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