“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)

In my old neighborhood are several structures that used to be church buildings. One is now a photography studio (as best I can tell), one is a burned-out foundation, and one is just not in use anymore, looking more and more rundown every time I drive by. The church of my youth was falling down from lack of funds to care for it until another church took it over, and now it is beginning to thrive again. Hopefully, the members of those other churches are worshipping somewhere else, but what I think is that the older members died out and there was not a new generation of believers to continue. That is another issue, and not what I want to talk about today.

The church is not the building, although the Scriptures use a physical structure as a metaphor as in this passage: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:19-22)

The church is a “body of believers” with Christ as the cornerstone. In this and other passages, we learn that each believer is a temple in which God resides. ^“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Then together we unite to become the whole building, joined together to rise and become a holy temple in the Lord. However, if we don’t fit together and work together and support each other, we lose our connection to this holy institution and the opportunity to grow in Christ.  ^“They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.” (1 Corinthians 2:19).

Make no mistake, God’s house–the church–does not depend on us. It will succeed until such time as it becomes the bride of Christ to live and reign with him forever. However, we know that the kingdom is now, and as believers we desire to be a part of it now. We cannot do that by being a force of destruction. In nature, nothing is stable. It is either growing or rotting. That means that the structure is either growing stronger and more like Christ and more useful for the Kingdom, or it is rotting and becoming an eyesore like the buildings I mentioned above.

The question for you is this: do you want to flourish as part of the thriving body of Christ, or are you content to slowly disintegrate into a broken structure, because there is no in-between. The Lord characterizes a person who is not flourishing in terms of temperature, calling him “lukewarm.” And he detests a lukewarm Christian. “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” Revelation 3:16).

 We witnessed a beautiful thing last week. One of our staff was very transparent and vulnerable in sharing something very painful with us all and some decisions he had made that are life-changing. Although painful, it was a beautiful thing that he felt he could share it with his co-workers.  He took a risk to be transparent, which in itself is a growth experience. And so many of his co-workers reached out to him to encourage, support, and comfort him, some sharing their own painful stories and how they are overcoming even now. What a beautiful picture of the church, of how the body can strengthen and build/rebuild by coming together in support.

This is an example of unity, and this is pleasing to God.

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing”  1 Thessalonians 5:11.