Jesus Was a Carpenter

Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and a hammer
And His hands could join a table true enough to stand forever
And He might have spun His life out in the coolness of the morning
But He put aside His tools and He walked the burning highways
And He built His house from people just like these

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 put aside His tools and stopped to touch the dying
And He built His house from people just like these

It was on a storming Sunday when He rode to old Jerusalem
And the palms they cast before Him
Were like the crimes they laid against Him
It was on a storming Friday when He climbed the streets to Calvary
And where He died today why they're selling beads and postcards
And they tell us too that that was long ago

But would He stand today upon the sands of California
And walk the sweating blacktop of New York and Mississippi?
Would He be a guest on Sunday, a vagrant on a Monday?
With the doors locked tight against His kind you know

Oh, come again now Jesus be a carpenter among us
There are chapels in our discontent, cathedrals to 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

Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and a hammer
And His hands could form a table true enough to stand forever