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You will also note in the bulletin that next Sunday we will do something a little different. Growing out of our many-year and now growing partnership with New Life Presbyterian Church, the New Life Church pastor, Tedd Pullano, will be preaching here and I will be preaching at New Life Church. Be here not only to hear Tedd, but to help introduce him more broadly to life at Third Church. Or if you are curious about New Life Church, then join us there for worship, also at 10:00 a.m. There are a number of way to become involved in this partnership – one of the best is by being in touch with Bob Melech to see where needs and interests might meet. *** This is also the second Sunday of the summer whereby members and friends of the Worship, Music and Arts Committee have met to brainstorm worship themes, and then created liturgical elements for morning worship. Thanks to those who helped create and thanks to those who are providing leadership this morning. When we looked at the lectionary texts for this Sunday, an immediate connection arose which we are exploring this morning – the link between Psalm 84 – which we have heard and which we will sing – and the temple dedication some 500 years or so before Christ in I Kings 8. I Kings 8 is not so clear without a little context setting, so we’ve done a couple of things. We’ve included in the bulletin a brief outline of all of I and II Kings, getting more detailed as we get closer to our morning’s text. I will read excerpts from all of I Kings 8. You can read all of it this afternoon lounging on the hammock – consider this morning’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version. *** Three things to consider… * The first some of you rehearsed a few weeks back – but perhaps we can all try again. This is the audience participation part of the sermon. Interlock your fingers – like this. Then follow me. “Here is the church…here is the steeple…open the door…and see all the people.”
* The second – a familiar verse from Avery and Marsh. The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place; the church is a people!
* And finally: “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. My heart has a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord.”
And three counters to those considerations... * When you do open the door and see all the people, you realize that things like doors, and windows, and boilers, and restrooms – as well as sanctuaries and chapels and classrooms – matter.
* And though the church IS NOT a building, you realize that you need a building, or a place, or something, for the church to gather, that while the church is not just the church at the church, it is sometimes, and that you need a place to go, even for rejuvenation, before you head back out into the world to serve.
* And you realize that while the biblical witness is diverse and varied, that the biblical writers thought a great deal about the place where God dwells, and the places where God’s people gather to ponder God. It is not a mixed bag so much, but a varied picture that we encounter. We realize that the primary biblical narrative concerns God and a people, a people chosen, and that a fundamental reality of that chosen people is that they are a people on the move, often quite literally. And yet God’s promise to them is manifold – the promise of generations, offspring upon offspring, but also the promise of a place for them to dwell. So while it never trumps the relationship, place matters, and it matters a great deal. And while Jesus embodied the personhood of that relationship – God incarnate – Jesus took place seriously as well. His first act of ministry is teaching in the synagogue. He went to the temple in Jerusalem not to replace it, but to purify it, so that people would have a place to go to encounter God. And while Paul was much less interested in establishing an institutional church whose organization needed perpetuation, he nonetheless took seriously the places where these fledgling communities gathered. And we know this. If you grew up in this church, you know it. If you grew up in another church, you know it as well. You know that the church is not the place itself – it’s the people, the relationships, the message, the spirit – but you know that the place matters. I encounter it here all the time, and encountered it again yesterday. A family was here for a memorial service. They’ve moved away for decades now, but the children, now with children and grandchildren of their own, grew up in this church. And they remembered – place matters. This sanctuary. The chapel. The choir room where Mrs. Moot reigned supreme. It was not the church, rather the container where these blessed things happened. But it mattered nonetheless. Or in my own life. The First Presbyterian Church of Akron, Ohio has just determined, after a very long period of discernment, that it cannot meet the needs of the community in which it finds itself. It will move to a new location, and use the church building that remains for a new, community-based ministry. It is a good decision, a faithful decision, the decision that many churches should be making, rather than hemorrhaging and floundering until there is no money or building or church left. But nonetheless – it was in that building where my father was baptized, where my father was ordained, where my mother and father were introduced and married soon thereafter, where I was baptized, the place from which my grandparents were buried. The church is a relationship, and the church is a people, but if you read I Kings 8, and the chapters around it, you will realize that place matters. And if you read the Psalms, from psalm to psalm, you will realize that the Israelite people carried great expectations about the places where they gathered to worship God. “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” They spent considerable time and energy considering all of this. They knew that if they overdid it – turned the building into an idol – forgot that the place was about God and not about them – that they would find themselves in trouble. But on this side of idolatry, something important was going on. The glory of the Lord showed up in lots of places, but from time to time, the glory of the Lord showed up in the temple, and at that point, even the priest had nothing to say. And Solomon’s prayer is really not about the building itself, not about this great and marvelous temple. It is about God, the covenant, the relationship. Hear it again, perhaps as our prayer: "The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us, but incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances, which he commanded our ancestors.” We Presbyterians have a strong theological proclivity regarding God’s sovereignty, God’s action and activity in all of life. We would do well to remember that we cannot limit who God is or where God dwells – in the streets, the mean streets of the city, in hospitals and homes, in city hall, in board rooms, in places where religion is practiced and popular and in places where religion is unwanted or ignored. God’s sovereignty knows no boundaries, and certainly doesn’t operate according to zip code or floor plan. And even within the church, the matter of place is wild and unpredictable. The grandest, most lavish cathedrals can seem dead to the Spirit, and the most run-down, dilapidated storefronts can be places where the Spirit is alive and well. We should remember that. Pay careful attention to the language of I Kings 8. Even in the context of this beautiful temple, describing God’s presence in and around it can’t quite come close to capturing the mystery and majesty of God. Choon Leong-Seow writes that “faith speaks only with a limited vocabulary. It paints impressionistic pictures. (The images in I Kings 8) convey a sense of divine nearness that is only God’s to give.” And in this temple dedication, Leong-Seow writes, “the sanctuary is but a human establishment that represents the sovereignty of God. God’s rule is not tied to any one locale on earth or even in heaven or the highest heaven. God is transcendent and free of human manipulation.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume III, page 78) Walter Brueggemann puts it another way: There will be no “domestication” of God, even as the temple is dedicated with an elaborate liturgy. And whether the Israelite people are in residence in the land, and therefore worshipping at the temple, or whether they are living in exile from the land, “direct presence in the temple” is not a requirement for an “access point” to God.” (An Introduction to the Old Testament, pages 149-150) Other portions of the Old Testament speak to that. God’s dwelling place is with the people, Ezekiel tells us. And our dwelling place is with God, Deuteronomy tells us. No place, no temple, no church, no doctrine, can contain God. This is about covenant, about relationship, about God’s sovereign freedom to dwell where God will dwell, and a reminder to the church that no building can house all that God is and does. So the church is not a building. And it’s the people that matter. But consider as well the lovely things that happen here – worship and service, learning and caring – and consider the lovely things that are launched from here, from this sanctuary that is both a place of rest and re-energizing – acts of service, acts of mercy, acts of justice. The late theologian Dorothee Soelle told this story: “In Rio a group of missionaries was working with street children…every day boys from the street got together to chat (with a group that include a Catholic priest as well as Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian pastors)… * One day one of the boys said: ‘I would like to be
baptized.’ The church is not a building. Robert Hovda writes: “Christianity is not a temple religion, although the temple temptation is always with us. The God in whom we believe – the power and purpose at the heart of things – is the God not of the forest and the mountains and the seas but of men and women, the God of history, the God whose spirit is to be sought and found and listened to in the people he forms, one people, a covenant community…” (Dry Bones) I believe that. I believe with Walter Brueggemann that “(God) is a God who cannot be framed by the human mind or contained by works of human hands.” Yet I also believe with Brueggemann that in I Kings, and therefore elsewhere in the Bible and in many places across human history that “(God) is present in a specific place and on specific terms, and (that) the life of the people is enriched and redirected as they incorporate this reality.” (Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 474) What does that mean? It means that we care for this place, never for its own sake, and never with the belief that it captures all, or even very much, of who God is. But we care for it to make it a place of welcome and hospitality and justice, so that what goes on here – worship and everything else – somehow honors God and builds up God’s people. Does that make this a sermon about our capital campaign, and our much-anticipated construction? Not precisely. And not entirely. But maybe a little. So we care for this place. But we are also to become as attentive as we possibly can to the presence and mystery of God in all of the lovely dwelling places where God is, places near and far, big and little, fancy and run down, including the streets of this city and our very lives and spirits. And we remember that Solomon’s prayer, even at the great moment of temple dedication, was about relationship, and people, and covenant. And we remember the joy our hearts feel as they sing, happily sing, in God’s house, whose four walls lie beyond our deepest comprehension and imagination, and are as near as the breath we breathe. Amen.
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