A long, long time ago and far, far away, there was an extended family of wandering sheep herders who lived out the generations of their lives in the region that you and I call the Middle East. They traced their history back into the dusty recesses of time to a single couple named Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah had an encounter with the Great Being we call God, and the history of them and their descendants is really a history of their relationship with God. Their descendants—people with names like Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—grew in number and in their relationship with God. Over the course of centuries, the family endured the hardship of servitude in Egypt, the crisis of escape and looking for a homeland, and then the hard work of nation-building in the place where they believed God wanted them to put down their roots. All the while, the people listened and looked for when God might show up. The most famous encounter of all was when the great liberating leader Moses went up on a mountain and came back with ten simple laws that revealed God’s plan for his people. The great nation of people carried the two tablets of stone on which these laws were written wherever they went. They kept them in a special box called the Ark of the Covenant, and they kept the box in a special tent called the Tabernacle. But after many generations of worshiping their God in a tent, their great leaders decided it was time to build for God a permanent home. King David had the idea, but it was his son, King Solomon, who actually was allowed by God to construct a fabulous home on a hill in the city of Jerusalem, the capital of the nation that had grown from the family of wandering sheep herders. Here is the prayer that King Solomon prayed when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the Temple and the two tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments were given a home in place in the Temple called the Holy of Holies.

From 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.

Solomon and the people of Israel dedicated their new temple around the year 930 before Christ. Over the course of the next millennium, the Temple would be destroyed and rebuilt two times. The people’s relationship with God was something like the history of their temple. They would fall away from God as they ignored and forgot God’s law for their lives, and then they would come back to God and try once again to organize their lives around God’s presence with them. The Temple—or sometimes just the memory of it—always played a role in their relationship with God. The Temple stood as a special place to remind them of their relationship with God. But the people always struggled, and people still do, with the fact that a relationship with God is about so much more than just a building, even a very magnificent building.

That brings us to the time of Jesus. In the time of Jesus the great family of Israel was again struggling with its relationship with God. They had almost completely forgotten what their great Temple in Jerusalem was all about. When Jesus arrived on the scene he began to remind the people about their ancient history, how God had been with them in the form of God’s Spirit, in the form of God’s Law, in the form of God’s mystical presence as they were gathered together in prayer. Jesus confronted the waywardness of the people’s religion and was so threatening that it got him killed. But the people who had sensed God in Jesus realized that Jesus was not dead and that God was still present with them. Shortly after Jesus’ crucifixion and then his resurrection, the people who loved him most and knew him best were gathered in a room and they were filled with an unmistakable and overwhelming sense of God’s power. Just like Abraham had heard God’s voice telling him to leave his homeland and strike out for a new homeland, and just like Moses had heard God’s voice telling him the fundamentals of his Law on Mt. Sinai, Jesus’ disciples had an encounter with God in an event we now call Pentecost. Today is the day when the Christian Church remembers Pentecost, and we use the color red to remind us of the flaming entrance of God’s Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, into the souls and lives of the first disciples.

One of the key things those first disciples learned about God and about themselves was what the people of Israel had sometimes forgotten, that the true House of God is not so much a physical place like the Temple, but it is a family of people who know God. This old and crucial truth was something expressed so powerfully by one of the church’s early leaders, a highly educated Jew named Paul. Paul traveled around and wrote letters and tried to teach the first Christians who they were and what they were all about. One of his most problematic groups was the church in the Greek city of Corinth. Listen to what Paul said to them.

From I Corinthians 3:10-17: According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Ever since the first human beings collected a few sticks and leaves and patched them together to form a shelter, people have built structures in which we house the activities of our lives. Our buildings are an extension and expression of ourselves. Sometimes buildings take on lives of their own and we run the risk of thinking it is all about the buildings and not about what happens in them. The same is true of religious buildings. Jesus’ first followers worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem, and then in their synagogues, and then in their homes. Finally, they began to build special places of gathering in which to house the gathering of God’s people. The Greek word for a gathering of people is “ecclesia,” from which we take the word “ecclesiastical.” The way we translate “ecclesia” into English is with the word “church.” The church of Jesus Christ met in lots of places, but over time, their special places came to be called churches. And sometimes we forget that church buildings and churches are two different things. The church is the gathering of people, or the family, if you will, who have had an encounter with God. And the buildings we build are simply places where the family gathers to share our lives together as we continue our relationship with God.

I know that you know that. But it helps to be reminded, doesn’t it? We are here today to dedicate a new church. But in a way—a very important way—what I’ve just said is not true. In the last few weeks people have been asking me, “Jack, how do you like your new church?” And I know exactly what they mean. And I tell them I love our new church. But what I should be telling them is that I don’t have a new church. I have the same old church that I’ve had for nearly twelve years now. This old church that just a couple of weeks ago had its 54th birthday is not a new church. It is an old church with a new building, a new home. You and I are part of an old, old family of faith. And as we dedicate our new church home we need to remember a few lessons from our family history.

When Solomon prayed in the brand-new Temple he said to God, “even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” I hope and pray that the generations of the faithful who will come to worship here will feel God’s presence in this place. Many of us already do. But we must never forget that God is present everywhere all the time. This particular place is here simply to point the way in a very visible and unapologetic way that God is here at the corner of Via de la Valle and Paseo Delicias and God is here wherever “here” happens to be.

When Solomon prayed he said, “There is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants….” And when Paul wrote he said, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid: that foundation is Jesus Christ.” I hope and pray that the present and future church will never forget that our household of faith is built upon a foundation that we did not lay. Our foundation is the covenant love of God supremely expressed in the death and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus, the Christ. Our house is built on nothing less than the plan and purpose of our Creator, which is to restore his creation and reconcile his lost family. We are all about the business of sharing and knowing God’s love or we should go out of business.

When Solomon prayed he quoted God’s words to King David, 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.” And when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he said, “the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done.” Solomon and Paul both knew that when God’s people forget and ignore God’s ways then they are in peril of losing their place in God’s house. Israel strayed from God and lost their nation as the result, losing their Temple, too. Paul saw that the church had to stay faithful to her Lord, Jesus Christ, or else the church would not survive the testing of its faith, the fires of persecution that would later come and that still do come. I hope and pray that the current and future generations of Christians who call this church their home will never forget our foundations and never forget that the success of our lives depends on the quality of our faithfulness to God and his ways.

When Solomon built the first Temple he arranged for the finest building materials from all over the region to be brought to Jerusalem and there they were crafted into a magnificent structure. Paul talked to the Corinthians about building the church either out of gold, silver, and precious stones or out of wood, hay, and straw. The first three materials can withstand the fire of trouble and time, but the latter three can be easily destroyed. We have used some wonderful materials in the construction of this new structure. But the real question is this: with what are we building the real church that exists here, the church that is you and me? Paul said that you and I are the holy Temple of the Living God. Because we are a living thing, a generation within the generations of the family, we must always be aware of how we are building for the present and for the future.

Last week, at our home, we had a problem with the lighting fixture that pretty much is the entire ceiling over our kitchen, so Gustavo came over and removed the Plexiglas cover of the whole thing so he could get up into the ceiling and try to fix it. As he rummaged around in the dark corners he discovered gold! Apparently these two golden items were left there by the people who built the house over thirty years ago: two golden Coors beer cans!

You and I are part of the house of God. With Solomon, we pray that God will always look upon us and see us, so that we can then look upon and see God. With Paul, we hope and pray that God will help us to be faithful to him because he is faithful to us. At this important milestone in the life of our church, as we dedicate a new church home to God’s glory and to God’s work in the world, let us keep building with only the precious gifts of God. Our foundation is Jesus himself, who is present and alive among us, calling us to follow him along the pathway of discipleship that leads to abundant and eternal life. We build with the gifts Jesus himself gives us. They are gifts of God’s holy Word in scripture, gifts of sacraments that usher us into the spiritual reality of washing and birth into new life through baptism and the nourishment of a meal that strengthens us for daily living. They are gifts of faith, and hope, and love. They are the gift of the church itself.

Look around you. We are the house of God. We exist in order to glorify and worship God here in this place.

We exist in order to go out into the rest of the world where God also lives and call the whole world into a faithful relationship with him. We take God’s Temple with us wherever we go, because we are God’s Temple. Let’s keep building!

Amen.