The House of God
August 23, 2009
August 23, 2009
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 84; 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10–11, 22–30, 41–43
Eleven years ago, still in my first year of ministry, I was an associate pastor in my first church and the head of staff retired. Under his leadership, the church had become a favorite wedding location, so suddenly I had 10 weddings scheduled in 7 weeks. Kind of a baptism by fire. And ever since then, oddly enough, I have loved weddings. One of my favorite weddings that summer was the 2nd wedding of a 2-wedding day – and they had 6 little children, ages 3-5 or so, participating in the wedding. At the rehearsal, we sat the little ones down to talk with them about what to do and not to do during the wedding. You know, don’t pick your nose, don’t talk during the wedding, and so on. One of the little girls raised her hand eagerly. “You know what you must never ever do during a wedding?” she offered. “Yes?” I said, curious to hear whatever wisdom her life thus far had taught her. “You must never ever throw cabbages during a wedding” she pronounced, with finality. I could agree with that, wondering, however, what episode had provided this insight. But then, the groom crouched down to talk with the kids. He was a lovely guy – a streets and sanitation worker from Chicago – very plain-spoken and direct, with clear ideas of his own. “You need to be very well behaved tomorrow,” he said, “Because this is God’s house.” The children all nodded solemnly, and indeed, they were very well-behaved.
This is God’s house. I remember being told that about church when I was a child. I don’t think that I ever had the sense that church was really where God lived, at least, not more than any other place God lived. But I did have a strong sense of church as a place for paying attention to the things of God, for holy talk. And in that sense, I remember thinking of church as hallowed ground. Hallowed ground?
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…we pray. Hallowed means holy. What does it mean for something to be holy? We heard the story today of the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem that King Solomon built. Surely the temple was holy – it, too, was the house of God. There is a detailed description of the temple, earlier in 1 Kings.
The temple was large: 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet high. It had a stone exterior, but the interior was cedar, much of it carved into gourds and flowers. The innermost sanctuary was 30 feet wide by 30 feet long by 30 feet high, and its interior was also cedar, in this case, plated with gold. There were sculptures of cherubim – 15 feet tall, with 15 foot wingspans. The doors to the inner sanctuary were carved of olivewood. There were also bronze pillars, basins of bronze, stand of bronze – so that the total effect was an interior of carved cedar, olivewood, bronze and gold. The project took seven years to complete and was obviously amazing. It was completed in 960 BCE and was destroyed by Babylon almost 400 years later in 586 BCE, at the beginning of the Exile when much of the population of Israel including most of the religious and political leadership were exiled to Babylon. After the overthrow of Babylon by the Persian Empire, the King of Persia, Cyrus, granted the Israelites permission to return home. This was around 536 BCE, and 20 years later, the temple was rebuilt. This temple is known as the Second Temple and lasted almost 600 years until the Jewish revolt again Rome which concluded in 70 CE when the Second Temple was destroyed. It has not been rebuilt, and now, on the same site, one of the three most holy Muslim sites was built in 691 CE, the Dome of the Rock.
But there are remnants of the Second Temple, the most notable of which is the Western Wall of the temple, which is a much-revered place for prayer in Jerusalem to this day. I visited both the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock while in Jerusalem earlier this summer. There is a barricade separating the places where men and women pray. Being there was profoundly moving to me – it is common to tuck written prayers into the wall, and I left prayers there for my family and for this church. As I rested in a moment of contemplative prayer at the Wall, with my hand on the wall, I felt such a deep sense of connection with women throughout the centuries who had prayed there – praying with joy, with hope, with anguish and grief, with anger, or contentment, praying for their sons, daughters, husbands, and parents, for their homeland and their neighbors, and now I was part of those prayers.
That is part of the power of holy places. They connect us with other people, both present and past. And sometimes, the beauty of the places is a big part of their impact on us. Certainly the people of Israel felt that the temple built by Solomon was beautiful and grand, and that in its beauty and grandeur, it paid tribute to God, and tangentially to them as God's people. The temple has been a powerful symbol for the Jewish people – both in its presence and in its absence.
Many of us have a special feeling about churches that have been important in our lives – and certainly for some of us, part of what we love about Frame is this beautiful sanctuary from the amazing carved ceiling to the arches, to the warm wood tones of the pews and the radiant light of the late afternoon sun through the western window. Part of what makes it a holy place for us is its beauty, but also this place, or other places, also become holy for us as we experience transcendent moments of our lives: as we learn and grow in faith, as we are touched by a hymn we remember from our childhood, as we pray, as we gather with family to mourn a loved one, or to celebrate a wedding, or to baptize a child. Each of these moments seem to be a way that we say, like Joshua did as he led the Hebrew people into the Promised Land: as for me and my house, we serve the Lord. And part of what makes this place holy for us is each other – as one of the poems Dan Dieterich read by Wendell Berry puts it: Let us meet here together, members one of another, here in our holy room.
I remember a sign I saw in Israel, behind a fence, that read “Private Holy Place” and I thought it was an oxymoron. How can there be a private holy place? Community is, I think, essential to holiness – at least, the possibility of community. Because at some level holiness marks what is essential and common to all people, and so there can't be a holy place that is privatized. That is not to say that we can't have personal holy places – and by that I mean, places that have become holy over time to us because of our own experiences there. There's no sign by the little lake where my parents have a cabin that marks it as a holy place. Nonetheless, it has become holy ground to me, and I suspect also to many who have spent summers there – I photographed my first sunset there, I have memories of the sun on my tanned skin as I picked blueberries with my mother there, I saw caught my first fish with my dad there, and this summer I saw my first bear in the wild there. Some of my most memorable experiences of God's creation were there, and there is a rock in the woods that has become a communion table of sorts there – for it is where we left the peanuts for the chipmunks, sharing a meal across species.
Think for a moment about such a place for you – it may be near here: the Ice Age trail where you and your spouse grew in love as you hiked together; the river where you first kayaked with a friend and could experience the water in a different way, the farm where your father grew Christmas trees, the berry patch where you and a grandmother picked blackberries before making jelly together. Surely, these are holy places too – places where relationships acquired depth, and you sensed the beauty of God's creation. Places where you grew in your understanding and ease with yourself, and tried new tasks. Or just places where you could rest in the beauty. Wendell Berry described such an experience of holiness: “I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
The concept of holiness is classically described as something “set apart” -- a holy place, such as a temple, is a place set apart. Holy people are those who are set apart. I think this may be a completely backward understanding of holiness. Perhaps holiness is all about connections, and holy places are where we come to deeper awareness of connection – connection with creation, connections with creatures human and otherwise, connection with the creator. And that awareness can come through beauty, through understanding, through silence, through shared joy and sorrow – a connection that says there is more to life than me, more to the my life than what I make of it – these connections lead us to worship, to recognizing and honoring that larger presence in which we live, to a sense that God is what lies beyond and yet within us, and that God's presence within us comes at God's initiative.
And so we can baptize babies, affirming their connection to God, knowing that we are God's because God claimed us, God is the spark within us that bears testimony to the unity, dignity and holiness of life, and that God was working in our lives before we ever knew about God. We baptize babies because they are God's more than they are ours, and we remind ourselves that it is an amazing privilege to participate in raising these children of God's.
When we think about stewardship – usually folks in the church are thinking about the annual pledge drive, and trust me, there will be one here this year. But stewardship is a much larger, and more important theological concept than “we should give to the church”. Stewardship is at its essence an affirmation that all life begins and ends in God, that not only are our children not our own, and our stuff is not our own, but indeed, our very lives are not our own. We give to the church not because it is our church, but because it is God's church, and we recognize that the commitment of others before us made it possible for us to be part of God's church here, and so our commitment will make it possible for others to worship here. And our stewardship of the earth – the most essential holy place – is a recognition that the earth belongs to God, and that we hold it in trust for those who come after us, so we need to make choices that will make it possible for life to flourish here long beyond our time. And our stewardship of ourselves means that we make choices that will honor God within and beyond us.
Participating in the larger life beyond ours is worship – we worship here and remember that we are part of each other, part of God, and part of a community of people who have served in God's name here for 144 years. Our giving is part of our worship. We worship in the world by delighting in God's creation, caring for it and recognizing that it doesn't belong to us, but in fact, we belong to it. We worship in community by recognizing that God dwells within each of us, and that each of us (and even more, all of us together) bear God's image to the world. Caring for each other is part of a worshipful life. Holiness can't be about being set apart because God isn't set apart from us – God is and has always been radically involved with us, and so a holy place should be a place where we become engaged – with God, with each other, with God's world, with our own deeper self. This is God's house, and so are we. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Psalm 84; 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10–11, 22–30, 41–43
Eleven years ago, still in my first year of ministry, I was an associate pastor in my first church and the head of staff retired. Under his leadership, the church had become a favorite wedding location, so suddenly I had 10 weddings scheduled in 7 weeks. Kind of a baptism by fire. And ever since then, oddly enough, I have loved weddings. One of my favorite weddings that summer was the 2nd wedding of a 2-wedding day – and they had 6 little children, ages 3-5 or so, participating in the wedding. At the rehearsal, we sat the little ones down to talk with them about what to do and not to do during the wedding. You know, don’t pick your nose, don’t talk during the wedding, and so on. One of the little girls raised her hand eagerly. “You know what you must never ever do during a wedding?” she offered. “Yes?” I said, curious to hear whatever wisdom her life thus far had taught her. “You must never ever throw cabbages during a wedding” she pronounced, with finality. I could agree with that, wondering, however, what episode had provided this insight. But then, the groom crouched down to talk with the kids. He was a lovely guy – a streets and sanitation worker from Chicago – very plain-spoken and direct, with clear ideas of his own. “You need to be very well behaved tomorrow,” he said, “Because this is God’s house.” The children all nodded solemnly, and indeed, they were very well-behaved.
This is God’s house. I remember being told that about church when I was a child. I don’t think that I ever had the sense that church was really where God lived, at least, not more than any other place God lived. But I did have a strong sense of church as a place for paying attention to the things of God, for holy talk. And in that sense, I remember thinking of church as hallowed ground. Hallowed ground?
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…we pray. Hallowed means holy. What does it mean for something to be holy? We heard the story today of the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem that King Solomon built. Surely the temple was holy – it, too, was the house of God. There is a detailed description of the temple, earlier in 1 Kings.
The temple was large: 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet high. It had a stone exterior, but the interior was cedar, much of it carved into gourds and flowers. The innermost sanctuary was 30 feet wide by 30 feet long by 30 feet high, and its interior was also cedar, in this case, plated with gold. There were sculptures of cherubim – 15 feet tall, with 15 foot wingspans. The doors to the inner sanctuary were carved of olivewood. There were also bronze pillars, basins of bronze, stand of bronze – so that the total effect was an interior of carved cedar, olivewood, bronze and gold. The project took seven years to complete and was obviously amazing. It was completed in 960 BCE and was destroyed by Babylon almost 400 years later in 586 BCE, at the beginning of the Exile when much of the population of Israel including most of the religious and political leadership were exiled to Babylon. After the overthrow of Babylon by the Persian Empire, the King of Persia, Cyrus, granted the Israelites permission to return home. This was around 536 BCE, and 20 years later, the temple was rebuilt. This temple is known as the Second Temple and lasted almost 600 years until the Jewish revolt again Rome which concluded in 70 CE when the Second Temple was destroyed. It has not been rebuilt, and now, on the same site, one of the three most holy Muslim sites was built in 691 CE, the Dome of the Rock.
But there are remnants of the Second Temple, the most notable of which is the Western Wall of the temple, which is a much-revered place for prayer in Jerusalem to this day. I visited both the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock while in Jerusalem earlier this summer. There is a barricade separating the places where men and women pray. Being there was profoundly moving to me – it is common to tuck written prayers into the wall, and I left prayers there for my family and for this church. As I rested in a moment of contemplative prayer at the Wall, with my hand on the wall, I felt such a deep sense of connection with women throughout the centuries who had prayed there – praying with joy, with hope, with anguish and grief, with anger, or contentment, praying for their sons, daughters, husbands, and parents, for their homeland and their neighbors, and now I was part of those prayers.
That is part of the power of holy places. They connect us with other people, both present and past. And sometimes, the beauty of the places is a big part of their impact on us. Certainly the people of Israel felt that the temple built by Solomon was beautiful and grand, and that in its beauty and grandeur, it paid tribute to God, and tangentially to them as God's people. The temple has been a powerful symbol for the Jewish people – both in its presence and in its absence.
Many of us have a special feeling about churches that have been important in our lives – and certainly for some of us, part of what we love about Frame is this beautiful sanctuary from the amazing carved ceiling to the arches, to the warm wood tones of the pews and the radiant light of the late afternoon sun through the western window. Part of what makes it a holy place for us is its beauty, but also this place, or other places, also become holy for us as we experience transcendent moments of our lives: as we learn and grow in faith, as we are touched by a hymn we remember from our childhood, as we pray, as we gather with family to mourn a loved one, or to celebrate a wedding, or to baptize a child. Each of these moments seem to be a way that we say, like Joshua did as he led the Hebrew people into the Promised Land: as for me and my house, we serve the Lord. And part of what makes this place holy for us is each other – as one of the poems Dan Dieterich read by Wendell Berry puts it: Let us meet here together, members one of another, here in our holy room.
I remember a sign I saw in Israel, behind a fence, that read “Private Holy Place” and I thought it was an oxymoron. How can there be a private holy place? Community is, I think, essential to holiness – at least, the possibility of community. Because at some level holiness marks what is essential and common to all people, and so there can't be a holy place that is privatized. That is not to say that we can't have personal holy places – and by that I mean, places that have become holy over time to us because of our own experiences there. There's no sign by the little lake where my parents have a cabin that marks it as a holy place. Nonetheless, it has become holy ground to me, and I suspect also to many who have spent summers there – I photographed my first sunset there, I have memories of the sun on my tanned skin as I picked blueberries with my mother there, I saw caught my first fish with my dad there, and this summer I saw my first bear in the wild there. Some of my most memorable experiences of God's creation were there, and there is a rock in the woods that has become a communion table of sorts there – for it is where we left the peanuts for the chipmunks, sharing a meal across species.
Think for a moment about such a place for you – it may be near here: the Ice Age trail where you and your spouse grew in love as you hiked together; the river where you first kayaked with a friend and could experience the water in a different way, the farm where your father grew Christmas trees, the berry patch where you and a grandmother picked blackberries before making jelly together. Surely, these are holy places too – places where relationships acquired depth, and you sensed the beauty of God's creation. Places where you grew in your understanding and ease with yourself, and tried new tasks. Or just places where you could rest in the beauty. Wendell Berry described such an experience of holiness: “I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
The concept of holiness is classically described as something “set apart” -- a holy place, such as a temple, is a place set apart. Holy people are those who are set apart. I think this may be a completely backward understanding of holiness. Perhaps holiness is all about connections, and holy places are where we come to deeper awareness of connection – connection with creation, connections with creatures human and otherwise, connection with the creator. And that awareness can come through beauty, through understanding, through silence, through shared joy and sorrow – a connection that says there is more to life than me, more to the my life than what I make of it – these connections lead us to worship, to recognizing and honoring that larger presence in which we live, to a sense that God is what lies beyond and yet within us, and that God's presence within us comes at God's initiative.
And so we can baptize babies, affirming their connection to God, knowing that we are God's because God claimed us, God is the spark within us that bears testimony to the unity, dignity and holiness of life, and that God was working in our lives before we ever knew about God. We baptize babies because they are God's more than they are ours, and we remind ourselves that it is an amazing privilege to participate in raising these children of God's.
When we think about stewardship – usually folks in the church are thinking about the annual pledge drive, and trust me, there will be one here this year. But stewardship is a much larger, and more important theological concept than “we should give to the church”. Stewardship is at its essence an affirmation that all life begins and ends in God, that not only are our children not our own, and our stuff is not our own, but indeed, our very lives are not our own. We give to the church not because it is our church, but because it is God's church, and we recognize that the commitment of others before us made it possible for us to be part of God's church here, and so our commitment will make it possible for others to worship here. And our stewardship of the earth – the most essential holy place – is a recognition that the earth belongs to God, and that we hold it in trust for those who come after us, so we need to make choices that will make it possible for life to flourish here long beyond our time. And our stewardship of ourselves means that we make choices that will honor God within and beyond us.
Participating in the larger life beyond ours is worship – we worship here and remember that we are part of each other, part of God, and part of a community of people who have served in God's name here for 144 years. Our giving is part of our worship. We worship in the world by delighting in God's creation, caring for it and recognizing that it doesn't belong to us, but in fact, we belong to it. We worship in community by recognizing that God dwells within each of us, and that each of us (and even more, all of us together) bear God's image to the world. Caring for each other is part of a worshipful life. Holiness can't be about being set apart because God isn't set apart from us – God is and has always been radically involved with us, and so a holy place should be a place where we become engaged – with God, with each other, with God's world, with our own deeper self. This is God's house, and so are we. Amen.