Ezra 3:8-13

(Re)building the Temple

Sermon preached Nov. 15, 2015
Opening
When someone yells fire! you pay attention.
We dont know who said it, but the pastor of Central Presbyterian, heard it as he was
leaving the building early on the morning of Oct. 27, 1938.
A fire started in a defective flue on the north wall of the church. The fire spread and grew
and soon flames were shooting through the roof. For more than three hours firemen from
Chambersburg and other communities battled the fire. At one point an alert was called
that the steeple might topple over at any moment.
It wasnt until 7:00 that evening that the last fire truck left the scene, and four firemen
kept watch over the building all night in case flames flared up again.
The next day dawned with the building in ruins. The pipe organ damaged beyond repair,
the sanctuary roof caved in. But the bible on the pulpit was unharmed.
And so, the congregation of Central Presbyterian set to work to rebuild.
Intro to scripture
The Israelites in our reading needed to undertake a rebuilding project too.
Our scripture takes us to the same time and place as last week, from Malachi. Seventy
years before, Israel was conquered by the Babylonians and a lot of the population was
deported in chains to faraway Babylon, present-day Iraq. Then God raised up King Cyrus
of the Persian Empire and Cyrus conquered the Babylonians and told the exiles they
could go home. And they did, and returned to a ruined county.
Now, try to imagine what this would be like. Fantasy time - the United States is
conquered by China. The occupying army rounds up a big percentage of the population
and ships them to Mongolia. The idea is to weaken the country so America cant rebel
against the occupying Chinese. And the American exiles live in Mongolia for seventy
years and while theyre there, they actually start to prosper, make a life for themselves.
But then Russia conquers China and tells the exiled Americans they can go home. So
they pack up and head home. And they come back to a devastated country. Washington
is in ruins, the dome of the Capitol has collapsed, the Washington Monument toppled
over. Our factories have been ransacked for their equipment. Productive farmland now
1

is full of weeds and trees. And to top it all off, the people who remained in America,
have forgotten what being an American is about. And you exiles, have to re-establish, the
United States of America.
Thats sort of what the exiles heading to Israel faced. They had to rebuilt, re-constitute
their nation. Where to begin? Well, Israel was the chosen people, that was their identity,
God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt and rescued them again from captivity in
Babylon. Where do you start, rebuilding the nation? By rebuilding the temple in
Jerusalem, the most important symbol of what it meant to be Israel. The place where
heaven and earth joined together, the place where the Israelites went to worship and
encounter God.
And so, they rebuild the temple in order to rebuild the nation.
Thesis
I suggest that we in the church in the United States face a similar challenge. Over the last
70 years, our nation and culture have changed dramatically - and it happened not while
we were in exile, but while we were right here. And these changes mean that we have to
rebuild our church from the inside out, if were going to change lives and change our
community with the love and power of Christ.
Our changed context
If youre say sixty or over, youve seen the world change in ways you couldnt have
imagined when you were younger.
Some of those changes are good. Life expectancy, per-capita income are up; infant
mortality, poverty rates are down. Even though we have a long way to go, civil rights are
the law of the land, African-Americans and Jews who were previously shut out from a lot
of American life now have more opportunity.
But some of these changes, pose enormous challenges to the church of Jesus Christ:
Item: Last week, the people of Hamtrack, Michigan elected a city council a
majority of whom are Muslim Americans. I say this not to connect that to the
horror in Paris on Friday, but as one anecdote that points to the massive wave of
immigrants coming to America. And theyre of different stock than previous
immigrants, who came mostly from Europe. Many of these immigrants are not
Christian or from cultures influenced by Christianity. Theyre Muslim and
Buddhist and Hindu and Sikh and Shinto and other faiths.
Item: the rise of the Nones Ive mentioned before. 23% of Americans, when
2

you ask them their religion, check the box marked none.1 The percentage gets
higher the younger the sample group. Millions of Americans say theyre spiritual
but not religious, meaning they see no use in being part of a church or synagogue.
Item: Take a look at the marriage announcements in the Sunday New York Times.
Youll see that about a third of the couples arent married by a pastor, priest or
rabbi - the marriage is conducted by a family member or friend who registers with
the state for permission to conduct the ceremony. Used to be, even unchurched
people wanted to get married in a church by a minister, now we are not even
needed for that.
The ground is changing under our feet.
My theologian friend Bill Black put it like this: ...the guiding morality assumed
by the culture that produced our constitution, one informed by the Christian faith
of the vast majority of the citizens of earlier Americas, has been replaced by a
noisy plurality of conflicting faiths and philosophies. The philosophies and
secular faiths that now control the heart of our culture (media, entertainment,
technology, education, the markets) are hostile to the values of Christians and
their beliefs. And so now Christians find themselves increasingly subject to the
same pressures to conform that other cultural minorities faced when Christians
were the ones controlling the culture.
Since the first colonists came here, Christianity has been woven in the common life of
America. Most towns, especially those with town squares, had churches built right on the
square or other prominent places. Christianity or at least some version of it, had a place
of privilege in American life.
Thats mostly gone. And I keep hearing predictions that within ten years churches will
lose their property tax exemption and there will be no special favorable treatment for the
church.
So what do we do?
And its bewildering. Hard to know what we do. Clergy my age - we were trained to be
pastors in a culture that no longer exists. Ive heard colleagues say they dont know what
to do and theyre just trying to hold on until retirement.
What do we do? Thinking about this, I was reminded of how a couple of weeks ago, a
friend of mine from South Carolina, my age, recently put on Facebook a picture of a
poster that read, Hey young people - your music stinks, and pull up your pants!
Thats one way to deal with the changes happening around us - turn into cranky old
3

curmudgeons who talk about the good old days when the Sanctuary was full and children
behaved and people respected the church, and then batten down the hatches, turn inward,
preserve what little is left and hold onto the past until the last church member dies off and
leaves a note for someone to turn off the lights.
And there is a lot of that happening. I bet all of you know of churches that are just
hanging on by their fingernails but its pretty clear that in ten years or so, the organ will
be silent, the pews empty and the lights turned off forever.
So what about Central? I dont believe thats your future. I believe God has a plan, a
purpose for this church. I believe, that this church has the potential for greatness in it. I
think this church is worth fighting for. And I want to be part of what God is going to do
in and through you as the world changes around us.
But...like the Israelites needing to rebuild the temple for a new day, we have some
rebuilding to do. Some rebuilding, from the inside out. Heres what I mean.
Shift one - from a place to a people
One of my preaching professors was named Jim Kay. Learned some good stuff from him.
He used to get worked up and emotional about things and he cried a lot. He blamed that
on being Welsh. Do Welsh people cry easily?
Jim told a story about a Roman catholic official visiting a parish in Central
America. And the official gave a talk to the congregation and was saying, The
church thinks this... and The church teaches that... And The church wants
you to do so and so... and one of the congregants got up and said, Father, I dont
want to be disrespectful, but WE are the church! WE are the church!
Friends, this building is not the church. Christ never intended the church to be
understood as a building where people would come to worship and eat potluck suppers.
That thing you learned when you were little, Here is the church, here is the steeple, open
the door and see all the people, is dead wrong.
In the days of the early church, that was clear. There were no church buildings and the
church - the people - met in houses. Its clear now in places like China, where most
Christians gather in house churches. The Greek word we translate as church means a
gathering, an assembly - the people who gather and assemble - and has nothing to do with
a building. The church, is a people.
This building, is wonderful. The sanctuary is amazing, I think its the most beautiful
Protestant sanctuary Ive ever seen. But its not the church. You are the church. And
when we talk about rebuilding the church, were talking about building each other up,
4

building each other up so we can meet the challenges of serving Christ in this strange new
world we live in.
Shift two - people encountering God in a church building to people encountering God in us
Last Friday, was that amazing Pork & Sauerkraut supper. And its a wonderful thing, all
the people we served. Your gift of hospitality is awesome.
But during the Pork & Sauerkraut supper, something very strange happened out on the
Square in front of the church. Someone dressed up in a kangaroo costume and was
dancing around while holding up a big sign. The sign read, Why cook tonight? Pork &
Sauerkraut until 7 PM! And the someone dressed up in the kangaroo costume was Deb
Mummert.
The supper was in here. She was out there, acting wild and crazy, attracting attention.
One guy came up to her and said, Ill come to the supper if you sing Get Me to the
Church On Time. Deb proceeded to sing and he joined in, Get me to the Church on
Time, and she escorted him into the building where he had a pork and sauerkraut supper.
What Deb did, was what we as the church must do. Get out there and encounter people
on their turf, in ways that get their attention.
Why? Its like this. The new temple in Jerusalem had an important function. It was a
thin place where heaven and earth came close togther, and where you came into the
presence of the Almighty. You went to the temple, to encounter God. But Paul says in
our reading from 1 Corinthians, that WE are the new temple. Incredible as it is, people
no longer go to a physical place, a temple, to encounter God - people encounter God, in
us.
You know how we sense the Holy Spirit among us when we worship? Its an awesome
and thrilling thing when that happens. But it has nothing to do with this place. It has
everything to do with us, gathering as a people - because as Paul says, WE, collectively,
are Gods temple, and in US, Gods spirit dwells.
God wants to love other people through us.
I want that to sink in. We are the means by which God makes himself known to the
people he loves. We are Gods ambassadors, says Paul. God intends us to be the kind of
people that when others encounter us, there is something different and attractive and
compelling that makes them feel and think, Wow, I want that...
But that means, more and more we have to go where they are. Because we cant just
expect people to come to us here in the building.
5

Now, some of us seemed called to do things like put on kangaroo suits and dance around
on the square, and thats an example of someone doing whatever it takes to touch other
people.
But some other ways:
- We could host a community picnic at Penn National and invite especially people
whove moved here in the last year and serve them a lunch as a way of saying,
Welcome, were glad youre here and we want to meet you and know you.
- We could have a presence in most of the community events downtown - like
during Luminary Night next month, have a table with hot chocolate and hot cider
on the square and just offer cold people a hot drink.
I mean, if we prayerfully ponder this, well come up with dozens of great ways to touch
people outside of this building. And some of them will sense God in us and want to find
out more, maybe come to know Christ and become part of his people at Central.
Third Shift - Go deep
Remember the quarterback Kenny Stabler, who played for the Oakland Raiders? He was
being interviewed and for some reason the reporter asked him what he thought about a
poem from the author Jack London, where London said, I would rather be ashes than
dust. Stabler thought about it for a moment and said, I think that means we ought to
throw deep.
If people are going to encounter Christ in us as people who constitute the new temple,
well, we have to be growing deep in Christ.
And heres the challenge. You cant do that, you cant grow in Christ, by giving it
whatever leftover time and energy and attention you have at the end of a long week. And
Im afraid, thats what a lot of folks in churches decide they can give. The little scraps of
whats leftover.
Ask yourselves these questions:
If a spiritually seeking person asked you why they should trust in Jesus Christ,
would you be able to tell them?
If someone at work is going through a crisis - just got diagnosed with cancer - and
they know youre a church person and they ask you to pray with them - would you
be able to do it?

If a family member is lying in the hospital near death and they tell you theyre
scared, they ask you how they can be sure that God will save them from the dark
abyss of death, how would you help her?
Those are the kind of situations where the rubber meets the road. Where if were going to
be the presence of Christ to people, we have to be able to show and tell people the way to
salvation, we need to be able to share our stories of how Christ has helped and healed us,
we have know how to pray, and so on. Can you, and do you?
This is hard, but we do it together
This is hard. This is challenging. But were together in this.
Like this story. You sure must like to jump, a grizzled old sergeant was asked who just
completed his 1000th parachute jump. No, I hate to jump, the sergeant replied. Then
why are you in an all-volunteer Army in an all-volunteer parachute unit if you hate to
jump? Because I like to be around the kind of people who do.
I think youre those kind of people. And I want to jump, with you.
Closing
Back to where we started.
Two months after the fire, the congregation here gathered for a meeting. Before them
was the question of rebuilding here on the Square, or moving?
They voted to rebuild, right here. And on Sunday, Feb. 25, 1940 the new building in
which we sit today was dedicated to the glory of God.
May we, through rebuilding this church, this congregation, from the inside out, be a
powerful force for Christ and his kingdom, for years and years and years to come. Amen.
Endnotes
1. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/