I remember with fondness a little game we used to play as children using our hands.  We would fold our hands together in a certain way and chant: “Here’s the church. Here’s the steeple. Open the door and see all the people!”  Opening our hands, eight fingers would dance joyfully in the air.  Alternately, we could play the game in such a way that the last phrase was, “And Where’s all the people!”  No fingers would appear when we opened our hands.

Recently I Googled the word “Church”.  The images that appeared were all structures of brick and mortar or cement and stone.  It wasn’t until I scrolled halfway down the page did pictures of people materialize, at first as cartoons, then a few actual people.

Too often we think of an edifice when we speak of “Church.” For hundreds of years Christians have constructed beautiful buildings replete with gorgeous pictures, magnificent columns of great height, and statues of saints throughout.  Some others are built with stark simplicity expressing that the Word is more important than the surroundings in which we worship.  The walls, windows and doors only give us a space in which to gather.  But there is so much more to “church” than the building!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor, theologian and martyr espoused a “beloved community” as the essence of “church.”   Bonhoeffer’s “beloved community” is comprised of people who believe they are loved by God and that everyone around them is loved by God, too.  They believe this so deeply that it shapes who they are, how they live their lives and how they deal with their own and with other’s brokenness.  It is in recognizing our own brokenness and imperfection, that we can come to realize our need for the grace of God.

In April, 1960, Dr. Martin Luther King said: “There is another element that must be present in our struggle that makes the resistance and non-violence truly meaningful.  Our ultimate end must be the creation of beloved community.”  As he wrote in his autobiography, the reason is so that “when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.”  When a beloved community is generated in our lives, all people around us are loved, whether we like them or not.

In my experience at St. James’ Episcopal Church, it is indeed not the buildings but the people who worship there alongside me that are most important.  Oh yes, we must take care of the buildings too.  They are part of the stewardship which God has given us to care for.  But they are secondary to the members of the congregation itself.  Going back to the little game I spoke of earlier, people are the end result of opening our hands.  It is a little sad for me when I open the hands and no fingers are displayed!

God gave us two great Commandments: that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind; and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.  Without one another, the walls, windows and doors of a building are meaningless.