Year A: Epiphany VII
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40
Preached at The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.[1]

Paul reminds us today that we are temples. We are God’s people.  This is why I keep talking about the sacred spaces of our hearts being such fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to descend like a dove and fill us with as much love as we can open ourselves up to receiving. Paul’s words and our God’s unfailing presence are much-needed comfort for us in a world of rapid change, politics charged on multiple fronts, and many temptations to create division between ourselves and other humans on a daily basis.

Last week, I talked to you all a bit about the context of Paul’s letter to the still-forming Church in Corinth – a community Paul had helped to found but was not called to stay with. Last week, we heard Paul address the tension and conflict stirring within the community of Corinthians. This week, Paul builds on the importance of our unity as God’s people to remind and to teach the Corinthians what they were – and what we are still – called to build together.  While, like any skilled Lego Master Building, what we each are called to build will differ, we have a common foundation: that foundation is Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to have a foundation in Jesus Christ? Well, this week, we hear a lot about the Law. The passage we said/sang from Psalm 119 is all about praying to keep God’s law and to incline our hearts towards God’s desires for us and God’s law. Before I entered seminary, I didn’t have much use for the Psalms, but I’ve come to really, deeply, appreciate them. The beauty I found in today’s Psalm is that call for order. As someone who enjoys planning, I can relate to what the Psalmist calls for today: the prayer to God to tell me what to do, to give me rules so that I can follow them and maybe feel more in control in a chaotic world. In this plea, I find myself feeling more grateful than ever for the apostles’ teaching and fellowship – for our fellowship – figuring out how to keep our hearts open together.

Our Old Testament reading takes us back to Leviticus, a challenging, stern, and at times rather funny book, which in today’s passage covers several statements of law, including one that takes us again back to our discussion last week about how we orient our hearts. As God’s people, we can’t afford to let any hate for our human kin into our hearts, no matter how tempted we are in these days of division. Instead, we’re called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, regardless of whether or not our neighbor loves us. Even the gospel passage from Matthew includes a list of decrees, but again, notice what they have in common? In the midst of all of this talk about keeping the Law, minding facts we learn with our heads, we are also hearing about love and about what we should be doing with our hearts: loving God, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, loving even when it goes against what is happening around us, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, just as we promise in our baptism. Just as we work together to uphold with fellowship modeled after the apostles.

After declaring our belief in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed; the first promise we make in our baptismal covenant is that we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread – our communion in communion – and in the prayers. That fellowship is especially important; it seals us together whether we’re gathering together around a table to break bread for a parish dinner or in Holy Communion. This fellowship is our commitment to working together and to loving together to live into these promises we make in our baptism, to being Christ to each other on good days and bad, to hold each other up, to love each other as best we can and in doing so proclaim by both word and deed – love – the Good News of God in Christ. It happens everywhere from adult study to those late-night conversations with our nearest and dearest where we ask each other “Is this the right thing to do? Is this the right risk, the right leap? What path is the most right? How can I be the most loving?”

When the chaotic world is too sad and too complicated. When the rules we’re trying to follow seem too many to remember or become too overwhelming. When we’re in a situation where the promises we make in our baptism are challenging us and we don’t know how to begin seeking and serving Christ or what it means in this particular instance to strive for justice and peace among all people. This is when we use the love to tie it all together. This is when we remember that the foundation we have in Jesus Christ is held together in love: love for each other, love for baby Julian, love for our family and friends, love for strangers, love for enemies. The best way we can live into our promise to respect the dignity of every human being is to be love in a world that so desperately needs it. That needs Christ and the Christ in each and every one of us. Part of what makes our baptism so beautiful is that it’s not just about making these promises for the newly baptized. In Julian’s baptism, we also renew these promises for ourselves and in doing so, we promise to help Julian and to help each other do our best to be the love in a world that so desperately needs it. From holding a door to lending an ear to saying a prayer. From offering our neighbor a coat from Betty’s Basement or a meal at Neighbors Feeding Neighbors. Today, Paul teaches us that a skilled master builder needs a foundation in Jesus Christ and all the laws and promises that make that up are cemented together in love.

In our Baptismal covenant, we find what it means to be a faith community, cemented together in love – and love isn’t just a noun. Love is a verb, something we do, an action in a world that needs it. Acting in love is what makes us alive, living as the living temples that Paul teaches us we are called to be with a firm foundation in Jesus Christ. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”  This is a question to the community as a whole, the entire Christian church in Corinth.  To suggest that God dwells among the gathered community was radical in first-century Corinth, because previously God was understood to dwell in the temple in Jerusalem. But God dwells here, too. In this building and in each of us and we are charged with carrying God and the Good News of Jesus Christ out into the world, whole in loving each other as our heavenly father is whole in loving us

[1] 1 Corinthians 3:16-17