Making a Home for God

Old Testament: Selections from 1 King 8
The Gospel:  John 6: 56-69             
 
In the last week, while on vacation, I think we drove through about two-thirds of Vermont from Rutland to Fairlee and to and from Quebec going different routes each time. As I drove through our beautiful green mountains and valleys, one of my favorite sights coming upon a village or town was of a church steeple that beckoned from afar. Seeing that white steeple or bell tower peeking over hills and treetops feels like an invitation, even a reassurance. It feels like I’m not alone.It feels like home. 
 
I love to go into churches as well and do so whenever I can when I travel. I love the architecture from the very simple New England style meeting house church to the ornate cathedrals like Notre Dame in France or St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC. I love how the Green Mountains and dairy farms enter through clear windows and a simple cross and worn wooden pews are the only ornaments in some churches while flying buttresses, intricate stained glass windows and gilded altars are featured in others. I have been in modern and historic synagogues where the Torah’s simple wooden or highly decorated Ark provides the central focus. I have been in a Hindu Temple primarily made of marble with gold statues to the Elephant-style God Ganesh, Shinto Shrines with their Torii gates and dwellings of the kami, Shinto gods. I have been in Buddhist Temples with dozens of golden buddhas and mosques with their mihrab or niche indicating the direction of Mecca, geometric designs and prayer rugs. All of them, although sometimes a higher power of another name, make me feel God’s inspiration, the creator inspiring human creation. The creator inspiring prayer, worship and gratitude. 
 
Yet the two tablets containing the ten commandments given by God to Moses had a mobile home rather than a permanent one for almost 500 years. That mobile home that Moses built, the Ark of the Covenant, was a box made of acacia wood, covered with gold and carried on gold covered poles. When the Isrealites traveled, they carried the Ark, placing it in a fine tent tabernacle or “tent of the Lord’s presence” when they encamped somewhere. 
 
No wonder David wanted to create a home for the Ark even though God said that would need to wait for his son. An established place of worship both beckons and inspires. It creates the opportunity for learning and centering for individuals, and fellowship and growth of the faith community. 
 
So once Solomon was established as king, he built a Temple to hold the Ark. The Temple that Solomon built was said to be 180 feet long by 90 feet wide and 50 feet tall. It was made of stone and cedar and involved enormous cost and labor to build. Solomon accomplished this with non-Israeli enslaved laborers and about 3300 Israeli officials to oversee the building process. He incurred such debt in the building, particularly to King Hiram for the cedar, that he had to give the King 20 towns in Galilee to pay for it.
 
And when the Temple was complete, Solomon invited Jews and non-Jews to come and pray there. Even before Paul, Solomon, as he said in a prayer in dedication of the Temple, was inviting others in to learn the wonder of God.
 
But, maybe, he was also showing off his wealth and power. His labor was forced and his focus on grandeur possibly more than faith. Sadly, within a few decades, Solomon the wise and rich king, will forget God as he got caught up in his wealth and his many, many foreign wives and he begins to honor their gods as well, forgetting the Creator who answered his wish for the knowledge of right from wrong, the knowledge of human nature. He got caught up in too much of humanity, forgetting to center God. Maybe he thought his work for the God of Israel was complete when he built God a house. But in forgetting God, he also forgot his promise to God to follow in God’s ways in order to have a successor from his line always be on the throne. In the end, Solomon will be the second and last King to rule over a united twelve tribes of Israel. 
 
It seems rather like the saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”  or “He who rests on his laurels, wears them in the wrong place”. 
 
We cannot say that our forebears built this beautiful church in 1892 with our belltower and beautiful stained glass windows, so our work learning and teaching about God, praying, and offering gratitude is done. 
 
It is not, after all, about the building, no matter how beautiful the church, mosque, temple, cathedral or shrine is. 
 
As Jesus says in Matthew 18: 20 “ For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” We are the church and we invite Jesus, the Living Bread, in. That is what worship, what church is about, as hard as that was for some of the early disciples and even us today. It is in inviting the spirit, inviting God in, or recognizing God in and among us that we hear the words of eternal life. 
 
I am currently taking a course on St. Teresa of Avila, Spain, a 16th Century Christian nun and mystic. Her book, Interior Castle, describes our souls as being a castle with seven mansions or rooms within it. In the seventh room, at the very center of our soul, of each one of our souls, she says God is waiting with open arms for us to make it through those other rooms to receive the all loving embrace. The challenge is that in our busy lives it can be hard to quiet our minds and hearts enough to hear God speaking to us from within our very souls - deep in that seventh mansion. 
 
Building a house for God is not so much about the building, as beautiful and inspiring as many of them are, but it is about making space and time and quiet to hear God right here - in our soul where God, the embodiment of love and acceptance, already lives waiting for us to realize that. Teresa emphasizes that our soul is a God-given, Godly nature that we have to take time to discover.
 
It takes work. St. Teresa says that we are beautiful and each one of us is worthy of union with God, the beloved. But we have to turn inward to connect to God within each of us. She calls the first mansion self-knowledge and humility but notes that for most of us, we do not pray well or often here because we are just too busy, which frankly, often exists for over half of our lives as we are family and society members, we work to sustain ourselves and raise families and communities. But if we work on finding time and humility, we can enter the second mansion where our heart opens to God and the possibility of learning more. 
 
Climbing through the mansions is a disciplined practice of prayer, reflection and recognition of our failings and a letting go of self in order to join with God, to join with love. Honestly, it is a journey that we could be on our whole lives, as we slip back to earlier rooms and then try to move forward again. 
 
So it is not about the house, the cathedral, church, temple, mosque or shrine. It is about making space for God in our hearts and minds, and reaching for God who is already journeying with us in our very souls. Like any journey, we are likely to get lost at times. Sorry, there is no GPS that will guide us to God, saying “Rerouting” when we encounter doubt or shame and take a wrong turn, but we do have the ability to reroute ourselves. Teresa says the hinges to the doors of each mansion we need to travel through to reach God, love, in our core are: prayer, experiential self-knowledge and humility. In each progressive mansion, we get better at these things: we focus better in prayer and learn to do so more regularly. We grow to know our true selves in all our blemishes and we grow in humility - knowing it is more about God than it is about the individual as we seek oneness with the God of Love.
 
While this journey is an individual one,  our church and other houses of worship are still important because they provide a safe space to meet fellow travelers, others who want to learn more, who want to connect more fully to God’s love, to learn from the example of God’s son Jesus, even when it takes time and work to understand. 
 
That first Temple that Solomon built lasted 400 years until 586 BCE when the Babylonians destroyed it. Despite the popular depiction by Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, that Ark has never been found and is assumed to be destroyed but we did not lose the commandments themselves. The 2nd Temple would be built 70 years later and would last until 70 CE when the Romans destroyed it.
 
A building, as beautiful, awe and faith-inspiring as it is, can be destroyed, but each of us already has an internal house for God in our very souls, it just takes time to quiet our minds and hearts to follow the map of prayer through the experience of who each of us is and to gather enough humility to listen for God who is softly calling out directions. 
 
I am going to keep visiting churches as I did last week visiting the Abbey of St.  Benoit du Lac in Quebec where this modern brick church completed in the 1990s has no stained glass but does have a huge window at one end shaped like the tree of life and an altar backed by a slatted wood structure that contains a simple cross made of blue stone that is superimposed over a circle representing both creation and unity. I found inspiration in the church’s beautiful simplicity and in the monks offering Gregorian Chants. 
 
I am also often equally inspired by the literal trees of life in God’s creation. 
 
So we do not need to build God a fancy home or go visit God there  unless that is what it takes for us to quiet our minds and hearts to reach out to God within each of us, and it is ok if some do need that. Get out your prayer maps and keep practicing. It is ok if you get lost, we all do at times. Just stay calm and listen for God to whisper the next direction. Amen. 

Pastor Michelle Fountain

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