By Newcastle Francis Paul Niukapu Josh is the resident humanist in the neighbourhood . He does not go to church anymore. He goes about telling his friends that since God lives in everyone’s soul, it is not necessary for anyone to go to church to find God. His parish priest learns of this and decides to pay Josh a visit. The priest shows up in Josh’s house one cold winter evening and finds Josh warning himself by the fireside. Josh invites the priest to join him at the fireside, which he does. The priest does not talk about church attendance, although Josh suspects that is why he came. They talk about the weather. Meanwhile, the priest uses the fire-tongs to remove a burning piece of wood from the fire and places it all by itself beside the fireplace. Both men watch as the flames flicker and go out and in a short time white ash covers the once blazing piece of wood. Josh gets the message. He turns to the priest and says, “Father, I will be in church next Sunday.” Like that piece of wood we need fellowship with our brothers and sisters in the faith in order to maintain the fire of our own faith. We need the church. Josh is an example of people who go to one extreme. There are people also who go the other extreme, people who see the presence of God only in churches and church services. We read about people like that in today’s gospel. We are not told exactly who they but some of them were probably disciples of Jesus. They were fascinated with the splendour of the Jerusalem Temple built by Herod the Great in over 46 years and lavishly adorned with gold and silver offerings of the people. For these people the Temple is God’s dwelling place on earth and the adornment of the Temple means that the people’s faith in God is strong. Can you imagine the shock on their faces when Jesus tells them that this Temple standing in all its glory and majesty is destined to be utterly destroyed leaving not one stone upon another? As a prophetic statement the destruction of the Temple was accomplished in AD 70 by the Roman army under the command of Titus. Jesus’ saying on the Temple is significant not only for the people of his time but for Christians of all times. We must remember that the people of Jerusalem who were building up and decorating the House of God were the same people who were at the same time planning to destroy the son of God. If they saw God in the adornments of stone and gold, why couldn’t they recognize Him in flesh and blood? When a temple becomes so superimposing that people are no longer able to see God except in it, the time for its destruction has come. How does one explain the fact that the flourishing of Christendom in the Middle Ages was associating with a culture in which human life and human rights were cheap? Think of the religious wars, the torturing and killing of freethinkers, the burning of suspected witches and the inhuman traffic in slaves. Could it be that the more people exalted the temple as the house of God the less they esteemed the human person made in the image of God? And yet, that should not be the case. Our faith demands that we recognise the presence of God in the human person as well as in the temple. St Paul reminds the Corinthians that they are as sacred as the temple; that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that you are Gods temple and that Gods Spirit dwells in you?” (1Cor 3:16). “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” 1Cor 6:19). The Christian who, like the disciples in today’s gospel, sees God in the grandeur of the temple but not in other people is only telling half of the story. The Christian who, like Josh in our story, sees God in the human person but not in the temple also tells only half of the story. Today’s gospel, therefore, challenges us to endeavour to see and serve God both in the temple when we gather for worship and in one another after the worship. Remember, we treat the other person with respect and dignity not because they deserve it by their own conduct but because God in them deserves it. This way, our lives both in church and out of church, become one continuous act of service to the same God who dwells in the human soul as well as in the temple. Taalomōnū atu ia ki he Ahotapu moe ofa atu...pehē foki ki hoku Palōkia moe teu oe Kofilimāsio a pongipongi na... — feeling blessed.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 15:18:03 +0000
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