“When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.”Was happy to welcome him. Zacchaeus hurried down from his tree and was happy to welcome Jesus into his home. Now, you might think you know where I am going with this. You’re pretty familiar with this story, right? It’s an absolute staple of Sunday School and family worship because it’s such a great image. The short guy who wanted to see Jesus, so he climbed a tree to get a better view. I bet quite a few of you sang the song too – do you remember? Zacchaeus was a very little man and a very little man was he And at the end of that Sunday School lesson, or that family service, I am willing to bet that the teacher or preacher said something like this:“Now children, Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus into his house – but we need to welcome Jesus INTO OUR HEARTS”.Am I right?Now, it’s not that this isn’t a good message. It is. It’s a brilliant message, because we do need to welcome Jesus into our hearts. And if I stopped right now and you went away with the message that you should welcome Jesus into your heart I would have done my job.But these are special circumstances. Our first day back in church after so long, our first worship together in this pandemic, I couldn’t rest with the obvious message – I needed to dig a little deeper. So as I’ve been thinking and reading and praying about this service, I’ve kept coming back to the Psalm we heard earlier, Psalm 84, and thinking about the dwelling place of the Lord. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!”This is such a lovely psalm, full of such lovely images about the dwelling place of God – a place where everyone is happy, singing praises to God, a place so lovely that a day there is better than a thousand anywhere else. God’s dwelling place is a place of strength and protection. It’s also a place of safety, a place where even a tiny bird can nest. It’s a place that replenishes everyone who lives there, fills them up so much that they overflow with goodness and wherever they go they bring God’s abundance with them, so that pools spring up in their footsteps.Beautiful. To us, such a beautiful set of images of God’s kingdom. But think about this for a moment – this is the reason I’ve been thinking and praying with this psalm so hard lately. To the Jewish people of the Old Testament, God’s dwelling place wasn’t Heaven – it was the temple. Don’t forget, for them, God was literally present in the temple, in the Holy of Holies. Sometimes physically visible as a pillar of smoke, sometimes audible as a voice, actually present. God’s dwelling place, the place described in the psalm, was the temple.So fast forward a few thousand years and that means that for us, God’s dwelling place is ……… this. Here. This building. Our church.Now of course we have a much more complex understanding of God’s dwelling place than that. We are the temple. Each one of us is the Body of Christ, a living sacrifice, God’s holy temple – which is why the Sunday School teacher at the start of this sermon was right to say we have to invite Jesus into our heart.And of course, God is everywhere, in everything, always present, throughout all creation. There is nowhere that is not full of the presence of God.And yet, we build churches, we cherish churches, we make them beautiful, with architecture that fills us with awe, with art, with stained glass. We gather here to worship – not because we have to, because God is everywhere and we know that. We gather here to worship because we want to, because we know that while God is everywhere, there are some places where we feel that more strongly, where God’s presence is more evident to us. Churches are thin places, where the barriers between us and God are more permeable, where we hear God’s voice and feel God’s presence more strongly.“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord;my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”God seeks us out. We saw that in the story of Zacchaeus – God doesn’t miss a single detail, sees us where we are, with all our imperfections and shortcomings, and calls us by name. God invites Godself into our lives, into our homes. And then, then God invites us into God’s home. Into God’s kingdom, into the heart and body of Christ, into heaven. And also, yes, God invites us into this little, physical dwelling place of God, God calls us to church. God’s home, right here.And our home.Welcome home, my brothers and sisters. Welcome home.
Mother Anna writes...What a treasure trove of parables we are getting at the moment! In recent weeks, we have read the parable of the sower and the parable of wheat and tares and now today we get five all at once – so many images and stories for us to learn from in one sitting. As you know, Jesus used parables to help us to understand mysteries. God is beyond our understanding, words are inadequate to describe or explain God, so Jesus used these stories, these images and symbols of everyday things in order to reveal something to us about God. Everything we can possibly say about God is inadequate, but by using parables Jesus lets us glimpse something of the infinite reality of God, but safely within our own limits.But of course symbols and allegories and images are by their nature a bit unspecific – we can’t take them at face value but have to interpret them. Usually, Jesus helps us out, as he does here, by telling us something about what they mean, in this case the kingdom of God. But these parables are all very different, so what exactly are we to learn about the kingdom from these parables? I’m not going to tell you.No, really, I’m not. I am not going to tell you what these parables mean, I’m not going to tell you what you should learn about God from these parables. No. Because that’s your job.It may be that you think you’re not up to the job - I certainly felt like that when I first started reading the Bible seriously. Or maybe you think that you know already what the parables mean – they’re so familiar, and you’ve been told hundreds of times what they mean. Or maybe you think it’s my job to tell you – that’s what I get paid for after all, so why should you try to figure it out? Or perhaps you want to find someone else to tell you what to think – reach for a book or ask Google.But I’m serious – this really is your job. It is the job of everyone who considers themselves Christian to dig deep into Scripture, because it is through Scripture that we get to know God, get to know Jesus. How can we have a relationship with Jesus if we don’t spend time with him? If we don’t listen – really listen – to what he has to say to us? So no, I’m not going to tell you what these parables mean. Instead, I’m going to ask you to spend time thinking about what God is saying to you – to you alone – in this scripture this week. Get the Bible out. Sit quietly. Pray, and ask God to help you hear. Read the passage, then sit and think about it. Pray some more. Live in the parables – imagine you are there, kneading the dough, sorting the fish, uncovering the treasure, buying the pearl. Maybe look to see if you can find things these parables all have in common, or try to find something different in each parable, some unique way in which each one describes the kingdom of God.Do whatever works to keep you thinking about the parables. But above all, spend time praying and listening. Wait confidently for some insight as you hold the parables in your mind. Read. Pray. Re-read. Enjoy being with God as you read and think and dwell in God’s Word.We call it the Word of God for a reason. Listen. God is waiting. Amen.
“This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”.This quotation from our first reading today is often put up on church doors, as a way of welcoming visitors into the sacred space within. It acts as a reminder that churches are set aside for God and so become holy, a special place where we might encounter and draw closer to God. The quote seems particularly poignant at a time when we are still exiled from our own house of God. But the time is drawing near when we will be able to return, so this seems like a good time to think about what our church building means to us.There are some places in the world where God seems closer, where the veil between this world and God’s seems slightly less opaque – a thin place, as the saying goes, between us and the kingdom of heaven. This is often true of churches. When we enter there is often a shock of silence, as the walls, the dim light and the empty spaces contrast with the busyness, crowds and noise outside. There may also be a sense of awe, especially in a cathedral– it is impossible to enter St Paul’s without being a bit taken aback by the scale of the place.But the sacredness of a church goes beyond physics. It comes, I think, partly from years, sometimes centuries, of prayer - from the knowledge that people have stood, sat and knelt in the building and offered their prayers to God, that they have sung and worshipped, celebrated weddings and baptisms and lamented over coffins there. And it comes from the presence of God. For the Jewish people of the Old Testament, God was physically present in the temple. Not contained there, of course – God is and always was too big to be confined – but physically present nonetheless, a literal, not metaphorical, presence. This is true for us too, though in a different way – no pillars of smoke for us, but the real presence of Christ in the bread of the Eucharist which we keep from week to week in the sanctuary.Of course, God is with us always. Of course, we don’t need a special, sacred place to worship God. Of course we can find God in the world, wherever we are. We are, as St Paul reminds us again today, the children of God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – all we need is found in God and we are brought to God’s kingdom through the death and resurrection of Christ, drawn by grace and God the Holy Spirit. So no, we don’t need a special, sacred building and the last four months have shown us very clearly that we can still pray, read God’s word and worship without a building in which to meet. And yet we miss it. We are still drawn to church, still find ourselves longing for the quiet holiness of our church building, in which we can sit quietly or worship together, leaving renewed and restored, at peace and closer to God and one another.St Aldhelm’s is not just a building – it is us, the people, our fellowship and our prayer, But it is also a building, and that building is none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven, and on 6 September we return. Thanks be to God. Amen.
