Church Buildings?
John 4:7-42
Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
New American Standard 1995
John 4:7 There *came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus *said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His adisciples had gone away into bthe city to buy food. 9 Therefore the aSamaritan woman *said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For bJews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you aliving water.” 11 She *said to Him, “1Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that aliving water? 12 “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who agave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him ashall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to beternal life.”
John 4:15 The woman *said to Him, “1Sir, agive me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 16 He *said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19 The woman *said to Him, “1Sir, I perceive that You are aa prophet. 20 “aOur fathers worshiped in bthis mountain, and you people say that cin Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21 Jesus *said to her, “Woman, believe Me, aan hour is coming when bneither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 “aYou worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for bsalvation is from the Jews. 23 “But aan hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father bin spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 “God is 1spirit, and those who worship Him must worship ain spirit and truth.” 25 The woman *said to Him, “I know that aMessiah is coming (bHe who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26 Jesus *said to her, “aI who speak to you am He.”
John 4:27 At this point His adisciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and *said to the men, 29 “Come, see a man awho told me all the things that I have done; bthis is not 1the Christ, is it?” 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.
John 4:31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “aRabbi, eat.” 32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the adisciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” 34 Jesus *said to them, “My food is to ado the will of Him who sent Me and to baccomplish His work. 35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white afor harvest. 36 “Already he who reaps is receiving awages and is gathering bfruit for clife eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 “For in this case the saying is true, ‘aOne sows and another reaps.’ 38 “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
John 4:39 From athat city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “bHe told me all the things that I have done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of His word; 42 and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed athe Savior of the world.”
The church has mainly used this narrative about the woman at the well to talk about who your neighbor is. So many more lessons come out of this narrative that I don’t have time to give you all of them. So I decided to go explore an area that Jesus spoke about that may upset some of the listeners or readers of this sermon. But I’m asking you to have an open mind and to think about the additional lessons that can be learned from this narrative that your local preacher never touches. Why don’t they touch them? The answer is they were taught that there is only one way to preach this narrative in their seminary or whatever preparatory training they took to be a preacher of the word. I went to seminary. No, I went to two seminaries, and this discussion about the woman at the well always went in the same direction. One of the seminaries was conservative, while the other was liberal. For this narrative, they always came up with the same story that Jesus wanted us to know what it means to have a neighbor.
When Jesus conversed with the woman, he told her that a new way of thinking about God was about to occur. We would consider this the kingdom of heaven on earth. What exactly is this new way of thinking? Jesus made it very clear that one does not need to worship at a temple. Whether it was the Jewish or Samarian temple was not what God was looking for. In fact, he was saying that God does not need us to bring him meat, cereal, and wine. Because by doing this, we start to imagine God as a human being needing physical nutrition.
Jesus said that God is a spirit. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all knew this to be true. We know this to be true today. But from when the Jews left Egypt to when the temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Jewish religion transformed into something that looked like the pagan religions of the world. Jesus reminds us, and I know I’m repeating this, that God is a spirit. We need to have a spiritual relationship with God and Jesus, not material.
Jesus also knew that buildings and statues, and fancy windows were distractions. They took away from the worship of God. Let me give you a quick example. I was appointed to a church with a rusty school bell on the lectern. I thought it looked pretty awful to be in the front of the church, so I slid it under the cloth on the lectern. I received a long lecture about why that rusty old bell had to be in site even during worship. Now, what was the purpose of the bell? 40 or so years ago, a wealthy parishioner gave the bell to end the adult Sunday school, which met in the sanctuary. I had no problem with them using the bell that way. However, I didn’t want it out when worship was on. I lost that battle to the administrative board, who told me if I hid the bell again, they would call the Bishop to have me instantly removed. This is an example of how people worship the material inside the church building.
People today worship their church buildings. People today worship the contents of the building. This narrative of the woman at the well, Jesus clearly tells her that that has to stop. God is not material. God is spirit. Therefore God wants a relationship with us which is much more important to him than bringing him stuff.
So let’s start with the church building. The problem with the temple in Jerusalem was that religious leaders said you must come to Jerusalem to this temple if you wish to worship God. Oh, by the way, you should also bring a sacrifice to give to God. When the temple was destroyed, the sacrifice system was gone. The centralized worship of the Lord was also gone. Jesus tells us in this narrative that God is universal. Yes, we know that, but we seem to have forgotten. Why do I say that?
The reason is that churches and synagogues have been built worldwide, and we are told that we must go to one of these buildings to worship God. If Jesus returned right now, he would slap us on the back of our heads and say you don’t get it. God is everywhere and should be worshiped all of the time. It is not enough just to worship God for one hour a week in a specific building and in a specific way. God also does not want our sacrifices. The tithing that we give to God in our church worship time is to support spreading the message and, unfortunately the building. So go look at your church budget and see how much money you spend on your building. Sometimes the number is low because maintenance that year was low; other times, it is a huge amount of money. I called church buildings the albatross that sits around the congregation’s neck. Of course, the way we worship today, we need a building. Let me again note that Jesus in this narrative says that’s wrong. But I will acquiesce. It is better to rent a building than to buy or build a building. The albatross is no longer around your neck. Larger community churches today are renting building space as opposed to buying one or building one.
I am in the United Methodist Church system, and the conference that I am in purchased a headquarters building several years ago. Many thousands of dollars have been spent on the upkeep of the building. It always sounds better to own, but in the long run, it’s better to rent because the landlord then has to fix the air conditioning and heating system and the windows and the roof. Also, by renting were following what Jesus said in this narrative.
Where would the community meet if we didn’t have the church building? So again, I acquiesce to the point that we have to have a building. However, we must consider how much money was pouring into buildings. When you’re putting money into a building, that’s less money you could use the spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If you have a building, how are you using it to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ? Do your people want to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ? Let me give you one more example from my past. I was appointed to a church that wanted to build an addition. The addition was to contain a gymnasium. When the building was complete, I worked out a deal with the YMCA for them to install a volleyball court and that they would use the building one night a week. The volleyball court became the property of the church. So I went to recruit people to come out on this one night and talk to the parents of all these kids that came to play volleyball. Also, I tried to find people that would stay a little later and talk with the adults who came out to play volleyball that evening. I got one person out of a congregation of 150 to assist me.
I learned today that the building is being used to make money for the church because they rent out the space to whoever will pay the price. The very expensive building is now taking care of the fact that the people do not want to give a full tithe. At my conference, we have a person who has been on a crusade for a very long time about hospitality. I agree a hundred percent with hospitality. However, she also says that your buildings must be pristine. She advocates that money should be dumped into a building fund that should be the church’s highest priority. Her reasoning is that when someone comes into the church, they want to see a nice new beautiful building. The problem I see with this idea is that the people begin to worship the building. Certainly, this is not what Jesus wanted us to do.
So let me leave you with this question I posed to you earlier. How do you and your congregation see your church building on its property? Is the building used as a social club for Sunday gatherings, or is it used to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ? With these two questions, I leave it up to you to decide which direction your congregation should be going.
