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Sunday August 27, 2006 - Proper 16, Year B

Do you ever wonder what we are doing here?
Here we are, one of the last Sunday mornings of late summer,
and we're sitting inside with candles and organ and bread and wine.
To an outsider, someone with no knowledge of this thing called Christianity
we would look really strange
as we read from one book and then the other, sometimes speaking, sometimes singing,
wander round the church, put money in a plate, address our conversation
to a large white wooden bench,
and then go up front
for a snack.
Sometimes we sit, sometimes we stand,
sometimes we kneel,
and we don't always even do those things at the same time.
There seems to be no apparent reason for any of this,
no reason
for this peculiar activity
when we could be just as well at home asleep, out having brunch,
or hanging out at the beach.

But we do it, week by week, we do this slightly odd and definitely uncommon
thing that we call worship,
we do it week by week, year by year,
often as much as anything by habit,
but underlying that
we do it
because somewhere, deep down within,
we want to worship God
and this
is the best way
we know how.

And when we do this,
we follow a rich tradition
a tradition that goes back something like
ten generations,
two hundred and twenty two years in this building
and another eighty in the previous church before that,
and before them
a lineage of churches that goes back
to the time of Jesus.
And even before that,
because this tradition we have of gathering to worship in a beautiful building
goes all the way back to the time of King Solomon,
who built the first temple,
the house of God
set aside
for worship.

And today in our first reading
we heard the story
of that first temple, the one that King Solomon built.

We've been working our way up to this point. This whole summer,
the Old Testament readings
have been telling the story of King David,
from him being chosen to be king
as a young shepherd boy, through his defeat of the giant Goliath, his glorious kingship, his affair with Bathsheba, and passion to build a temple, a place
to worship God.
And God kept saying, "Not yet."

Finally
David died,
and his son, Solomon
succeeded him.
Solomon
is the one we remember
as wise;
when God asked him what he wanted, as the newly anointed king,
he asked for wisdom,
And God gave him that, and riches and power besides.
And finally God stopped saying "not yet"
to the dream of the temple
that Solomon had inherited from his father David,
and Solomon ordered
its construction to begin.
28 feet wide and 84 long and 42 high,
it was made of stone and lined with carved panels of cedar and cypress,
overlaid with gold,
and carvings and statues of the cherubim, all made of olive wood
coated in gold.
It was a place of glory.

But it was empty. Because the ark of the covenant,
that sacred box carried on two long poles,
that held the two stone tablets
of the ten commandments
was still where David had put it,
just down the road
in its temporary home.
It was the place
where God
communicated with Moses,
the place
that people could come
and know
that God was there.
And until that box
was brought to the temple,
the temple would remain an empty shell,
a beautiful building
with no heart to it.

And so, as we heard today, Solomon summoned
all the leaders of Israel, the heads of the tribes, the elders of the great families,
and they went
to fetch
the ark of the covenant.
Grasping the poles
that supported it,
the priests led it up the hill,
followed by the greats of the land, mighty and respected,
following in the wake
of a small wooden box.

Passers by
must have wondered what it was all about, this peculiar procession, particularly those
who were from other countries,
or too young
to remember the last procession,
the time
when old King David
had danced in the street.

They wound up the hill
through the outer doors,
across the courtyard
and into the holy of holies,
the inner sanctuary,
and there they placed the ark,
safe under the watchful eyes
of the carved and gilded seraphim.

Until then
it had been a perfectly normal event,
one of the many ceremonies
that surround a head of state.
But in that moment
everything changed.
As the priests placed the ark in the place made for it
suddenly a cloud filled the space, so thick
that the priests had to scurry outside
for breath.
Just as in the old days
when the people had wandered through Egypt,
the ark at the head of their convoy with the cloud of the presence of God
reaching from the ark into the sky,
the cloud of God's presence
filled the temple.
And they worshiped.

Solomon probably expected
that people would come to his temple
and marvel at the monumental architecture, the beautiful carving
and the gilded woodwork.
He probably even expected
them to come to pray,
because after all,
this was supposed to be God's house,
and the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God's presence
was right there in the center of it.

But I would bet he never expected something as tangible
as a cloud
filling the very center of his temple,
a cloud announcing beyond all doubt
that God was there.

And what that cloud did
was redirect their attention.
It redirected their attention
from the beauty of the building
to the one that it was created in honor of.
It redirected their attention
back to God.
Because that was the purpose of the temple.
To be a place
to worship God.
And that's made clear
in Solomon's prayer.

Because in his prayer, Solomon reminded God
of the wonderful things that God had done
in giving the covenant, in showing steadfast love, in keeping promises.
And he asked God
to keep on doing these things,
to be the one
in whom the people can trust.
But his prayer
also reminded the people who heard it
of the God
that had kept faith with them, the God that they knew
as Lord of hosts, living God, King, God of gods, sun, shield, water, nest.
And he reminded them
that while God would be present in this place,
God is the God of the whole world.

We don't worship in Solomon's temple. But we do worship
in a place of great beauty.
But just like the temple,
the point of us being here
is not to admire the building, beautiful as it is. The beauty here
is designed
to turn our thoughts toward God. We are here to worship: our church building
points us to God.
It points us, returns us
to the reality beyond all reality
the God who gives us life and breath and hope.

And Solomon's prayer reminds us of two things.
First, the building is a sign
that God is here.
We might not see a cloud
hovering over the altar.
But God is here.
God is here with us as we come to pray,
the same God
that Solomon prayed to,
the Lord of hosts, living God, King, God of gods, sun, shield, water, nest.
God is here.

And Solomon's prayer reminds us of a second thing.
God is here,
but God is not only here.
Our God
is God of the whole earth, and the God of the whole universe.
God is bigger than we can imagine.
There is nowhere that we can go
where God is not.
And that means
that what we do here on Sunday mornings
is connected with what we do every day of the week.
Because if God is here,
God is also there — in our schools, in our workplaces, in our homes,
God is present.
God is with us.
And so our worship
spills over
into the rest of our lives
and what we do there, everything that we do,
is a kind of worship too,
living our lives in honor
of the God who gives us
life and breath and hope.

And we're kind of like the church building ourselves.
Because if the letter to the Corinthians is right, then we, each andvery one of us,
are temples of the Holy Spirit,
we are churches of God.
We are places
where God is present.
And we are places
that point to God,
that invite other people to worship.
What does that mean?
Well, it means that God is involved
one way or another
in everything we do.
And everything we do,
reflects on God.
So when we say something
God is with us — sometimes rejoicing, sometimes groaning.
When we say something
we point others to God — to a picture of God that draws them in
or to a picture of God that they wouldn't want to know.
So when we do something
God is with us — sometimes rejoicing, sometimes groaning.
When we do something
we point others to God — to a picture of God that draws them in
or to a picture of God that they wouldn't want to know.

This week, see if you can remember
that God is with you.
And see if you can remember
that you are a pointer to God.
And see
if it makes any difference
in what you want to say
and what you want to do.

God with us. Pointing to God.
That's the story of Solomon's temple,
and it's our story.
Amen.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006