READ 1 Corinthians 3:16–17
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
MEDITATE
At Antioch, whose story we reflected on yesterday, schism threatened to rupture the church. A nifty solution would have been to say, “Let’s just have a Jewish church and a Gentile church! The Jewish church worships at 8:30 AM, followed by coffee hour, and the Gentile church worships at 10:00 AM.” Nope. No way. Not at Antioch—or Jerusalem, for that matter. Thank God for that! The early church avoided the path to schism.
Of course, if there was something to do wrong, the church in Corinth, located in a port city in Greece, got it wrong. The church at Corinth has splintered, Paul learns. It’s wracked by schisms rooted in devotion to different leaders in the church—with various allegiances to Paul, Apollos, Peter, even Jesus! Early in his letter, Paul launches an attack on these cliques, confronting the problem of a church divided: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” The you in this question is plural and should be translated by the southern expression y’all. “Don’t y’all know y’all are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in y’all?” With this plural pronoun, Paul challenges the church as a whole, as a unified temple filled with one Spirit, which is exactly what they are—or at least ought to be.
The Corinthians just don’t get that the house of God cannot—must not—be rankled by rivalries. They don’t realize how disastrous it is to destroy God’s Spirit-filled temple through cliques and quarrels. They don’t recognize that sanctified subdivisions do dire damage to the church.
Think for a moment about the tabernacle in the wilderness, which was so full of God’s glory that Moses couldn’t go inside (Exodus 40:34–35). Or Solomon’s temple, which was so full of a cloud—God’s glory—that the priests couldn’t do their jobs (1 Kings 8:10–11). Imagine if only a poof of cloud, a smidgeon of glory, filled the corner of a room or two—like a miniature twister on a street swirling dust and plastic bags. A whiff of glory is comical in its smallness, laughable in scope.
This is no way to be the church: compartmentalizing a Spirit that ought to be poured out on all flesh, turn slaves into sons and daughters, bring bleached bones back to life. A Spirit in me but not you, in us but not them, is paltry and pathetic.
Yet this sort of division is something we are taught to develop from our earliest days in the church, where we are subdivided among Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians—and any number of denominations and non-denominations. Even Pentecostals, people who lay claim to a latter-day outpouring of the Holy Spirit, divided within a decade of the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Azusa Street over whether churches should be racially integrated, which they were at the start in those early heady days of speaking in tongues and riotous worship.
Don’t y’all know that y’all are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in y’all?
The church I grew up in belonged to a band of churches united by the simple motto, “No creed but the Bible.” A century or so ago, that single band of churches discovered a slender reason to subdivide: some refused to allow musical instruments to mar their a cappella singing, while others were happy to sing along to organs, pianos, and guitars.
Don’t y’all know that y’all are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in y’all?
Back in 1986, I lived with Priscilla in Scotland. When I was invited to interview for jobs in Kansas City and Pasadena, an astute and affable professor of psychology who was on sabbatical in Scotland at the time advised, “Don’t just ask what you can contribute. Ask how that community will shape you because it will inevitably shape you.” My professor was right, I’ve learned. Communities inevitably shape us. So dare to be shaped by a community other than your own. Dare to be formed by a community of faith that is unfamiliar, even a little alarming. Why? Because y’all are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in y’all—not just you there or you here but you, the church, everywhere.
You probably can’t go everywhere, to every church, to grow your spiritual life. But you can venture somewhere else, anywhere people experience the Holy Spirit differently from you. If you’re Pentecostal, worship with Episcopalians. If you’re Catholic, study with the Baptists. If you’re Methodist, meditate with Greek Orthodox Christians. I dare you! And why? Just once more: because y’all are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in y’all.
BREATHE 
PRAY
Holy Spirit
Air of human concord
Heir of divine accord
I belong to a church that has splintered
a temple that has split
a body that is scarred
And I am seduced into schism
by good reason
with just cause
But there is no reason good enough
to scar the body
to split the temple
to splinter the church
Forgive me for misplaced devotion
and divided loyalties
I have only one place to go—not many
I have only one God to worship—not several
I have only one Lord to serve—not scores
I have only one Spirit to breathe—only one
Amen