Talk given by the Revd Edward Hobbs on 15 June 2008Reading: Ephesians 2:17-22
The big question our passage raises for today I think, is where do people go to meet with God? If you want to learn something more about him, if you want to experience him for yourself, where do you go? If you're a guest here this morning that might be a question you are asking yourself? Where can I go to meet with God? Where can I go to really engage with a life changing spirituality? If you're a regular, that might be a question you still feel you haven't really got to the bottom of either! Where can I go to meet with God? Where can I go to really encounter something spiritual... something bigger than myself... something supernatural? Now in the past I think it was reasonably straightforward... certainly in Bible times.... You went to the local temple. Our Bible reading was from Paul's letter to the Ephesians... Ephesus was in Southern Turkey.... and was the home to one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world... the temple of Artemis.... It would have dominated the entire city... it was huge! It was a very obvious physical landmark that said "god is here" come and find out more! For the Jews again the place to go was reasonably obvious... it was the temple in Jerusalem. You don't have to read much of the Old Testament to know just how significant a place this was for them. If you wanted to meet with God... if you wanted to do business with God.... this was where you needed to come. But today I think in many ways it has become much less clear. For previous generations, at least within the UK, a natural place to turn would have been the local church. Again the tower or spire would have made it stand out from the surrounding houses... and the bells called people to worship. I'm not sure they always found the answers they were looking for when they got there, but it was the natural place to turn. But things have changed a lot in recent years, we now live in a multi-cultural society, where in many cities you are as likely to hear a call for prayer as church bells. People have more choices... and combined with that there is an increasing suspicion of institutional religion. Some people still look to the church, but others look in all kinds of different directions. I put "Where do I find God?" into Google, and got over 14 million hits! Not least a website called "How to find God without religion" It read as follows... How to Find God Without Religion. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other world religions aren't the only paths to God. Find God through yourself. God is not a magical man made happy by prayers or blind faith. If you can listen to yourself, you will find God. Then it gave 4 easy steps. 1. Find a quiet place, free from outside influences. A dark room would do fine. 2. Find yourself. Focus on one special thing. This can be a person, object, or even your impression of God, but remember to focus on this one thing only. 3. To truly understand, you will become intoxicated; endorphins will rush into your system and you will become extremely blissful. Keep in mind that this is very difficult to accomplish, and very few have done it themselves. 4. This feeling of bliss and happiness is your connection to God. Some call it getting high, some say it's intoxication. But the truth is that you are losing sense with all of your thinking functions. You are losing anxiety, pain, and other bad emotions by connecting with your most primal roots. Ever wonder why animals seem so happy? They are not burdened with the power to think or care; they just feel what they feel. Well if that's the alternative, maybe I'll give church another go! But it does just go to show doesn't it, how confused people are! How willing they are to try just about anything! Where do I go to meet with God? Well if you've got your Bible open, we're on page 1174, Paul tell us doesn't he... verse 22... about a dwelling in which "God lives by his Spirit". Where do I need to go to meet with God? Well a dwelling where God lives by his Spirit seems a great place to start!! So where is this place? What's it like? Verse 21... "In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." So it is a building... A temple in fact... after all! Well no! At least not the kind of building or temple that they were expecting! You see this isn't a temple built of stone. They were used to great temples built of stone! This is a temple built of people. It's built on Jesus, with the Apostles and Prophets laying the foundations, and made out of people... people like you and me! Paul takes the temple language that they would have understood and he turns it on its head! It's not about the building it's about the people! The building isn't the temple. The people are! So if we want to find God, we need to find a group of people, rather than a building. But what are they going to look like? How am I going to know when I've found them? There are lots of groups of people who claim they can introduce you to God! How am I going to know I've found the right one? Well let's look very briefly at the different elements in the building's construction. Firstly it has Jesus as the chief cornerstone, verse 20. Now I don't want to go into this too much, as David covered it a few weeks ago, but not being a builder I wasn't too clear what a cornerstone actually was! Well the cornerstone effectively is the first stone to be laid and it's crucial in determining the size and shape and orientation of the building. Again it can be hard to picture what a cornerstone might look like. When I think of building I tend to think of bricks of breeze-blocks... something reasonably small. Well in excavating the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, the archaeologists found a corner stone that was some 38 feet 9 inches - approximately 12 meters - long! In ancient buildings they could be huge! They were the starting point for construction. Everything else was measured off from there. So what does it mean for Jesus to be the cornerstone of this new temple built of people? Well just like the cornerstone in a conventional building it is Jesus who sets the orientation for this building of people. Without Jesus there can be no church! Verses 17 and 18. He - that's Jesus - came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him - through Jesus - we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Jesus sets the shape of the church because it is only through him, in the power of the Spirit, that we have access to God the Father. What does that mean? Well it means that when we are entering into a process, as we are at the moment as a church, thinking about who we are and where we are going, we need to recognise that as Christ's church, ultimately it is Jesus who must determine what the church should be like! His priorities must be our priorities, if we are going to build his church and not our own. So Jesus is the cornerstone. The Apostles and Prophets lay the foundations, from verse 19: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. With Jesus as the cornerstone, the Apostles have fleshed out God's plan for the church. If we want to know what the church should be like we need to turn to the New Testament - to the gospels to learn about Jesus, to the letters written to encourage the early churches and help them stay on track, to the book of Acts, where we see the story of the first churches and how they began to grow. One of my favourite passages in the whole Bible comes at the end of Acts chapter 2, we won't turn it up now, but do look at it again sometime, especially if you are doing some thinking and praying about the future of our church. There we find a wonderful picture - a wonderful model - of how the church should be: worshipping, sharing, learning, growing both in depth and in numbers... filled with the Holy Spirit. It looks an exciting place to be a part of! And it's not there simply as a historical record, but as a model for us to emulate! So Jesus is the cornerstone, the Apostles have laid the foundations. And it is then people - people like us - who are being built up into the Temple. Verses 21 and 22: In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. I know we are busy as a church working through a proposal to look at the inside of this building, and let's face it, there is some work to be done! But as a whole the New Testament is fantastically disinterested in bricks and mortar! Pretty much every time the Bible uses the word church, it means the people. The church is the people. The dwelling place of God is the people. This building is not God's house. We are God's house! Built together on the cornerstone of Jesus, on the foundation of the Apostles teaching, filled with the Holy Spirit, we are God's temple, God's house! If people want to meet with God - this is where they should find him! Now that is a scary thought. And a serious responsibility isn't it! If people want to meet with God - this is where they should find him! Just think about that for a minute! Yet that's what this passage is saying isn't it! Verse 22: And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. When people see us together - not only on a Sunday morning but not least on a Sunday morning - do they think God is in this place? Maybe I can't put my finger on it... maybe it's just a feeling... But there is something going on here? Something special? Something that maybe I don't understand? But at the same time something I definitely want more of! Is that what people think when they see us together? Is there something about our welcome, something about our worship, something about our fellowship, something about our friendship, something about our joy, something about our graciousness... that says to visitors "God is in this place!" Because I think this passage says there should be! How can I say this nicely? I've been in plenty of churches where it looks to me as though most of the people who are there really wish they weren't! The service is to be endured rather than enjoyed. They look bored, they look half asleep. Some of them more than half asleep. They don't look as though they have any expectation themselves that they have come to meet with the living God! So it's no great surprise that any guests who might be with them go away thinking - there's not much going on there! The locals clearly aren't expecting much - so nor should I! In my conversations with people who have come to faith, it never ceases to sadden me how often they say that church was the very last place they expected to find any kind of real and meaningful encounter with God. Do you see how that turns on its head what our passage tells us to expect!? Their own past experience has told them that God isn't really here among us. When they have gone to church in the past they have not been caused to think... wow, God really is in this place. in fact quite the opposite - and many have gone away never to come back! So the question for us, the question for those of us who through the work of Jesus are being built into his holy temple, the question for those of us who are Christians, is what are we going to do about it? What is it about our own expectation as we come on a Sunday morning? Our prayerfulness, our openness to meet with and hear from God, our spiritual expectancy? What is it about the way in which we treat other people? Especially the welcome we give to outsiders? What is it about the way we serve? What is it about the form and content of our services that will say both to us and to everyone else that God is in this place? If you want to meet with God - well here he is! We're not going to get there overnight. And it's going to look very different at each of our 5 services on a normal Sunday. But what do we need to do? What perhaps do we need to change to enable this to be the case? And what part can I play in making that happen? As I said this isn't going to happen over night - and even our passage recognises that. Verse 22: In him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. This is an ongoing work. It's going to keep on going and we need to keep on going until Jesus returns. In just a moment I'm going to give a minute's quiet, to think what it might be that we could do, what it might be that you could do, that would contribute to creating this kind of atmosphere. That both for us, and for our guests, we would be overwhelmed with the presence of God, when we meet together. And then please do share those ideas, either with a member of the staff team, or perhaps a member for the SPEAR group, our vision team, who are presently seeking to draw such ideas together. Just before we have that moment though, I'm conscious that there may be guests here this morning, who are themselves seeking God. You may or may not feel you know where to look. You may or may not feel that you have encountered him this morning! Well for you let me read verses 17 to 19 again. He, that's Jesus, came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household. This is the offer that Jesus makes to all, that through him we can have access to our Heavenly Father, we can know peace with him, and we can be adopted into his family. Church may not always be what it should be - we are a work in progress! But what God has to offer you is perfect, and if you want to, you can receive it today! If that's you, please do come and have a word with me afterwards, and why not use our moment's quiet to ask God to make himself real to you this morning. © 2008 Edward Hobbs | 