St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (also called the Belfast Cathedral). Source: http://www.irishviews.com/belfast-cathedral.html |
August 26, 2012
Old Testament Reading: 1 Kings
8:22-24, 27-30, 9:1-5
Solomon’s Prayer of
Dedication
22 Then Solomon stood before
the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread
out his hands to heaven. 23He said, ‘O Lord, God of Israel,
there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant
and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, 24the
covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him;
you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand.
27 ‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the
highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! 28Have
regard to your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the
cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; 29that your
eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you said,
“My name shall be there”, that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays
towards this place. 30Hear the plea of your servant and of your
people Israel when they pray towards this place; O hear in heaven your
dwelling-place; heed and forgive.
God
Appears Again to Solomon
9When Solomon had finished building
the house of the Lord and the king’s house and all that Solomon desired to
build, 2the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had
appeared to him at Gibeon. 3The Lord said to him, ‘I have heard your
prayer and your plea, which you made before me; I have consecrated this house
that you have built, and put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will
be there for all time. 4As for you, if you will walk before me, as
David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according
to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, 5then
I will establish your royal throne over Israel for ever, as I promised your
father David, saying, “There shall not fail you a successor on the throne of
Israel.”
SERMON: “Will God Dwell on Earth?”
Churches can be incredibly
uncomfortable places. People either talk
a bit too much or no one greets you at all.
You either know the responses by heart or it feels like you’ve suddenly
entered another planet where everyone speaks the same foreign language. In our fast-paced world, the notion of even
sitting still for an hour can seem impossible. You’re either too hot or too
cold (and sometimes both in the same service).
And let’s not even talk about these summer gnats!
One of the most uncomfortable
experiences I’ve had was in a church. A
cathedral, actually. It is called St.
Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, and is a Church of Ireland (Anglican) church. A massive, ancient, stone structure, it was
one of the few places a PCUSA gal could find a Good Friday service
(Presbyterians in Ireland rarely observe Maundy Thursday or Good Friday).
I decided to really give it my all:
I went to a Service of the Hours, which was a three-hour ordeal in which we
contemplated the last three hours of Christ’s life. There were about a dozen of us in a sanctuary
built to house five hundred.
Halfway through the first hour, my
toes went numb with cold. By the end of
that hour, my teeth were chattering as I feebly tried to wrap my scarf more
tightly around myself. By the second
hour, most of the liturgy was lost on me as my mind constantly repeated, “It’s
sooo cold.”
But for some reason, I still sat
there. It was a time in my life when I
was desperate for a concrete confirmation that God was with me. I knew God was with me in subtle ways, but I
was looking for a neon sign that the plans of my life were going to work out,
that I wasn’t on my own.
But neon signs and churches don’t
exactly go together. So I sat there,
reading the assigned readings, praying the assigned prayers, all the while
getting stiff and cold and just…plain…frustrated.
What did I expect to happen? The Spirit to descend like a nice electric
blanket and warm my soul and body? A
booming voice from heaven to confirm that I was on the right path? I’m not sure I expected anything, other than
inevitable frostbite.
I almost left after two-and-a-half
hours. After all, what was the use of
another half hour? I could have been
warming up with hot chocolate in Starbucks instead of freezing in the name of
some Silent God. Perhaps it was because
I was too stiff to move, but I stayed.
And then in the last five minutes, in that arctic cathedral, I got what
I was waiting for.
Jesus’ suffering on the cross was
finished with: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” We prayed a prayer that said that God held us
completely. And after three frigid hours
of waiting, I heard what I already knew but would not have been able to hear
anywhere but there. I felt in my chilled
heart that I was completely held by a loving God, and the worries of my mind
gave way to that reality.
I’m not sure why I had to be in
that place to see that God was with me.
I don’t know why I needed to be so uncomfortable to accept God’s
presence. I just know that God was there
– in the cold, in the waiting, in the frustration, even in my numb toes…in all
of it.
As I read this morning’s text,
where we come back in conversation with that complicated, sometimes-wise
Solomon, we hear his prayer for God to dwell in the Temple he’s built. He prays that God would make that resplendent
building more than just a golden shell by filling it with God’s very presence:
God’s ears to hear the prayers of the people, God’s eyes to watch over them
with care and steadfast love. It is a
bold prayer. So bold that Solomon
questions himself halfway through it:
‘But will God indeed dwell on the
earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this
house that I have built!
Will God dwell on earth? In fire and cloud leading the people of
Israel to safety, in the God-child born to re-define what living is all about,
in the Spirit poured out on all at Pentecost, we see that the answer is
yes. But will God be contained by
earth? That answer is no. If the highest reaches of heaven cannot
contain God, neither can this world, or my opinions, for that matter.
This wild God answered Solomon’s
prayer with a promise:
‘I have heard your prayer and your
plea, which you made before me; I have consecrated this house that you have
built, and put my name there for ever; my eyes and my heart will be there for
all time.
This golden house was consecrated,
set apart, made holy by God. So is this
house.
God’s eyes and heart dwell
here. But you only need to look at the
eyes of one you love or hear the sound of rushing waves or feel the coolness of
an early-autumn breeze to know that God dwells there, too.
So what makes this house so
special? Why come here to connect with
God when God is so much beyond this place?
Does God dwell here more than in the rest of creation? Is God present here in a way that God is not
in other places?
This is a question many of my
generation ask, and often the answer that arrives is something along the lines
of being “spiritual but not religious”, where our faith in God is only personal
and can happen as easily in Starbucks as in a traditional church service. Or some days, more easily.
But if God wanted faith and worship
to be acts of isolation, why call for the Temple to be built, why pour the
Spirit upon a fragile, diverse Church?
No, God is not more present here in
this building than anywhere else. But we are.
In a world where we pause only as long as it takes for the next text or
email to arrive, this place is set apart for dwelling. And dwelling is a radically counter-cultural
act of patience. We can easily spend
Sunday mornings fishing or reading a great book and feel deeply filled by God’s
presence.
But those fish and that book won’t
sit next to us when we lose someone we love.
I can read the Bible on my iPhone, but it won’t bring those words to
life in loving community. And as
friendly as I may be with the person who makes my coffee, he will not
appreciate me sharing my deepest doubts and fears over and over again.
God dwells here, not to be
contained by our tradition and theology, but so that we will learn what it
means to dwell in a world where people mostly just hover through their days.
This dwelling place opens us up to
what we would be unable to hear otherwise, what I could not hear in a Starbucks
in Belfast but what had to be heard in a freezing cold, ancient church. God holds us completely. God dwells with us.
This is what God was saying in
response to Solomon’s prayer for the Temple, that God would always hear the
cries uttered in that place, always see the beloved community gathered
there. And God reminded Solomon to dwell
with God and God’s people just as completely, following the ordinances to care
for the orphan and widow, to walk with integrity and honesty.
Whether we come to this place each
Sunday out of habit, or to see good friends, or out of curiosity, we each of us
are seeking something here. I don’t know
what word from God each of you are desperately listening for. But I do know that you have come to the right
place.
Will God dwell on earth? God already does, but the question really is,
will we? Will we lay aside our to-do
lists, obligations and appointments long enough to dwell with God and each
other in this place? Will we gather
here in comfort and discomfort, in clarity and deep doubt, in times where our
hearts are overflowing with joy and in times when they are breaking with
sorrow?
Will we come again and again to
re-learn how to dwell in this world as our Savior did, bringing forgiveness,
generosity and hope to a world desperate for community? Empowered by the Spirit, filled with our
common longing, we will, because somewhere deep within us, beneath the layers
of cold and impatience, we know that this is home. Amen.