My Real Estate Isn't as Big/Sexy as Yours

"Many's the man
grounded by greed
leaning on power and land
show me the one
lost in the stars
show me a principled man."
-Steve Taylor, "Pricipled Man"



I maintain that we are more concerned with our real estate than our real estate.

Let me pronounce that for you:

I maintain that we are more concerned with our real estate than our real estate.

Let me unpack that for you:

I maintain that we are more concerned with our real estate (as in "property') than our real estate (as in the real state/estate of our soul).



Isn't that what Jesus maintained before the Samaritan woman; that "it doesn't matter which if any mountain you worship on; it matters whether you worship in Spirit and truth"?


Isn't that why the Temple Mount is the most contested property on earth?

"Since New Testament times," Wolfgang Simson flatly asserts, "there is no such thing as
'a house of God'".

Where is the house you will build for me, SomEone asked.

We are still trying to build Him one.

The Kingdom is not about place; but grace.

Let's unearth it; let's not tether it to land.

Not our inevitable idolatry of place; our obsolete obsexxion with "location, location, location"; our complex "edifice complex," our bankrupt "build it and they will come" model..

World Magazine's recent cover story offers three amazing case studies (tellingly sampling from three different religions) in defense of the thesis that "Separating church and state is all the rage, but three communities show that the American tradition of religious cities lives on."

Code Nast Traveler covered the story ("Tom Monaghan's Unanswered Prayers" ) of the Domino's Pizza founders quixotic quest to build a city that is"Catholic Utopia."

Why do they/we/I do this?

Why the god Empire over God's Jesus?

Why earthly Kingdom over the God of all the earth?

As I sat in a rooftop restaurant, enjoying a hamburger with my son, "having church in a 'secular spot'"....overlooking the Temple Mount!...(read that shocking expose here)..

..I think it first hit me.

I felt just as, and in "real estate" was just as "spiritual" there...

..as I had been moments earlier on the Mount.
(The "There" to top all "theres")

Or in any church building.

Because the only church building Jesus ever mentioned was us.

I couldn't stand on holy ground if I tried.

"Lord, it is good for us to be here...Let's build a building," a well-meaning Christfollower once suggested.

Jesus answered, "Peter, you are more concerned about real estate than your real estate."

Or something like that.

PS: Thank God this blog (and yours) are only "virtual," and therefore not really "real"..
that means we can't idolize them like we do church buildings and temple mounts.

Right?

Bleeding and hushed

hung between thieves

there the foundation began

are you the onetaking your cross?

are you a principled man?

-Steve Taylor, "Pricipled Man"