Revelation – The New Temple

1992 (Year C), 2 February / Epiphany 4

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Once upon a time in a far away land a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he 
had everything his heart desired the prince was spoiled selfish and unkind. But then one 
cold night an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return 
for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away. She told him not to be deceived by appearances 
for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again the old woman’s ugliness 
melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress. The prince tried to apologise but it was too 
late for she had seen that there was no love in his heart. She transformed him into a 
hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle. Ashamed of his monstrous form 
the beast concealed himself inside his castle.

The rose the enchantress gave him would flower until his twenty-first birthday. If he could 
learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell then the spell would be broken. If not he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.

If you want more then you must see the latest Walt Disney film, or read, Beauty and the 
Beast. We know that in the end the beast’s ugliness disappears, transformed by love. We 
know he’s not just restored to his old selfish self for he too can love and see beyond 
himself

The point? Well that’s easy. The church, almost from the beginning, has told its members 
that really they’re beasts. They’re sinful; they’re evil and they’re ugly and they’re not worthy of being loved. After all God made them and they turned their backs on his good creation 
and were banished from the perfection of the garden. Most of them have been so 
conditioned that now they first see all that is bad in everything, including other people. 
Very few see the goodness and the beauty in themselves or any other person.

I think it’s devilish. Maybe it’s even a spell which has been cast by the devil, if we talk in 
that kind of way. We see first the ugly and bad, and blind ourselves to what is there all the 
time, the good and true and beautiful. As far as recognising the good and the truth and the 
beauty in us, well that’s an even bigger no-no. We’re told from birth that it’s wrong to 
boast, to build ourselves up. Even to think of ourselves as good is sinful. To love ourselves. Well really how can we?

We ignore our own needs, after all it’s selfish to indulge ourselves. It’s naughty; we should 
rather be looking to give ourselves constantly sacrificially to others. That’s what 
Christianity is all about, surely. Well for those who think like that, the sentence which 
introduced our Eucharist this morning and was repeated in the second reading must make life a bit difficult, ‘Surely you know that you are God’s temple, where the Spirit of God dwells. Anyone who destroys the temple will be destroyed by God, because the temple of 
God is holy; and that temple you are’.

And just to show that there is nothing new under the sun, here is part of a psalm, written 
hundreds of years before Paul, ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in 
my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works 
are wonderful, I know that full well.’

The truth is this, that our relationship with our bodies affects our lives for good or evil, 
most powerfully. Scripture reveals that your body is God’s temple, the Spirit’s dwelling 
place. It further says that your body is not yours but Christ’s, so that he can say of you ‘This is my body’.

The implications of this are simply enormous. If your body is Christ’s, how might you feed 
it? – I guess with great care. If your body is the place where the spirit dwells, how might 
you look after it? I guess with love and tenderness. If your body has been fearfully and 
wonderfully made by a divine creator would you not hallow it, revere it and bless it. All 
these things we should do. We should be conscious that our bodies are the home of the 
divine. They are to be loved and cared for, for what they are, the body of our beloved.

The fairy story I began this sermon with ends when an ordinary girl comes along, falls in 
love with the beast and kisses him. The beast is liberated from the spell and he recognises what we knew all along that really he is a handsome prince. We only have to remember 
back what it was like when we learnt that we were loveable, capable of being loved. It 
transformed us. You can tell those for whom it has recently happened – they glow, they 
can’t stop smiling.

God uses all kinds of ways, all manner of ‘girls’, to free us from the things which cast spells over our lives and mask our beauty. The embrace of a loved one, the care of a parent, the attention of a friend. They all, as the words of today’s collect says ‘Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory’. Thanks be to God. AMEN