Bit of a big story with lots of ctachphrases in it this week. Solomon's temple is complete and he prays, as you would. But there is a key verse about God not being able to be contained within these walls. Solomon recognised that God's House wasn't big enough. In fact talking about size in front of God is just plain stupid.
Big is not a God word particularly. 'Everywhere' is a God word. 'Infiltrated' is a God word. 'Nook and cranny' is a God word, but not 'big'. The word is just too small for God, too limiting, too much about size. Size isn't everything and it ain't nothing when you talk of God. God is so huge God is in the space between atoms. God is so huge, God fills the space between your breathes.
This is more about God being everywhere rather than God being big. It's a passage that allows us to recognise the holy, thin, sacred places that reveal themselves through our living with each other. Events of God. Love events, justice events. The real places of sanctuary and sacredness are the places as far from the church as the sun is from the moon, where we stumble over God and realise God has happened in the breaking of silence, in the keeping of sielnce, in the holding of thoughts in the breaking of bread where ever that may be. Events dear boy, events. The temple cannot hold God because God is the event of living. Put God in a church and God dies because God is the event, the happening, the loving, the forgiving, the caring, the shouting, the faithing...
So we need a couple of hymns tht suggest God isn't the church but the event of being the church. Or is there a symbol, an image that offers that understanding? And what about a contemporary reading: a way of engaging with the event of God, stories of the God event, parables or passage about God in the event.
Easy one this week!
Recent Comments