You are a part of God's building
Think of the place you experience most as sacred. The place which, once you set foot there, reminds you that you are home in your heart. Maybe this is a special room in your house with designated candles and a makeshift altar. Or a favorite wooded path near a stream. There are several such places for me near where I live: the contemporary art museum MASS MoCA that I experience as a cathedral of creativity, and The Trustees property down the road. You have your own sacred places, I’m sure. These two places consistently connect me to a larger vision of beauty, wonder, and divine presence.
In Revelation 3:7–13, John of Patmos envisions Christ speaking to a sixth congregation in Philadelphia (not that city of brotherly love, but a city now known as Alaşehir in modern Turkey). As usual in Christ’s messages to the churches, the letter ends with a promise for those who remain steadfast in faith and nonviolent resistance. This week’s promise is for God to make such followers an integral part of God’s sacred space:
If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. —Revelation 3:12
In John’s time, like ours, God’s holy buildings are sometimes known for their exclusion rather than their radical welcome. Just consider how many denominations are still fighting over whether to treat LGBTQ+ people as full humans. In ancient Philadelphia, Jewish siblings in faith—followers of the new Messiah Jesus and those who do not follow him—are waging a battle of who belongs in sacred space. If John’s account is to be believed (and perhaps it should not be, since early Jewish Jesus-followers have a poor track record in blaming other Jews), Jewish synagogues were treating converts to Christ as second-class believers. Instead of brotherly love in Philadelphia, Revelation gives us an example of a sibling feud. God loved their group more, these people thought—they were the chosen people, after all. But the Christ of Revelation turns the invitation upside down, setting before the rejected Jesus-followers an open door rather than a closed one (3:8). It’s worth remembering, too, that Gentile (non-Jewish) converts would not have been able to step foot in the first century Jerusalem Temple. To bolster the point, a slab of stone from that building reads: “No foreigner is to enter within the balustrade and embankment around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death which follows.” (Quoted here, and with thanks to reader Kevin for this recommendation).
To those rejected and excluded, John and Christ say you are welcomed and loved in this sacred space. What’s more, you are a foundational part of it. A pillar.
There’s a much older Hebrew Bible verse that cements the outsiders’ central status in God’s sacred space and which is almost certainly in John/Christ’s mind: The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22). Contemporary social justice prophet William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, sees the Psalm’s verse referencing not only a sacred building but a moral vision for an entire society that prioritizes the needs of the most oppressed. He preaches:
“The rejected must lead the revival for justice. The cornerstone is that part of the foundation upon which the whole building stands. And the Psalmist says [referring to 118:22], speaking metaphorically of how we view human beings in society, that it is God’s intent that the stones that were once seen as unfit to be part of the architecture—the stones that were once thrown away or kept in the quarry—have now been called to be the most important stones. The rejected stones make the best cornerstones.”
In God’s architecture—whether of a flourishing human society or of a literal temple or church—the outsiders are the insiders and the central piece of the foundation. Their place solidifies the rightness of everyone else's place. How a community, city, church, or country treats those who are most oppressed tells a moral truth about the group; it’s why Christians and people of conscience declare Black Lives Matter, along with Trans, Indigenous, and immigrant lives. The extent to which their lives (speaking here as a white, cis-gender man) matter is the extent to which the society itself is just and whole.
John’s letter ultimately invites the readers to a contemplative and spacious awareness of God’s presence. The message to the Philadelphia church ends in a surprising place, considering the context of the rest of Revelation. If they hold fast to their faith in Christ under Rome’s imperialism and gods, God will make them a pillar in the temple of God. But just what does John mean by the temple here? The Jerusalem Temple itself has been destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D and what’s more is that Revelation 21:22 envisions a reality in which there will be no temple, because the temple is God’s presence itself.
What John, or the Cosmic Christ speaking through John, is getting at is that we—the hearers and readers of this strange book then and now—are participants in God. Not only are we pillars in the temple, stones in the sacred building; through God, we are that which makes the building sacred! This echoes the mystic’s claim that somehow we are “one” with God in our truest identity. Evidence of our systemic separateness is all around us and yet it does not diminish the essential fact of our inherent divinity. We awaken in Christ’s body, this translation of St. Symeon the New Theologian’s poem describes, and realize that our bodies are filled with Christ.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.
Apocalyptic culture corner: I’m still making my way through Octavia Butler’s Parable series. Hopefully finished soon!
Apocalyptic quote of the week: See The Bulwark newsletter for a deep-dive article into disastrously misguided apocalyptic movements: “The countdown is set, the events line up, the end times are near—you are all prepared for the apocalypse. And then you wait. And wait. And time passes, events go by, and the apocalypse doesn’t come. The teachers disappear, the scriptures are pondered, and the surviving believers are forced to deal with the inevitable question: What now?
This scenario has played out countless times—so many apocalyptic movements have come and gone over the centuries, be it the White Lotus Rebellion or the First Crusade, the Millerites or the Branch Davidians, ISIS or Aum Shinrikyo, or, in the United States and particularly relevant to the upcoming election, QAnon.”
Image credit: Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash