Jesus was a carpenter and he worked with a sow and a hammer And his hands could form a table true enough to stand forever And he might have spun his life out in the coolness of the mornings But he put aside his tools and he walked the burning highways To build a house from folks like you and me
And he found them as they wandered through the wild Judean mountains And he found them as they pulled their nets upon the Sea of Galilee And for a thousand evenings while the day behind him emptied He walked among the poor and he stopped to touch the dying And he built his house from people just like these It was on a shining Sunday when he rode to old Jerusalem And the palms they cast before him were the crimes they laid against him It was on a stormy Friday when he climbed the streets of Calvary And where he died today why they're sellin' beads and postcards And they tell us too that that was long ago [ ac.guitar ] But would he stand today upon the sands of California Or walk the sweating blacktop in New York and Mississippi Where the mighty churches rise above the screaming cities Would he be a guest on Sunday a vagrant on a Monday With the doors locked tight against his kind you know [ ac.guitar ] Come again now Jesus be a carpenter among us There are chapels in our discontent cathedrals in our sorrows And we dwell in golden mansions with the sand for our foundations And the raging water's rising and the thunder's all around us Won't you come and build a house on rock again
