Living as Temples of God
Sub Dn. Timothy Grace delivers a powerful sermon on the dignity and freedom of the human person, as shown by St. Paul and Christ in the scriptures. He explores how seeing ourselves and others as temples of God guides us in holiness and love.
Transcript
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the epistle and gospel readings today, we have as our theme the dignity and freedom of the human person. St. Paul makes this clear by saying that we are temples of the living God. Christ gives us his famous discourse from the Sermon on the Plain as recorded in the Gospel of Luke on loving those who don't deserve it. So, let's explore the connection between these two scriptural passages today to find out how to live as the scripture tells us as sons and daughters of God.
We start with the epistle first where St. Paul gives us a composite text from different books in the Old Testament—from Leviticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book of Samuel. In grouping these together into a cluster, he is telling us that now in the life in Christ, all these commands from the Old Testament are most urgent and most applicable now for the people of God. He says that we, as the people of God, are the temple of God.
Now, in using the word temple, he's not using the general name for the building. In Greek, the word is ‘naos,’ and this is the word for the Holy of Holies in the temple. This was the place where the high priest entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement to offer a sacrifice and burn incense for his own sins and that of the people. We see an equivalent of this in the sanctuary of the church behind the iconostasis, where only the clergy enter or those with a blessing, and where the sacrifice of Christ is ritually offered. It is the holiest place in the church.
This has massive implications for us on how we live our lives. If we are going to follow this idea that we are the sanctuary or the place where God dwells, St. Paul is saying that we as believers and followers of Christ are the most holy place where God wishes to dwell. This gives grounding and direction to our holy living.
How do we treat the sanctuary in the church space? We are very careful of how we behave. We keep it clean and orderly. Nothing is in there that shouldn't be, and we watch how we speak, act, and think. We are mindful of God, moving as it were in fear and trembling because God is there.
What we see in the life of the church is a constant process of internalizing what is external. For example, in something like a church building, church fathers and other commentators are constantly applying to our own inner world and life. The church building and the sanctuary specifically is the place where we are reminded of the essential fact that God wishes to dwell in us as sanctuaries.
So, let's explore this idea further. What would you not think about when you're in church? What would you stop yourself from thinking about because you are mindful of the presence of God in this place? Well, don't let such thoughts into the sanctuary of your mind other days of the week. What would you not do when you're in church because you are respectful of the holiness and sanctity of the place? Well, don't do those things either.
How do you treat people in church space? That should be how you treat people in the sanctuary of your body at times, and let the care you bring when you come to church guide how you behave for the rest of your life.
The reading gives us three commands regarding holiness. Let's unpack them further as we explore what this means to be temples of God.
"Separate," "Be different along the way of Christ." Throughout history, the people of God have been marked as different from the people around them. And when they went astray, the basic story of the Old Testament is when they started behaving like the people around them. Most specifically, they started to worship idols of the surrounding nations, and that's when their identity as people of God changed. For us, there is still a challenge to be separate, to not follow the idols of a modern consumer culture.
St. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:5 that idolatry is greed and covetousness. Check your heart to see what it longs to possess and see in what ways you need to be separate. Why be separate? Because God dwells in you like a temple, and there is no room for idols in the temple of the Lord.
God also tells us to touch nothing unclean. This means not entertaining anything sinful with our thoughts, intentions, and actions. How difficult this is, really, in an online world, with so many different spaces, temptations, and the mental and spiritual confusion that arises from such an accumulation of content constantly thrown at us. But let's ask the questions: as you surf the internet or use your phone, how clean are the things you touch? As you watch TV, how clean are the things you place before your eyes? How clean are the conversations you carry with other people? How clean are the thoughts that you dwell on? In a temple, there is to be nothing unclean.
The final command here is to perfect holiness, to keep at it, to practice it. None of us has flawless patience, perfect love, unassailable gentleness, a 100% rate of kindness, and immaculate humility. We need to acknowledge and accept that sometimes our efforts can be 20%, 50%, or 75% of what they could or should be. Just like we continue to improve and beautify our church buildings, making our temples more resplendent, so we should continue.
We even have a saint, St. Isaac the Syrian, who says something as scandalous as this in his ascetical homily number four. He says, "Love stillness above providing for the world's starving and the conversion of the multitude of heathen to the worship of God. It is better for you to free yourself from the shackles of sin than to free slaves from their slavery. It is more profitable for you to attend to the deadness of your soul due to the passions than it is to resurrect the dead." It’s a hard word, but reflecting on this passage provides a clue.
Saphron wrote, meditating on this very passage: "Repentance and the silence of the anchorite is a way to knowledge of God and life in him. This is just now so rare in the world but is the most important thing of all. The loss of true knowledge of God given to us by Christ and the Holy Spirit would irreparably damage the world."
The loss of real knowledge of God that comes to us through holiness would damage the whole world irreparably, and then it wouldn't matter if you were a slave or hungry if the presence of God was not there. The whole world would be damaged irreparably.
God walks among the people, a holy people committed to repentance. Us being temples of God is good for us and good for the world around us. That's why we place such a high value on it. Here we begin to see how attending to holiness is an act of love towards others. This is where we turn to the gospel—having God walk with us and fill us, enabling us to show the love that is even shown to enemies, a love impossible from a human perspective.
Considering ourselves as temples doesn't only relate to how we view ourselves in relation to God, but also how we relate to other people. If we are meant to see ourselves as temples in which God wishes to dwell, then so is every other person. That difficult family member, an impossible coworker, even those with differing political views or interests, they all have the destiny to be temples of the living God.
Romanian Elder Papouklau, enduring communist forces in the 20th century underlined this understanding through his writings. He said, "Good people help you towards salvation, but evildoers help you even more. Suffer them without causing them trouble. All the ages have been filled with enemies, but the enemies of this age have filled heaven with saints."
He used to call the guards in his prison "brothers," which offended his fellow prisoners who were being tortured. They said, "You're calling them brothers, they're like devils." He replied, "They are made in the same image as we are. They are still our brothers in the Lord. The enemy you cannot forgive is like a wild animal you're carrying on your back. The condemned one is not your enemy but you, becoming the slave of your personal resentments. The cure takes only a moment: shake the wild beast off your back and you'll feel immediately light and free." He could have such a point of view because he saw even the guards who were beating him as temples of the living God.
His victory was unlocked there because if you can love your enemies in those conditions, who can touch you? You are free. You have achieved true freedom.
Living as temples of God means that our lives are marked by two things: holiness and love. St. James summarizes this beautifully in his epistle at the end of chapter 2 by saying that pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
Through these actions, we show ourselves to be children of God. Through these, we find true dignity and freedom. Love and holiness have a close symbiotic relationship. They are not in opposition. The more we work on our passions, the more we build our capacity for love. The more we exercise love, the more holy we become.
Lose your western thinking of holiness as merely a moral command. Holiness is the essential inner frame upon which God weaves the threads of his presence that preserves and blesses all creation.
Lose your conception of loving enemies as a pie-in-the-sky ideal impossible to carry out. Instead, see it as the desire of the Father for you to see all people as temples of God where he wishes to dwell, and the very command by which you can be free of all hatred and resentment.
May God help us all to be truly his sons and daughters in these ways. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
