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Prayers for our temple...

June 2, 2013
2 Pentecost, Year C
1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43

            We’re coming to the tail end of the construction that has been part of this place for so long.  The end is almost in sight.  In recent weeks especially, it has been great fun to peek into the construction site and watch it transform.  We are so close to walking through our bright new entryway, flushing the toilets in our big new bathrooms, and growing in faith in our beautiful new education room. 
If you haven’t been here long, it might seem like it’s been an effortless process.  But for the multiple vestries that have been overseeing the discerning and the compromise and the planning, for the leaders involved in the capital campaigns, for John working with the architects and builders to ensure the details are in place, this has been a long, long journey. 
            With that as our own background, we get this morning’s reading from 1 Kings, which is part of the dedication ceremony for the Temple in Jerusalem.  A temple that has taken far longer in its discerning and planning and preparation and fundraising and building than even our construction here at St. Aidan’s.
            Those of you working through the Bible Challenge might feel like you’ve JUST read this piece from 1 Kings.  You’ve actually read it not just once, but twice.  On Thursday, we had an almost identical reading but it was from the book of 2 Chronicles.  The people of Israel’s experience of construction has been so long-lasting and imprinted itself so deeply on their brains that this story in included (in all of its somewhat excruciating detail) twice in the Bible.
            For chapters and chapters in Chronicles we get the prequel to all of this, hearing about King David who wants so badly to build a house for God, a place to permanently house the ark of the covenant, those two tablets Moses received from God when God made the covenant with the people.  But God tells David that it isn’t for David to build this temple, but his son Solomon.  So David, disappointed, reluctantly holds back from building.  But he spends years soliciting and collecting gold, bronze, gems, and cedar that can be used for the construction (the Biblical basis for the Capital Campaign).  And David creates precise architectural drawings for the place and its furniture, right down to the goblets that will be used and the cherubim that will be stationed over the ark.  Then before David dies, he hands on this legacy and this mountain of materials to Solomon to follow through.
            1 Kings then walks us through the building of the Temple according to David’s specifications.  The massive golden altar.  The golden lampstands to burn in the inner sanctuary.  The latticeworks covered with bronze pomegranates.  Finally, the ark of the covenant is brought into the Temple and placed in its spot under the cherubim.  Solomon has completed the dream – the obsession – of his father David.  And Solomon assembles all the Israelites and reminds them of how their ancestors were in slavery and God made a covenant with the people through Moses.  Solomon reminds them of all the ways they have strayed from God and been forgiven and embraced by God throughout history.  And the cloud of the glory of the Lord fills the Temple.  (Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?)
            And then comes the dedication of the Temple, a piece of which we get this morning.  Solomon starts out okay, with a little praise of God.  But then he lays out a series of requests that make it look like he thinks God is some kind of a magic genie.  If we are losing at war, but then come to this Temple and pray, hear us and make us win.  If there is a drought, but then we come here and pray, give us rain.  If there is famine, but then we come here and pray, give us food.  And if foreigners come and pray here, grant their prayers so that God will be known throughout the earth. 
            These prayers are Solomon’s hopes for this new Temple and they feel strange to me; they seem like bad theology.  After the recent tornado in Oklahoma there was a picture on the front page of the newspaper showing a regular neighborhood that had been cut through by the tornado.  On one side of the street the houses were completely unaffected and on the other side of the street the houses were smashed beyond recognition.  I don’t believe that one side of the street was praying better than the other.  And I don’t believe that the people that win wars are the ones God loves the most.  Or that the areas free from famine or drought are somehow closer to God.  Or that if my family had just prayed more or better my mom would still be with us.
            I’m more impressed with the deep hope that comes later in the Temple dedication, a piece we don’t get in our reading this morning.  Solomon prays: “The Lord our God be with us, as God was with our ancestors; may God not leave us or abandon us, but incline our hearts to God, to walk in all God’s ways.”  And then God responds, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you made before me; I have consecrated this house that you have built, and put my name there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.”
            To me, that feels closer to how I believe prayer works and what I believe a church can be.  I don’t think either prayer or a new worship space can magically solve problems or prevent hardship or protect us from harm.  But they can bring us closer to God, incline our hearts to God, help us to feel God with us, help us to know that God does not leave us or abandon us, help to strengthen our love and our faith and send us out renewed to be God’s hands in the world.
            What an amazing thing if the Temple were that to the people of Israel and beyond!  What an amazing thing if St. Aidan’s can be that to this community and beyond!
            Those are my deepest hopes for this place when this long season of planning and construction is finished.  It isn’t really about the new bathrooms (although I’m thrilled we’ll finally have a diaper changing station and that children will no longer get stuck inside because they can’t open the doors).  It isn’t really about the new entry way (although I can’t wait to have it be obvious how to get into this place and have a place where there is room for us to gather after services).  It isn’t really about the new education room (although I love the possibilities it will give us for our programs for kids and youth and meeting space). 
            It’s about so much more.
            Recently I had a vision of what this place is in part and what it can be, with God’s help.  About a week and a half ago, I was in here, cleaning up and putting things away from the prayer stations that were out on Pentecost.   I read and thought about the scrabble words people had laid out.  I organized stacks of notecards to deliver to people.  I dried off the rocks in the font.  Replaced the chairs over the labyrinth.  Put back the crayons and markers.  And then I came to the prayer chain.  And I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  It seemed too private to hang out in the open, and yet it seemed disrespectful to recycle it.  And so I sat down right here in the church and prayed each link.  Almost all of them were anonymous, so mostly I didn’t know who I was praying for, but only that these were the prayers of people’s hearts.  I prayed for healing.  I prayed for God’s presence with hearts that were breaking.  I prayed for understanding where there was hurt.  I prayed for children and for marriages and for families.  And I rejoiced with so many thanksgivings. 
            And I was reminded of how much all of us have in common – the things we love, hope for, give thanks for, worry about.  And I was also reminded how little I actually know about what other people are going through.  The whole time, I was humbled to be holding these beautiful, heartfelt prayers in my hands.  Honored to be able to make them the prayers of my own heart.  At the end, I hung the chain of human pain and need and joy in my office, a reminder of God’s presence manifest in this place when our hearts are open to receive it.
And so, to Solomon’s final prayer of dedication I add my own prayer for this community:

May God make this a place that brings people healing and hope,
A place that holds each other, the community, and the world in prayer,
A place that welcomes all people,
A place that recognizes and spreads God’s love,
A place that shines as God’s light in a world that is broken and anxious, overwhelmed and uncertain,
A place in which we know God to be with us, inclining our hearts to Him.

Amen.

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