ in our own time.
And, at the end of the day, it’s all because You also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
So, What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do about buildings? About buildings, perhaps, such as this one?
After all, buildings like this one make statements about values, whether we want them to or not. Robert and I see this more than once a week, on average, when we are saying Evening Prayer, and someone - someone whom we have probably never met before - wanders in here during those few brief minutes that the doors are open in the afternoon. And it rapidly becomes plain that it is no accident that they’ve chosen this building - the church - rather than wandering in to the library, or McDonalds, or a shop, or the police station. They want an encounter with a set of values - values that they don’t anticipate finding in those other venues. And those values have something to do with - in fact, quite a lot to do with - welcome, peace, prayer, acceptance and help. All, I suspect, things that Jesus would do. Indeed, a good number of these visitors are the 21st-century equivalent of Sheldon’s unfortunate people who die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin.
And that’s why they come to the church - this church - because they believe that there’s just a chance they might find someone who will be Christlike in their behaviour, and who will welcome them, feed them, clothe them, and love them. It doesn’t always work out like that, of course - but how wonderful that there is even that aspiration. And that is wonderful - and it is also rather challenging.
In fact, it’s challenging in all sorts of ways. I can’t speak for Robert - and he has a truly remarkable ministry towards people in need - but I can say that, personally, I find this edge of ministry profoundly challenging (as, I suspect, do many of you). For, to go back to Sheldon again, I am a person in a big church who has good clothes and [a] nice house to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and I can and do go away on summer vacations and all that. And that challenges me.
And it challenges me that if they’ve made it through the doors of this building during the 20 minutes or so that we say Evening Prayer, then they are doing well - they are doing really, really well. For most of the day, most of the week, those doors are locked. And this building turns away and rejects those who, whether for emotional, spiritual, medical or financial reasons, are probably the people who need this place most.
And it challenges me - well, it challenges me that Jesus, in all probability, wouldn’t have given two hoots for this great pile of stone. He would, I think, be bemused that the only part of our parish finances that is truly secure and in credit is the bit of the bank account we call the Fabric Fund. If Jesus could make a fuss in the Temple - the ultimate religious building of his era and of his faith - the building where God was believed to reside - heaven on earth - if Jesus could make a fuss there, we would be really barking up the wrong tree to think that he might not have comments about Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering, in the diocese of Peterborough and the County of Northamptonshire. And, if I am totally honest, I think that Jesus’ comments might just be to ask us if he thinks this building, with its altar set so far away from its congregation, and with its utterly rigid and inflexible seating, and with its lack of toilets, or places to serve refreshment, or places to honour the needs of our children - I think that Jesus might just want to ask us if we think this building does anything like enough justice to the needs both of the people who are the church, and of the people whom the church is called to serve.
Indeed, we should live with the fact that the very word church was a profoundly un-Jesus kind of word. And there is one sense, and only one sense, in which the word church is used at all in the New Testament. And it has nothing - nothing - to do with piles of brick or stone. It is about us. It is about you and me - and, incidentally, it is about you and me in absolutely equal measure - it is about the people of God - the baptized. That is what church is about.
And that makes it really scary! Because God has a big requirement, a requirement of us - of you and of me. He’s going to ask us to be His dwelling place. Not a dwelling place like the Ark of the Covenant in the old Temple, stuck there in the Holiest of Holies, in the innermost courtyard. God doesn’t want to be stuck here in this heap of stone like a painting or a sculpture in a museum.
God wants to dwell with us and in us. And the implications of that are awesome, as the writer of that brief passage that was our second lesson understood so clearly: In Christ the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. That is what happens when we are baptized and called into the communion of people who feed on Christ’s Body and become Christ’s Body.
And so, if we celebrate - if we dare to celebrate - this church building, we must make sure we celebrate properly what it ought, what it should, what it must stand for - which is us, my friends, you and me - us, the Church of God. The people who are prepared to stand up and say Jesus is Lord - I want to do what He would have me do - and I want to do it right here and now.
We’re going to be singing a new hymn today - a hymn we are going to learn properly by singing every Sunday throughout this month - and it is a hymn inspired by the call to do and to be Christlike - the call to work out and live out the values of Jesus. It has, I think, an utterly beautiful tune, and its words are words of great power. We will sing them at the end of this act of worship, but now, even now, as we celebrate the Dedication of this building as a House of God, and a House for the people with whom God will dwell, we should remember that
Heaven shall not wait
for triumphant hallelujahs,
when earth has passed and we reach another shore:
Jesus is Lord;
in our present imperfection:
his power and love are for now and then for evermore.
For You and I also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Amen
Dominic Barrington, October 7th, 2007
