I grew up watching the Star Trek adventures of Captains Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and Sisko. As a kid, the voyages in the ‘final frontier’, the technology far beyond anything we currently have, and the unique characters often sparked awe and wonder in me. This was especially true for the famous holodecks. Holodecks were technologically advanced rooms that create interactive and lifelike holographic experiences. They were, in essence, places where stories came to life. Want to live like a pirate in the 1500s? Storm the fortress with the king’s cavalry? Relax on a beachside or solve a mystery? Any number of stories could be experienced and anyone who entered a holodeck could live into those stories.
In a sense, how we understand our world, the people around us, God, and ourselves is not unlike a story. From the opening pages of our lives to its closing chapters, we are confronted by plots and setting, characters and meaning, direction and outcome. Narratives fill our lives. Interestingly enough, when one person wants to get to know another person, the question they often ask is, “So what’s your story?” Each of us has and are living a story.
When we look to the scriptures, we discover God’s grand story. It is a story filled with rich love and deep community. It is a story that reveals who God is and who we are in him. It’s a story that tells of a God who would go to any length, even giving his very life, to overcome the barriers between us. It’s a story of loving God and neighbor. It is the story we all share. Yet, the busyness of our lives, competing narratives, our own brokenness, and the pervasive sin in our world can cause us to lose the plot. Like someone who looks at their face in a mirror and, after looking at themselves, goes away and forgets what they look like,” we look into the story of God and forget. We begin to live out alternative stories that are harmful or not in keeping with who we are in Christ. We need to be continually reminded of our story.
If we turn our attention back in time to first century Israel, we discover that the ancient temples were not unlike a holodeck. To enter the temple would not only recall one’s story of what God has done, but to ‘act out’ liturgical and ritual practices in relation to that story. Biblical scholar and teacher, Crispin Fletcher-Louis, highlights the idea of the temple’s reorientation function:
“[The] temple [was] organized to reflect Israel’s understanding of the structure of the cosmos, and the worship and rituals of the [followers] actualize[d] and guarantee[d] the God-intended order and stability of creation…. The symbolism of their place, attire, and activities is inseparable from the belief that their temples are maps of the cosmos.”
To say that in simplified terms, temples functioned as a type of interactive map, a holodeck, in which the people of Israel not only experienced God’s presence, but understood and lived into their story as God’s people. The temple, then, had a centering effect in that the grand story of God was constantly being recalled and held in the focus of its participants. Going to the temple, experiencing worship and joining in the liturgy and ritual practices reminded the people of God of their story. It was like looking into the mirror once again and remembering our faces.
Our understanding of ‘temple’ has changed over time. As the Apostle Paul explains in his letters to the churches in Corinth and Ephesus,
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”
“So now you are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household. As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord. Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.”
Far from a place of brick and mortar, Paul reveals that the people of God are the new temple. And, like the temple of old, when we enter into fellowship with one another, we experience God’s presence and are reminded of his grand story. The church community, then, should have a centering effect in that the grand story of God is constantly being recalled and held in the focus it’s people. We are to practice together what it means to be followers of Jesus. When we worship with one another, gather around tables, share meals, hang out in coffee shops or our homes, pray together, dig into scripture, and the list goes on, we look into the mirror and find ourselves once again.