“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 him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”
—1 Corinthians 3:16-23
When I say the word church, I think I’ll get many different responses from you. For some of you, it might stir up memories of Sunday School and having a nice time with your friends; for some church might be a necessary but tiring burden every Sunday morning; for others it might be something negative, something that has caused a lot of pain in the past, and even today; and for others maybe at least it’ll make you think of the Renaissance and Martin Luther.
One Indian philosopher called Bara Dada was not so enthusiastic about the Church; he said “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but Christians are not like him.” Most people would probably agree that there are a lot of serious problems with the Church, this community of Christians, these people who say they follow Jesus but often do the exact opposite of what Jesus did.
How to fix all that? To be fair the Church has tried to fix it, but it often doesn’t seem enough: pastors and priests who abuse their power are sometimes removed, but many more are allowed to stay; the Church sometimes reaches out to people who feel shut out, but sometimes either it doesn’t reach out enough, or there are issues that just can’t be agreed on, and people still feel shut out.
So how to fix an unhealthy Church? Paul’s solution here is very different from ours. Here he is writing to the Corinthian Church, a big, rich, mega church in the ancient world that was full of rich, talented believers, who liked to listen to superstar preachers, and were often proud about following this or that preacher. This one might brag about following Paul, that one might brag about following Apollos, another one might brag about following Peter.
Paul doesn’t recommend that the Corinthians try to be a bit nicer and try to get along. He very firmly reminds them of what the Church is: you are the holy temple of God, he tells them, you are what Jesus paid for with his blood to create, and because of that you need to take it seriously. Paul reminds them that the Church is holy, that means it’s called to be different from the world, and that it doesn’t play by the rules of the world: it shouldn’t be split into rival cliques of followers, it shouldn’t be a place where the powerful can do whatever they want, it shouldn’t be a place with insiders and outsiders. It should be united in Jesus, and yes, following Jesus will seem weird and silly by the standards of the world, but that’s part of what it means to be holy — to be called by God to be set apart for a special purpose.
That’s the vision of the Church that we who are Christians need to remember. It’s not a place like the outside world, but neither is it just a social club where you expect people to be nice to each other, not a place to show off your talents because you couldn’t hack it outside church — Christians, remember that the Church is the body of Jesus, it’s what Jesus paid for with his blood, it will be the bride of Jesus at the end of all things. And Christians, the Church is you. You are the Church, that holy temple of God. Yes, that temple is battered and quite sick right now, yes it has done a lot of harm, but that’s no reason to give up on it. Because Jesus hasn’t, and he won’t.
Remember what the Church is, remember why the Church is so precious, remember that if you are a Christian, you are part of it too — live out that remembering, and with God’s help, the Church can be more like what Paul wants it to be here in this passage: nothing less than God’s holy temple, and a light for people who need it.
Remember, My Lord 
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