Summary: Faithful people are the living stones of the church today, the physical presence of our risen Lord. When we look to them, we see the face of Christ. When we serve the least of our brothers and sisters, we are really serving Jesus.
In the year 313, the emperor Constantine made a world-changing declaration. He said that Christians should have the freedom to practice their religion in the Roman Empire. Soon after, a basilica was built in Rome, a church building with special significance. This church, known as the Basilica of St. John Lateran, became the cathedral of the diocese of Rome and the official seat of the pope.
This church was dedicated in the year 324 by Pope Sylvester, and it became the place where everyone was baptized in ancient Rome. The basilica became known as the "mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world." Every November, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the dedication of this church, the Lateran Basilica.
On this day in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said that church buildings are important because they are the places where the community gathers to praise God. But he also said that God desires "to build a spiritual temple in the world, a community that worships him in spirit and truth." Each of us is to become a "house of God," a living temple of his love. Buildings such as the Lateran Basilica are temples of stones, symbols of the living church.1
The apostle Peter offered a similar understanding in his first letter to the followers of Christ in Asia Minor. He said that Jesus himself was a "living stone ... rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight." He also said that we, as followers of Christ, are "living stones ... built into a spiritual house."2 Church buildings are certainly significant, but not nearly as important as the people who make up the various parts of the body of Christ. We are nothing less than the building blocks of the universal Christian church.
Early in his ministry, Jesus visits another impressive stone structure: The temple in Jerusalem. John tells us that the "Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." Passover was one of the greatest of the Jewish festivals, and it was an occasion for Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover supper.
The timing of this visit is important to note. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus makes this visit at the end of his ministry, during what we call Holy Week. But here in John, it happens at the beginning. Using an image from building construction, you might say that this visit is a cornerstone of the ministry of Jesus. For John, it is one of the first building blocks that is put in place. For Matthew, Mark and Luke, on the other hand, this visit is a capstone, one of the final stones to be added to the structure.
What happens in this cornerstone visit is the cleansing of the temple. When Jesus entered the temple complex, "he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables." He may have found them in the outer court, the court of the gentiles, where the selling of sacrificial animals took place. This market was intended to help people who had been on a lengthy pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and who needed a convenient place to buy their sacrifices. The money changers were people who exchanged foreign money for a fee.
When he encountered this market, Jesus became furious. "Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the money changers' coins and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, 'Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!'" Jesus had a violent reaction to what was being done in the temple complex, because he had a passion for maintaining true worship in the temple. When the disciples saw this, they remembered the words of the psalm, "It is zeal for your house that has consumed me."3 True worship was one of the cornerstones of the ministry of Jesus.
Andrew Ziminski is a stonemason and conservator of old churches in the United Kingdom. Having worked on some of the greatest cathedrals and churches in Britain, he has a deep love for the various features of church buildings. In a book called Church Going, he describes the porch of a church, the room in front of the building's main entrance. He says that porches are "spaces that manage the transition from the outside world of the churchyard to the sanctity of the interior." The goal of a porch is to be an inviting space that draws people inside. In addition, porches have had a role in worship over the years: "At a baptism," he says, "the priest would receive the infant, family and sponsors at the porch, and the service would begin there."4
You might say that Jesus did his cleansing at the porch of the temple. He drove out the animals, the sellers and the money changers from the temple's place of transition, the space between the chaos of the outside world and the holiness of the temple interior. He wanted the court of the gentiles to be an inviting place that drew people into God's sacred space. Jesus made clear that the temple was for prayer, not for profit. Prayer was one of the building blocks of his ministry and mission.
We need to maintain this state of mind whenever we gather for worship. Being "a house of prayer for all peoples"5 is more important than sanctuary architecture, musical styles or audiovisual systems. A church can have all kinds of sights and sounds, but what really matters is that it is a place of prayer instead of commerce. Worship should always be focused on bringing people into the presence of God, in a way that fills them up instead of draining them. A person should always feel better at the end of a service of worship than they did at the beginning.
After Jesus cleansed the temple, the Jews asked him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" The word "sign" is very important in the gospel of John. The first of Jesus' signs was the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, a sign that "revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him."6 John is the only gospel-writer who "uses the language of 'signs' to describe Jesus' miracles," says Bible professor Emerson B. Powery. For this particular gospel, signs reveal "something key about Jesus's identity" and "may lead to an attraction to the Jesus movement."7 Signs were additional building blocks of the ministry and mission of Jesus.
The Jews asked Jesus for a sign, and he responded in a way that reveals something key about his identity. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," Jesus answered them. This confused the Jews, who said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" Not even a modern construction company, with cranes and heavy equipment, could put together a destroyed temple in three short days.
But John tells us that Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body. That temple was not an impressive stone structure but was the body of Jesus. It is in the flesh and blood of Jesus that God is most fully present. Although the meaning of these words was not clear in the moment, John says that after Jesus "was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken." This sign said something key about Jesus, and it drew people to Christian belief. John goes on to say that when Jesus "was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing."8
When looking at the stones of any church, including the Basilica of St. John Lateran, we need to remember that the building blocks of our faith are found in living stones. These stones include Jesus, described by Peter as a "cornerstone chosen and precious."9 They also include each of us, said by Paul to be "members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone."10
As we each play our role as building blocks in the house of God, let us look for the presence of the living Christ in the people around us, especially in the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters. One of the reasons that Jesus cleansed the temple was that he was angry at the money changers and the merchants who were taking advantage of poor pilgrims to the temple.
Concern for the poor has always been a hallmark of Christian life, and it shows up in the design of church buildings. Stonemason Ziminski points out that poor boxes became numerous in the seventeenth century, and they often bear the legend "REMEMBER THE POOR." He says that the one at Dore Abbey is even more persuasive, with an inscription that reads, "If ye cast your eyes away from the poor, God will in return cast their eyes away from ye at a later day."11
Let us look not at the impressive stones of church buildings, but instead at the living stones that are all around us in the community of faith. These people are the building blocks of the church today, the physical presence of our risen Lord Jesus. When we look at them, we see the face of Christ. When we serve the least of our brothers and sisters, we are really serving Jesus.