Transcript
You Are the One: the Legacy
First Baptist Richmond, August 25, 2024
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11) 22-30, 41-43
Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the [magnificent new temple he had built] and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “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.”
On September the 8th, at 9:15 in the morning, we are going to cut the ribbon on the church’s new gathering spaces. You are invited. I hope you will come. I hope you will bring your friends and neighbors to celebrate with us in the completion of a project that has taken several months and several million dollars. We’re trying to open the doors of the church to the world around us, trying to create spaces that are inviting and welcoming so that everybody can find a place at First Baptist. Now, that’s a noble ambition, and I’m grateful that we’ve been able to do it, but I will be even more grateful when the construction is over and the celebration begins.
That’s the kind of moment described in today’s Old Testament lesson from 1 Kings 8, the moment when Solomon dedicates the new Temple in Jerusalem. In the preceding chapters the temple has been under construction, and it’s taken even longer than our project. It’s taken seven years! But like all such projects it didn’t begin with the building, it began with a dream. That story is found in 2 Samuel 7, beginning with verse 1:
“Now when King David was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to the prophet Nathan, ‘See now, I
am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.’ Nathan said to the king, ‘Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.’” David was going to build the Lord a house, but that night the Lord came to Nathan in a dream and said, “No. One of David’s sons will build me a house, but David won’t build me a house. I will build him a house, that is, a dynasty, so that his kingdom may continue forever.”
The next morning Nathan came to David and broke the news. David was disappointed, and maybe even a little hurt. Still, he tried to accept the compliment of it and move on to other things. But at the end of 2 Samuel he wants to offer a sacrifice to the Lord and doesn’t have a good place to do it. He goes up to the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, which is on the hill above the City of David. Threshing floors were often located in places where they could catch a breeze because farmers would thresh their wheat by beating it with sticks and then tossing it up into the air, letting the wind carry the chaff away while leaving the wheat behind. Araunah had a place like that, probably the highest place in Jerusalem, and David wanted to offer his sacrifice there. But Araunah, in an act of surprising generosity, offered to give David his threshing floor, and his two oxen as a sacrifice, and the wooden cart they were pulling as fuel for the fire. But David said no. He said, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.” So, he paid Araunah 50 shekels of silver for it, and preachers have been using that story ever since as a reminder that what you offer to God should cost you something.
But a few chapters later Solomon has become king, and he has been given rest from his enemies all around, and he has been given wealth and wisdom like no other king before or since. He decides it’s time to build the temple his father
could only dream of. He decides to build it right there on the threshing floor his father bought from Araunah the Jebusite. And like his father he believes that he shouldn’t offer anything to the Lord that doesn’t cost him something. But Solomon has so much! He has to dig down deep into his pockets before he even begins to feel it. So he makes a deal with Hiram, King of Tyre, for all the cypress and cedar timber he will need, and sends 30,000 men to Lebanon to cut it. And then he sends 80,000 stonecutters to the hill country of Judea to quarry out great, costly stones, and 70,000 laborers to haul them back to Jerusalem. And then, when all the materials are stacked and ready, in the 480th year after God’s people had come out of Egypt, Solomon begins to build.
The temple he built was ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high, which is not that big, but it didn’t have to be. It was mainly for housing the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred chest God’s people had been carrying around with them since they left Mount Sinai. Solomon built the whole temple out of dressed stones and paneled the inside with cedar. If you had walked in during construction it might have looked and smelled like a gigantic cedar closet. The thirty feet at the rear of the temple he made into an inner sanctuary—the Holy of Holies. It was a perfect cube, thirty feet in each direction, and all of it plated with gold. And in it, to watch over the Ark of the Covenant, were two enormous cherubim, carved of olivewood and covered in gold. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message: “Everywhere you looked there was pure gold, with gold chains strung in front of the gold-plated Inner Sanctuary—gold everywhere—walls, ceiling, floor, and Altar. Dazzling!”
But don’t take his word for it. Read through 1 Kings 6 sometime and be amazed by the sheer opulence of the temple. Everywhere you looked there were
these gorgeous wood carvings, and hand-woven tapestries, and expensive furnishings. It must have cost a fortune—a king’s fortune! One writer estimates that in today’s market it would be worth more than 200 billion dollars. As I said, it took seven years to build it, with crews of master craftsmen and artisans working around the clock. But finally it was finished, and on the day of dedication all the people of Israel gathered together, and Solomon and the priests and elders brought the Ark of the Covenant up from the tent where David had kept it, sacrificing sheep and oxen every step of the way, carrying it up the broad front steps of the new temple, across the portico, and into the sanctuary itself, and then placing it gingerly in the “Holy of Holies” with those two, gigantic cherubim standing guard. When the priests came out the glory of God filled the temple like a bright cloud.
Then Solomon dedicated the temple, and he blessed the people. He said some things about how the wanderings of God’s people had finally come to an end, and how the promise God made to David had at last been fulfilled. But then (in a moment of touching humility) he said, “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! Nevertheless, let your eyes be open night and day toward this house, and let your ears be open night and day to my prayers, and not only to mine but to the prayers of anyone who comes to this house, or prays toward it, or reaches out toward it.” When I read those words I can almost see the people of Israel wherever they are—a farmer standing in the middle of a drought-stricken wheat field or a mother kneeling by the bed of a sick child—closing their eyes, reaching out toward the temple, and offering their prayers to God. There was something special about that place.
More than a year-and-a-half ago I got an invitation to preach at the Lakeside Chautauqua in Ohio. It’s on the shores of Lake Erie, and it’s been there since 1873. It started off as a Methodist camp meeting and over the years evolved into what it is today: a beautiful and wholesome environment where thousands of people gather each summer for recreation and wellness, arts and entertainment, and religious and educational programming. It was an honor to be invited and I said yes. Christy and I got there last Saturday night, just in time for a concert by ABBAmania—the world’s premiere ABBA cover band—that started with “Dancing Queen” and didn’t stop until “Waterloo.” Afterward we met our host, Charlie, who walked us down to the local ice cream shop as his wife explained that ice cream—along with pizza, and doughnuts—comprise the three major food groups at Lakeside. I asked for a single scoop of pralines and cream and ended up with something the size of a softball. But the next morning there I was, on the same stage where the band had performed the night before, trying to bring the word of God to the people of God. And somehow it all came together: ice cream, ABBA, and the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As I talked with people through the week they kept telling me that they had been coming there for years—like 40 or 50 years. Some of them had moved there permanently. Others would rent a cottage for the summer and invite their grandkids. I mean, it was a lovely place, and the path along the lakefront is known as “Ohio’s most beautiful mile,” but I still had trouble figuring out the enduring appeal until I realized that this was holy ground for those people, and that part of what made it holy was coming back year after year.
I remember the first time I went to the Holy Land I was a little skeptical about some of the sites that we visited. “Is this really where Jesus preached the
Sermon on the Mount?” I asked. “Do we really know where he was born?” And my tour guide, who was not only smart but also wise, said, “Whether this is the exact spot or not may not matter so much. What does matter is the fact that through the centuries pilgrims have been bringing their devotion to this spot, and their devotion has made this spot sacred.”
Nowhere was that more obvious than on the Via Dolorosa—“the way of suffering”—that follows Jesus’s footsteps from his trial to his crucifixion. At one point he is said to have staggered and put his hand against the wall to steady himself. If you look at that place you can see something that is roughly the size and shape of a human hand, but about an inch deep in solid rock as pilgrims through the centuries have come to that same place and put their hand on that same spot and worn down the stone. It staggers the imagination to think how many of them there must have been, and what they must have been feeling as they put their hand where Jesus’ hand had been and thought about what he had been experiencing in that moment. As a result that place, whether or not it was the exact place, has become holy.
Some of you might say that about this place, this complex of buildings on the corner of Monument Avenue and Arthur Ashe Boulevard that takes up an entire city block. It didn’t cost $200 billion dollars, not quite, but it is a glorious place where people have been coming for nearly a hundred years now to sing hymns, and say prayers, and read Scripture, and hear sermons. The effect has been cumulative; it has sanctified this place that was once only a building. It has turned it into holy ground.
According to the author of 1 Kings the glory of the Lord filled up the place that Solomon had built. At the time, it was only a building, but God sanctified it
and promised Solomon that if the people would keep coming and worshiping and offering their sacrifices and lifting up prayers that place would remain holy ground. And if Solomon and his descendants would keep their covenant with God, and walk in the way of their father David, then one of his descendants would always sit on the throne of Israel.
That’s a lot of “ifs,” and it makes me wonder about the state of the church in America today. There was a time when it was strong, when it seemed that everybody was getting up on Sunday morning and going to church. But that practice seems to have fallen out of favor. Fewer and fewer people are going to church these days. I remember visiting a church not far from here that had to shut down. I walked through the sanctuary looking at those empty pews, hymnbooks still in the racks, the organ dusty and silent. I stood in the pulpit and looked out over that room imagining what it had been like when people were there, their shining faces turned toward the pulpit, hoping to hear a word from the Lord. I climbed into the choir loft and peeked into the baptistery and there, lying on the bottom near the drain, was a dead bird. It seemed symbolic. I thought of the Hebrew word ichabod which means, “the glory of the Lord has departed.”
This whole saga that we have been remembering this summer—the story of Samuel and Saul and David and Solomon—it all seems to rely on the people of God keeping their covenant with him, relating to him with love and faithfulness. If they do that then the legacy of David will be secured. One of his descendants will always sit on the throne. The temple in Jerusalem will stand forever. But if they don’t? Well, maybe you remember the rest of the story, and maybe the same could be said for us. That if we who are the people of God can keep our covenant with him, if we can continue to relate to him with love and faithfulness, if we can
keep on singing the hymns, and saying the prayers, and reading the Scriptures and hearing the sermons, if we can keep on bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond—and beyond, then the legacy of the Son of David will be secured, our story won’t have to come to an end, and no one will ever have to find a dead bird in our baptistery.
—Jim Somerville © 2024
