“Holy Ground”
A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel T. Moser
Preached at Pleasantville United Church of Christ
On the Occasion of the Dedication of the New Sanctuary
February 27, 2011

Thank you for the great honor and privilege of inviting me to be a part of this glorious day in the life of the Church of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts”!

It’s good to see so many familiar faces here today, colleagues and friends. How many of you are sitting in the pew your family has always sat in? I thought so.

Blessed are those who dwell in thy house ever singing thy praise! Thank you Ed and Debbie and the choirs for today. It doesn’t much matter now what I preach, folk will go away blessed by what you have already shared.

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I met with the building committee to talk about the architecture of a sanctuary- the place of table, font and pulpit. But of course your praying, dreaming, discerning and visioning began long, long before that. Pastor Hilary told me about the sadness of that Christmas Eve awhile back where despite the grueling schedule of services offered people had to be turned away for lack of space. “No room in the Inn on Christmas eve.  She shared with me your longing for a space large enough for you all to worship together on a Sunday morning. In the very first sermon ever preached in this sanctuary Pastor Hilary spoke of the vision you had for the shape of your worship, a vision that called for curved pews and a sloped floor so that you had a space where the body of Christ could gather and see one another and hear one another and know one another. In so doing you went against all the latest trends that say build a gymnasium with removable seating, maybe with refrigeration units in the floor so you can take out the furniture, flood it and turn it into an ice rink for the church curling team. Of course this comes from the same genre that back in the 60’s said the key to a vital church was having shuffleboard tiles in the church fellowship hall floor.

How many of you have been in churches that had that? How many of you ever played shuffleboard? When I was at Quakertown some of the kids were helping clean out a storage area and they came to me holding these round discs in their hands like they were some ancient artifacts. “Pastor Dan what are these?” they asked. I told them they were prayer wheels and that they would learn about them in confirmation class.

So despite the lack of refrigeration units take comfort in the fact that even in the original Hebrew the passage from exodus reads “take off your sandals for you are standing on Holy Ground, not take off your shoes you’re standing where the multipurpose room is going to be built.

To be sure you have opted for a very ambitious undertaking. We are here to celebrate the completion of the first part of the task of Holy Ground making, the building of this wonderful welcoming space.

I was reading from the book of Nehemiah, I know I should get a life, but it is about the building project undertaken by Ezra and Nehemiah after the Hebrew people had returned to Jerusalem from exile. It was a project to restore the Temple and rebuild the walls around it and the city that is referred to collectively as building God’s house.

It describes the difficulties and turmoils Ezra and Nehemiah had to overcome to get the project done, worries about finances, dealing with the enormous pressures and tensions from neighboring areas opposed to the project and all sorts of squabbling among themselves.  It records how hard they had to work to keep up the morale when things got rocky. Thank God you didn’t have to go through any of that! Right John and Donna? But what I really appreciated was chapter 3 which reads like a long dedication plaque, listing all the folk who worked and what sections they worked on: Joiada son of Paseah and Meshullam son of Besodeiah repaired the old gate, they laid its beams and set up its doors, its bolts, its bars. Next to them Uzziel son Harhaiah one of the goldsmiths made repairs. Next to him Hananiah one of the perfumers made repairs, and here is one I liked, next to him Shallum son of Hallehash ruler of half the district of Jerusalem made repairs, he and his daughters, equal opportunity labor unions back then. On and on the list goes of people working side by side building to the glory of God as you have worked together here to build this house of God.

Now some might say “Who needs all this?” You can worship God and pray anywhere. “Couldn’t all this have been sold and the money given to the poor?”

This was the argument a rather prominent disciple named Judas made to Jesus about such things. And theoretically it is true; we can worship and pray anywhere. In fact I saw an example of that this fall as I was driving by a golf course one Sunday morning on my way to church. There was an especially devote man in some very bad plaid pants down on one knee on a green, clutching his putter like a holy symbol obviously deep in prayer. It is also true that when Christ returns, when history is consummated and the New Jerusalem descends to earth Revelation says there will be no temple in that city for God and the Lamb will be manifest in everything. But until our eyes are blessed with that glorious vision and the victorious church becomes the church at rest we desperately need places that wrap us in beauty, surround us with symbols of faith that remind us who we are, and equip us for ministry, places where the Holy Spirit envelopes us with loving welcome and asks us as God’s beloved how we have lived our faith in the week past.

You have built a wonderful space. Now the exciting challenge begins to turn this space into a sacred place. Space is simply that. Walter Brueggemann notes that space is important but in our society space is often referred to as something we as individuals want so we can fill it with things of our own choosing. Space is rootless, it has no accountability. Place on the other hand is space that has historical meanings. Places are spaces where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is a space where vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issued… (1) Tom Long writes”Urban life dangles before us the promise of virtually boundless existential space, limitless choice and no involuntary commitments. But for many people this has turned out to be an empty promise. So many of us demanded our space when all along what we were yearning for was a sense of place.” (2)

I believe we hunger for a place of sanctuary where we experience eternity and the presence of God is palpable and real; a safe place where the broken hearted may seek refuge, the wounded find healing and hope. A place where people work for justice, where “we learn to pray, come to faith, struggle with temptation, find new purpose and a new power to carry that purpose out. A power that takes all our small faiths and adds it to the body of Christ making it far more than the sum of its parts.” (3)

You are well launched in your conversion of this space into such a place. The ground is already sacred, you have but to look out those doors to my right to see the reminder of the communion of saints, who rest from their labors and form a great cloud of witnesses to all that happens here. Then too I was blessed to be here after the concrete was poured, before the flooring and carpet were laid. I saw the prayers and scripture verses many of you wrote on the concrete with permanent markers. How many of you here today did that? The floor beneath us is supported not only by concrete but literally by scripture and prayer. And as you continue to worship here as one writer notes every wall, door, floor, and window will continually be blessed by prayer, stately ritual and sacraments down through the decades until the gentle positive energy of God’s love and grace permeates the ground and the very stone from which the church was built, creating a bastion against evil and injustice. (4)

It started Pastor Hilary noted in her first sermon with the first hymn, the first baptism, the first Holy Communion. It has already been bathed in the candlelight of its first Christmas Eve. But our most finely crafted liturgies our most glorious anthems, eloquent sermons and heartfelt prayers will always be incomplete until we take the love and grace experienced here out into the world to be a part of the restoration of creation, part of the new heaven and new earth that God intends. This Holy Ground demands a response.

I recently talked to a gathering of long-term disaster response volunteers about holy Ground. One man was scheduled to make a presentation the next day about a church world service home that he and his crew had restored after the flood in Tenn. It was an older home in a working class neighborhood where a mom and dad and four children had lived before the flood. He had worked especially hard to restore the old hard wood floors until they and the wooden banister to the upstairs were gleaming. The two younger children were eager to get inside but the varnish wasn’t quite set and ready for shoes. He told them they could take off their shoes and slide across the floor in their stocking feet while their older brother and sister watched through a window. He had a picture of the two children with wonder and delight on their faces doing just that. He had entitled the picture “the end result” but he told me with tears in his eyes that after our talk he had renamed the picture “standing on Holy Ground”.

One of the old liturgies of our church has this wonderful exhortation to confession the last line of which is an invitation: approach with me now to the Throne of Grace and make your humble confession to Almighty God. Here in this sacred place we encounter the throne of grace. Here is forgiveness, here is sanctuary, here ancient words are proclaimed and prayers answered. Here the seraphs join in singing Holy Holy Holy as the communion of saints gather in witness. Here the Living God calls us to complete the task for which the church was built. Here the voice of God thunders from the rafters and whispers in our hearts commanding us to take into the world the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord, that the forces of evil and death have already been confronted and defeated by his cross, and that we are a part of making the world new. (5) To proclaim that someday the work you have started here will by the power of Christ be completed, that someday the whole body of Christ will all gather around the throne, someday we shall all see one another, all nations, tribes and languages, as beloved, someday we shall all hear one another in love and we shall all know one another, not as strangers and sojourners but as children of God. Someday it will all be Holy Ground. We testify today that Christ will make it so. We stand now on this Holy Ground to proclaim that the power of Christ is even now making all things new! Amen.

Footnotes:

1.      As quoted in Tom Long’s “Accompany Them With Singing”

2.      ibid

3.      “Simply Christian” by N.T. Wright

4.      Author Jim Butcher

5.      “Simply Christian” N. T. Wright