[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage 518, Pentecost 12, August 27, 2006

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 Pentecost 12, August 27, 2006
 
I Kings 8:(1,6,10-11) 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
 
God’s Space
 
What a sanctuary dedication!  This is not just a sanctuary.  This is THE sanctuary, the only house of God, the only point on earth where God takes up residence.  Solomon does make allowance that although the fullness of God may dwell in his house the expanse of God does not: “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house...”  (1 Kings 8:27) This sounds a lot like incarnation to me.  Although here God is not uniquely present in a person, God is uniquely present in a building.  What Solomon is celebrating is a kind of nativity of God.  Sinai was the annunciation, and the placing of the arc in the temple is the birth.  Now, God is physically present, the fullness of God.  Oh, you go into the wilderness, and God is there but plays peek-a-boo.  In the temple you can count on God’s presence in a different way.  So, from then on, people who really wanted to be related to God would go see him in his house at least once a year.
Imagine being able to go visit the incarnate God!  It would be like that magic spot on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where the finger of God and the finger of Adam touch.  It would be like in the movie “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” when the space ship landed and these gleaming creatures emerged.  Here in this place and no other on earth, human beings meet the one beyond, the ultimate one.  What an experience!  What a privilege for an ephemeral creature! 
"A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field."   (Isaiah 40:6)    We cry out against this reality, but it remains the reality.  We are grass.  We are radically contingent beings, but if we can relate ourselves to the eternal one.   If we can build him a house, if he will stay in his house, we can shake this nagging feeling that we are grass. The house that Solomon built is gone, gone with it for most of us is the believe that God can be cooped up in any structure we build.  Not gone is our need for sanctuary with God however.  What we have left is a kind of space suit that will protect us from the life-threatening atmosphere outside of God's house, the vacuum of sin and death.  “Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  (Ephesians 6:11)  Thus protected for now we look forward to finally entering God's true sanctuary;  "so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."  (Titus 3:7)
Or, if we eat right...  “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”   (John 6:56) There is a lot of talk nowadays about eating right, but it is not this talk.  Why not?
“It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.”  (John 6:63)  
Because we think the flesh is everything.  But, if the flesh is everything, then we are grass, and here comes that nagging feeling again.
We would like to rise above needing God in a sanctuary, needing to wear the whole armor of God, needing to feed on Jesus as if we were sucklings.  We would like to rise above being contingent creatures.  We, like Archimedes, would like to move the earth with a lever, but we have nowhere to stand.  The more we pretend that we are not grass, the more we look just like grass.  Therefore, accepting our mortality, let us embrace all that God has provided and set our hearts on things eternal.
 
 
May these thoughts strengthen you.
 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor
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