FOLLOWING JESUS

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

[1 Corinthians 3:16 nrsv]

We often explain Lent as a journey to the cross.

A lot of what we’ve been experiencing lately seems to affirm that.

I’m fighting the urge to catalog all the grievances here. I think you can come up with a pretty extensive list on your own.

It is at times like this that I find refuge in scripture, in reading, in anything that shuts out the noise of the outside world and makes time for silence in my life.

My focus is on listening to God and hearing God’s call to us to do what we can do to make the world around us more a vision of what God’s Kingdom should be.

Faith in God may be easy when life is good and when things are going well. But it can seem less obvious and less straightforward when life becomes broken and chaotic and desperate.

In those moments it is crucial to our lives and our own sense of relationship to God that we know God is among us.

There is a greater sense of urgency, even of desperation, an enormous need to know that we are not alone no matter how fearful or lonely or desperate we feel.

This time of Lent is a time of self-examination, a time to reflect on how our lives are lived in relationship to what God asks of us, to see whether we can bring ourselves to relinquish control over the direction of our lives and allow God to lead us in the way we should go.

I’ve often used a more lighthearted comparison to this time of Lent from professional baseball.

Major League Baseball teams are in Florida and Arizona preparing for the regular season that begins in another month. It’s a ritual they go through each spring.

Hitting, pitching, fielding, running, are all skills the players have to work on to improve and help their team to hopefully win a championship.

Likewise, we as people of God, are moved to deepen our understanding in order to strengthen our faith and bear more effectiveness witness to the Gospel. We do so through prayer, study, worship, fasting, and generosity.

So, you could liken Lent to Spring Training for Christians.

And the question that Paul asks in our focus verse from his First Letter to the Corinthians applies to what we hope to accomplish during Lent.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

That Spirit is what moves us to be a reflection of God to the rest of the world.

Much like a baseball team, God doesn’t ask us to do it by ourselves, but in community.

We tend to think as individuals and, in the process, disregard the power of community; or, as Paul frequently puts it in his letters, “the body of Christ.”

Paul’s use of the word “Temple” in this passage is intentional.

Like a body, a temple is made up of many elements: bricks, wood, metal, glass.

Likewise, we as the people of God, are a “spiritual house.”

Paul is emphasizing the importance of community over divisiveness, which is the situation in which the Corinthians found themselves.

As he states further along in the passage: “So let no one boast about human leaders… you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” [v. 22, 23]

So, as a team, as a Temple, as the church, the body of Christ, not necessarily as individuals, we utilize this Lenten season to return to God, to renew our commitment to follow Jesus on his journey together.

The Holy Spirit that dwells within us will use us to proclaim to the world in word and in deed the love of God, God’s forgiveness, and the eternal life God offers.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer p. 99)