I Kings 8:22-40
St. John 8:47-59
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *Eleven weeks ago in the middle of June, we started this cycle of Lessons from the Old Testament for the Daily Office with Hannah and Samuel. We have read of Saul son of Kish, of David son of Jesse. And now we are at what must have seemed the high point of the narrative: Solomon son of David and the dedication of the temple.
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
What is man that you should be mindful of him? *
the son of man that you should seek him out?
By the time the Books of the Kings were most likely set down in order as we have them, the temple lay in ruins, not one stone left upon another. The prophet Isaiah wrote of this: "Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste." (Isaiah 64:10-11)
It is no wonder that the editors who assembled First Kings under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost devoted eleven chapters to the reign of Solomon, four of those chapters to the building and dedication of the temple. It was a Good Day, the best of days. In a few short years the kingdoms would be divided and begin their spiral into ruin. Never again, even to this day, would the land have rest from all its enemies round about. Never again could it be said that "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry." (4:20)
But what is that to us? The days of the Temple rituals are past, and we worship One who is greater than the Temple. "Before Abraham was, I am," he said to the people (St. John 8:58), identifying himself as not only one who is greater than Abraham and the prophets, but as the one who is the Son of the Father, the "I AM" revealed to Moses at the burning bush: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father."
And yet... we continue to build places that are called by his name.
Many people come into this place during the week to pray -- on Sunday, but also throughout the week. They often kneel in silence, most often well back in the church. Or they kneel at the side altar. Perhaps they light a votive candle. Others walk by outside and leave prayer requests in the book, or tie a ribbon on the tree as a symbol of their petition.
I count myself blessed to spend many of my working hours in this room, on the organ bench or at the piano, and I pray that I may never take it for granted.
Some of us would say that our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, reserved in the tabernacle up there by the candle. Whatever we may think of that, most of us in the Anglican tradition would say that this place is more than what the Puritans would have called a "meeting house," simply a convenient place to gather on the Lord's Day. This, and every other Christian church, is a place that is called by the name of Christ, and where, in some manner, he chooses to dwell among his people. As we shall recall shortly in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, "when two or three are gathered together in his Name, [he] will be in the midst of them."
Why should God pay attention to us this evening, or any time that we pray in this place, or even when we remember it from afar and pray "toward this place," as Solomon phrased it? "What is man that you should be mindful of him, the son of man that you should seek him out?"
Part of the answer is in the sign that Our Lord Jesus gave after cleansing the Temple, saying that it must be a house of prayer for all people. In chapter two of his Gospel, St. John recounts it in this manner:
Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. (vv. 18-22)And another part of the answer comes from St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: "... ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (6:16b)
The Temple was but a figure of "a greater and more perfect tabernacle" (Hebrews 9:11): Jesus Christ Himself is the holy place, the One in whom all the fullness of God doth dwell (Colossians 2:9). When St. John the Divine described the holy city, new Jerusalem, he stated that he "saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof" (Revelation 21:22-23).
Through him, we "as lively stones, are built up an spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (I Peter 2:5)
In connection with this we must consider a detail that is omitted from the narrative in First Kings. We find it in the parallel account of Second Chronicles:
And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course: Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:)In Psalm 22, we read that the Holy One is "enthroned upon the praises of Israel" (v. 3). This is as true now as it was on that day in the Temple: the presence of God is in some manner connected not only with the Blessed Sacrament, or the house that is called by his name, but with the music that we sing in this place, most of all in those moments when through the making of music, we become "as one."
It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD; So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God. (5:11-14)
It is with these things in mind that we can hear Solomon's prayer. We can join with him on behalf of those who enter this place to pray, those who tie a ribbon on the tree outside, those who remember this place from afar and wish that they could be here.
... hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee to day: That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place... And hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, forgive. (8:19-20)----------------------
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. (St. Jude 24-25)
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(slightly expanded from the version that I preached at Evensong: September 1, 2013.)
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