On Building a Dwelling Place for God
July 21, 2024
Traceymay Kalvaitis
Ephesians 2: 19-22
…you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
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Today’s sermon is titled On Making Space for God to Dwell.
If I had to sum up my job description in one sentence, it may well be the title of this sermon: On Making Space for God to Dwell. It is my one aim, each week, in writing the sermons and creating this worship experience, is to make space for God to dwell among us. If I were to ask you right now if you have been touched by the grace of God, I expect very few would raise your hand. I would say, Friends, that each and every one of you have been touched by the grace of God because you are here in this moment and not elsewhere. You, too, are making space for God to dwell, just by being here.
You are also making space for God to dwell in supporting the work of this church. Much of our church work is visible to the public, but some of the most profound work is invisible. Because of the church, and just in the past two weeks, I was able to respond to a neighbor who had a house fire, a young man in prison who was struggling to afford phone time to communicate with his family, another man, a father of two, who is a year out of prison and trying so hard to re-create his life and support his family. And this past Thursday, in the wake of the death of Edie Clark, I was providing assurance to her family and closest Friends that there is a vast community of people who are all feeling some sense of loss and sadness; none of us are alone.
In each of those four instances, I was simply making space for God to dwell. I was reaching out as a reminder that though the world may seem unkind, there are people who care. Whenever I offer aid or assistance, I try to always tell the recipient that what I am able to do is made possible through the support of many others. We are working together in a relationship that Paul eloquently described in his letter to the Ephesians, “…you are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
In re-reading the 23rd Psalm over and over this past week, it was the last verse that resounded in my mind…“I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” The word dwell, in particular, catches my eye and ear. Like so many words, this one has multiple meanings. The two most familiar definitions of the word “dwell” are as verbs; “Dwell” can mean “to keep the attention directed” like in this quote from Johnny Cash; he says “Don’t try to forget the mistakes, but don’t dwell on them, either.” “Dwell” can also refer to living “in or at a specified place” as in the quote from Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in possibility.” It seems to me that dwelling in the house of the Lord is, in a sense, dwelling in possibility.
Our reading from the book of Ephesians today also speaks in beautiful detail of the same kind of phenomenon; please, listen again to the boldness and the action in this passage. “You are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets…joined together, (you) grow into a holy temple…you are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” This is reminiscent of a verse in the book of Acts, chapter 7 that says, “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” This metaphor of our bodies being the temple of God recurs throughout the Bible, and the concept is, in my opinion, so abstract and so loaded with implied responsibility, I find it difficult to dwell there. If our bodies are the temple of God, then we must question how we choose to care, or to not care, for ourselves.
In our verses from Mark, Jesus speaks to his disciples of taking care, taking time to rest, after he had sent them out, two-by-two, to teach and heal with only their sandals, staff and one tunic each. They return and meet Jesus by the shores of the sea of Galilee. They are mobbed by people pressing in and Jesus says, “Come away to a deserted place and rest awhile.” That was easier said than done, for Jesus had no temple with doors to close. Surely, he could have asked for one to be built and perhaps in his three-year ministry it might have even been completed, but Jesus did not ask for a temple…instead, Jesus became the temple of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with his followers joined together, growing into a holy temple, a dwelling place for the Most High.
The effectiveness of Jesus’s ministry was compounded by the very fact that he was a vessel through which God could reach the people and he lived among them, not on a dias above the masses, not on a throne, not behind the temple curtain or behind a pulpit; Jesus was among the people, present and accessible.
Jesus took time to rest and restore, and he ordered his disciples to do the same. Rev. Francis Beare has the following advice for us all, “The watchful care of health and strength is a primary religious duty. If we are too busy to allow strength to be renewed by withdrawal and rest, we are too busy to serve God with our best.” We read in the third commandment, from the book of Exodus, that we are to keep the sabbath holy. The Jewish tradition of Shabbat is time set apart from ordinary time; it is a holy practice of observing the balance between work and rest. Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday evening and lasts until dark on Saturday evening. Shabbat was a practice unparalleled in ancient cultures where rest and relaxation was strictly the privilege of the wealthy. In this sense, observing Shabbat was, and perhaps still is, a radical act of refusal to be defined by one’s productivity, but to instead recognize that, as Rev. Beare said, “If we are too busy to allow strength to be renewed by withdrawal and rest, we are too busy to serve God with our best.” I carve out time each week to observe Sabbath. Sabbath comes from the Jewish word, Shabbat, meaning “to rest.” I take an afternoon, usually on Mondays, to do something meaningful, something that I enjoy. It is a time set apart, and a space created for God to dwell. We are human and we need rest; we are not machines.
This seems like the perfect time to share something else I learned about the word “dwell.” “Dwell” can also be used as a noun, a thing. According to the dictionary, a dwell is “a slight, regular pause in the motion of a machine.” A slight, regular pause in motion; a little rest, if you will. With this one, small, 5-letter word “dwell” we can refer to residing in a place, keeping our attention focused, and even the small pauses in the machinations of our daily lives.
I challenge us all to consider the times in our days or weeks where we can make space for God to dwell. There are so many ways to do this. I encourage us, like Jesus encouraged his disciples, to take time for good rest for ourselves when we need it. I encourage us to take care of our physical bodies to the best of our abilities. And I encourage us to be of service to others. In so doing, we make space for God to dwell within us and among us.
In closing, I remind us that we are offered invitations today in these scriptures. First, an invitation to “dwell in the house of the Lord.” This is not a house made with human hands, but some place within us where all there is is the goodness of God and the promise of possibility. Secondly, we are invited to “join together spiritually, into a dwelling place for God.” And here we are. Welcome to church; welcome to a community of faith where we care for one another as Friends and we also for people we may have never met, people who are in crisis and need to know they are not alone. And lastly, let’s not forget the sacred necessity of the dwell, the slight but regular pause, the moments of rest that offer us the chance to turn our attention back from where we have come, back home to God. May we all, in some ways large or small, make more spaces for God to dwell within us and among us. So be it. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer: God of wholeness, I thank you for the power of love that dissolves the boundaries between us. I thank you for sending Jesus and all the divine wisdom he embodies as a radical example of a higher love, a deeper acceptance, and a commitment to service that we can always find ways to more fully emulate. Free us from our tendencies to limit, to judge, to exclude. Remind us, Lord, of the ways of Christ and help us to not be discouraged by the limited awareness that surrounds us in humanity, but rather empower us to look for the best in ourselves and the best in others. Help us to create within our hearts a place for love, a place for God, to dwell. In Jesus’s name, we pray this prayer that he gave to us…Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever and ever. Amen.
Benediction: I leave you with two benedictions, ‘benediction” meaning “blessing.”
First, these words from Kalil Gibran’s book titled The Prophet; this is from the chapter “On Houses” and it reminds us that where we really dwell is within ourselves, not within structures made by human hands.”
“Your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”
And from 1 Corinthians 3:16, “…you yourselves are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in your midst.”