The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proper 16 – 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84, John 6:56-69
In the early morning stillness that is not silent... soft patter of rain, the ticking of a clock, distant wail of a train whistle and wet tires on the street below, the surrounding world still asleep. In the exuberant bustle of an adolescent gathering...voices out-shouting one another in an enthusiastic cacophony coalescing finally into recognizable song. On the streets of Southside... faces of hunger and need met by hands offering food and compassion. In the ordered rows of Cathedral pews...familiar books, comfortable words, soothing rhythm. Prayer. Worship. People longing for, reaching out for connection to God. To loved ones. To others. In one place or another, in one pattern or not, with words and music and images, with silence and emptiness, with form or none at all people seek God. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord prays the psalmist almost 3000 years ago.
What does your soul desire? How do you pray? I was born and baptized into an Episcopal church whose worship was bound in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. My early spirituality was formed by the shape and language and familiarity of that book. When I was confirmed at age 11(because that’s how we did it back then) my Godparents gave me a white leatherette prayer book with my name embossed on it in gold. The 1928 Prayer Book. But on Sunday mornings something else was happening. We worshiped out of the green book, the zebra book, and the purple book, named for the color of their covers. These “trial” liturgies were used on Sundays as the Episcopal church began to explore language and form heading for the 1979 BCP which you now find in your pew. So people who longed for the Lord, who raised their hearts and voices in worship, struggled with change. This struggle was a gift to the church, infusing our gathering with a richness and variety of liturgy. And it was a gift to me, allowing me to experience process and journey as the way to something full of possibility. I grew up thinking such change and variety were normal. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
What do we long for? In part, being connected to God and one another in meaningful worship. What is God calling us to do? To renew that connection and tell others about it so that they can know a place to bring their longing hearts. In steady times and uncertain times, in transition times and new times, when we stand in the doorway or on the precipice, when we are confused or crystal clear our souls have a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Around 960 BCE Solomon builds and dedicates the temple in Jerusalem and significantly moves the Ark of the Covenant into what is to be its permanent dwelling. This is no small thing. The Ark of the Covenant, considered the earthly dwelling place of God, built by Moses according to God’s instruction, is the most sacred symbol for the people of Israel. The Ark contains...holiness. It is said to have held the two stone tablets on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments, or a pot of manna preserved from the wilderness journey, or scrolls of sacred writings. It was carried with the Israelites wherever they went had had no permanent place. But neither had the people. They had wandered through Canaan for generations before David built Jerusalem. Before that they wandered 40 years in the wilderness with Moses. And for the longest time before that they had been resident aliens in Egypt. And before that? There had been Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, all of them following God’s call as they wandered about the fertile crescent through what is modern day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts? When Solomon built the first permanent temple for God and placed the Ark in it people were asking, where is God’s dwelling place. In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In this temple? Journey and Exodus had defined them, been their reality for the longest time. God and the worship of God were not to be found in any one place (we sometimes struggle to remind ourselves that God is everywhere and not just within these wall son Sunday morning. They didn’t have that struggle). Yet Solomon builds the temple in faithful response to God’s call for him. And it left some of the people with questions. Can God hear in heaven the prayers we pray in this temple of stone? Can God dwell on earth?
So as Solomon dedicates the temple he prays. He prays that it will be OK to pray in this place. “Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today… hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place.” Solomon longs for God. He longs also to know that this change will be OK. His prayer of dedication is longer than the excerpt we have in our passage this morning. He asks for God to hear and act. He pleas, if someone sins, hear and act. When Israel is defeated by an enemy, hear and act. When drought comes, hear and act. When there is famine, hear and act. When even the foreigner prays, hear and act. All who pray are to be heard and the prayers acted upon so that the whole world will know the God of Israel, will know that God hears and acts. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts, minds, souls? In this Cathedral? In this gathering? In Christ?
Solomon asked, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?” Almost 1000 years after Solomon placed the Ark in the temple God indeed came to dwell on earth in a whole new way. Not in a temple, not on a throne, but embodied in humanity. Incarnate. In Christ. In Christ Jesus who had the audacity to claim to be the bread of life. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” This was such a shock, so difficult to grasp, that even some of his disciples stopped following him. I have no doubt that all of those disciples longed to be connected to God and that they had sung that hymn, How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Jesus knew from the first there would be those who would not believe. But that didn’t stop him from preaching the good news to them. And some people left because…because it was difficult? Because it was about eating flesh? Because they thought Jesus didn’t have what they longed for? Or perhaps because they thought Jesus was what they longed for?
Do you also wish to go away?
“Do you also wish to go away,” Jesus asks the twelve. Simon Peter answers, “Lord to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In our hearts? In this Cathedral? In this gathering, the very Body of Christ? In the early morning stillness? In a group of enthusiastically singing youth? In a soup kitchen on the Southside of Bethlehem? How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
