Longing for God

GOOD MORNING!    I BRING GREETINGS THIS MORNING FROM THE CT. CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST – FROM OUR INTERIM CONFERENCE MINISTER, CHUCK WILDMAN & FROM ALL OF THE OTHER STAFF, AS WELL AS YOUR REGIONAL MINISTER, MIKE PENN-STRAH, WHO HAPPENS TO BE ON SABBATICAL FOR A FEW MONTHS & RETURNS AT THE END OF OCTOBER…

I ALSO BRING GREETINGS FROM THE COLCHESTER FEDERATED CHURCH IN COLCHESTER, CT WHERE I PREACHED LAST – THEY ARE A CHURCH THAT IS JUST BEGINNING CONSIDERATION ABOUT BECOMING AN OPEN& AFFIRMING CHURCH. THEY WERE GLAD TO HEAR THAT I AM A MEMBER HERE AT SPRING GLEN CHURCH & THAT WE ARE A CHURCH WHO IS LIVING INTO BEING AN OPEN & AFFIRMING CONGREGATION. 

AS MANY OF YOU KNOW I HAVE BEEN A MEMBER HERE AT SPRING GLEN FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS/ SOME OF YOU MAY KNOW ME AS SARAH LIBBY’S MOTHER/OTHERS MAY KNOW THAT I SERVE AS AN INTENTIONAL INTERIM PASTOR IN VARIOUS CHURCHES THROUGHOUT CT.  FOR MANY BLOCKS OF TIME I AM NOT PRESENT IN WORSHIP WITH YOU WHILE I SERVE ANOTHER PARISH.    AT THE MOMENT, HOWEVER, I SERVE AS THE INTERIM ASSOCIATE CONFERENCE MINISTER FOR CLERGY CONCERNS AT THE CONFERENCE OFFICE IN HARTFORD – FUNCTIONING AS BOTH A PASTOR TO PASTORS & A RESOURCE FOR OUR PASTORS THROUGHOUT THE CONFERENCE.  IT IS MY PLEASURE TO BE ABLE TO BOTH WORSHIP AMONG YOU AT THIS TIME & TO OCCASIONALLY SHARE IN WORSHIP LEADERSHIP, AS I DO TODAY…

WILL YOU JOIN ME IN PRAYER?  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen

King Solomon was never known for his humility. After all, he was King David's son!   Many considered him the wisest man who had ever lived in Israel. SOME believed that King Solomon's reign was the highpoint of Israel's prosperity and prominence as an empire and apparently KING SOLOMON knew it! 
 
On this grand day of celebration, King Solomon stands before the whole nation and has to find words to dedicate this amazing this new & glorious temple that had finally been completed in Jerusalem… Here was a grand new house of God, that King David had always hoped to build, that had finally been completed during KING SOLOMON’S reign.  So what does he do on this occasion?  King Solomon declares that this temple will be a place of prayer, a place of national unity, a place of comfort for the sorrowful and a place of the divine presence – words that one would expect at such a moment of national self-congratulation and royal pride!  This temple had been built as the Rolls Royce of temples - all in gold and fine woods, in jewels and ivory, in brass & bronze & silver and more gold!!! It was probably the most beautiful and spectacular worship space that folks had ever seen!

And yet, even as King Solomon celebrates this culmination of the great historical covenantal relationship with God, Solomon adds something that may really surprise us when we hear it read... Solomon asks (at verse 27): "Will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven, and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built."

So even this King, even this leader with the inflated ego seems clear that even this grandest of all temples probably cannot contain God… He is quoted as saying, Even heaven, even the very highest heaven, cannot contain God! And so, of course, even Solomon has to admit that this amazing temple cannot really pretend to contain God…  Solomon was wise indeed to recognize that in spite of all his best efforts to create the grandest, the most elaborate structure in God’s honor, that God was not to be contained by human or even any other spaces...

We do call our church buildings "houses of God," don’t we?
Yet, we do not really believe that God literally lives here, do we?

I guess we might say that we try to point to our experience of this place… our experience, that, when we have come seeking a word from God, when we come in pain or sorrow or at times of trouble  - to this place searching for comfort - we yearn and hope to find it here...
This worship space is a place we come expecting to encounter God...

And really… All of the elements of this space and all the elements of worship each week and each Sunday are designed to help assist us in that encounter with God…

It seems that we human beings have always longed for God’s presence… We have always sought for a place where we could be assured that God “is”...

For thousands of years we have sought to create sacred spaces, special places where we could go “to be” in God’s presence...  We seem to yearn for and to long for God...

We seem to need times and places that are Holy for us - places and times when we prepare ourselves to experience the Holy… times and places set aside to encounter God… times and places when we both fear and yet also yearn to come face to face with the triune God…  I believe it is a fundamental yearning in each of us for places and times when we can somehow know God’s presence,  encounter the risen Christ, and feel the Holy Spirit moving in our midst...

The Ark of the Covenant was a portable symbol of God’s presence - for a very transient community.  The Ark symbolized that God was always present with them - where ever they traveled. Until the Temple at Jerusalem there had not been one central location where God was thought to come to rest...
 
King Solomon further revealed his wisdom for he understood how important it would be to bring the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple at Jerusalem, signifying that God’s presence could finally come to rest “there”... But he was also not kidding anyone… he recognized and acknowledged even at this event, that even in spite of this glorious Temple in Jerusalem that nothing could really ever “contain” God...////

Like the Israelites, we too, hold onto deep-seated connections with our places of worship, our sanctuaries, our Holy & Sacred spaces...  I suspect that each of us can recall a place or a time when we knew that a place was a Holy Sanctuary for us, or that we remember a moment in time which is a Holy Moment for us... ///

My guess is that for some of us it may have happened in a traditional church building or during a formal worship time… I imagine that for others here that we carry memories of moments or occasions outside of “official” church spaces and outside of traditional worship settings where we experienced THE HOLY…

I’ve just returned from vacation and a place which serves for me as one of those sacred, soul-renewing places, a place that constitutes one of my sanctuary places, one of those PLACES WE CALL LIMINAL PLACES, where the distinction between the Holy and the Ordinary is very thin…////

Spending several weeks on a small Island off the coast of Maine each summer renews and refreshes me in countless ways...  It is not just the beautiful vistas or the dramatic sunsets or the ebb and flow of time that the tides remind me about in a daily rhythm…  It is not just the wide variety of birds or the steep cliffs or the whale sitings or the swarms of butterflies or the smell of salt air… It is also the people… It is the community of people who I encounter there that fill me over and over again with a profound sense of the Holy and various moments when the Holy Spirit is present and alive and moving among us…

I hope that each of you know a holy and sacred place… I hope you too know moments of God’s presence in your life…

King Solomon reminds us today that not even heaven can contain God… No place, no building,  not even this one, can “contain” God… Solomon knew it about the temple in Jerusalem and we too know it… Yet we still need places like this... We still need a place like Spring Glen Church where and when meeting the Holy is possible…
 
We need places and times where we meet and greet one another on our mutual journeys of faith, where we share in community - song, prayer, and the Word of God together...

I believe we need a time and a place where we talk & share together the joys and concerns of our lives... I believe we need a place and time where we share and use our many gifts - where we make a difference in the lives of our children, our young people, our adults, and our elders... We need a time and place where we pool our financial gifts and make decisions to help those in need - both locally, nationally, and around the world...
 
We all need a time and a place where we can share together in rituals that help us keep and maintain a relationship - with each other and with God...
 
I hope that’s why you come here on Sundays… There’s no doubt in my mind that we need to have “houses of God” - needing, as we do, a time and a place set aside especially for our spiritual life, our spiritual growth, our relationship with the Holy...

 Though God is not contained by any one place that we build, God’s presence is here...
  And God promises to come and meet us. 
God is never content to remain aloof or distant.

We must always remember that this God, out of love, came & lived among us, stooped to be among us… once… in the form of a human being…  And I trust that God continues to be among us still, seeking and searching each of us out...

We come together each Sunday at a certain time and in certain places to open ourselves again to the Holy because we long for God... And we come together because God also longs for us... Amen.

Acknowledged here is a sermon entitled
"An Uncontainable, Yet Accessible God" by William H. Willimon

TEXTS for worship August 26, 2012
1 Kings 8: (1, 6, 10-11), 22-30
Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion.
Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim.
And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.

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. He 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, the 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.

Therefore, O LORD, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, 'There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.' Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant my father David.
 
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!

Regard your servant's prayer and his plea, O LORD my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, 'My name shall be there,' that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place.

Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.

Psalm 84 FROM PETERSON’ THE MESSAGE

What a beautiful home, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
I've always longed to live in a place like this,
   Always dreamed of a room in your house,
      where I could sing for joy to God-alive!

 Birds find nooks and crannies in your house,
      sparrows and swallows make nests there.
   They lay their eggs and raise their young,
      singing their songs in the place where we worship.

   GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies! King! God!
      How blessed they are to live and sing there!
 And how blessed all those in whom you live,
      whose lives become roads you travel;
   They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,
      discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!

   God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and
      at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!
GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, listen:
      O God of Jacob, open your ears—I'm praying!
   Look at our shields, glistening in the sun,
      our faces, shining with your gracious anointing.
 
 One day spent in your house, this beautiful place of worship,
      beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
   I'd rather scrub floors in the house of my God
      than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.
 
   All sunshine and sovereign is GOD, generous in gifts and glory.
   He doesn't scrimp with his traveling companions.
      It's smooth sailing all the way with GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies.