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Sunday, August 30, 2009
Your House Will Be My Home As Long As I Live
11th in the Psalm 23 Series
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Psalm 23 Good News Bible
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. 2 He lets me rest in fields of green grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water. 3 He gives me new strength. He guides me in the right paths, as he has promised. 4 Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, Lord, for you are with me. Your shepherd's rod and staff protect me. 5 You prepare a banquet for me, where all my enemies can see me; you welcome me as an honored guest and fill my cup to the brim. 6 I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life; and your house will be my home as long as I live.
I hope you have benefitted as much as I have from our summer sermon series on Psalm 23. We still have some copies available of the eleven different translations of this psalm that we have used as resources over the summer, and I commend that sheet to you.
I have gotten a couple of surprises as we have looked at various translations and as we have looked at Rabbi Kushner’s little book on Psalm 23. One of the surprises may have been that there is a more accurate translation of the verse we have known as God walking with us through the valley of the shadow of death. The Hebrew words probably more accurately talk about God walking with us through the valley of deep darkness-wherever that darkness may occur in our lives.
Several of the modern translations take that corrected Hebrew text into account as you have noticed, and that means that God walks with us not only in the times of grief and loss, but that God is with us through the other dark and fearful times of life as well.
The second surprise for me and perhaps for you is the way that some current translators render the last line of the Psalm. I have thought that the verse saying “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever means that if I trust God, that then I will be in the presence of God forever.” I do believe that and you do as well. It turns out that the literal meaning of those words in Hebrew are that the Psalmist intended to dwell or live in the house of the Lord-the Temple in Jerusalem-all the days of his life. The Psalmist considered the Temple to be that important, that sacred a place.
It is an understandable feeling because the 35 acre Temple Mount on which Solomon’s temple was constructed was the holy site for Israel for 1000 years. Jews from across the world would come to the Temple at least once a year-more often usually-for at least the Passover feast, and Jesus was among that group each year. In fact, the only thing we know about the childhood of Jesus was that when he was twelve, he went with his family to the Temple, to the House of the Lord, for the celebration of Passover. Do you remember this story? His parents started back home to Galilee afterward and they thought Jesus was with another group following them, but then discovered that he was not there. They went back to Jerusalem searching for him. Where did they find him? In the Temple! He was sitting with the scribes there listening to them and asking them questions.
What did Jesus say when they so anxiously berated him for getting lost? “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” Jesus had a very high regard for God’s house, for the Temple, or in our case-for the church building. That space was set aside for the Israelites as God’s space, holy space. Jesus treated it that way.
People have made that same effort to create holy space, space to experience God, to worship God for thousands and thousands of years-even before the Bible was written! Do you know that the monuments in England such as Stonehenge (there are several like this) were created as worship space, holy space? This was a time when people thought the sun and the moon were gods to be worshiped, but the point is that we have been setting apart some space as sacred or holy because we have chosen to honor and worship God there. It does not mean that God is not present everywhere, and you and I may have some spaces in nature that help us feel close to God. It just means that we have needed over the ages to make some spaces special just as some spaces in our home are special for us to honor love and family and friendship such as our kitchen table or our dining table.
Many of us at St Andrew church have been privileged to do some travel in the lands of the Bible and the lands of Christian history in Israel and Greece and Italy and Ireland, and we have seen so many buildings now or even excavated ruins that folks constructed to honor God and worship God and experience God’s presence and God’s otherness.
There have been several special places like that in my travels. One is the Temple Mount today in Jerusalem where a Mosque now stands after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD. The last time we were in Jerusalem, we went not only to the Western Wall, but onto the 35 acre Temple Mount, and I just took some quiet time there to remember all of the incredibly important events that have occurred on that site! I remember that this was the place where Jesus was, and how important this space was for him-even when he was only twelve years old!!
One of the other places that is very sacred for me in Israel is in Capernaum, Jesus’ headquarters in Galilee for his itinerant ministry of teaching and preaching and healing, because in Capernaum we can actually stand in a synagogue built on the foundations of Jesus’ synagogue in Capernaum where he worshiped and where he taught!
In Greece, there is another very special place for me in Philippi-it is the foundation (only) of one of the earliest church buildings in all of Christian history! We can only see the outline of it on the ground in the rock foundation, but I am moved every time to think that his building, 1700 years ago, was one of the first church buildings in all the world!
Well as we know, Christians have been constructing and setting aside different kinds of buildings over the past 1700 years so that God can be worshiped and so that people can be taught the stories about Jesus and so we can be formed by those stories and then be molded and developed into the likeness of Jesus Christ! Susan Bell and I have chosen just about a dozen of different kinds of church buildings so that we can see just a glimpse of the diversity that we humans have chosen in brick and mortar to honor God:
(Brief slide show.)
That last picture is of our proposed new building that we will be breaking ground for today. If we had been completely thorough, we could have shown each other all the different buildings/spaces that the St Andrew Congregation has met in: the Peabody school gymnasium, the first church building four miles north of here that then became fellowship hall, the last sanctuary in our former location that has held so many memories for those here at that time, and now of course our present sanctuary which will become our new fellowship hall in one year when we are in our new sanctuary. We could also add pictures of our LIFEspot space which is now the worship space for our 5 PM Afterhours worship service!!
That series of pictures could remind us of the words from a modern Avery and Marsh song-the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is the people!! Whatever the space is like where we meet, ST ANDREW CHURCH IS THE PEOPLE, and the building is an instrument that we use to bring people close to God and each other and to abundant life in Jesus Christ!!
Still the space, the buildings are important for us-they let us live our mission and purpose of inviting and receiving and nurturing (training) and challenging and sending forth committed followers of Christ. It is difficult to do those things without have enough space to gather people for those purposes. And those buildings can help stir in us feelings of faith, feelings of awe and wonder and humility-those are spiritual feelings that certain kinds of space can lead us to know and feel.
So that is what we are doing this morning-we are living our vision and mission as we break new ground for the people here and the people God is sending here in the future.
We are also making room. We have run out of room. So to provide more seats in worship and in Sunday school and in youth group and in Adult study means we are just practicing the radical hospitality that is part of our identity and out vision.
We are doing a third thing-we are making the light of Christ even more visible as a sign of hope in our community. I believe even more people will be able to see our new space with an even more visible and well lighted cross and just take hope and comfort from that lighted cross because the empty cross is a sign of hope!!
Finally, when we turn the dirt this morning with our shovels, we are doing something else: we are practicing the words of the first song we sang when we got into this space, the hymn we began today with: verse 4 of this hymn is one of my favorite verses:
Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood and stone
To heal and strengthen, serve and teach and live the word they’ve known
Here the outcast and the stranger bear the image of God’s face
Let us bring an end to fear and danger.
All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place!!
Thanks be to God for letting this congregation be among the only 10% of United Methodist churches in our country that are growing and building and expanding ministry and space to make room for God’s people!