Preaching a sermon today feels a little like having to give the leader’s keynote speech at the end of a party conference tho’ I’m not intending to hand in my letter of resignation tomorrow and I can’t see any similarities between Hampstead and Bournemouth, Blackpool or Brighton tho’ I’ve never been to Blackpool.
This is the Sunday on which we celebrate our church’s dedication. We give thanks for the time when these bricks and mortar and plaster and glass actually became a church. And so today we think about what we need to be a church and what sort of church we want to be.
In a key note sermon for such a day I might therefore be expected to speak about finance and economic forecasts and the need to increase revenue, about the strength of our membership, about home affaires and perhaps about ecumenism which is the church’s equivalent of a foreign policy. And if I were to preach such a sermon I suppose I might end by misquoting a famous President; I might challenge you to ask not what your church can do for you but what you can do for your church.
Of course the major advantage I have over a party leader is that I can take my key texts from the Bible which is rather more inspiring though perhaps no less controversial than an election manifesto. And the first text comes not from our gospel reading but from a closely related passage. Earlier in the day, before he comes to the Temple Jesus has entered Jerusalem with the crowds coming up for the Passover. There the crowds had acclaimed him with shouts of Hosanna as now the children do in the Temple; and there as here the Pharisees and scribes were moved with indignation. And there Jesus had responded, ‘I tell you that if these shall hold there peace the stones will cry out.’
Reminded of that text it occurred to me to wonder what these stones whose dedication we celebrate today might cry out if we held our peace? How would the story of these stones compare with the stones of the Temple? When Solomon builds the Temple he creates not just a building but an enduring symbol for the Jewish faith, a focus for prayer and the purity of faith, however far you are from Jerusalem. When the Temple is eventually destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, we are told that the Babylonians took away the pots and the shovels and the snuffers and the dishes for incense and all the bronze vessels, and the firepans and the bowls.
In the midst of such a tragedy of exile and death it seems odd that the writer should go into so much detail. Even so, this sad inventory underlines the profundity of their loss and the paradox of the Jewish faith.
The law is full of ritual detail and the intricacies of design for the Holy of Holies. God is a God of small things in the Temple. And yet as Solomon says in his dedicatory prayer, ‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.’ God is so much greater than anything we can imagine that there is no way in which he can be contained in human buildings, words and actions. He is completely and only like himself and we must not imagine that we can pin him down or come nearer to him in one place rather than any other. And yet paradoxically it is only by focussing our prayer in one place that we hope to find him anywhere. We need the small details and we need people who will care for the details of rotas and agendas and inventories and menus and orders of wine and the polishing of brass, and the writing of letters asking for money. All these things need our attention so that at the appropriate time we can be free to pray.
‘Heed the prayer that your servant prays towards this place, ‘ says Solomon, ‘hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.’ But this paradox of the utterly transcendent God who is interested in the smallest detail is not the only paradox enshrined in the Temple. The worshipper in the psalm is glad when he and his friends go up to the house of the Lord. And yet he recognises that there is the seat of judgement. There is the God who knows me better than I know myself; there is the God who discerns and understands with utter clarity who and what I am.
And yet here also is the place of peace. By recognising our need to be so utterly known by God, by our willingness to submit ourselves to his judgement, we find peace. This is the purpose of the house of prayer. We may find this matter of judgement somehow frightening as perhaps we are bound to do, because there are always aspects of ourselves that we find frightening and dare not face. And for this reason the author of Hebrews sets alongside us the loving advocacy of Jesus in this house of prayer which is also a place of judgement. Jesus is the high priest who always speaks the better word, the word that calms our fears and reassures us that the truth is never anything but loving. And so because this Jesus stands in his Father’s Temple the stones themselves sing out, Hosanna Save us!
Which brings us back to the stones of this house whose dedication we celebrate as we rededicate ourselves to God’s service today. The other difference between a sermon and a key note speech is that there haven’t been cameras trained on you to see who has fallen asleep, nor are the church wardens equipped with stop watches to see how long your applause will last when I finish. In fact our applause takes the form of an affirmation of faith in the words of the creed. Because of course here it is you the living stones who speak and sing and cry out. And so as we rededicate ourselves today the question to us is I suppose this.
If these bricks and stones, mortar and plaster and glass were not here would we still feel ourselves to be a real community of faith?
Would we still be a living temple of minds and hearts?
If this building were suddenly whisked away as the djinns whisked away Solomon’s palace when the butterfly stamped his foot, would we still feel so united by a spiritual bond of love, that we could still pray together as if nothing had happened?
Stephen Tucker