Sunday’s Lectionary, the passage from 2 Corinthians… “5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The writer is using the tent/building metaphor to express the difference between our transitory life on earth and our eternal life in Christ. But it seems to me that sometimes we Christians care more about the metaphor than about the reality behind it: we build buildings, thinking these will last, and all the generations to come will worship here.
But buildings don’t last. And this generous legacy from earlier generations may feel like an unnecessary weight on the shoulders of the Christian community. If we put bricks and stones together to represent the eternal community of Christ’s people, what does it say when the roof starts to leak, or the building eventually decays and tumbles?
