THE TEMPLE IS WITHIN
A short story by Jennie Jackson - view in PDF form Here
On
her drive Jaime had been wondering why services often seemed so dull. Perhaps
the day’s silver-gray sunless sky affected her mood, but she couldn’t get her
thoughts past the fact that soon she’d be seated, for an hour, in a church pew.
It seemed to her, if you subtract a few prayers, songs and scriptures, the remaining activity
did not seem to qualify as adoring God. And wasn’t worship supposed to be in
“spirit and truth?” She puzzled over these things as her car pulled into a
vacant parking space on the lot of First Methodist. With her thoughts so full,
she hadn’t noticed something was gravely different. And now, as she stepped
from her car this Sunday morning, the details before her became reality.
There was no building. She glanced about at the familiar town surroundings to make sure she had not driven to the wrong parking area. After all, her mind had been on other things. The few houses that had withstood an expanding downtown of recent years were still there including a row of brick duplexes across the street. On the other side, the hardware store still flashed the weekly specials across its rusty sign.
No, she was in the right place. Everything was as it should be except, there was no church building. With its absence Jaime was able to look directly across the newly mowed lawn through the stand of hundred-year-old oaks to see that the Episcopal Church was gone as well. This made her turn in a 360 survey. The Presbyterian Church no longer stood beyond the Hardware, and the Baptist steeple no longer rose above the family YMCA. And just barely a block away, she affirmed the Catholic Church and statue were missing.
What she did see instead was a few hundred people standing in their respective parking lots or lining the streets, all repeating the same survey, their faces upturned as if awaiting the arrival of some extraterrestrial ship. They were lost in the shock of disappearances. Perhaps this kept them from banding together at first, but now there seemed to be a slow movement.
Jaime’s first thought was to get in her car and leave the scene, but people were talking now, and she wanted to hear if anyone else knew more about what was going on. She decided to join the forming crowds. It reminded her of Palm Sundays ever since she could remember, spent walking with members of other congregations who, regardless of denomination, joined in the effort to remember the famous “Ride into Jerusalem.” Only now, as parents guardedly gripped their children’s arms, there were no cheerful skips and waving palms. Yet it did seem the crowd was moving in the same direction. They were headed to the square.
“. . . offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” a single voice carried from a distance, “this is your true and proper worship . . .” but Jaime could barely make out the speaker’s next few words — something about not conforming to the patterns of this world — over the footsteps and ensuing conversations surrounding her.
There was no building. She glanced about at the familiar town surroundings to make sure she had not driven to the wrong parking area. After all, her mind had been on other things. The few houses that had withstood an expanding downtown of recent years were still there including a row of brick duplexes across the street. On the other side, the hardware store still flashed the weekly specials across its rusty sign.
No, she was in the right place. Everything was as it should be except, there was no church building. With its absence Jaime was able to look directly across the newly mowed lawn through the stand of hundred-year-old oaks to see that the Episcopal Church was gone as well. This made her turn in a 360 survey. The Presbyterian Church no longer stood beyond the Hardware, and the Baptist steeple no longer rose above the family YMCA. And just barely a block away, she affirmed the Catholic Church and statue were missing.
What she did see instead was a few hundred people standing in their respective parking lots or lining the streets, all repeating the same survey, their faces upturned as if awaiting the arrival of some extraterrestrial ship. They were lost in the shock of disappearances. Perhaps this kept them from banding together at first, but now there seemed to be a slow movement.
Jaime’s first thought was to get in her car and leave the scene, but people were talking now, and she wanted to hear if anyone else knew more about what was going on. She decided to join the forming crowds. It reminded her of Palm Sundays ever since she could remember, spent walking with members of other congregations who, regardless of denomination, joined in the effort to remember the famous “Ride into Jerusalem.” Only now, as parents guardedly gripped their children’s arms, there were no cheerful skips and waving palms. Yet it did seem the crowd was moving in the same direction. They were headed to the square.
“. . . offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” a single voice carried from a distance, “this is your true and proper worship . . .” but Jaime could barely make out the speaker’s next few words — something about not conforming to the patterns of this world — over the footsteps and ensuing conversations surrounding her.
“What has gone
wrong?” she heard the elderly gentleman in front of her murmuring.
“It could be a
terrorist event!” his wife anxiously exclaimed.
“But there seems to be no other damage, no injuries. Only missing church buildings.”
“I tell you what . . .”
Jaime had to step aside quickly as a fashionable lady pushed forward to join the old couple in conversation.
Inhaling in short puffs to compensate her accelerated pace, the woman continued. “It’s the Rapture! I knew it when I awoke this morning. Even though it’s late October, it has never been this cold this early.”
Jaime could not help but register the irony that the congregations appeared present and accounted for.
As they neared the square, it had begun to snow lightly. No cars passed and gradually, the people’s speech idled as well. All except the singular speaker. Jaime was too far away to observe him directly so she let the sound of his voice, which rose louder now, blend with the soft, white flakes falling past the gray-blue stones of the old courthouse.
“. . . share with the Lord’s people who are in need,” she heard him say as she decided to step away from the crowd and make her way slowly across the street.
She felt the snow touch her hair and face, glad for its coolness, and watched it settle, coming faster now, on her shoulders and outstretched hands. Approaching the fanned entrance of a corner building, she lowered herself to rest on its chipped brick stairs and leaned back to watch the powder build on the worn pavement below.
This is all too absurd, she thought. Yet even so, the reality of the morning lay before her. Two things burrowed through her mind: the fact she had almost “wished” church to be gone during her drive downtown, and that despite their loss, people still gathered and someone still preached. In the new covenant God is dwelling in us, she contemplated, not the temple, not the palace, not the local churches. She was secretly glad they were gone. God may have been part of Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, the once a year mission project or twice a year meals collecting sales for causes—but what of forming relationships? of loving those who suffer? of bringing them into the fellowship? Maybe without the buildings there would be fewer barriers, maybe then it would be easier to see the burdens of others.
“But there seems to be no other damage, no injuries. Only missing church buildings.”
“I tell you what . . .”
Jaime had to step aside quickly as a fashionable lady pushed forward to join the old couple in conversation.
Inhaling in short puffs to compensate her accelerated pace, the woman continued. “It’s the Rapture! I knew it when I awoke this morning. Even though it’s late October, it has never been this cold this early.”
Jaime could not help but register the irony that the congregations appeared present and accounted for.
As they neared the square, it had begun to snow lightly. No cars passed and gradually, the people’s speech idled as well. All except the singular speaker. Jaime was too far away to observe him directly so she let the sound of his voice, which rose louder now, blend with the soft, white flakes falling past the gray-blue stones of the old courthouse.
“. . . share with the Lord’s people who are in need,” she heard him say as she decided to step away from the crowd and make her way slowly across the street.
She felt the snow touch her hair and face, glad for its coolness, and watched it settle, coming faster now, on her shoulders and outstretched hands. Approaching the fanned entrance of a corner building, she lowered herself to rest on its chipped brick stairs and leaned back to watch the powder build on the worn pavement below.
This is all too absurd, she thought. Yet even so, the reality of the morning lay before her. Two things burrowed through her mind: the fact she had almost “wished” church to be gone during her drive downtown, and that despite their loss, people still gathered and someone still preached. In the new covenant God is dwelling in us, she contemplated, not the temple, not the palace, not the local churches. She was secretly glad they were gone. God may have been part of Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, the once a year mission project or twice a year meals collecting sales for causes—but what of forming relationships? of loving those who suffer? of bringing them into the fellowship? Maybe without the buildings there would be fewer barriers, maybe then it would be easier to see the burdens of others.
Jaime
continued to sit and reflect further on these things at length until her shoes
were able to sweep
a small mound of snow together as she stretched out her legs bouncing them to
regain warmth. With cold hands she reached to pull the ends of her scarf close
around her face. Turning against the whipping breeze, she saw a man.
He
stood at the side of the building looking down at her. “What do you make of this day?” he asked.
Glancing
over at him, she wished she didn’t have to speak to this stranger. Have you been here long? she wondered
but didn’t say, though he seemed respectable enough.
“I
was just making my way to Our Kitchen,” he continued and gestured to the side of
the building. “Do you need to get out of the weather?”
“Here?”
she managed.
Jaime
had never noticed any activity at this building. The front entrance behind her
showed no signs of current business; the glass of its windows and door was
still draped in the same burgundy-wine cloth left by its previous owners.
He
nodded, “Doesn’t look like much, but it serves a purpose.”
She
was not about to follow a strange man into an abandoned building. “Actually, I was going to head back to my
car,” she said brushing the flakes from one sleeve, then the other.
“We
eat here regularly,” he offered. “They never use the front entrance.”
As she pulled herself up from the stoop, the
building’s side door came into view advertising in white letters: “Our
Kitchen.” Chilled by weather and thought, she followed him around the corner
and decided to go in.
A
simple, unremarkable series of four or five wooden tables and sets of chairs
filled the room’s expanse, a single lit candle rested on each. The room’s other
lighting hung low and beamed warm. A young woman and man pronounced welcomes and
before disappearing, promised it would only be a minute. With no sign of menus
or other patrons Jaime thought this could be a family’s own home if it weren’t
for the multiple tables and downtown location. She took a seat.
“I’m
Andrew,” the man who had invited her in said offering his hand before pulling
his arms from his jacket. Jaime shifted in her chair then shook his hand. She introduced
herself and unzipped her coat.
Food
was already being served – a rich bowl of soup, half an apple and homemade
bread. She was hungry and didn’t bring up the fact that she hadn’t even ordered
anything. “So you come here on Sundays?” she asked.
“Pretty much. And
some during the week in the summer.”
* * * * *
* * * * *
“So it’s true, isn’t it?” Shannon asked her friend, Jaime, speaking loudly enough for her phone to pick up her voice as the car cornered a turn at the last minute.
“There’s not a church building standing for hundreds of miles, maybe more,” Jaime responded.
“Well, what is the town doing about it?”
“There’s the usual bickering and blaming, but no specific evidence produced. Some folks have found space in schools or malls to meet while others are sticking closer to home holding small services. They’ve had to split into so many groups, and believe it or not, some have already started rebuilding.”
“What do you think really happened?” Shannon asked, just a few blocks now from the coffee shop where she was meeting Jaime.
“I don’t know. Maybe God just got fed up.”
“With what exactly? What would make it worth snatching hundreds of churches off the face of the earth?”
“Speaking of . . .” Jaime remembered the photos her friend had taken and posted online. They were part of a series depicting a newly completed cathedral in the Midwest. It was magnificent with walls and arches stretching to unfold a picture story rendered in colored tiles . . . “I wonder, what about that gorgeous cathedral you photographed?”
“The building is gone! After all that time—it took decades to build—and all that money. It vanished.”
“But you have your photos.”
“Umm,” Shannon paused before clarifying, “not really. They show no evidence a cathedral was ever on the grounds. Just manicured lawns and the city bustling around the perimeter. I have all the frames, even checked the website. No cathedral.”
Jaime felt for her friend. She had poured a lot of effort into that photo series capturing just the right symbolic play of light across the cathedral’s architecture and artwork. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” Shannon’s car now edged along the curb in front of the coffee shop. “I’ll see you in a minute. Bye for now. Oh . . . I’m bringing you a surprise.”
Enough
time had passed since Jaime had been downtown for her to feel comfortable there
again. Now she sat waiting for her friend, spiced drink in hand, just a few
doors from the stoop where she rested that snowy Sunday. They hadn’t had a
chance to get together in weeks, and the first topic of discussion would be obvious.
Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to wait much longer to compare notes; her friend
had just arrived and was in line at the counter, only one gentleman in front of
her.
Shannon waited her turn to order, feeling excited because
she had arranged without Jaime knowing for the now infamous courthouse speaker
to meet with them. It had been no easy matter and had taken the better part of
two weeks to track him down. She had
contacted leaders of local churches . . . only to find he was simply a school
teacher from one of the neighboring towns. Even this she learned by accident
while browsing the fall harvest at the farmer’s market.
She had bent low to select the best-shaped pumpkin for the
front walk of her home, smiling over the conversation of two old farmers. They
thought they stood out of the hearing of Saturday shoppers, but Shannon made an
effort to appear to be having more than the usual trouble deciding on which
pumpkin would satisfy so the gentlemen would continue.
“. . . what made Andrew climb those courthouse steps, I
guess we’ll never know. Who would have thought he’d be the speech-giving type.”
“Well, after all, he is a teacher. They stand and perform
for an audience every day.”
“Yeah, but at church he hardly speaks a public word. Still,
he’s likable enough, and little Ms. Richards sure lights up every time he slides
into the pew beside her. I know she has
a hug for everyone, but they always seemed to be deep in conversation.”
“Well, he wasn’t exactly silent then.”
“No. It’s just; I guess no one would have taken him for a
public orator.”
“Wonder what got into him?”
And that’s exactly what Shannon wanted to ask him herself. Waiting
for the barista to add whipped cream to her drink, she had noticed across the
room two other chairs forming a little nook around the coffee table where Jaime had settled. Perfect.
Shannon didn’t think her friend would mind his tagging along, especially when she finds out
who he is.
Jaime smiled as Shannon slid into a chair, but a man also
sat down right in their group. I knew I
should have picked a spot off to the side with just a couple of seats, Jaime
thought to herself.
“Hello!” the man with Shannon said holding his hand out to Jaime.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here.”
“No. Well I, we—“was
he with her? Shannon knew Jaime
wouldn’t like adding a stranger to their too infrequent get-togethers, but this
guy did look a little familiar.
“Jaime, this is Andrew,” Shannon introduced pulling her easy
chair closer to the table. “He’s the man who was speaking in the square that Sunday.”
“Oh?” Jaime looked closely. “Wait . . . you’re the guy . . .
I met while it was snowing.”
Andrew was nodding his head and stirring his hand to their
little group “Curious how things go. How have you been?”
Shannon just stared.
“Okay, I guess,” Jaime answered. “But I didn’t meet you in
the square.”
“Well I stopped that day in the square when I realized what
had happened. See, I had been on my way to Our Kitchen when—“
Jaime interrupted, “that’s where you invited me to eat that
day.”
Shannon’s eyes widened and eyebrows rose over the edge of
her sweet coffee while Andrew continued.
“I circled the square several times trying to process the scene—the
crowds, the empty church lots. A passage I had just read from ROMANS the night
before came to mind. When people started gathering, it occurred to me the
passage could be talking about churches. They just looked so bewildered. So I
parked my car, grabbed my Bible, and went to the courthouse steps.”
“Emm” was all Shannon said then she was up moving along the
shop windows. She reached for a stack of books propped in the corner of the
windowsill, selected one and brought it back to the table. “What verses?” was
all she said.
Andrew watched her leaning over and flipping pages, chuckled
at her enthusiasm then stated, “ROMANS 12.”
As Jaime looked past Shannon toward the windows, she spotted
a tent-folded card displayed on one of the tables that said: “Come visit and
enjoy free lunch at Our Kitchen” and then, in bright letters was another offer:
“Join us again for free coffee – Thursday nights featuring the ALIVE mission
and praise band.” Turning back to her
friend she asked, “How did you know a Bible was over there?”
“People have prayer groups here off and on through the
week,” Shannon answered without looking up as she brushed her hands across the pages to
smooth them to the correct open position. “Oh, this part is good!” she said
giving Jaime a look that meant, I can’t believe
you two had already met.
“Well, read it!” Jaime sounded impatient.
Shannon began, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test
and approve what God’s will is . . . “
Jaime and Andrew looked at each other for a moment then he
broke in, “Go on, and skip ahead to the list.”
“Okay,” Shannon traced the page and began again. “Love must
be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another
in love,” she glanced up then continued, “Honor one another above yourselves.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be
joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the
Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute
you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those
who mourn. Live in harmony with one another.” She paused to consider the list
giving Jaime time to interject—
“Isn’t that what churches were supposed to do?”
Andrew responded, “Yes, but it just struck me that day how following
this list is offering “our bodies as living sacrifices” which the scripture
says is our “true and proper worship.” It just seemed like we’d be okay without
the buildings.”
“Because the temple is within,” added Jaime.
“Yes.”
“And that could
make it easier to carry out—“
With cup in hand for a refill Shannon stood up, “If only!”
Bible
quotations – from the New International Version
