That We All May Be One

 Today has also been designated “World Mission Sunday” by The Episcopal Church. Each year on this Last Sunday after Epiphany when we read the great Gospel story of the Transfiguration, we are asked to remember that another name for The Episcopal Church is “the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.” In other words, we are all missioners for Jesus Christ, and our mission field reaches around the world, but begins right here at home.

This seems like a good theme to celebrate here at St. Andrew’s Pentecost Church because you are both a domestic and foreign mission and have been from your beginnings! From the Spirit-led leadership of Ester Bryant, Mary Jackson and Louise Scott who petitioned this diocese for mission status way back in 1919 to Fr.  Nwachuku’s outreach to Nigerian Anglicans in Chicago in 1998 through the growth of that ministry in its several locations to the eventual merger of these two congregations in 2006 you have been all about domestic and foreign mission!

Our Prayer Book defines the mission of the Church as restoring “all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” So many people are separated from God today! They either don’t believe in God or they are afraid that God doesn’t believe in them. And people are separated from one another! Whether it’s discrimination and prejudice… or the widening gap between rich and poor… or because of broken families or alcohol or drugs, people are looking for healing and for reconciliation – with God and with one another. And it’s our job to make that happen! But how do we do it?

Well, in the 1980s and 1990s the worldwide Anglican Communion began developing something called “The Five Marks of Mission.” It’s a kind of check-list to see if we, as Anglicans, are doing all that is necessary to be about the mission of the Church. These marks were accepted by the Lambeth Conference in 1998 and at our last General Convention in 2009, The Episcopal Church adopted them officially and asked that the whole budget and program life of our church begin to revolve around them.

Our Presiding Bishop says that these marks are “digital” – that is, you can tick them off by the digits on one hand! 1)to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom; 2) to teach, baptize and nurture new believers; 3)to respond to human need by loving service; 4)to seek to transform the unjust structures of society; 5) to strive to safeguard and renew the life of this planet earth. This is a well-balanced plan of action!

And it begins by each of us, in our own way, sharing the Good News of God’s love with our families and friends and neighbors. Let people know that God “is,” and that God loves them. And by so living our lives in such a way that we are witnesses of God’s Kingdom, witnesses that God is in charge…of our lives and of the world! Peter and James and John were “witnesses” of Jesus’ transfiguration on that holy mountain in today’s Gospel. Now, it’s true that Jesus told them not to share what they had seen until he had risen from the dead. But after he was raised on that first Easter morning, those three disciples, and all the others, preached that message all over the Mediterranean world and finally to the ends of the earth. We’re to do the same thing!

Secondly, we are to teach, baptize, and nurture new believers. That’s what the Church is for. It’s to be a place of Bible study and teaching…a place to baptize and confirm people (like we are doing here today!)…and a place to be nurtured by Word and Prayer and Sacrament so that our faith may continue to grow!

Next, we are to respond to human need by loving service. I don’t know all the ways you do that here at St. Andrew’s Pentecost Church, but I know that you do. I know you’ve done Thanksgiving dinners for the lonely and have contributed to women’s outreach programs in Nigeria. And I’m sure there are other ways that you provide direct services to those in need. But we also need to work to transform the unjust structures of society. That’s the fourth “mark of mission.” Someone once said that we can either keep pulling people out of the rushing stream, or we can go upstream, find out who’s throwing them in, and make them stop!

I noticed just ten days ago, at the Church of England’s General Synod, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of his grave concern for our fellow Christians in Nigeria who are under threat at the hands of one of the most extremist Islamic organizations in the world, Boko Haram. He said, “We are talking in Nigeria not simply about a few incidents of interfaith conflict…we are talking about a threatened disintegration of a society…”

And after his words, the Synod unanimously passed a resolution requesting the British government to do all it can “to support those in Nigeria seeking to protect religious minorities of all faiths and enable them to practice their religion without fear.” Sometimes, specific acts of loving service are not enough. Actions must be taken to address systemic injustice! And that’s why the Anglican Communion is so important… so that we can stand in solidarity with one another around the world.

And finally, as Christian “missioners” today, we are to play our part in taking care of Mother Earth – this “fragile earth our island home” as our Prayer Book describes it. That can be as simple as re-cycling our garbage or trying not to litter as we move about the city or it can be as complicated as supporting the efforts of our government to move to cleaner energy sources which will do less damage to our land, our water, and the very air we breathe.

In the Old Testament lesson today, Elijah passed along his mantle as a prophet to his friend, Elisha. Today, it has been passed to us! In the Epistle, St. Paul reminds us that we are not to proclaim ourselves, but that we are to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. And, once again, on that Mountain of Transfiguration, Peter, James and John see Jesus standing alongside Moses and Elijah, and seem to hear a voice saying “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”

That’s what we are here to do today. We are to catch a vision of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And we are to ‘listen to him.” But, more than listen, we are to respond to him in mission. As we prepare to confirm two new members today, please join with them in rededicating yourself to that mission. The mission we will now renew by rehearsing our Baptismal Covenant!

It’s not often that we get to celebrate Ministry with a capital “M” in the various ways we are doing today – and all in one liturgy! That theme is announced in our Collect, or prayer, for today which reminds us that there are “various orders of ministers in the Church.” In addition to the three-fold order of bishops, priests and deacons, our Catechism teaches that there are actually four kinds of ministers in the Church – lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons.

 And as a way trying understand all that, let me share an image which has meant a lot to me over the years. About five years ago, Susanne and I lost a dear friend named Jim Kelsey. Jim was the bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan and he was killed in an automobile accident on the way back home from a Sunday visitation in his diocese.

 Jim had been a real leader in what we might call, for lack of the better word, “Baptismal Ministry.” That is, he believed that allChristianMinistry, all service in the Body of Christ, was rooted and grounded in Baptism.  I think he would say that the most important thing that ever happens to us as Christians is that we are baptized – because that’s when we become members of Christ’s Body, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and when the congregation challenges us to “confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.” (BCP308)

 One way Jim Kelsey sought to remind himself of that every day was in his office. When you walk into most clergy offices (including, I must confess, mine) you will see the walls adorned with diplomas and certificates – probably the seminary diploma and at least the ordination certificate to the diaconate, or the priesthood, or the episcopate. Jim only had one large certificate framed on his office wall. And that was his baptismal certificate!

 He used to say that he thought baptismal certificates were the ones which ought to be large and adorned with seals and signs and symbols so that all Christians would hang them on their walls as a constant reminder of their baptisms! And that ordination certificates should be simple and small, sort of like driver’s licenses, clergy could carry around in their pockets in case they ever needed proof of ordination! I love the point that perspective is trying to make!

 Today, we have a unique reminder that all Ministry is rooted in baptism. We were to have some actual baptisms today and that would really have made the point, but we do have confirmations and receptions and we will all renew our baptismal vows. We will also receive into our church a priest from our sister Communion, the Roman Catholic Church. Despite all our divisions in the Body of Christ today it is the One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism spoken of in our liturgy and in the Letter to the Ephesians that we celebrate here today.

 The one Lord is described so beautifully in our First Lesson from Isaiah: “Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth,” the Prophet writes, “It is (God) who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…The Lord is the Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth…” (Isaiah 40).Israelbequeathed to us faith in the One God.

 The one Faith is what Jesus proclaimed and which is described in the Gospel today as bringing healing and freedom to all whose lives he touched. And it is the one Baptism which compelled St. Paul  to do whatever he could to relate to all people – Jews and keepers of the Law…Gentiles and those outside the Law…weak and strong alike. He says that he made himself a slave to all of them, so that he might win more of them for Jesus Christ!

 Now, we’re all going to be making some promises here this morning. Those being confirmed and received will promise to renounce evil and renew their commitment to Christ. Randy, in being received as a priest of this church, will promise to be loyal to the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them.

 But all of us together will recommit our lives to Jesus Christ as we renew our Baptismal Covenant. That Covenant gives us all our marching orders, whether we are lay or ordained, young or old, newcomers to Christianity or only to The Episcopal Church. Pay attention to those promises as we rehearse them in a few moments – belief and trust in the Triune God…a commitment to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers…resistance to evil and a willingness to repent…proclaiming the Good News of God’s love in word and example…loving our neighbors as ourselves…striving for justice and peace among all people by respecting the dignity of every human being.

 Those promises summarize the response we are asked to make to the God who made us, the God who is in solidarity with us, and the God who empowers us to be the Body of Christ in this world. The Diocese of Chicago has an easy-to-remember motto, or mission statement – Grow the Church, Form the Faithful, Change the World.  It’s pretty clear to me that you are doing those things here atSt. Ann’s. You’re obviously growing the Church – as we confirm and receive new members here today.

 You’re forming the Faithful as you prepare to welcome Randy (Walk Itch) Wakitsch as a priest of this parish and this church. I’m sure he would say that, even as he helped form you, over these last six years in Children’s Formation, Outreach, and Centering Prayer – that you have helped form him as well! Until he has come to this day…

 Now, all that remains is for you to Change the World!

 Sound like a tall order? Well, just remember that Baptismal Covenant. Trust in God…Break the Bread…Resist Evil…Preach Good News…Love your Neighbor…Work for Justice and Peace…And Respect the Dignity of Every Human Being.

 And your world will never be the same!

 Bloomingdale. Good afternoon! My name is Christopher Epting and, thanks to Bishop Lee’s kind invitation, I am now serving as Assisting Bishop here in the Diocese of Chicago. I am the retired Bishop of Iowa and still live in that great state just to the west of you, but it’s a particular pleasure for me to be here with you today because, from 2001 until 2009, I served as the Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, working out of our Episcopal Church Center inNew York.

And last evening I represented the Diocese of Chicago at the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service at the Focolare Center in Hyde Park. It felt like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes as I knew a number of the participants from my days as ecumenical officer. It was a great event!

 My responsibility, during those years, was to coordinate and oversee the relationship of The Episcopal Church to other Christian communions and to other faith traditions. I made several visits to thePhilippinesand was privileged to meet with Obispo Maximo Alberto Ramento (now venerated as a martyr of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente) as well as his two successors, Tomas Millemena and Godofredo David. I worked also with Bishop Raul Tobias in this country, making it possible for him to attend our last General Convention inAnaheim.

 Although never privileged to visit India, I once celebrated the Eucharist in a MarThomaChurchon Staten Islandand served on the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations with Bishop John Gladstone of the Churchof South India. I have always believed that that Church and the Church of North India were models for the ecumenical movement that I wish we had followed more closely in this country when we were part of a similar association in something called the Consultation on Church Union, or COCU. I believe we had a failure of nerve and missed our opportunity to enter into a similar united church.

 I say all that by way of background just to let you know how exciting I think this shared mission and ministry is and how, in many ways, I believe that you could be a model for such experimental, risk-taking cooperative mission work in the future. In today’s Gospel, we are told that “Jesus came toGalilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘the time is fulfilled, and thekingdomofGodhas come near; repent and believe in the good news.’” (Mark 1:14b-15).

 That text reminds us that Jesus’ primary message was the same as John the Baptist. It was that the Kingdom…the king-ship…the Reign…the Sovereignty of God was at hand! People didn’t have to wait for it to come some time in the future. The Kingdom is now! We are rediscovering today that Jesus did not come to found a Church. Jesus came to inaugurate the Reign of God in this world!

 This Kingdom had been looked forward to by prophets like Jonah in our First Lesson today, by poets like today’s Psalmist who wrote that God “alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken. (Psalm 62:7). This Kingdom continued to be proclaimed bySt. Paulwho wrote in today’s Epistle that “the appointed time has grown short…for the present form of this world is passing away!” (I Corinthians7:29passim)

 We might also want to add, in our time, that the present form of the Church is passing away!

A couple of weeks ago, the Diocese of Chicago and Seabury seminary sponsored something called “The Great Awakening” featuring Bishop Lee along with two very popular religious authors and visionaries of today’s Church, Brian McClaren and Diana Butler Bass.

 And their messages were basically the same. The institutional Church is in big trouble today. All denominations and Christian communions are facing crises in authority, economic challenges, and from declining numbers and aging congregations. The Episcopal Church is not alone in these challenges – it’s happening all over! And so we have two choices – we can either turn inward and focus on survival or we can use this as a new opportunity to re-envision what the Church is all about!

 I believe the Church of the future will be less concerned about institutional maintenance and more concerned about God’s mission in the world. An old friend of mine used to say that the important thing is not that God’s Church has a mission, but that God’s mission has a Church!

God’s mission is about the reconciliation of the world – and everyone in it – to God.  Jesus says it clearly to Simon and Andrew in today’s Gospel when he said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people!” (Mark1:17)

 And Mark tells us that ‘immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Mark1:18). They followed Jesus not into the comfortable confines of a church building, but into the highways and byways ofGalileewhere they engaged with the real lives of real people with real problems and – along with their rabbi, Jesus, made a real difference in this world.

 I believe the Church of the future will also need to “travel light” as those early disciples did. So I think that will mean more “tent maker” or “bi-vocational” clergy. I think it will require ecumenical cooperation when we will learn that we are not in competition with Lutherans or Methodists or Roman Catholics or Baptists, but in league with them.  Our “competitors” are not fellow Christians; our competitors are the principalities and powers of this world which – as the Prayer Book says – “corrupt and destroy the creature of God.”

 The Diocese of Chicago has a great, and easy to remember, motto or mission statement – Grow the Church…Form the Faithful…Change the World. And Bishop Lee gave three very simple ways to carry out that mission statement in his Diocesan Convention sermon a couple of months ago. He suggested that “to grow the Church” each of us have at least one meaningful conversation with another person about God and about our lives this year. That’s all evangelism is really – sharing our lives and our relationship with God with other people.

 To “form the faithful” Bishop Lee encouraged us all to read at least one verse, or one chapter of the Bible every day. Use the Forward Day by Day booklet, or the Prayer Book lectionary, or some other scheme. But engage the Bible this year…and watch your Christian formation begin to happen.  Finally, he suggested that we each commit to one cause or one effort at social change in our community or our world. Not just to write a check, but to become personally involved in some effort to “change the world,” to make this present world look a little more like the Kingdom of God Jesus came to inaugurate.

 “The time is fulfilled, and thekingdomofGodhas come near,” Jesus says. Do you believe that?

Well, if you do, then the time is short! Don’t wait any longer! Do something this week to “Grow the Church”…to “Form the Faithful” (beginning with yourself!)…and to “Change the World.” For “the appointed time has grown short…and the present form of this world is passing away!”

 The journey to the river had been long and hard and the young man was tired. Seeing it now, after so long, was something of a disappointment to him. It was sluggish and muddy.  The banks, sloping upward so sharply that there was no easy access…or approach for that matter. The copper-colored water seemed curiously lifeless, and even the foliage which sprouted right from the water’s edge was dull green. Unhealthy, somehow.

 The man he’d come to meet was there at least. No sluggishness or lifelessness in him! This man was vibrant, filled with energy. Filled with anger too, yet somehow with hope.

He had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Challenging people to go in a new direction, change their ways, and marking that by a purification ceremony in that dirty water. Crowds had come out for this!

But the roughly dressed man didn’t seem interested in signing up a bunch of followers. He kept saying “one more powerful than I is coming. I’m not worthy even to loosen his sandels.”

 And now that One stood before him. Just one more face…in the middle of the crowd. The baptizer turned toward the river, pushing his way through the brush and raising clouds of dust before reaching the narrow bank.  He waded into the still water with the pilgrim close behind him.  Their bare feet sank into the soft river bed, and churned up more mud and the smell of decay.

 But even this dirty water felt cool and refreshing as it bathed his body.  And the pilgrim’s thoughts raced back through the history of his faith…and back…back to a time when all was water, until the words, “Let there be.” And there was.

 He closed his eyes and the image changed. Again, everywhere water! And no life. Except for those few faithful, the ones who were said to have trusted God

“In the cup of whose hands sailed in ark,

Rudderless, without mast…

Who was to make of the aimless wandering of theArk

A new beginning for the world…” *

 Yet a third time, and the pilgrim recalled a redeeming of life from a watery death. This time in theRed Sea, a sea of reeds. There was a pathway for some. A tragic death for others. But life and freedom on the other side!

 And there was water from the rock…streams in the desert…water for the purification of a thousand priests. And now… this…

As he came up from the water, he felt at one with all of it!  He knew that he was an inheritor of that Universe which had been prepared for him and for all others. And, he knew that he was God’s Child!

 He heard a voice…‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

 Well, that may have been something like what happened to Jesus of Nazareth on the day of his Baptism in theJordan Riverby John.  He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was God’s Son!

 That would be an event worth celebrating, I guess, even if it didn’t have anything much to do with us. But it does.  Because you and I share the Baptism of Christ!  And our Catechism says that “Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as…  children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of thekingdomofGod.” (BCP858)

 When you and I were baptized, God said to us, “You are my beloved son or daughter, and with you I am well pleased!” And when women and men renew the vows of their baptism in confirmation or reception or reaffirmation, God says the same thing to us, “You are my beloved sons and daughters, and with you I am well pleased.”

 Oh, not in everything we do is God pleased. We make mistakes. We consciously sin!  But in you, in the essence of you that really is “You,” God is well pleased.  God loves you as a daughter or a son and, because you share the life of his Incarnate Son, God will never let you go!

 As Bishop Lee said in his Diocesan Convention sermon on Baptism, “Living Under Water:” Water is both life-giving and dangerous. The waves can and do overwhelm us sometimes. We do find ourselves lost in the wilderness and there we can be struck down. But the promise of God, the promise of that cloudy pillar and fiery beacon never ceases. Through the waves and the wilderness God is with us. Even when we are struck down, God is with us. Not even death can separate us from such a love – and no one is outside its reach!”

That is Good News, beloved!  That is the Baptismal Covenant God has made with us and with all the baptized…a sign of hope for the world.

 Hope we find from a Baby in a manger…from the visit of some Persian astronomers…and from a Jordan River Baptism!

 “Epiphany” – the shining forth of God’s love! To you…and to me.

______________________________________________

*Alan Jones, “Journey into Christ”, page 37

“I am bringing you good news of a great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”(Luke 2:11)

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them has light shined.” (Isaiah 9:2)

“Oh the majesty and magnificence of his presence! Oh, the power and the splendor of his sanctuary.” (Psalm 96:6)

“…the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (Titus 2:11)

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them…” (Luke 2:9)

Light shining…magnificence and splendor…grace appearing….glory all around.

All of our Lessons from Holy Scripture tonight seem to emphasize Light! And it’s easy to see why anciently the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated Christmas on January 6 – or what we call the Feast of the Epiphany. Because the word “epiphany” means a “shining forth” and surely the birth of Christ was a “shining forth,” an epiphany of God’s purposes in ways the world had never seen before!

Even in evening celebrations of the Christ Mass, like this one, there is an emphasis on candlelight and “candle light services”. We’ll sing Silent Night by candlelight at the end of this service. And our homes are filled with Christmas lights of all kinds. Why all this emphasis on “light” at Christmas? Well, what does light do? It “reveals”, doesn’t it? It makes things known that would otherwise be hidden. And that is exactly what the birth of Jesus Christ did for the world. It revealed, made known, manifested, something of what God is really like.

You might think that would have been unnecessary for the people of Israel who had worshipped God for nearly 2,000 years before Jesus was born. But there were still differences of opinion about what God was like. There was a Priestly understanding of a God who approved of cult and temple and sacrifice. There was a Prophetic understanding of a God who desired justice and righteousness above all else…and was quite suspicious of the sacrificial system.

There were those who saw God as vengeful and capable of destroying entire nations if they opposed the Divine Will. And others who saw God as tender and compassionate, One who brooded over this world like a mother over her children.

To this day, people have all kinds of ideas about God. Some believe in a God who sanctions violence of the most extremist kind. On the other hand, some Eastern religions have a very peaceful, tolerant view of the Divine, but don’t say much more than that about God. Seems to be a more of a Force, or a Divine Mind, rather than a Personal Being for them.

But our claim as Christians is that we know a bit more than that about what this God is like. Without wanting to say that we know everything there is to know about the Creator of the Universe (we certainly do not!) we do believe that something of the very nature of God has been revealed to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. We have been “enlightened” to some degree about that very Nature.

For example, we know that God is not callous or cruel. God does not willingly afflict or grieve human beings. We know that God is not distant from us or from the affairs of this world. For all God’s power and majesty, there is a certain vulnerability and even the possibility of being “hurt” – like a baby in a manger, our God can be vulnerable…and even wounded.

We know that God is not static and predictable by our rules and regulations, but is perfectly capable of surprising us, like the twelve year old boy in the Temple once surprised his parents by being about his Father’s business instead of being where they thought he ought to be. God “shows up” in unexpected places!

We know that God cares very deeply about what happens to us and so reaches out with a Word of wisdom and with healing, like that itinerant rabbi who once went about preaching Good News and backing up his words with actions like the healing of a paralytic, and the restoring of sight to one who had been born blind.

We know that God is capable of being betrayed by us, and delivered into the hands of sinners, for even less than the thirty pieces of silver Judas once got for betraying his friend.

But, in all this, indeed because of all this, God reigns! With all the vulnerability and unpredictability and deep compassion, God remains the creator and sustainer of the Universe, the ultimate source of all life and all that is. And this God is able and willing to bring good out of evil, and life out of death at every turn. Just as he once split open the grave and won the victory over death and hell on Easter morning.

How can we say all this? How can we believe all this with such passion? Because we believe in the essence of the Christmas story… because we believe in the “good news of great joy for all the people (for to us) is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

We know something of what God is like because we believe that the meaning of the Christmas story is what St. Luke said it was, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.”

We believe that Jesus Christ is “the grace of God…bringing salvation to all…” And his name will be called, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Light shining…magnificence and splendor…grace appearing…glory all around.  That’s what we celebrate here tonight, dear friends. I’m so glad you’re here! Merry Christmas!

Advent 4B.  This is “Mary’s Sunday.” The 4^th Sunday of the Advent season when we pause to reflect on the enormous role played by a teen-aged, Jewish peasant girl in God’s ultimate plan for history and for this world.  With what Anglicans sometimes perceive as Roman Catholic over-emphasis and Protestant under-emphasis on the Mother of Jesus, we sometimes fail to say much about her at all!

Yet, the Gospel accounts are full of Mary in the Christmas story, she is referred to a number of times in the subsequent accounts of Jesus’ life, she is there at the foot of the cross and again in the Upper Room at Pentecost. The Prayer Book has four major holy days specifically celebrating Mary’s life – The Annunciation (which we also had as our Gospel story today), the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth when both were carrying their first-born sons, the Presentation of the young Jesus in the Temple when the days of Mary’s Purification after childbirth was complete, and the Feast St. Mary the Virgin on August 15^th when Roman Catholics believe she was taken back into heaven in a special way.

Mary’s story begins, in a sense, with our Old Testament Reading today from the Second Book of Samuel. While the Hebrew people believed that their awesome God could never be seen face to face and that God did not live in a house made with hands, yet they had sensed the Divine Presence in the pillars of fire and cloud and on Mt. Sinai. They had preserved the tablets of the 10 Commandments in a “tent” called “the Ark of the Covenant” and carried it with them wherever they went, even sometimes into battle.

There was a great debate about whether eventually a Temple should be built where the Ark could find a permanent home and where the people of Israel could come to offer sacrifice and to worship and to pray and to sense the almost-physical presence of  their God whenever they wished and could get there. The great King David, quite understandably, began to believe that he was the one to build God’s great House, his great Temple.

Especially when David himself was living in very comfortable surroundings – he said, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” But the prophet, Nathan, like most of the prophets down through the ages, was a bit suspicious of this heavenly building program. He, and the other prophets, were concerned that a beautiful Temple could become an idol for the Jewish people; that something even though built to point beyond itself to the God of heaven and earth, could almost become an object of worship in and of itself.

It’s something we Christians have to be concerned about as well. Our great Cathedrals and Gothic churches can, and do, provide the space and the context for the worship of God. I cannot walk into places like this without sensing the beauty and majesty of God, that peace of God which passes all understanding. But, if we are not careful, we can find ourselves worshipping a building rather than the God the building was erected to glorify. That is now, and was then, idolatry!

So, Nathan heard God saying, “Go and tell my servant David…are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day…Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took YOU from the pasture…to be prince over my people…Moreover the Lord declares to you and the Lord will make YOU a house…your throne shall be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7 passim)

In other words, God was not interested in dwelling in a house made with hands. God was interested in dwelling in the midst of a people – the house of David was not to be a Temple. The house of David was to be a family….an inheritance…a people!

That story would have been well known to a young, Jewish girl in first century Palestine. She would have heard it read in the synagogue and would doubtless have sung these words from today’s Psalm countless times in her growing up, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn an oath to David my servant: I will establish your line for ever, and preserve your throne for all generations” (Psalm 126).

Those texts must have come crashing down upon her when she heard these words spoken to her as in the voice of an angel: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.” (Luke 1)

The throne of his ancestor David! David’s descendent! The Anointed One! The Messiah! And she was to bring him into the world! Truly, she was the “favored one.” Surely “the Lord was with her.” Yet it would not be so easy.

“How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Mary was not concerned here with having Gabriel explain a Doctrine called the Virgin Birth. Mary was concerned about being laughed at, scorned, cast out, perhaps even stoned as an unwed mother from a strict Jewish family and community. For them, there could be no other explanation but that, at the very least, she had become pregnant before her marriage vows to Joseph. And, at the worst, the father was someone other than Joseph.

“How can this be?” she asked. “How can I do this?” The only answer that came? God will be with you. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”  How many of us would have said “Yes,” considering the cost, on that vaguest of promises? Yet Mary did. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

No, dear friends, the Lord God does not dwell in a temple made with hands. Even so beautiful a temple as the one we are privileged to worship in here today. The Lord dwells in a midst of a people. A people who trace their history to a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. A people who trace their history to rugged tablets of stone carried through the desert in a rustic tent. But,for us, a people who have discovered the true dwelling place of God.

In the womb of a pregnant teenager. In a wooden manger and on a wooden cross. And, finally, in the hearts of his faithful people. Greetings, favored ones. The Lord is with YOU!