we are the building blocks of the Temple Easter 5 2026

Peter gives us a challenge to live as the Blocks of the Temple, Jesus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good old Thomas always gets a bum rap. He's called Doubting Thomas from the time of the resurrection when he said, I want to put my hands in the side and then I'll believe to now. And Jesus has a response. I've been with you all this time. You still don't know? You haven't figured it out? You wonder if is he talking to Thomas or is he talking to us? We are here to celebrate the fifth Sunday of Easter. The fifth Sunday celebrating the calendar celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. It's the resurrection that we're celebrating. Forget the fifth Sunday, sixth Sunday, it doesn't matter. It's the resurrection that we're celebrating. And what is the resurrection but Jesus giving life by the Father? Given life by the Father from the tomb. And he comes back out of the tomb. And now he's saying, I want you to follow me to the Father. We look around in our world and we say, Yeah, I want to follow you. And I like to use Peter's references tonight from his gospel, his letters, I should say. And he's saying, just pretend that each of us is a major block of stone, metaphorically. That every one of us is important to build the community of the church and to build the body of Christ. And this goes back in ancient history to when God said, Behold, I'm laying a stone in Zion, which is the mount of the temple. So God is becoming present to his people in the temple, metaphorically using building blocks to build this temple. And the temple was indeed beautiful. It was knocked down once during a war and then rebuilt again. So it's regarded as a sacred place in Jewish history. And even around the wall of the city of Jerusalem, you could still see the temple in the distance. And it was on a mount. The mount was called Zion. That's why we hear Zion, a holy mountain, because that's where the temple was. But Jesus comes on the scene and he replaces the temple with the temple of his body. In the resurrection, everything changes. What was knocked down, what was crucified, what was mocked, is no longer dead. He has come back to us. The Father who laid the stone on the temple in Zion gives us the new stone, the new rock, Jesus. And Jesus invites us to go to the Father. You see, that's a constant invitation for us. That we're always being invited by Jesus to be part of the temple, God, to be part of it. We're invited every Sunday, we come to liturgy, every day that there's a liturgy. We're constantly being invited to be an active member of the body of Christ, metaphorically, to be a very strong stone in the community of the church. The church being the new temple. Jesus, the temple, who comes to us from the Father at the resurrection. Very important. All the stuff about being knocked down and thrown over and crucified, it's out of the way now. Jesus, the man, did that for us so we could embrace him as one of us. But Jesus God rose from all of that. The wounds were healed. The wounds were checked out in his hands and his side. And now he lives. So Thomas a little queasy on that, we heard on the night of Easter. And now as Jesus is preparing to take his leave, he says to you and to me, I want you with me. Awesome. It's a wonderful invitation. But we have time. We have the duration of our lives to live in order to live up to becoming each one of us, metaphorically, a stone in the temple, a stone in the body of Christ. And we're building blocks. Jesus remembers, he used it when he was talking about himself being the temple in John's Gospel, and he refers to the stone that the builders rejected, becoming the cornerstone. He was referring to himself. John knew that because when John wrote the gospel, Jesus had already resurrected from the dead. But when Jesus said that, he was in the temple's precincts. And they basically said, We're going to knock you down, we're going to get rid of you. You don't belong here. You're not who you think you are. And Jesus said, We all remember, destroy this temple. Now he's talking about himself, destroy this temple, and in three days I'll rebuild it. So he gave them foreknowledge of what his body would go through, and they saw the broken temple on the cross. And they saw the broken temple being placed into the tomb. But he came back. So Jesus is not a dead rock. Jesus is not a nice story about the past. Jesus comes to invite every one of us to be living stones, as Peter refers to. Living stones in his body. Now, the direction of the homilies during Easter are always positive, I think. Especially for me. Positive because it's Easter, it's a glorious time, it's a promising time. But don't forget the reality. In Jesus' lifetime, we know Judas. We know Satan existed. And in our lifetime, Satan might still be active. Excuse me. Satan is active in the world. And in the church. Deceiving. The Prince of Lies, he's called, deceiving us, contorting our imagination and our belief. And Peter refers to them as people who disobey the word and come to their own destiny of death, not physical death, spiritual death, eternal death, versus the eternal resurrection of Jesus. The scriptures teach us today that because it's Easter season, everything is not joyous. Should be, but everything is not joyous. There are still people in our families, the world, the church, that are deceiving, that are evil, that will corrupt the temple. However, through all of that, we're challenged through Peter's letter to remember who we are: a chosen race. So each one of us is a member of that chosen race. Each one of us is a member of the body of Christ. Each one of us is a metaphoric stone in the temple. But stones can fall apart. The binding, whether it's cement or mortar between stones, could wear away. And we, as stones in the body of Christ, can also wear away. So what do we need? We come before the Lord and announce the resurrection every day, and we make an affirmation of faith in the Lord, to ask him to strengthen us, to ask him to remind us as to who we are, to ask him to remind us that each one of us is a living member of the body of Christ, and that we are challenged to live that way. And the challenge is indeed the challenge. Jesus knew Judas, Satan knew Jesus and wanted Jesus. All of the apostles were tested and tempted. As far as we know, they gave their whole selves to their faith in Christ through martyrdom. We don't have to be martyrs right now. We might be someday to our faith. We don't have to be martyring our lives, but we have to be martyrs to the dirt, the sin, the negativity in our world. We have to get rid of all of that in order to be a strong royal priesthood. We are the building blocks of the church. Every one of us is necessary. And yet every one of us is not worthy. And those of us who are not worthy to be members of the body of Christ are called forth for penance, called forth for reconciliation, called forth for change. We come before the Lord every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist. And what do we say right before the communion? I'm not worthy. Lord, I'm not worthy. Yes, it's reiterating the centurion's promise to Jesus. But we can indeed say that. But as soon as we accept the fact that we are not worthy, we also have to accept the fact that he died for us and calls us to be worthy, calls us to be holy temples, calls us to be living members of the body, calls us to be a royal priesthood, a holy people. That's our goal. It's not easy, nor was the cross easy, but it's our call to be living members of the body of Christ, that we may live in Peter's words his own wonderful light, and that gives us hope, that gives us promise, and that gives us energy to leave and live in the world that He created for us.