Doctrine and Covenants 163
Commentary Series

The Temple Calls

by Richard A. Brown

The Temple is an instrument of ongoing revelation in the life of the church. Its symbolism and ministries call people to reverence in the presence of the Divine Being. Transformative encounters with the Eternal Creator and Reconciler await those who follow its spiritual pathways of healing, reconciliation, peace, strengthening of faith, and knowledge. —Doctrine and Covenants 163:8a

Years ago, while the steel skeleton of the Temple was still rising, I compared that moment with moving into a house and finding a place for everything in the kitchen. Kitchens have more stuff than anywhere else in a house, and, generally speaking, once you stock your kitchen with everything from dishes to canned goods, that’s where they’ll remain. And so, I wrote, we needed to “get the Temple right” from the start.

I was right about kitchens. I was wrong about the Temple!

Kitchens, you see, are just rooms in buildings. Temples are more than that; they are symbols—of hopes and dreams, mission and vision, identity and relationships. They are sacred space.

A common complaint back then was that the church was building the Temple without knowing exactly why. Despite all that had been written by church leaders and members, uncertainty remained. In the midst of these questions, we proceeded, in response both to inspired counsel and, I think at least in part, because building the Temple was a dream handed to us from generations who had sacrificially invested their lives.

Scripture and religious history are filled with people asking questions. Not long after miraculously leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, Moses was confronted with complaints that he had led the people into the wilderness just so they would starve to death. But God heard the grumbling and promised Moses meat would be provided at sunset and bread at dawn. Sure enough, quail flew into the encampment that evening. The next morning a fine, flaky substance covered the ground after the dew burned off. The people had never seen such a thing and questioned, “What is it?” (In Hebrew it was “man-hu.”) This “manna” saved their lives and sustained them on their wilderness journey.

About three thousand years later, in July 1831, Joseph Smith Jr. gathered a small group of followers in Independence, Missouri (on the edge of the American wilderness) to dedicate land for a temple. They wouldn’t even own the land for another five months. I can imagine somebody asking about that temple: “What is it?” Other church members in Kirtland, Ohio, soon began to ask questions about a “School of the Prophets” and what kind of structure would house it. Plans for a simple meetinghouse eventually expanded into a much grander “House of the Lord.” In time, people called it a temple, too. An answer to “What is it?” came in December 1832:

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; that your incomings may be in the name of the Lord; that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord; that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High.
—Doctrine and Covenants 85:36b–c

This spiritual foundation remains more than 175 years later for both the Temple in Independence and the “House of the Lord” in Kirtland. They have become sacred space for us. Twenty years ago Bob Mesle pointed out that “it is not God who will be more present in the Temple, but people who will be more open to that sacred presence…. Sacred space becomes more sacred, more powerful, as our experiences with it grow in meaning and richness, making us more open to the presence of the Divine there” (“Reflections on Sacred Space,” Herald, September 1988).

Those early church members did not stay in Independence or Kirtland for long. By the late 1830s, after experiencing violent persecution and forced eviction, the Saints gathered on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River to build their own city, Nauvoo. There they raised another temple, although it reflected new and starkly different theological ideas. The Reorganization later rejected both those ideas and the temple that embodied them.

The church would do a lot of “incomings and outgoings” during the next century. We have always been on the move, both geographically and institutionally. Each succeeding generation passed on a dream of one day building a temple in the “center place of Zion”—Independence, Missouri. Meanwhile we were continually challenged by boundary issues: we’re not Mormon (at least in the Utah sense) but definitely Latter Day Saints; we’re not Protestants (mainline or evangelical) but certainly Christians. In fact, we share something in common with a great many Christian groups, yet we remain a unique Christian community.

Boundaries offer both blessings and curses. When we don’t fit neatly in a known category, others may question if we’re really Christian. And we constantly ask ourselves, What is it? when the topic turns to identity. We received this prophetic insight at World Conference in 2000:

Lift up your eyes and fix them on the place beyond the horizon to which you are sent.… Become a people of the Temple—those who see violence but proclaim peace, who feel conflict yet extend the hand of reconciliation, who encounter broken spirits and find pathways for healing…. Let it [the Temple] stand as a towering symbol of a people who knew injustice and strife on the frontier and who now seek the peace of Jesus Christ throughout the world. —Doctrine and Covenants 161:1a, 2a–b

The Temple offers a key into understanding who we are, what we are called to do, where we are called to go, and how we fit into God’s plan to redeem creation, culminating in the peaceable reign of Christ. We are not alone in this divine plan, but we hold a definite place in its unfolding.

Sociologists sometimes classify Christian groups into four major categories (see figure 1), identified with these or similar terms:

• Liturgicals, who value ritual, particularly to celebrate the sacraments

• Social Justice Christians, whose passionate faith changes the world

• Conservatives, who anchor their faith in foundational beliefs

• Renewalists, who are guided by the Holy Spirit

Forty or fifty years ago most denominations fit primarily into a single category. Even then, though, there was some crossover. Liturgical Roman Catholics have long displayed strong strains of social justice and spiritual renewal. Methodists, founded by social-justice champion John Wesley, have led the way among Protestants with liturgical creativity. In recent years the pace of boundary-crossing has picked up, resulting in more-diverse denominations. A major challenge, however, is handling issues raised by that very diversity.

Phyllis Tickle is an astute observer of the sociology of religion. She sees a new form of Christianity emerging, one that could be for the twenty-first century what the Great Reformation was 500 years ago. A major characteristic is constant movement around the intersection point of the four quadrants:

There is enormous energy in centripetal force, especially as it gathers more and more of its own kind into itself. Centripetal force, though, is usually envisioned by us as running downward, like the water in a bathtub drain. The gathering force of the new Christianity did the opposite. It ran upward and poured itself out, like some bursting geyser, in expanding waves of influence and nourishment. Where once the corners had met, now there was a swirling center, its centripetal force racing from quadrant to quadrant in ever-widening circles, picking up ideas and people from each, sweeping them into the center, mixing them there, and then spewing them forth into a new way of being Christian, into a new way of being Church. —The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (Baker, 2008), 135

The spiral form of the Temple sanctuary has become a critical metaphor for Community of Christ. It evokes multiple images, including these two:

• Approaching the Divine in awe and wonder and the interaction between human beings and God

• A lifelong inner and outer journey of discipleship

Recent prophetic counsel reinforces these themes: “Understand that the road to transformation travels both inward and outward. The road to transformation is the path of the disciple” (Doctrine and Covenants 161:3d). “Do not be defined by the things that separate you but by the things that unite you in Jesus Christ” (Doctrine and Covenants 162:5a). “Transformative encounters with the Eternal Creator and Reconciler await those who follow its [the Temple’s] spiritual pathways of healing, reconciliation, peace, strengthening of faith, and knowledge” (Doctrine and Covenants  163:8a).

An Exile People
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Community of Christ has never identified solely with any of those four major groupings of Christians. There have been times when we have stressed one or more areas more strongly than others. In one sense, our spiritual journey is that of an “exile people,” whose only real home is a kingdom yet to be realized on earth as it is in heaven. Now, as an increasingly international church, we have even more “incomings and outgoings,” diversity, perspectives, and interests. It should not be surprising, then, that some within our faith community want a clearly worded statement of beliefs, while others desire to build signal communities, and others—well, is there an end to the options? What is it, then, that holds us together? Section 163 echoes inspired counsel from 1984:

The temple shall be dedicated to the pursuit of peace. It shall be for reconciliation and for healing of the spirit. It shall also be for a strengthening of faith and preparation for witness. By its ministries an attitude of wholeness of body, mind, and spirit as a desirable end toward which to strive will be fostered. It shall be the means for providing leadership education for priesthood and member. And it shall be a place in which the essential meaning of the Restoration as healing and redeeming agent is given new life and understanding, inspired by the life and witness of the Redeemer of the world. —Doctrine and Covenants 156:5

That last phrase—“inspired by the life and witness of the Redeemer of the world”—is critical. Velma Ruch put it this way: “Now is the time—the time to learn the way to the Temple…. It can be accomplished only by people who have experienced the redemptive power of Christ in their own lives and who, in the response of their discipleship, seek to be true ambassadors” (“The Way to the Temple,” Herald, September 1988).

The Temple calls us to minister as Jesus did: healing, reconciling, making peace, strengthening faith, and increasing knowledge. Of course, the way of Jesus Christ leads to the cross and to resurrection.