Scripture for November 6:
The First Lesson: 1 Kings 8:22-30
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.
Psalm
84:1-12 Quam
dilecta!
How dear to me
is your dwelling, O L ord of hosts!
My
soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the
L ord;
my
heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
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 L ord of hosts,
my
King and my God.
Happy are they
who dwell in your house!
they
will always be praising you.
Happy are the
people whose strength is in you!
whose
hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.
Those who go
through the desolate valley will find
it
a place of springs,
for
the early rains have covered it with pools
of water.
They will climb
from height to height,
and
the God of gods will reveal himself in Zion.
Lord God of hosts,
hear my prayer;
Hearken,
O God of Jacob.
Behold our defender,
O God;
And
look upon the face of your Anointed.
For one day in
your courts is better than
a
thousand in my own room,
and
to stand at the threshold of the house
of
my God
than
to dwell in the tents of the wicked.
For the Lord
God is both sun and shield;
He
will give grace and glory;
No good thing
will the Lord withhold
from
those who walk with integrity.
O Lord of hosts,
Happy
are they who put their trust in you!
Glory be to the
Father and to the Son,
and
to the Holy Ghost:
As
it was in the beginning, is now,
and
ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
The Second Lesson 1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Rid yourselves,
therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all
slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk,
so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you
have tasted that the Lord is good.
Come to him, a
living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious
in God’s sight, and 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.
But you are a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s
own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were
not a people,
but
now you are God’s
people;
once
you had not received mercy,
but
now you have received mercy.
The Sermon:
Three
thousand years ago, more or less, an ancestor in the Faith built
a magnificent temple for the praise and worship of God. It was the
first permanent structure of worship for the Jews who had come to
inhabit their promised land after slavery in Egypt. It was a monument
to their freedom and an acknowledgement that God had blessed them,
that God had led them through the Red Sea and through the dangers
of the wilderness into this land which would be their home. His name
was Solomon, and Scripture holds him up as a wise and faithful ruler.
In his wisdom he knew that God could not be contained in a building,
even though it be called the House of the Lord, and he prayed (in
our first lesson), “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain
you, much less this house that I have built!” But in his faithfulness
Solomon understood this temple was to be a sign of God’s love
for his people and his people’s love for God.
Two
thousand years ago, more or less, Jesus went into the Temple which
had been the successor to Solomon’s temple and scandalized
those around him by doing two things: First, he overturned the tables
of the moneychangers—perhaps symbolic of the Temple’s destruction
some thirty years later—but then even more scandalous, he welcomed
the blind, the lame, and the children. For Jesus, God’s house
was a house of prayer for all people. It represented God’s yearning
to be one with all who would seek God, with all who would be whole,
with all who would find in God a home for their souls.
One
thousand years ago, more or less, a cathedral was built in Canterbury,
England, to replace the earlier cathedral that had been destroyed
by the Norsemen. It is the cathedral memorialized by Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales owing to the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket. For Anglicans
it is the Mother Church in England and the seat of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, spiritual head of the Anglican Communion throughout the
world of which the Episcopal Church is a part. A year and a half ago,
Bev and I made our pilgrimage to Canterbury and quite unexpectedly
ran into the Archbishop, Rowan Williams, and his wife and son strolling
through the cathedral grounds after dinner. He was gracious and much
to our delight remembered a visit to this church a number of years
ago, a visit of which he had fond memories.
Today,
you and I are celebrating the 100 th Anniversary of the Dedication
of this church, one thousand years after the dedication of Canterbury
Cathedral, two thousand years after the ministry of Jesus in the
temple in Jerusalem, and three thousand years after the dedication
of Solomon’s
temple. It is for us on this All Saints’ Sunday a celebration
of connection to all those who have gone before us in our most recent
history, but then to include the history of all the faithful for centuries
and centuries, for whom the worship of God inspired and motivated them
in lives of service and praise.
For
us, however, we are today particularly conscious of the three young
lives who along with their mother were lost in a tragic fire in Chicago
a little over 100 years ago. It was as a memorial for these children
and their mother that this stone Church on the Hill was built. It
is hard for us to imagine the terrible sense of loss those lives
must have occasioned for the Hoyt family. Can any one of us not understand
tragic loss of innocent life and the personal agony of asking, “Why?” only
to be met by a vast silence. And yet that void was an opportunity for
faith and provided the impetus for a vision of building a place of
beauty and nourishment for future generations, a place for hope and
goodness and comfort. I never cease to be moved by the depth of feeling
represented by the Tiffany window on the west wall of our church given
by Emilie Hoyt Fox’s siblings which depicts Jesus’ welcome
of the children. The text on which it is based is, “Suffer the
little children to come unto me not, for of such is the Kingdom of
God.” It is not hard to imagine that the figure of the woman
is Emilie and the children her children, as Jesus welcomes them into
his heavenly home and into his everlasting care.
Today,
by God’s providence and with a wonderful smile on God’s
face we are welcoming three children into the Body of Christ through
the sacrament of Holy Baptism. It is as if in remembering Emilie Hoyt
Fox and George, Willis, and Emilie, her children of 100 years ago,
we have represented a new hope for the safekeeping of these parents
and for the nurture of these three children, Kate, Lauren, and Henry.
We are dedicating them, in the words of Peter’s epistle, in this
house of God to be themselves “built into a spiritual house,
to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to
God through Jesus Christ.” What a gift we have been given, to
realize in our own lives and in the lives of those we love the knowledge
that we are treasured by God, that we are loved by God.
Sixty years ago, more or less, a baby boy was presented by his parents
at the font of another Christ Church to be baptized. It was the old
Prayer Book back then, and the priest intoned,
We receive
this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock;
and do sign him with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter
he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and
manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the
devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant
unto his life’s end. Amen.
By God’s grace it was that baptism that has brought me to this
Christ Church and to these baptisms. By God’s grace I was treasured
and cared for in that Christ Church and was brought to this Christ
Church to proclaim how it is that these children and all God’s
children might be treasured and cared for. It was at that Christ Church
where I first heard those words that are embodied in our worship and
celebration in this Christ Church today,
Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with us; God will dwell with us and we shall
be God’s
people, and God shall be with us and be our God. And God shall wipe
all tears from our eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the
former things are passed away. [Revelation 21]
It is
John’s
vision from Revelation which is our song
today, a song that envelops all whom we remember, all who will come
after us, and we ourselves in this Christ Church which is Christ’s
Church, now and forever. Amen.
