A House or a Home?
Pentecost + 19 - September 29, 2013
St. Luke, Slinger, WI
I moved twice last year. The first time was the big move - from Long Island out here to Wisconsin, where another Lutheran congregation was nice enough to let my husband, daughter, and I, with our dog and three cats stay in a spare house for several months while we looked for a house to buy. And that was the second move, on December 15 (because a pastor and his family have nothing better to do than to move 10 days before Christmas) - into our new house, my husband, daughter, 6 week old son, our pets, and all of our stuff!
We made quick work of getting unpacked, at least as quick as you can with a toddler and newborn around. We put furniture in place, unpacked boxes, arranged cabinets, and got to know some of the quirks and charms of our new place. And we made lists of things that were yet to do - painting and repairs. You know how this goes. But it was only a few months ago when we finally got around to painting our living room and dining room, which make up most of our 1st floor. With that done, we finally felt like we could hang up some of our pictures and artwork and things, and Andy, my husband, raced to do just that. Almost sooner than the paint could dry, he was digging through the boxes of home decor, and when at last he had this big print on our wall, the first major thing we had hung, he sighed and said to me, “Ah, it’s starting to feel like a home.” No longer just a house to him, but a home because at last we were starting to make it our own, put our own touches on the place, as though decorations and design are all that it takes to make a building into a home.
I think maybe Solomon felt a little bit like that when it came to the design and construction of the temple. We get just a tiny bit of his story in the reading from 1 Kings this morning. You may remember that this is King David and Bathsheba’s boy, handpicked by David to take the throne, the one chosen to build God a house, a physical reminder to the people of God’s presence. And if you read the chapters leading up to what we heard in worship this morning, you would realize or remember just what an undertaking this was, what a lavish project it became, how opulent this building was. Huge, well-crafted of hand-hewn rocks, special timber, everything overlaid with gold. It was majestic. Magnificent. A place befitting the creator and ruler of the universe. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to honor God with the best that we have, that can really be a good thing, but somewhere along the line, this temple Solomon had built missed the mark. Solomon and the people who came after him got sidetracked. They lost focus. God never needed a house. What God wanted was a home.
This week I had a post for some company that makes prefabricated homse come across my Facebook feed. And the caption that when with the picture was this quote:
“I believe that a good home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, ... must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.” ― Jani Ortlund
And while it's not scripture, I thought, “What a good description of what God wanted the temple to be, what God wants our homes as followers of Jesus to be!” Because this temple isn't just for God. It's for God's people! God intended for the temple to be a place where all people are invited in and welcomed and embraced, a place where people could experience the living God and be sent forth in awe and thanksgiving and joy to share the good news of God's immeasurable love. But no matter how good the temple looked, no matter how nice the decorations were no matter how impressive it was, over time it became a place of exclusion, not inclusion; a place of judgment, instead of mercy and forgiveness; a place of greed and jealousy, instead of abundant sharing and love. It was a mighty house, but it was not, in fact, a home for God and all of God's people.
It's good for us to hear this story, both as individuals and families, but also as a congregation, a chance to think about how our lives reflect God's longing for a home. You all are in the middle of a building project. You are, literally, “Under Construction.” And I don't know all the details of what your plans are, what you hope to see come from all the time and money and inconvenience of adding on to your building. I assume it means good things – that St. Luke is growing, that you are reaching out into your neighborhoods and helping new people to connect to God in new ways through this community of faith. But sometimes when we get into things like this as the church, we get sidetracked. We lose focus. We have a tendency to get so mired down in the details or anxious about the financing that we forget what the point was in the first place. Because it's not about the building. It's not about the “house”. God wants this place to be a home. A place where troubled souls find peace, where weary hearts find rest, where hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion. When these things are happening, they are signs of God transforming the houses of our hearts into home, a home where the doors are always open.
And the good news is that it doesn't depend just on us and what we do. Read through the Bible – starting with Adam and Eve and through all our ancestors of the faith, the stories of Noah and Jacob and David, which you've been hearing these past few weeks. Read the prophets and the Psalms. Read the gospels and Acts and Paul's letters to the early church, all the way through the end, to the book of Revelation, and what you see there is God's never-ending effort to make God's home with us, to make a home for us. We know we screw up. We know how often we run away from home – we see it in Solomon's story, as he goes astray and follows other gods, building houses for them on the high places. And we see other betrayals and abuses of God's intentions for all of creation, misunderstandings of the temple as the only place where God can be encountered or worshiped, trying to put limits on a limitless God. But God keeps coming. No matter how many times God's people turn away, God keeps reaching out, keeps rebuilding from the wreckage of our lives, seeking to make God's home in each of us, sending Jesus, who says welcome home, promising to abide in us, to stay and live within us, ultimately promising that in the end, God will come down and make a new heaven and a new earth, and God will make God's home among us.
This is what God does. It is what God is always doing, giving peace to the troubled, rest to the weary, food to the hungry, love to the lonely, healing to the wounded, God reaching out and saying welcome home despite ourselves! And our call, our mission, is to make sure that everyone is welcomed in, that we're not just waiting around for them to come to us, because honestly, that's just not happening much nowadays, but that we are going out into the world from this place of holy hospitality, this place of God's grace, sent to share this great good news of God's love that is for everyone, no exceptions. Welcome home! Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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