Where is God?

Sermon preached Sunday, March 7, 2021, the Third Sunday in Lent, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA.

The Temple in Jerusalem was a key part of life for a first century Jew like Jesus. It’s hard for us to understand just what it represented and the incredibly important role it played.

The temple, at least the first one, was built by King Solomon, son of King David, because God required a permanent home. Since the time Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, the Israelites has carried the commandments and, in essence, the presence of God in a tent called the Ark of The Covenant—a name that might sound familiar if you’re an Indiana Jones fan.

They carried God’s dwelling place around with them, until finally God

said that it was not right that he had no real place to call home. And so Solomon built a great temple. It took lots of special offerings and years to build, but it was lauded for its beauty and design. Unfortunately, it was not to stand forever. It was destroyed by the Babylonians nearly six hundred years before Christ was born.

It was eventually rebuilt, after the Israelites returned from exile enforced by those same Babylonians. After years of having no place to properly worship God, they were able to rebuilt God’s house. It was bigger now, the temple complex was spread out, containing a series of areas that eventually led to the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence was. The Court of Gentiles (or non-Jews), The Court of Women, The Court of Israel for the men, and the Court of Priests. This was the temple Jesus knew, the temple Jesus and his disciples walk into at the beginning of John’s Gospel.

Since the temple was God’s house, it is where Jews would offer sacrifices to God, or come to pray on special festival days. It wasn’t that God couldn’t be found anywhere else, but one was guaranteed to find God at the temple. Up until this point, this was the common thought: if I want to encounter God, I need to be there.

But, as usual, Jesus has more to say. When we hear this story about the money changers and the merchants selling animals, we picture all of this happening in the heart of the temple. We might imagine animals being placed upon the altar, or the sounds of coins clinking overshadowing the practice of worship. But these things would have been happening in the court of the Gentiles, in the outermost part of the temple complex.

If we were to compare this story to our own churches, this is not Jesus acting in the Sanctuary, or even in the Adult Faith Formation Room or Karns Hall. This would be Jesus our in the parking lot, maybe even standing out by the entrance sign. Jesus has left the building.

And that’s the point. Jesus speaks on this day about how the temple will be destroyed and raised up again in three days. He is obliquely referring to himself, but no one else understands that—no one else understands that he is now the temple. He is now where God is present, where people can be sure to encounter God.

So what does that say about where God’s house is? What does that say about where God dwells?

God dwells wherever Jesus dwells. God goes wherever Jesus goes.

We might call a church a “House of God,” but God is not exclusively located there. Jesus spent time in local synagogues, interacting with the local people of the established religion. He didn’t ignore them; he spent time with people like Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to Jesus in the middle of the night to learn.

But because of Jesus’ actions, God can be found in so many other places.

Jesus often went to the edges, to the borders and crossed them. He engaged in a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well. If you remember anything about the relationship between Jews and Samaritans, you know it wasn’t good. Each group believed the other to be worshipping God at the wrong place, to be unclean, to be, at their core, bad people where were to be avoided at all costs. And here Jesus is, inviting a Samaritan into dialogue and bringing her and her entire village to faith.

Jesus heals a blind man, who many believed was blind because he or his parents had committed some unpardonable sin. Jesus restores his sight, even though it is the Sabbath and some might think he is “doing work on the Lord’s day.”  He does not let human rules get in the way of God’s grace. Time and time again, Jesus can be found with those whom society often overlooks. The poor, the hungry, the outcast, the ones who live on the fringes.

And if God was in those places then…we know that God is in those places now. They might look different though—maybe we need to look a little harder for them.

Where are the places we would rather not go? What are the borders we’d rather not cross? Where are the people we think are “too different,” if not “unclean”?  [beat]

Are we willing to look for God in the parking lot? Out on the streets of Littlestown? Across the invisible lines that separate our communities into the “good” and “bad” parts of town? God is on the move, God is out and about, God has left the building—not forever and not completely—but this—the sanctuary of St. John’s—is not the only place we will encounter God. Surely the past year has taught us that much.

But this place still holds sway. We know that God is here. God is in water that we may touch and cross ourselves with, water that reminds us of God’s promises to us in baptism. God is in bread and wine, in these elements that become for us the body and blood of Christ. And God is in the Word: scripture read and hymns sung, as we proclaim God’s good news for us. It is so easy to only seek to encounter God here, or to simply return here without looking for God when we’re out and about in our everyday life. But if God has left the building, and we, too, will leave this building, why do we assume that we won’t run into God? After all, we run into other congregation members, friends, co-workers, acquaintances and all sorts of other characters—why not God?

Maybe that’s something to think about this week. Maybe we can keep our eyes peeled for where God might show up. And maybe we can use that to discover where we might be most called to do the work of God.

If we spot God in the midst of an interaction with someone living on the street, what can we do to join God there? If God is advocating for justice and peace in a public forum, can we add in our own voice? If God is offering care to the sick, can our hands help? If God is comforting the grieving or consoling the bereft can we provide our own shoulders to lean on as well?

It’s a deceptively simple formula: find where God has already decided to dwell and take up residency there ourselves. But it takes courage on our part, and creativity. We cannot limit ourselves to what we have always done or where we have always gone. It means expanding our ideas of where we can encounter God.

God has left the building. Let’s go find out where God’s gone! Amen.