This Sunday Message was originally delivered at Weasley Chapel United Methodist Church on August 25, 2024. Below the recorded-live video is the sermon text I preached from, if you would like to follow along. Biblical texts for reference: Psalm 84 and 1 Kings 8:1-30. Read online with https://www.biblegateway.com – a fantastic resource.
So, the sons of Korah… the authors of the psalm that we read this morning—read twice, actually. That was not an oversight or a mistake on my part. Because I was really struck by this psalm when I was reading over the suggested readings for this week… this psalm authored by this group of men referred to as the sons of Korah.
It’s a fascinating group—an infamous branch of the family of Levi. The sons of Levi, the Levites, were the priests of ancient Israel. So, if we all remember, Jacob Abraham’s grandson, had twelve sons, who became the 12 tribes of Israel. And when those tribes settled the promised land, each tribe was given control over a certain part of the land, their tribe’s territory. Except the tribe of Levi. The Levites had no territory of their own, their territory, their domain, their “inheritance”—is the word the bible uses—was God’s sanctuary. The temple. The priesthood.
Moses and his brother Aaron, the first high priest, and his sister Miriam, a prophetess, were all Levites. And that’s a fascinating family dynamic in and of itself which I will have to talk about sometime in the future…
But there was another family of priests out in that desert. Their main story appears in Numbers chapter 16—the story of Korah, another descendent of Levi, who leads a rebellion against Moses and Aaron out in the wilderness. And it’s a great story, if you get a chance to read it. Korah’s rebellion is a spectacular failure. And at the end of the story the ground opens up and swallows him and his followers whole…
But hundreds of years later, after the temple is built in Jerusalem, we encounter this group of men descended from that infamous rebel—a group of men who still claim his name as essentially their last name, their family name—The Sons of Korah.
The evidence suggests that they were still fully included in the family of Levi. They were still priests. They served in the temple itself for centuries, and that they were largely responsible for things like music and maintaining the temple premises, leading worship services. They were called “doorkeepers” of the temple. And they are named as the writers of several psalms, including Psalm 84 which we just read. And unlike David’s psalms which are mainly personal expressions of David’s own creativity and faith etcetera… the psalms of the sons of Korah are more formal, and designed to be used in corporate worship services. Which makes sense right? They were priests. They were worship leaders in the temple.
And Psalm 84, right on theme, is about the temple itself. “Better is one day in your courts, O Lord God—better is one day in the temple—than a thousand elsewhere. There’s this great song from the 90s, I sang it in services all the time as a kid, based particularly on that phrase from Psalm 84: Better is One Day by Matt Redman… I was kind of hoping it was in The Faith We Sing book, so we could sing it this morning but turns out no… And it’s better with drums anyway, so…
Now, I’m sure the lectionary chose this Psalm for today because it fits so perfectly with the reading from 1 Kings 8, which is the dedication of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Solomon spent seven years building this magnificent temple—the House of God, permanent resting place for the Arc of the Covenant—at the center of Jerusalem. And in our reading today, it’s finally finished. They have this huge celebration, in the middle of which—where our reading began for today—God’s presence descends as a visible cloud over the sanctuary—which is one of the ways that God is known to show up back in the book of Exodus, again. And it’s all to confirm that yes, this is indeed God’s dwelling place on the earth…
And then I turn to the psalm, Psalm 84, written by these priest who liking did live in or at least in the vicinity of the temple—these priests from an infamous, and you might even say fallen, family. These priest who wrote this ancient worship song about how awesome the temple is… And what strikes me about the Psalm is its emphasis, not on the temple as this visual proof of God’s power and presence here on earth—but the emphasis on the temple as a home. And not just God’s home…
A theme runs through this psalm, where the temple is not just a home for God, but a home for all people… And not just a home for all people, even, but a home for all creatures…
A home for sparrows—where even the swallow can build her nest…
Now this idea of a temple, a sanctuary, a sacred space, where everything is safe, and where God and humanity can meet, goes back in the bible all the way to Genesis—Chapter 2, with the creation of Eden. That paradise garden—which is, nonetheless, a physical place located firmly on the earth. It is not heaven. It is not a “spiritual pain” of existence. And it is not the entire earth, either. The bible never says that the entire earth was once a paradise—that’s a misconception. Eden is one specific place on the earth, one perfect garden, where God and humanity can meet. And it is also a home. Not God’s home—humanity’s first home. Where humanity is safe. Where all their needs are met. Where they live in harmony with all of the creatures of the earth—even that troublesome snake, in the beginning.
Even the sparrows…
And then—we all know the story… Danger does enter the garden. The harmonious relationships between humanity and the earth, and between humanity and the other creatures, and between humans and humans, and between humans and God—the story goes through how each one of those relationships is broken, one by one. Harmony is broken. Struggle, competition, my safety at the expense of your safety enters the world. The need for things like walls, and fences, and armies—police forces—security systems… Danger as the rule, not the exception.
And so safety, what used to be the rule, becomes the exception. But the hope remains, that hope which we still seek, that with God’s help we can get back there—to Eden, to the sanctuary. To that place where all as safe and happy and have what they need in abundance…
Even the sparrow…
You know, Solomon takes almost a decade to build the temple in Jerusalem. And this dedication day, when the temple is finally finished is something everyone has been looking forward to since David, Solomon’s father, first brought the Arc of the Covenant into Jerusalem, before Solomon was even born. So this moment, this crowning achievement, when God’s presence returns in the form of that legendary cloud from the book of Exodus to confirm that, “Yes, Solomon, you have indeed built a worthy house for the Lord…” This is a goal that Solomon has been working toward his entire life. And in this moment, what would forever be the crowning achievement of Solomon’s existence—Solomon gets up in front of, theoretically, the entire population of Israel (probably not, but, in theory), and Solomon declares:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
Solomon’s request, in our reading today—his grand intention for this magnificent temple he has built—is not for God to actually live there forever. Solomon’s request that day: “that Your eyes [God] may be open toward this temple night and day… that You may hear the prayer which Your servant makes toward this place.” (1 Kings 8:29).
Solomon’s temple is what Eden was before it—one specific, physical location on the earth, set apart as holy, to be a meeting place, between humanity and God.
That’s all that temples are—and also what they need to be. Meeting places, points of contact, between humanity and God. Echoes of Eden, that we can still build in this world, where everyone is safe.
I think about those men, the priests, real people on the temple grounds every day, who knew what it was like to be the infamous and perhaps looked down on family, who when they wrote “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,” (Psalm 84:10) meant that literally, because that was their actual job, because the family had redeemed itself and been restored to leadership in Israel, and kept that infamous name, I think, as a reminder of all these facts—the rebellion and the redemption… I think about these men sitting in the temple court one quiet spring evening and just noticing these sparrows—tiny little birds, flitting in an out of all these cracks and cervices in the temple building… they flit into these holes with little twigs in their beaks, stray bits of cotton, maybe some locks of hair that were cut and thrown to them in the city streets… They vanish into these tiny little holes, spaces in the temple building that no human would even notice. They reappear a few seconds later without their building materials… go flying off in search of more…
I really wonder—sitting in the temple courtyard one calm spring evening, watching the birds build their nests, hearing them twitter and sing to each other as they swooped over the altar… Is that where this psalm came from?
“How lovely is Your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!…
Even the sparrow has found a home,
And the swallow a nest for herself,
Where she may lay her young—
Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts,
My King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in Your house;”
I had a bird once. And here’s the thing:
They are MESSY.
It’s not just the droppings that get everywhere. That’s a big part of it. But birds have these little down feathers under all their pretty feathers—they look like snow. They’re about the same size as snowflakes. But they don’t melt. And to stay flightworthy, birds have to maintain their feathers obsessively. They are constantly cleaning themselves, they are never not growing new feathers. So, to make room for the new feathers, they shed about a million—and I’m not even sure that’s an exaggeration—a million of these tiny little white, snow-that-doesn’t-melt feathers every day. And, like the droppings, those feathers get EVERYWHERE.
Birds are messy eaters, too—seed shells everywhere. And loud… Everyone knows that birds screech—but has anyone ever mentioned the stomping? My bird—the tiny little thing weight maybe a pound. Not even. But when she wanted out, or was upset, she would stomp across the bottom of her cage—and you could hear it anywhere in the house.
And they guard their nests, right. The psalmist is talking about birds nesting in the temple—”the sparrow and her young…” Birds are fierce parents. Tiny sparrows are known to chase hawks away from their nests. My bird did lay eggs a few times—that’s the only way we knew that she was a she. And obviously none of those eggs was ever going to hatch. But until that switch flipped inside her little bird brain that, oh, too much time has passed, nothing is going to happen here—she would defend those inviable eggs with her life… Chickens, right, have been domesticated into letting humans take their eggs—most birds defend their nests fiercely. They don’t build nests where they don’t feel safe…
My bird was quite possibly the messiest pet I’ve ever had. She was definitely the loudest—and I say that as someone who grew up with big dogs…
So, think about it—the psalmist is talking about sparrows nesting in the temple, with their droppings, and their down feathers and everything else that birds bring into a closed space—defending their nests from all the foot traffic in and out of the temple court—feeling safe enough to nest in the temple… Which means the psalmists, these Sons of Korah who perhaps understood better than most what it was to be small and outcast and need protection… The psalmist is more concerned about, more impressed with, the well-being and happiness and safety of sparrows than with the mess.
And I wonder—Is this how we’re supposed to understand how God sees us? That God is more concerned about our well-being and happiness and safety than with the mess? Is God maybe just not phased by how much of a mess we can be? And is God more concerned about us, than about any of the grand monuments built or great works done in God’s name? Was the whole point to give us a place of rest, and peace, where anxieties could be shed—not added to? Have temples build here on earth really been about us all along, homes for us, sanctuaries by both definitions of that word? Have these places been God’s gifts to us all along—not the other way around?
Sacred spaces do matter. They are meeting places. They are homes. And yes, that might all be psychological—just our brains conditioned to think that God is more present here than somewhere else. But even if it is just a trick of psychology, if it really does help us to connect with God in a meaningful way, then, does it matter?
Sacred spaces matter. They matter because they were created for us, for our benefit—not God’s. To help us connect with God—not the other way around. God can connect with us any time and any place. We are the ones with limits. Sacred spaces matter—while they are helpful to us, while they actually do bring us closer to God. And I think the danger humans often fall into, is to make the sacred space all about the sacred space, and not the connection—to make the place of safety something that has to be protected at all costs, and which is therefore safe to no one anymore. I mean, we’ve been watching that very problem unfold in Jerusalem for the last, what, two thousand years now? And still, despite everything, Jerusalem does still matter.
Something to ponder as we turn to our next song this morning: Remember that sacred spaces matter. They connect us to God, they also connect us to each other, to our history, to neighbors not only living but gone. They connect us to Eden. The balancing act is to neither underestimate nor overestimate how much they matter. And I think one of the ways to maintain that balance is to focus on the thing that should be at the heart of every sacred space, the thing experienced by all those witnessing the dedication of Solomon’s temple so long ago—what I have to assume the sons of Korah experienced too while watching those birds find their safe havens—the emotion that is both an emotion and a lifestyle:
Joy.
