The Church Isn't the Only Place of God

The bible text for this post is available at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=502778116

I grew up in a fairly traditional white ELCA Lutheran Church. It was progressive in a lot of ways… As kids we were treated with respect, which basically means we were allowed to speak and even contribute to conversations in a meaningful way. We were taught critical thinking and our learning drew on the arts…

But we also wore white robes when leading worship, talked in whispers about certain topics, and at Christmas there would be incense, handbells, and the full choir. I know there are a lot of things about that kind of church that no longer make sense for me or for the world we live in, but there are still things about it that I miss even as I hope for something new.

Sometimes I long for the smells and bells. Part of the reason I became a pastor is because I love the richness of ritual - the symbols, the cues, the way they point to and connect us to something ethereal and eternal and true. I miss the pageantry and spectacle of the before times, the way it inspires and moves. I miss the ease with which my heart could rise and sing before it became so bruised, before it felt too heavy to lift.

I know it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, I know some of the things that brought me comfort did harm to others, and I know that even if I could magically go back, it wouldn’t hit the same because I’m not the same. But it still holds a place of strange reverence in my heart and I’ve learned it’s ok to miss pieces of what was even if the memory is messy. 

So I get why people would pour tremendous resources into building a splendid temple. I get why they’d want to make a big show of it by having this over-the-top dedication service. Everyone is there and everything is more elaborate than you’ve ever seen.  The years have been hard and they need something to celebrate. It’s normal for a people who have been blown this way and that to want something solid, something permanent. To capture and hold something that is precious and feels like it’s been hit and miss.

For years now, there have been  plenty of voices pointing out that the church has overly emphasized our buildings as the heart of our existence. And rightly so. Quite often the elements that were supposed to point to God have ended up pointing to and serving only themselves. It’s the reason that we, as +KINDRED, work to share these walls with the wider community as much as we can, so that this gift of holy space isn’t just about us, but we don’t do it perfectly either.

As human beings, made to be in community with one another and the divine…

We do need a place to gather, to remember, to experience God. We say we are an incarnational people, that God made flesh in Jesus matter. So we know that the things we touch and feel, the things that make up physical space, the people beside us, are a part of how we know and draw closer to God.

But Solomon takes it a step further. In the past, the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, what the people held as the seat or the dwelling place of God among them....was always a movable thing.  It was carried from place to place and moved with the people. But now it has become a box within a larger box, never to be moved again. Solomon thinks THIS is how God and the people will be protected from all the kinds of loss they’ve sustained. THIS is holiness that is so grand it can not be destroyed, that will last forever. There’s a eerie sense of pride that sounds like Solomon announcing, “I have captured God in a box, come and see!” 

Where King Solomon and the church writ large go wrong is to claim that whatever WE create or are a part of is THE place, the BEST place, the ONLY real place to experience and know God.

This is Martin Luther’s point when he posted 95 critiques of the church (that he was a part of) on their front door. After years of reading and studying the bible as a monk, he felt a deep disconnect between who he understood God to be and how he saw the institution acting, and couldn’t stand by it any longer. It wasn’t all that different from what deconstructionists are doing now. 

Essentially, he points to the bible to claim that one person doesn’t have a monopoly on interpreting God’s ways. The systems and institutions that abuse the trust of the people should be held accountable, dismantled, and abolished. And exploiting the poor to grow their own glory and grandeur was detestable. He wrote that not only is all of that morally and ethically wrong, it is contrary to the Gospel the church claims to preach. It makes God into a commodity that can be controlled rather than the wild grace that runs free. As Lutherans, our legacy is one that has always woven spiritual liberation and social justice together.

Plenty of us will say (and have said) we want a church that’s always reforming, a faith and a family that is always open and able to move with the Holy Spirit…

until the reformation challenges something we’ve made into a pillar of our belief (either consciously or unconsciously), We want a church that’s revolutionary until it starts to shake up something we worked really hard to build. 

And maybe you’re here because you think THIS church is different, that maybe THIS one is on the right track.  And my God, I hope so. I really really want it to be and I know you do too.  And I do think that makes a difference. But I guarantee we’ll run into our own stuff too and it will take work to unravel, and it probably won’t be painless. I guess my hope for change is that we can be more honest about that because I find liberation there.

I believe there is value in things from the past carried forward, legacies matter, but there will inevitably come a time when the Holy Spirit will ask us to let them go too in order to hold onto something better. 

In her book, The Art of Gathering, author Priya Parker challenges any potential host to establish a purpose for their gathering, and the purpose can’t be the genre of gathering. WHY are you bringing people together? The answer can’t just be “for a costume party.” Why? She challenges people to get to the why behind the why. Why do you want to get people together for a costume party? To get together with friends in a playful way. Ok, WHY? To try on pieces of ourselves we don’t always get to express. Now, there’s an opportunity to create something meaningful.

I think Reformation gives us the same opportunity to reflect on why we gather as church, why we carry certain things forward, why we do what we do, why any of it matters…

because if we can get beyond the trappings of programs and accessories...

ultimately it will lead us back to experiencing, knowing, and living with God even as the way that happens inevitably changes. If we know why they matter, when the time comes to let them go, we can love them and release them because they are not the ONLY thing that matters. They are not the ONLY way that God or the sacred is present, accessible, and moving in our world.

Some of you grew up in the church and that church of our childhood... is gone - literally, or practically. One of my colleagues reflected this week that, “We will never again feel those experiences. For better or worse. We’ve had them, they’ve shaped us, but they’re done now.” 

Some of you have or are still wrestling with the hope that there is anything at all redeemable in this thing called church.

The Gospel means that we are people of resurrection.  It points us toward that thing behind and beyond what still remains. It shows us what we are still connected to, what still envelopes us even as it takes a new expansive shape.  

After all the work Solomon and so many others went through, to hold God still, to set up a tidy and tame God that worked for them...God shows up to the party as a cloud which filled the entire room. And as you think about how cloud stuff moves, you can envision it seeping through every crack and crevice that might have been considered flaws by construction standards and moves through even these narrow spaces to seep and spill far beyond any one room. This thick darkness which cannot be contained by any one place or people is where God promises to be forever. This is the glory that disrupts all the performance and pretension, to swallow it all up within the heart of Godself. So perhaps even when our eyes sting with holy smoke and we can no longer see all the shiny things that seemed to make our lives meaningful, God has not forsaken, but engulfed us in all that She is. Amen.

Martin Luther critiqued the church from within and without