Unfailing Dedication

1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11, 22-30, 41-43
September 2, 2018
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry


Today is the third and final sermon in our series on King Solomon, whose story is told in the books of history in the Bible. The books of history in the Old Testament recount in detail the most crucial stories of God’s people during the era in which Israel was ruled by kings. Kings were selected by God at first, and anointed by the prophet. But as the house of David was established, kings were born into the role – descendants of the previous king were assumed to be the rightful heirs to the throne. No longer were kings chosen and anointed in the same way.

The results were mixed. But King David’s son Solomon was a very good king in many ways. The book of First Kings describes his rule, and the building of the temple. The eighth chapter describes in detail how Solomon dedicated the temple to the glory of God. Let’s listen to that history in excerpts from the eight chapter of First Kings.

1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11, 22-30, 41-43
1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.

6 Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim.

10-11 And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

22-30 Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, ‘There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.’ Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant my father David. “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! 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; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.

41-43 “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name —for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.

The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.


There is a lot going on in this passage; so much so, in fact, that scholars continue to debate it. If you ever wondered how religion got to sounding so political, you might want to study up on the book of First Kings. There are two major themes here. One is the establishment of the dynasty of the house of David. Solomon is reasonably secure on the throne, having fended off his brothers’ efforts. He has consolidated his power; killing off potential challengers and rewarding those who are loyal. Solomon has also built himself a palace, a throne from which he can rule the nation. That’s a political perspective.

Also there is a subtext to the story of this temple Solomon has built, an implication that Solomon and the Israelites might regard the temple as a permanent container for God, a palace where God will sit on the throne. There is an implicit desire in this for God to be near, to be contained in the temple, to be in a location where anyone, Jew or Gentile, can come near to God.

But the second important theme is that God cannot be contained. Neither earth nor heaven nor highest heaven can contain God. In that regard, the temple is where the name of God is spoken, but it is not where God dwells. When the Israelites were carrying that Ark from place to place, they carried it with long poles, handles that allowed them to carry the Ark without touching it. When the Ark of the Covenant is carried into the inner sanctum the carrying handles of the ark are not removed.

When God makes God’s presence known, the glory of the Lord fills the sanctuary, such a cloud of glory that the priests cannot minister to the people. But the temple is not God’s permanent dwelling place, not God’s palace.

You may be asking now, “well, which is it?
Is God present in the temple, or in church? Or not?”
The answer, of course, is “yes.”

God is present in the temple,
and God’s glory cannot be contained.

The lord is in his holy temple
and God’s glory fills the heavens and the earth.

God is present with us, near as our very breath,
and God is so far beyond us and above us
that we cannot even imagine God’s greatness and God’s might.

One of the interesting experiences I have as a pastor is that when people outside the church meet me and know I’m a pastor, they tend to think they need to explain themselves to me. Well, first, they make a joke about watching their language. (Obviously, these are people who do not know me. At all.)

“I don’t go to church,” they usually start out.
“Okay.” I say.
Then they say one of two things:
either they tell me that they used to go, or they never were really engaged.

Lately, with the horrifying scandals in the Roman Catholic church, the moral catastrophe of the predatory priests and the intentional coverup, I hear even more of this kind of thing. Those who used to go and participate in a worshiping community quit because but there were so many hypocrites, or mean people, or wrong people, or terrible people, that they just quit, because they knew they had the right idea and the other people didn’t.

If they talk long enough on the subject, it never comes down to a theological argument – nobody has ever said they left church because of an irreconcilable disagreement over a theological point, like, say, atonement, or sanctification, or predestination. It almost always is because they had a difference with a person or a preacher. So they quit church.

Then there are the people who were never really engaged to start with. Maybe they went to church on occasion with parents or grandparents. More frequently now, I run into people who have never been to church at all, never been inside a church building unless it was for a wedding or piano recital or a cub scout meeting.

They like to tell me how unnecessary church is,
because churches just want your money,
or people can be moral without going to church,
Then they tell me they have their own spirituality,
worked out all on their own.

Anyway, no matter what the reason they give me, they all feel it is important to tell me, if they believe in God, that God is not inside the church building anyway. And, they want me to know, they can pray anywhere.

Yes! Did you know that?!

I’m never quite sure what to say to this. The snarky side of me wants to say, “How unoriginal,” or, more sarcastically, “How wonderful that you have developed these ideas independently of more than 2000 years of deep thinking and study of Christianity!
Why didn’t anyone THINK of that?!”

I do not say these things.
I would not ever say these things, in fact.

I would not say them, because even though I’m tempted to, I am aware that behind this desire to explain themselves to me, these individuals are expressing a kind of struggle that is really deep and genuine.

Setting aside the very human difficulty of working through conflict in community, and the very real problems that organized religion has, there is a constant and ongoing tension between God’s presence and God’s transcendence.

So people are correct when they say that they can pray to God anywhere, and that they do not need to go to a church to know God. But we cannot separate church from Christianity any more than those Israelites could separate Judaism from the temple. There is something that happens

– something beautiful --
when we join our voices together in prayer,
when we lift our voices together in song,
and when we lift up our hearts as we come to the Lord’s table.

God’s name is on this place where we gather and speak of God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. God is uncontainable, and God’s glory fills this place. Like Solomon’s temple, this sanctuary – any sanctuary – represents the possibility of God’s presence among us as a community in worship.

And it is also true that God’s freedom is such that God is above and beyond any building or any structure or any institution.[1] In Jesus Christ, God’s glory is fleshed out -- in the flesh – so that we encounter the living, breathing, immanent and intimate presence of the almighty.

So we have this space,
these sublime windows
and this soaring ceiling
and these very human and beautiful people,
and this bread and this cup
and we gather in unfailing dedication,
grateful for God’s steadfast love.

Amen.




[1] New Interpreter’s Commentary on 1 Kings

https://www.ministrymatters.com/library/#/tnib/5ad983eb621a6acd495bb46af43683b5/1-kings-81-66-the-dedication-of-the-temple.html