A Sermon preached on
Sunday, July 22, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark
6:30-34, 53-56
When you are still in the middle of a capital
campaign and busy spending money on renovating a building – very visibly right
now – you wonder if God is really on your side when all the readings seem to
indicate that God is not overly fond of physical buildings or of houses for God.
First we heard how God asks David via the
prophet Nathan: “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not
lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to
this day.” (2 Samuel 7:4) Nor it seems, does God want to live in one that day
either. Then, in the Letter to the Ephesians, we hear that in fact it is the
people, and not some wooden, stone, or red brick building who are the dwelling
place for God. And finally, as if to add insult to injury, when Jesus wants to
gather his disciples for a time of much needed rest and prayer, he calls them
away to a deserted place and not the local parish synagogue.
So, shall we give this place up and just use a
tent in the garden? No, it would be much too cold in the winter, though of
course to make sure that this building is also not too cold in the winter, we
do have to complete and fully finance our heating project! The other reason is
that if we look at the readings more closely, God does not actually reject
buildings as such. He just tells David that he is not the one called to build
him a house, that will be his son Solomon’s job, because other types of
“houses” and “households” are more important at that moment in Israel’s life:
The house of David, the dynasty he will found to lead Israel and that through
David’s descendant Jesus will expand to include the whole family of humanity.
But these passages are important and salient
reminders not to idolize our buildings. Remember, this is not the church, we
are! The people are the place. The proper home for God is in our hearts and in
our lives. Paul writes that joined together in Christ we form or will grow to form
God’s dwelling place. (Ephesians 2:21) Let us take a closer look at how this
particular dwelling-place is constructed.
The first thing to note is that strangely and
quite unlike any physical buildings it has no walls, nothing to keep people out
or in. When Paul says that we are no longer strangers and aliens (2:19) – or perhaps
immigrants and refugees to use a modern equivalent – he means that all people
are now included. The house or household of David has been expanded through
Christ so that all people will “have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Christ
has “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (2:14)
Paul was of course referring to the hostility between Jew and Gentile, because
that was his context. But we can expand this further. The new humanity Jesus
creates in himself is for all peoples.
The second thing – and this appeals to the
science fiction fan in me – God’s dwelling-place exists out of time and out of
space. Not only are we no longer outsiders, but as “citizens with the saints”
we are joined to all who have gone before us and who already form the eternal household
of God. This is not just about you Ephesians, Paul says. And for us too it
reminds us that God’s house is much bigger than this single church, or for that
matter the Church, or this world and this life.
Thirdly, it is “built upon the foundation of
the apostles and prophets.” Not literally of course, this is not a mafia movie
script. When we talk about the apostles as a foundation, we often use it as
shorthand for the church being built on the faith of the apostles, so on the
teaching they handed on, and on the historic creeds. And it is true that without
the apostles and their witness as recorded in Scripture we would not know about
Jesus. But I think that Paul also means that we must base our lives on the apostolic
and prophetic deeds and actions.
In the passage we heard from Mark’s Gospel,
the disciples, called apostles for the first time, have just returned from
being sent out by Jesus. “The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all
that they had done and taught.” (Mark 6:30) At the beginning of chapter 6 (Mark
6:12) they “went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons
and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” Or in other words, they
and we are sent to tell people about Christ in the hope that they turn to him. And
we are called to bring healing: both physical and spiritual. Our society is not
well, fear and hate are gaining ground. But we have the cure and that cure is
Jesus.
Prophets, the other element of the foundation,
are those, like Nathan, who tell the people and the powerful not what they
want to hear, but what God wants them to hear. Building on their example,
our job is not to reinforce existing prejudices but to introduce God’s counter-narrative,
which built on sacrifice, and selfless love as embodied in Jesus Christ.
Finally, we learn that “Christ Jesus himself is
the cornerstone” of the building. The cornerstone (or foundation stone) is the
first stone set in construction: all other stones will be set in reference to
this stone and so it will determine the position of the entire structure. Nothing
then is more important than Christ Jesus. Our relationship with him, our
adherence to his teaching, and our willingness to follow the path of his life
is what determines whether we as a community, not just as individuals, form a
holy temple in the Lord. We are the living stones that make up God’s spiritual
dwelling-place and we take our direction from God’s Son. He both holds us and
brings us together.
Of course, there are physical spaces where we
feel God’s presence. We have been worshipping God here for over 150 years and
that leaves traces. One priest wrote about her church as having “walls
varnished by prayer and a floor bathed by baptisms and flowered with wedding
petals and funeral lilies. Thousands of outstretched hands have received the
Body of Christ at the altar. Of course God is present.” [1]
Physical buildings are neither good nor bad in
themselves. They are good if they support the community in their mission.
Physical buildings are bad if they become the sole focus of the community or something
that people use to hide in and to keep the world out. God likes to move about
and we make a mistake if we think that we can keep or restrain God in any
particular space. Remember what God says to David: “I have been moving about in
a tent and a tabernacle. I have moved about among all the people of Israel.” (2 Samuel 7:6-7) And don’t forget too that the
word apostle, our foundation, means sent forth. God wants us to go out into the
world and to bring our loving, liberating, and life-giving message!
I think our church’s four visions take this
into account and strike the right balance between Paul’s blueprint for a
spiritual dwelling-place and our need for a physical home:
Our church is a place where we welcome others and
worship. It is where we teach and pray and seek fellowship: where we deepen our
relationship with one another and with God. It is a resource that we offer,
with ourselves, to support local concerns. Our fourth vision is perhaps the
most important and apostolic: The church building is also the place we leave
when we go out into the world to “act as a beacon of hope, embracing the
stranger with openness, kindness, and acceptance and bearing witness to our
faith by our lives and actions.”
God dwells in all our hearts, not exclusively
in Christian ones … we just have to help others discover this joyous truth.
Amen.
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