St. John’s United Church

“Encountering the Holy”

Richard Fairchild tells of how one his instructors at the Vancouver School of Theology used to come and sit or stand near the members of his class and, as he talked, look at each student and then - finger raised to emphasize some point or other – fix his gaze intently upon someone so that he/she knew they were connected, eye ball to eye ball - and impart a word of wisdom. The particular wisdom he would impart was a truth that was both simple and profound. One of those truths was this: “God is everywhere. But God is also somewhere in particular.” God is everywhere. But God is also somewhere in particular.

Our first reading this morning - taken from the First Book of Kings – is about this very matter. King Solomon has just finished the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem - and the time to dedicate the Temple has come. Solomon stands before the altar to pray. As he stands there, near to the Ark of the Covenant, in front of the chamber known as the Holy of Holies, he prays to God that God will keep the promises made to Israel and to his father, David, that he will cause the house of David to last forever. Then, he prays about the temple itself, this elaborate and beautiful structure that he has built to be the home of God, saying: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! Yet, give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, O Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”

God is everywhere. No structure. No person. No doctrine. No creed, no mountain, no valley can contain God - the God who is the Creator of heaven and of earth, the Maker of you and of me. But thanks be to God that, while God is everywhere - while God cannot be contained or limited in any fashion - God is still somewhere in particular. God can be approached. God can be encountered in a particular place. God is available and God will hear us as we turn our attention to God and to the place where God is.

God was with the Israelites during their flight from Egypt and their wilderness wanderings. God was in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. And that experience formed Israel into the people of God - the chosen ones. God was with Moses on the Holy Mountain where he received the Law, and, again, when he entered into the tent - the tabernacle of God’s presence. Day by day, God was with Moses and his followers - giving Israel her charter – her constitution - and ultimately bringing the people into the Promised Land. God promised to be the God of Israel and that they would be God’s people when they entered into Covenant with him at Sinai. He would be their God and he would watch over them, defend them and guide them. God promised also them and their chosen king, David - the father of Solomon - that God would cause his name to dwell with them - to dwell with them in a home made by human hands.

The name of God – YAHWEH - the name that the faithful of Israel never utter because it is so holy and because they do not and will not presume to control God or to put God in a box - is the sign of God’s presence among God’s people - the sign of God’s dwelling on earth just as God dwells in heaven above.

God’s name is precious - it represents the fullness of God shared with God’s people. It represents all of God’s promises - all of God’s glory - towards Israel - and toward us. God is everywhere. God cannot be contained or limited or controlled. But God is, also, somewhere in particular. God’s name is in his temple. And toward that temple the people did indeed pray, just as the people of Islam pray towards Mecca, and just as most churches that have been built over the last 2,000 years have been built so that the altar lies to the east, enabling the people worshipping there to pray towards the East - towards Jerusalem - towards the earthly place where God first caused his name to dwell.

Heaven is God’s dwelling place. Yet, whether we are a Jew or Gentile, a child of Israel or a stranger to the Covenant with Moses, God is to be found somewhere in particular; and God will answer us from that place and from heaven above - so that all the peoples of the earth may know God name, so that all the peoples of the earth may know where God can be found, and so that all the peoples of the earth may encounter the Holy and worship God in that place.

Now, sometimes, it can be hard to remember that God is somewhere in particular - working his works, listening to his people, answering their prayers. Sometimes, it can be hard to see how God loves someone in particular - that God is present for them and to them. Sometimes, it can be hard to locate God. That’s why it’s important to gather together in a specific place (like this church / chapel) and to hear the words that God has given, to pray together all kinds of prayers, to wait upon God and to do the particular things God has asked of us through the Law and the Prophets, through Jesus the Christ, and through the Word of life he proclaims.

Margaret Visser writes, “For anyone who is not spiritually allergic to churches, to walk into a beautiful church is to encounter understanding, to hear echoes of the soul’s own experiences of epiphany. Such stimulus and concurrence need not involve anything theological. It can be a matter simply of sunlight striking through coloured glass and dappling the wall opposite…, of the smell of flowers and lingering hints of incense…, of the silent cold of stone, of movements of the soul that respond directly to columns and arches and domes and colouring and carving…, or of the memory of the people who have filled this building in the past. I, myself,” Visser writes, “find it an invariable satisfaction just to see the dark entrance of a church (open!) even on a quick drive through an unknown town. It’s a hole in the hard walls of the rackety everyday, a reassurance that, thanks to the care and attention of my fellow human beings, a place has been made ready for silent contact with something enormous, something present, for anyone who wants it.”

Roddy Hamilton puts it this way: “There are only a few places free enough to be called holy places. Many have the name; few have the quality. The most important place is the one we carry around with us. It is our souls - that deep down place of discovery and adventure into a realm beyond this world. To touch it, we can stand on mountains, read poetry or smell a flower - but that lasts only moments. To relate and to be who we truly are deep down, we need to worship - to touch the mystery – the mystery of life and future and love, the mystery of truth and hope and promise, the mystery of light and searching. All these are the personality of God. The doorway to the holy place is here where moments of wonder last eternally.

The good news for today is that God is here in this place. And this is the reason we are here. We come together in this place each Sunday to seek God, for what we need more than anything is to be with God, to be reminded that God is with us. I can’t explain this. I can only point to my experience and that of countless persons down through the centuries all the way back to Solomon. When God’s people consecrate a place like this to God and gather to worship, God is with them. We experience the presence of God in a deeper, more profound way when we are together in this holy place. As we pray and sing and listen to the Word together, we come to know God’s presence in a way that we cannot know any way or any place else. “The Lord inhabits the praises of his people,” Psalm 122:3 sings. When God’s people lift their voices in praise, God’s presence is enthrone in their midst. Or, as Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.”

I will never forget being at church camp one year. Each night we would sit around a campfire, sing and have devotions. One night, we all noticed the wood popping and cracking, occasionally sending a glowing red ember out of the fire into the dirt. Soon, each little ember began to lose its heat and quickly died. The leader pointed this out to us and then picked up an ember with a shovel and placed it back in the fire. Soon it was glowing again. “Each of us,” she said, “is an ember set aglow by the Spirit of God and nurtured in the fire of the fellowship and worship of the church. To stay aglow, we must stay in the fire.”

Yes, I have encountered the Holy and known God’s presence outside these walls…many times and in many meaningful ways for God is truly with us always and everywhere. But, for me, there is no substitute for the powerful and enriching experiences of God that are ours when we gather together in this place to worship and praise God. In fact, my sense is that if we neglect the assembling of ourselves together as is the custom of so many, that our awareness of God’s presence in our daily lives will greatly diminish.

For God is here. This truly is God’s house. And that’s precisely why so many are not here. It’s too uncomfortable, too risky, too dangerous. When you come to someone’s house, you take the chance of meeting them – indeed, you expect to meet them! And when we come to this house - God’s house - a place where God has agreed to meet us – then, we run the risk of actually meeting God. And the simple truth is that many people do not wish to make that encounter. For, when we come to this place, we run the risk of hearing God speak to us, of being confronted with the truth about ourselves, of being convicted and challenged by the Living Lord. So why put yourself through all of that? Well, I believe it is because we really do need and want to hear the truth about ourselves and about our world. We come to be reminded of who we are, of whose we are, and of who we can become. And in coming here, in encountering the Holy and other who, like us are seeking to meet God, we re-establish contact with a source of strength and wisdom greater than our own. We need God and we need God’s people.

One of the former Presidents of Duke University was President Few. One Sunday morning as he was walking to church it began to rain. Some students drove by and offered to give him a ride, which he accepted. On the way, they asked him why he decided to go to church that morning when it was such a rainy day. President Few said, “I didn’t decide this morning. I decided fifty-five years ago, and I haven’t had to ask myself that question since.”
Most of you know that I carry this (calendar / Palm Pilot) just about everywhere I go. It’s a calendar and much more. I have a lot of important appointments and meetings listed here. Perhaps you have something like it, as well – a Palm Pilot or Blackberry or some calendar on your refrigerator or someplace for important appointments and meetings. Well, here’s an appointment you need to write down there each week. This is the place and this is the time. It’s a date you cannot afford to miss, for God will be waiting for us! And for that we can say, “Thanks be to God!” Amen and Amen.

Acknowledgements: Roddy Hamilton; Margaret Visser; Richard Fairchild; Bass Mitchell

A meditation preached by the Rev. Myra Garvin at St. John’s United Church, Brockville
Sunday, August 27, 2006 – Pentecost 12 B