Sermon at Parish Mass Dedication Festival, 25th October 2020

 

1 Kings 8.22–30
Hebrews 12.18–24
Matthew 21.12–16

 

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” – 1 Peter 2.5. The readings given to us for our Dedication Festival, and also, this year, for our annual meeting, give us three key messages about what it means to be built as living stones into a spiritual house.

Firstly, we are to be a community of welcome and inclusion. When Jesus entered the Temple and turned over the tables of the money changers, that was the action of a prophet. Instead of being a house of prayer for all nations, the Temple had become a robbers’ den. But, we are told, after Jesus had driven out the money changers, the blind and the lame had come to him in the temple and he healed them.

Now, according to the purity laws, the blind and the lame weren’t allowed in the temple, but here they are anyway. Jesus is showing what the Temple really should be about, the place where God is present and accessible for all people to heal and restore them. The corrupt money changers are driven out, those who should be in the temple are welcomed in. They come to Jesus anyway, and the religious authorities, who want to retain control, can’t do anything about it.

As our readings and the liturgy remind us today, this building, this house of prayer, is an outward sign of true Temple of God, which is a living temple, formed of all those whom Jesus is drawing to himself. He establishes a living temple in which there is no barrier to inclusion and welcome.

This is the first message to us as a Church: we are to ensure that there is no barrier to welcome and inclusion. We are to welcome all those whom Jesus is calling to himself. Before the pandemic we had been thinking about new ways of welcoming people, and discerning where we needed to become more inclusive. We will pick this up again as we adjust to this “new normal”.

The second insight is that we are to be a community committed to justice and the transformation of the world, when the experience of so many people is exile and alienation.

We heard today part of Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the Temple, as it is imagined in the first book of Kings. In fact 1 Kings was written many centuries after Solomon, and his prayer reflects the experiences of Israel in that intervening time. In his prayer, Solomon goes on to ask that the Temple will always be the place where God hears the prayers of his people, even if they have been defeated by enemies, or there is drought or famine. He prays that foreigners, too, will have their prayers answered there. And even when God’s people are carried into exile far away, he prays that they can still turn to the Temple in their hearts and minds, and be heard.

Exile is a persistent theme in the Bible. The historical exile of the Jewish people in Babylon inspires much of the prayer and reflection, the lament and the praise, of the Old Testament. But it’s set in a bigger story of exile, humanity driven out from Eden, wandering on the face of the earth, seeking a true homeland that only appears at the end of the Bible, when the City of God appears from heaven for all the nations to be gathered in.

And exile, too, haunts our world. Refugees and migrants seeking a homeland. The sense of alienation and disempowerment, that afflicts so many in our society. It is true, as the Bible says, that here we are strangers and pilgrims, seeking a better country, the City that is to come. But it is also true, as Jeremiah says to the exiles in Babylon, that we are to seek the welfare of the city of our exile, to make it a good place to live in.

So the second message for us is that the Church, the living temple of Christ, is to be a refuge and a strength in this time of exile, known as somewhere where God is always present to hear, to save. The Church is called to contribute to the welfare of this present age, to be a voice for the voiceless, a presence to help build a fairer and more just world.

The third insight for us is from the reading from Hebrews, which tells us that we have come to what cannot be seen, the living kingdom of God.

Hebrews is all about signs and types, shadowy things, giving way to the reality they represent. The sacrifices and rituals of the old law are fulfilled in Christ. He initiates the new covenant in his own blood, the Eucharistic cup which is his life for the world. When we gather at the altar we are joining in Christ’s worship of the Father, which is why we can say that we join with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, not visible to our senses, but the greater reality of which the Eucharist on earth is the sign.

But because we have come to what cannot be seen, Hebrews calls us to stay faithful. The first two insights for us were about what the Church does in the world: making inclusion and welcome, building a juster and fairer world. The third word is about what the Church is, the Body of Christ, the Eucharistic community living from his life.

This is the heart of the Church. If the Church becomes just a social enterprise, a human activity, then it withers and dies. “Cut off from me, you can do nothing”, says the Lord. Transformation comes from Christ, and begins with us. So above all we must be faithful and persistent, in worship and sacrament, to draw strength from what the Church is in Christ, for the tasks that the Church is called to do.

When we gather for the Eucharist we come to what we cannot see, but do believe, the living Kingdom of God, the thousands of angels and the saints made perfect. We are to persist, and stay faithful, in that heart of our life and worship. Confidence in our faith, in our worshipping tradition, in being living stones built into a spiritual house acceptable to God, that is where we will find the confidence to do, to welcome, to include, and to transform.