My girlfriend is a thrifter.
She has an uncanny ability to like, sniff out garage sales and yard sales. Before we started dating, I would hardly notice those neon pink and neon green signs that appear in neighborhoods when the weather is nicest. But now, I cannot help but notice. It is like I am particularly tuned into signs that start with the letter G or Y. I see them when I am driving to a local elementally school to drop off backpack donations. I see them on the way home from getting my haircut or going to the grocery store. Am I looking for them intentionally? No, but it is like, once I became aware of those garage and yard sales I saw more and more of them. They had been there all the time, but I wasn’t aware of them.
In our scripture today, Solomon finishes and dedicates a project talked about in scripture since his father David and even before: God’s home. Back in Exodus God said to Moses, “tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give…have them make me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them.” God wants a home with the people but at that point it was still a more portable structure. Fast forward to King David, who says, “I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” David wants to build a more permanent house for God. But it is not his task. Through the prophet Nathan, God tells David, “wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel…[did I ever ask] why have you not built me a house of cedar?” It will not be David’s task but his sons. “I will raise up your offspring after you..he shall build a house for my name.” So, when Solomon was established as King, he went to building God’s house, the temple. And it is a gorgeous structure of stone and cedar and gold. What we read today was the ark, the chest containing the 10 commandments, being brought into the innermost space of the temple and Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the temple and the people who will worship there. And a part of his prayer is a deeply meaningful question, a rhetorical one, reflecting on God’s nature, God’s power and presence. “But how could God possibly live on earth? If heaven, even the highest heaven, can’t contain you, how can this temple that I’ve built contain you?” And Solomon knows the temple, the house, is less about containing God and more about us making space for a God who wants to be near us, who has always wanted to have a sanctuary amongst us. The message version of scripture puts it this way, “Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn’t large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I’ve built.” But that question, the question Solomon asks, won’t let me go. It is what I kept coming back to over and over again. And it is a question that, I think we have asked too, just maybe with a different tone, from a different heart space. We’ve maybe asked it more earnestly, more desperately, more sorrowfully.
Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood?
How could God possible have a home, here…where there is so much pain and hard things?
God wants to make a home, is making a home, with us, with me?
Over and over and over again, scripture affirms God’s presence with us from Exodus to 2 Samuel that we’ve talked about, to Isaiah, Matthew, John, and Revelation.
Isaiah: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Matthew: “Look, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, god with us.”
John 1:14: “the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood”
Revelation 21: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, see, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them, they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”
God is in the neighborhood. God is here. And yet, we do not always feel that way. Sometimes, God is like those garage sales I talked about. Right under my nose, happening all around, sometimes with giant neon pink signs, but I never noticed them. God, grace, love, right under our noses, right next door, happening all round, and sometimes, so hard to recognize. And if you’re feeling distant from God, or like God isn’t near, those feelings don’t mean you have little faith, or are a bad person, or a bad Christian, it just means you’re human. I think part of a good start, a right start to this fall and this new season, is us giving ourselves permission to feel those hard feelings, while also reorienting ourselves.
Acknowledge your feelings, your questions, your struggles, and what you are going through. You do not have to deny what you’re experiencing and you do not need to berate or shame yourself. Acknowledge, breathe, and then reorient. Those hard things, don’t define you. They don’t define you right now and they do not define your life. When we ask, how could God ever make a home here, with me, now? God responds with, why wouldn’t I? You are my beloved child. I see your flaws and I love you. I see your pain, your struggles, and I am here with you, working for good to come even from this.
Reorient and look around. I don’t know what you’ll see but maybe it will be a tiny sign in the form of a smiling grandchild or kiddo at church. Heck, maybe it will be one of those big neon things like a new opportunity, or a phone call, or I don’t know.
God does not ask us to deny difficult things but God does remind us of truths greater and deeper than any pain, struggle, or hardship. “How could God possibly be here? Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood?” Yes, over and over and over and over again, yes and yes and yes. God is in the neighborhood. How can we perceive that this week?