"In This Place" - Sermon for Reformation Sunday

In This Place
Reformation – Narrative Lectionary Year 4
October 27, 2013
Grace, Mankato, MN
1 Kings 5.1-5, 8.1-13; John 2.19-21

Whenever I fly, which isn’t very often, I love sitting by the window and looking out. In addition to enjoying the scenery, I try to identify landmarks to determine where we are. Flying back from Washington State, wondering if I’d fly over Taft Park, the flight path that went agonizingly close to my home where I grew up in east Richfield. Indeed, that’s where we were coming in, but it was a melancholy experience. Instead of my home, there was a parking lot of a Home Depot. Most of the houses, including ours, had been razed or moved because of the airport and became commercial property.

I have come to appreciate the importance of places: Rice Lake, WI, where my mother grew up; and Ft. Snelling, where a maker stands in memory of my parents. On my bucket list is 3301 Texas Ave., St. Louis Park where I spent the first five years of my life and I haven’t been back to since. Of course, it’s not just the places that are important, but the experiences we have had and people we have met. They are so important that when they aren’t there we feel diminished and disconnected in some way.

The heart of today’s focus scripture is a place, perhaps the most important one in the Bible. Solomon, David’s son, is given permission to do what was denied his father: build a temple. The reason is that David was a man of war and the temple would not be a symbol of triumphalism. Temples and palaces were routinely built by newly crowned kings as monuments to themselves. The building projects were political moves, meant to consolidate their power. However, this temple would be built on God’s terms and for God’s purposes, not for any monarch’s political gain, even David’s.

This temple would also be different because it would be one of encounter rather than containment. The writer of 1 Kings clearly states that, although God’s glory fills the temple, God is not limited to the temple. After all, God is Lord of heaven and earth. Prior to this building of the temple, the Ark of the Covenant, symbol of God’s presence, has been in a tent. Though God refuses to be pinned down, God’s presence in the temple assures them that they now have the place that God had promised to their ancestors long ago. They won’t be abandoned. Even so, they will forget this lesson 300 years later when the temple is destroyed and they are exiled into Babylon.

In fact, the temple will be rebuilt by Ezra and Nehemiah, and subsequently destroyed a second time, and then a third during and after Jesus’ presence. So, Jesus startles the people when he claims he is now the temple, the locus of God’s divine presence. Jesus is now that place where we not only meet God, but God takes the initiative to meet us. This is a temple that when it is destroyed will be raised up on the third day and live forever. I in Jesus we see most clearly that God can be anywhere God chooses to be, but God promises to be in certain places for us to meet him. In “Solomon’s” Temple, the word in the form of the stone tablets, the Law is at the center; in Jesus, the Word is the center.

Five hundred years ago, a building project was the precipitating nit that Martin Luther picked with the church of the time. Though Luther didn’t object to the church being built, he did object to financing it through indulgences, “get into heaven cards” sold to unsuspecting peasants. He claimed that the church had no right to sell what God had freely given, God’s love in Jesus Christ. By the way, lest we Protestants get too snotty, we should remember that we have skeletons in our own ecclesial closets.

This past Wednesday night I asked folk, “Why are you here?” Answers were varied. “I was welcomed here and people remembered me when I came back.” “I felt acceptance for who I am.” “Our family has a long history here.” They all add up to one thing: to have an experience of the living God who, though can be anywhere, promises to be here. God meets us in the waters of baptism, making us his children. God is in, with, and under the bread and wine of Holy Communion, offering forgiveness and life. God meets us spoken words of grace and mercy. This sense of place is so critical in the time of “spiritual, but not religious”; God knows we need places like this to have an encounter with him.

Our leadership, in conversation with you all, have determined that we need to consider a building renovation project of our own next year, not as a monument to God but as a place of encounter. God willing, it will be to further support the mission and ministry God calls us to do here. It will continue to be a place for people to experience the graciously given love and acceptance of God. It will be a place where people can come and grow in the life of faith and be sent into the world, a hurting world that needs to hear the good news of God’s love. It will be a place where we can encounter the Word made flesh, whose death gives us life. Thanks be to God. Amen.