I Kings 8:22-30
I Peter 2:1-5;9-10
Matthew 21:12-16

Construction projects take a long time and are wearisome. The monks know this all too well from experience. But eventually they are completed and then we can be thankful for the finished product, much as people have been grateful for this church building for almost sixty years. But as wearisome as building projects can be, it is often even more so with our lives,
wondering if we will ever reach a finished state of maturity and wholeness. It takes a lifetime to build a life, so even though sometimes it seems we will never fulfill our potential – as humans, as Christians, as monks, or whatever our vocation – we must never despair or give up. We should never give up hope even though it really is true that we will never be finished either in this life (because it takes a lifetime to build a life) or in eternity (however we interpret that concept), because since we are Children of God, and God is infinite, we can never reach the end of our growth (there will always be something beyond where we are, no matter how far we progress).

In his letter that we read this morning, Peter talks about our growth in terms of a construction project. He says: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that you may grow into salvation…and like living stones, let yourself be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood…” Peter understands that no matter how beautiful our church buildings are, it is our lives that are the true temples of God.

In order to be holy temples, there are some things we should not have in us, lest they defile the temple. Peter gives a few examples of the abominations that we should remove from ourselves in order to be pure temples when he says: “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.” We all know how hard it is to get rid of
those things, and how quickly they come back when we do throw them out, but if we are to be the holy priests of God that Peter says we are, we can not have those things in us, because when we do, we are hobbled by the darkness in ourselves and can’t do a very good job of bringing the love of God to people. He puts it this way: “You are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Our priesthood consists of proclaiming a God who brings people out of darkness into light. So no matter how difficult it is, we need to be always growing away from the darkness – the pettiness, pride, and greed
that Peter warns us about. We will never be fully rid of them, because it does take a lifetime to build a life, but we can take comfort in the fact that we have all our lives to work on them. We can also take comfort in the fact that the growth does not depend on us – we must always put in the effort to grow, but the results are in God’s hands. All we need to do is our best (no more and no less) and then let go, trusting in God.

So if Peter wants us to grow out of certain infantile behaviors, what does he want us to grow into? He sums it up in one word when he says: “grow in to salvation…” There are a lot of opinions about what salvation is, but it seems to me the best view is to understand it as wholeness, fullness, and maturity; reaching our full individual potentials and becoming the unique persons we are created to be, knowing that our intrinsic legitimacy, integrity, and infinite worth are based on the absolute, unchanging foundation of God, rather than on our own or anyone else’s opinions of us. And Peter says to grow into salvation, not to receive it and forget about it. Once again the growth comes from God, but it is up to us to put it into action.

There are many ways to do that. The usual ones include prayer, scripture reading, giving up the need to always have our own way, refraining from gossip, and other disciplines. Since we are all different, we won’t all need to do the same things to help us grow, but we should never kid ourselves into thinking that we don’t need any discipline, or that we can take an easy way to maturity. Doing that only keeps us in our infantile state.

Our gospel story this morning gives us a glimpse of what we are to become as we grow and as the impurities are rooted out of the temples of our lives. First, Jesus drove out of the temple some of the people whom he considered to be symbolic of corruption. There are differences of opinion about how corrupt these people really were, but at least Jesus made a good point. After he did that, he healed blind and lame people, showing the fruit of purified worship – health and wholeness. That is our goal: rooting out the selfish corruption in our lives so that we can bring love and peace to our hurting world.

We all have a long way to go before our temples are completely clean, but on the other hand, we have all come a long way. We can look back on where we have been and look forward to how far we have to go in order to spur us to further growth, instead of causing us to despair. We can be joyful in the knowledge that no matter how much we grow, we have potential for
ever more as Children of an infinite God. We can also take comfort in the fact that no matter how much we fail, we always have another opportunity to begin anew every day. So we have no need to worry, we have an entire lifetime to build our lives. But we shouldn’t waste time, either, because life is too short and too precious to waste.

May we follow Peter’s advice and example: ” Rid yourselves, therefor, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure…so that by it you may grow into salvation…and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual
house…you are…a royal priesthood, a holy nation…in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

We have a great place to do all that, in this beautiful church building. May we have another 60 wonderful years to keep working at it.   AMEN