“But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.” – Acts 7:49-50
One truly unique thing about the Bay Area is that there is always construction going on. And we’re talking construction on every level: of corporate offices, housing complexes, private homes, accessory dwelling units. I suppose that’s what happens when a building is worth far less than the land it stands on: makes more sense to redo the building than buy another one somewhere else.
We’ve seen houses as a theme in all of our readings lately, and it’s interesting to piece these together. In 1 Kings, we read about the construction of Solomon’s temple, in nearly-painful detail that harkens back to descriptions of the tabernacle in Exodus, except this time everything is built on a larger scale, with additions like a porch and side room, and with remarkable opulence. But perhaps most striking of all, whereas in Exodus God was at the center of the story—God initiates, instructs every detail, empowers the workmen with skill—the center of this narrative is Solomon, and two Canaanites from Tyre. Solomon does ask God to inhabit his temple, with an offering that matched it in lavishness: the sacrifice of 142,000 oxen and sheep, for which the bronze altar before God was too small (no kidding). And God does respond: “My eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (1 Kings 9:3).
But unbelievably, this remarkable temple would be destroyed in just a few hundred years. In Acts, we read Stephen’s sermon, which pivots on this story: despite the temple Solomon built, he says, God does not dwell in these things we build. The temple was not an end unto itself, but a sign pointing to Christ, and not only Christ but the Holy Spirit, the God who would dwell in the temple of our bodies for all time.
We so often build the things in our lives as an end unto themselves. We spend lifetimes constructing impressive careers, children, bodies, possessions, without realizing that those things won’t last, missing the purpose for which they exist. Solomon himself wrote about this in one of the songs of ascents we read: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain… it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127). One sign of vain labor, interestingly, is anxious toil that keeps us from rest. There is an interesting dynamic here—we labor, yet we realize that God is the one who builds; as David said last Sunday, we choose to abide in Christ, yet he is the one who promises to abide in us—but one sign that we’re in the right place is that we can let go of our labors at the end of the day, and sleep. My eyes and my heart will be with you for all time, God says, and it is a promise that rings like a lullaby.
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