Day 15: 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
God created us to be part of a community. Each of us has a need for relationships with other people, whether friends or family. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God said, “I will make a helper suitable for him.” And so was born the first community — the family. Eventually, he collected an extended family together — Abraham’s descendants, the people of Israel — and called them His chosen people, his treasured possession (Deuteronomy 7:6). Finally, He joined the people of Israel who had not rejected Jesus with the Gentiles who believed in Jesus and called them “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Usually we usually refer to these people simply as “the Church.”
St. Paul uses two metaphors to illustrate how the church is to operate — as a building and as a body. As a building, each Christian is a brick in God’s temple. We are how God chooses to be present on earth. For anyone to know Jesus, he or she has to know a Christian in order to be told about Jesus. You might imagine someone just stumbling across a Bible and getting to know Jesus that way, but the story of Philip and the Ethiopian teaches us that a person needs a Christian for help understanding the Bible. Jesus promised, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 28:20)
As a body we each function as a different part with a special role. This reminds us that each one of us is necessary to the healthy functioning of the body. To stay away from the church is to hinder the church’s effectiveness on earth. It also reminds us that we need to take care of each other. When my arm is broken or my head aches, I give that part of the body special care and attention. In the same way, when a fellow member of the body of Christ is hurting in some way, we need to take care of that person so that he or she may return to health. That way the whole body can be healthy.
In this way we see that the Church is to be about both inreach and outreach. We need to encourage one another within the church, keeping one another healthy, and then work together to share the love of Christ with the people outside of the church so that they too can be a brick in the temple and a member of the body.
Currently, because of Covid, we are enduring a unique challenge. It is depressing to see the number of members able to attend on Sunday morning at a fraction of what is normal. We miss being with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet, we know that the head of this body is Christ. In Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). In Him the whole body “nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19). We are his treasured possession. He will heal and restore us.
Bible Readings: 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 2, 1 Peter 2:1-12
Immanuel Lutheran Church 