5 October 2008

The Feast of the Dedicaton

The Rev'd Canon William Bennett

New York City

Psalm 84

In ancient Israel thee were a number of pilgrim feasts when our forebears journeyed up to Jerusalem. They went up to celebrate the Feast of Booths in the autumn, the Passover in the early spring, and the Feast of First Fruits at the beginning of summer at Pentecost.

Jerusalem is built on a high plateau. It is up in the hills of Judea and the climb is the major thing one remembers about the journey. And wherever you were in that part of the world, you had to climb up to get to Jerusalem. Hence one always goes “up” to Jerusalem – even if you were traveling “down” from Galilee.

The journey to Jerusalem on foot or by animal was never easy. The climb went up and up. People ran short of breath on the narrow twisting roads. And because the roads were narrow and twisting, people got all bunched together in groups. You know how it is on a narrow mountain road, you can only go as fast as the person in front of you.

And as they walked, they sang, to relieve the tedium of the journey and perhaps the frustration of walking behind slow pokes. There are a number of Psalms that we believe were sung on these pilgrim journeys up to Jerusalem. Today’s Psalm is one of those pilgrim Psalms sung first by folks climbing towards Jerusalem in the heat and dust of Judah.

Suddenly, the travelers round a corner and there they see it – Jerusalem, the city built at unity with itself, shining golden in the sunlight.

They break into song in the words of Psalm (48): Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; in the city of our God is his holy hill. Beautiful and lofty, the joy of all the earth, is the hill of Zion,
the very center of the world and the city of the great King.

And then the Lord’s House, his dwelling, the Temple of the Holy of Holies, comes into view, the sun bouncing from its decoration and from its white sides. In the face of its splendor, they fall silent, only to have the song well up and burst forth anew: “How dear, How precious, How lovely to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts!” To enter God’s holy house and its surrounding courts is the deepest desire and longing of their souls.

The people tremble in excitement as they approach; their flesh quivers as it, too, rejoices in the living God. They want to cement their belonging to God by entering into his house.

With hearts pounding and flesh shivering, they enter the courts of the Lord and then into the sacred precinct itself.

And what do they find there? They find the altars of sacrifice. They find the priests and Levites who serve there and live within its precincts while on duty. And to the pilgrims these temple servants who sustain the cult of the Israel in that holy place are the happiest of people, getting to live in the Lord’s house and always praising him.

But then they see something else. Up there in that rafter above the altar they see some movement. And then a little tiny white piece of fluff drifts down to mingle with the smoke of incense.

It’s a feather.

There’s a bird up there! Be quiet, you can hear chirping – she has a nest full of chicks right up there beside the altar.

A bird, in here, about the altar! Everybody freezes. What do we do about that, they wonder. And then their somewhat horrified wonder dissolves as the song lifts their voices again:

The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

They rejoice for, surely, the God who makes room even for the birds of the air in his holy dwelling place will also make room for us beside his altar and will be our defender.

I love this song that those pilgrims long ago sang. I feel the excitement, the majesty and splendor, the longing to belong and finally the realization that if God can let the birds find a home in his house, then I can find a home there.

Today we celebrate finding a home here at St. John’s. We celebrate all the long years of its being the dwelling place both of God and the people God has assembled here to be his Church. Each in our own way has been called forth to this lace, has made our own pilgrim journey, and has found a home here in his house of God – like the sparrow and swallow.

Again and again, when I worshiped here regularly I would hear myself and others say, “I’m here at St. John’s because when I first visited I felt like I’ve come home, that this is the place for me.” I’m sure you’ve heard those same words or said them.

What have we come home to? And what have we come home for? We’ve come home to a place where, like the swallow, we can raise our young – that is to say a place were we can raise our children in the faith and where we can raise those who are older in years but young in the faith. It is a place where all can grow up together into our future which is none other than the ever-closer union with Christ our God into whose image we are maturing. Our home is a place where we can raise others and be raised ourselves. Our home is where we can be God’s people, together.

Our home here is our Beth-el, the House of God, where with Jacob the dreamer, we are visited by angels. And when we stand here before the altar offering the unending sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, setting forth the Lord’s death, looking upon his resurrection, being filled with his endless life, tasting God’s heavenly delights, then we, like our father Jacob, are at the gate, the very threshold of heaven which is God’s eternal dwelling place and is our own true home.

And we respond with thanksgiving to our sense of belonging. We respond by offering ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a living sacrifice as part of our eucharistic sacrifice at this altar. In particular at this time of year we think seriously and consciously of our response to God’s great goodness in calling us into this holy house, this temple of the Lord, to stand by the altar of the Lord of hosts. We consider how we respond with our thanksgiving offering of our time our talent and our money.

We are vividly aware from the financial turmoil of the last several weeks that money is a very powerful force in our world and Christianity takes its power very seriously.

Somewhere along the line Christianity became infected with a dualism which implies that spiritual things are good and that earthly things, including money, are bad.

Christianity has never held that position and especially our form of Christianity, Anglicanism, has never bought into it.

At the corse of the Anglican worldview is a radical acceptance of the Incarnation. God in Christ took on human flesh, he lived in this world, he shared our lives, our hurts, our joys, our desires, our disappointments. And ind doing so he redeemed it all. The whole world and all that is in it. He redeemed all human flesh — whether people deserve or not – particularly because they don’t deserve it! He redeemed our sin and our love. He redeemed our joy and our pain. He redeemed our work and our money.

Money is a curious word. It would seem that it has its earliest roots in a Latin word, moneo., That word at an early stage meant “to recollect’ or “to think about”. Money then causes us to remember, to remember working for it, a sign of its value to us. It causes us to think about the choices we make when we use that money.

Later the word moneo came to have the meaning ‘to admonish or to warn”. And money is a warning to us. It is a warning about the choices we make. Will we have enough money if we spend some to buy a new car? Will we have enough money leftover to be generous? Or is generosity, our offering of thanksgiving, what comes before you ask the question about buying the car, is our generous response to God’s great gifts to us what comes first not what comes out of the leftovers?

In the Hebrew money is represented by the word “kesef, “to desire or languish after”. This represents to us the power of money to distract us and lead us astray. It stresses the spiritual power of money. Money itself is not evil, but we can love money in such a way that it leads us away from our true selves. Our love of money can cripple us. Our hands which are made to be generous in showing God’s love to the world become cramped and crabbed from holding on tightly so that no one else gets our money.

At this time of year we are challenged to look at our use of money, at how we enter into God’s generosity, as you make your decisions as to how you will pledge to support the operations of this parish and diocese, but more particularly, to support the ministry of Christ in this place.
We acknowledge that, like the pilgrims who marveled at the hospitality of God’s house in Jerusalem, we are welcomed into God’s generosity. We receive life from God, we are given dominion over the creation from God (not because we made it but because God’s like that and gives everything away), and we receive eternal life from God – but to give that gift Christ our God had to share our death. So we are the recipients of God’s lavish generosity given at the cost of his own life.

We are told that we are the image of God. We stand in place of God in the creation as God’s stewards, the hands and hearts and minds that take care of the world on behalf of God. And as God’s stewards, as God’s representatives, we are called to join in all of God’s generous actions. We are, remember, Christ’s body. We are God’s sacrament to the world so that Christ can be present through us.

And all that we are and all that we have are gifts from God for the purpose of making God known. Making God known.

No matter how wonderful it feels to be in the dwelling place of the Lord of Hosts. Our time in this place is only a respite, a time for refreshment, and restoration and rejuvenation, so that we can be about our chief work as God’s people.

We must go forth from here, out of this physical house, but carrying with us always the knowledge of who we re, whose we are and what we are. For we are God’s holy people, who have been raise up not only to dwell in the house of the Lord, but we have been assembled to be in our flesh the Lord’s own dwelling place in this world, the world that he loves enough to die for, but whom the world will not know unless they hear about him from us, and more importantly see him at work in us, in our giving to the needs of the world crying in pain, in our loving o care for those who are without care and in our praising that God who has made a home for us and for all the creation.

How dear to me is your dwelling O Lord of hosts.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.