Weddings these days often have a second reading which isn’t from Scripture. Yesterday we celebrated a wedding here in which we heard read the end of The House at Pooh Corner, where Christopher Robin has to tell Pooh that he’s ‘not going to do Nothing anymore’. In fact he’s going off to school though that is never mentioned. Pooh is a little uncertain about what doing ‘Nothing’ with a capital ‘N’ means, so Christopher Robin defines it for him; ‘It means just going along. Listening to all the things you can’t hear and not bothering.’ That, when you think about it, could be a good definition of prayer. ‘Listening to all the things you can’t hear and not bothering.’ It also contains a paradox – ‘listening to things you can’t hear’ – which is a little like one of the most famous definitions of God. St Anselm said that ‘God is that than which nothing greater can be imagined.’ Prayer involves listening to what you can’t hear, God is what you can’t imagine.
And there we have one of the oddest but most life saving facts about being a Christian. You are committed to believing in and listening to a God who will always be beyond your understanding and as soon as you think you have understood him, you will have got it wrong. And that is life saving, because it puts you in a place where you will always remain humble before the miracle of life, and where you will always be dependent on something infinitely beyond yourself. And that also is the message of Scripture.
When Solomon comes for the first time into the new Temple he has built he does not at first marvel at its beauty or wonder how much it will cost to maintain it. No, he reminds himself and all those gathered there, that God is like nothing else in the world and that ‘even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain him, much less this house,’ which he has built. God is greater than anything he can imagine. And that means that whenever his servants pray in that house or pray towards that house, the first thing they must ask for is forgiveness. Human beings find it so easy to put their trust in what is less than God, which is idolatry. Human beings find it so easy to create their own Gods; they find it so easy to become preoccupied with the things around them, to build and care for the Temple, but then forget the one for whom the Temple was built.
When we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we find the means whereby we are able to talk about this unimaginable God – but this is far from easy talk. What he is saying is in effect that some stories which we tell ourselves have to be given up when a larger vision, a greater story comes along. The story of God’s appearance to Moses on Mount Sinai and the giving of the law to Israel, is now a story which has been superseded. The new story is not a story of a desert and a mountain but a city, a city where people are gathered in celebration with a heavenly choir, to honour the one who died on the cross and who now enables them to fulfill the goodness of which their humanity is capable.
Solomon asks the question, ‘Will God indeed dwell on the earth?’ implying the answer, ‘No.’ The most that can be said of the Temple is that God’s name will be there, because it is the place where people will speak the name of God in prayer. Christianity dares to say that in Jesus Christ, God can without blasphemy or idolatry be said to have dwelt on the earth. But what does it mean to say that? Does it mean that suddenly God is no longer greater than anything we can imagine, because we can imagine Jesus? Does it mean that prayer is no longer listening to silence because we can listen to the words of Jesus? The answer is definitely, ‘No,’ Jesus does not diminish the unimaginableness of God, his words do not fill the necessary silence of prayer. What Jesus does do, however, is show us that we can live with such a God and that such a God can inhabit our humanity without destroying it. Jesus shows us that we do indeed need God to be ourselves. This unimaginable God before whom we can only repent, only be humble, is the God who enables us to discover what it means to be fully and properly human and to live life in all its abundance.
When Jesus comes to the Temple on Palm Sunday he creates an empty space. The Temple needed money changers if people were to pay the Temple tax in the proper coinage. The Temple needed people who sold doves, if the sacrifices at the heart of the Temple’s life were to be offered. Jesus did not deny that. Just as he would not deny that we need stewardship schemes, and pledges of money and time, if this church is to fulfill its God given purpose. Nevertheless before a building can fulfill that purpose it needs a space to be created – the space which will enable it to be a house of prayer.
Today we celebrate the Dedication of this church as a building where we can learn to be fervent in fellowship, steadfast in faith, and active in service, as our collect says. Today we begin our annual stewardship month in which you will be reminded of all that this church has done over the past year, all that it hopes to do in the future, and the money and volunteers it needs to achieve those hopes. But before the articles appear and the letters go out and the appeals are made, it is important to inhabit that space Jesus cleared in the Temple and to remind ourselves why we are here. We are here to do the kind of ‘Nothing’ with a capital ‘N’ which Christopher Robin was talking about. We come to listen to all the things we can’t hear. We come to be stretched and opened up by the one who is greater than anything we can imagine. We come to this enchanted place – a place for not bothering, for learning not to be anxious. And if you can indeed listen and cease to be anxious and let this be a space which your whole self can inhabit, then you will be able to take this enchanted space with you when you leave. And it will sustain you through the week to come, so that you can indeed be steadfast in faith and active in service wherever you go from here.