"Where God Lives" 2 Samuel 7: 1-10; Ephesians 2: 19-22 by David Montgomery (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

The second grade Sunday school teacher asked, “Where does God live?” and Billy quickly responded with great confidence, “God lives in my big sister's bathroom!” All the kids laughed yet being the good Sunday school teacher she followed up with, “Billy, what makes you say that?” “Well,” Billy replies, “every morning my dad goes up to the bathroom, knocks on the door and shouts, my God, are you still in there?”

While Billy may know where God lives, the rest of us still ask, “Where is God?”

Where is God? Where does God live? Where is God's presence found? These are questions with which we have wrestled for ages. Young and old ask this question. My college students really want to know, “Where is God in the midst of crisis?” The elderly ask, “Where is God in the eternal? Where can we find God’s presence?”

In a reading this morning we find King David, King of the United Israel, wanting to build God a house where God would live. David is thankful to God for all God has done in leading Israel to prosperity and peace.    

David knows that he could not have led the nation without God’s leadership, so he wants to prepare a place for God to dwell.                      

David has a lavish palace for himself and it does not seem right that God is living in a tent. God needs a proper home, a temple, one with suitable splendor, perhaps gold, marble, stained glass would be nice.

I just came back from Istanbul and saw up close and personal the Hagia Sofia which surely could house God. This magnificent structure was built 1500 years ago by Constantine to emulate God’s grandeur.

So, David tells his pastor, Nathan, his desires and Nathan’s first response is, “Go on and do it. God has been with you through it all. It sounds good to me. I'll call the session together and we will start a capital campaign immediately.” But later God comes to Nathan and tells him, “Nathan, call off the session meeting. There's not going to be a building campaign while David is king. I don't need a house of cedar or a palace of marble and gold. Don't build me a home, a temple, let me make you my home, my dwelling place. Let me live in you!”

Amazing isn't it? God could have the greatest architects, the strongest laborers, the best engineers of all time construct a house.                                

Yet God chose to dwell in the people, the nation of Israel. That is the story of King David and the Jews. God lives in God's chosen people and in the passage from Ephesians we hear that God invites us, those of us here today, to be a part of that ongoing household.

And God brings us in, adopts us, through the cross of Jesus Christ. It is through the death and resurrection of Jesus that we are brought into the one family of God and given access, direct access to God.

You have seen the cross described that way. The horizontal beams of the cross are demonstrating a common relationship with all people on earth, set with the vertical beam which illustrates our connectedness with God; that's making the cross of Jesus Christ, where God lives and dwells.

One summer as my family was traveling between Panama City, Fla and Atlanta, Ga we had to make a potty break. Traveling with three young boys, we tended to do that regularly. Well, we pulled off the interstate at LaGrange, Ga and I remembered that there was an amazing cross in front of a church in LaGrange that we needed to see. So I asked the gas station attendant. “Excuse me, could you tell me where the church with the cross is?”

I mean, think about my question. Doesn’t every church have a cross? Every church in LaGrange has a cross. But the attendant knew what I was talking about. It is that memorable. So he gave us simple directions. 

So we found this marvelous stone cross that stands out front of St Mark's Episcopal Church on North Greenwood Street in LaGrange, Georgia. It is a huge Celtic cross. It stands 20 feet high, is 15 feet wide, and at least three feet thick made of solid granite. When you drive past the church you can't help but notice. It was breathtaking.

As we faced the cross we saw the symbols of the original 12 apostles. They are engraved in the stone: St Andrew's cross, Judas’ money bags, a shell, carpenters tools, the ship... all 12 represented. And engraved in the circle was a grapevine reminding me of the communion and Jesus's words “I am The Vine, you are the branches.”

But then we walked around it and found a shocking surprise. First to catch my eyes was a set of Mickey Mouse ears. Then we saw a swing set, a speedboat, a football field, two old rotary telephones and a radio tower, a house, the Justice Department emblem of the balance, and the medical professions’ insignia.

We recognized two United States dollar signs, a canoe, an airplane, a mushroom cloud, the symbols for male and female, a rocket ship, a totem pole, Einstein's theory of relativity (E= MC2), a G-clef and a sixteenth note, a clock and more.                          

Within the circle were people joining hands. All nationalities are represented, men and women, boys and girls. And at the bottom are three questions. “Who are you? Where are you going? Why?”

Makes you think doesn't it? We come off the street to the church drawn by our own similar needs for hope, security, peace, love and understanding into the sanctuary of the church where we gather as the body of Christ, which is all entwined in the cross. The church, the people of God gathered in worship. The Book of Order describes worship in W - 1.1001 as “Christian worship joyfully ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to the Triune God. In worship the people of God acknowledge God present in the world and in their lives.” That is who we are and what we are about. This is where God lives.

Almost every Christian family is asked three questions at sometime or another. “Do you go to church? Where is your church? What does your church do?” The typical answer goes something like this:                                                                  
         Q: Do you go to church?
         A: Yes, at least twice a month I go to the Village Church.
         Q: Where is your church?
         A: We meet in the Maumee Theatre on the corner of Anthony Wayne Trail and Conant.
         Q: What does your church do?
         A: 1. We welcome a community of gay/lesbian/transgender people who are not welcome in other churches;

2.  We are a church that, with Cheri Holdridge's leadership, was able to get chartered by the United Church of Christ and the Methodist Church even though we regularly have only about 50 active members;

3.  Our pastor is active not only in leading our church and performing pastoral care, but also takes an active role in social justice through Equality Toledo and Equality Ohio and in church planting activities.

4. We have active volunteer members who make sure worship runs smoothly each Sunday:  greeting attendees, teaching Sunday school, helping to lead the music, videotaping and blogging the service and sharing it through social media; making announcements, assisting with communion, preparing and running a powerpoint, purchasing and serving coffee and snacks every Sunday, setting up the worship space and tearing it down after every service.

You ought to come join us.

But in reading the Ephesians passage with its definition of church, perhaps we should answer these three questions quite differently. 

         Q: Do you go to church?
         A: I am part of the church. But the church does meet together if that's what you're asking.         

Q: Where is your church?
         A: Well, let's see, about this time of day on a Monday morning, many are at work. We have teachers in public schools, computer/software technicians, social workers out in the community. We have lawyers in courtrooms and librarians in libraries. There is a veterinarian working with animals as well as a factory worker and even a child care facility inspector keeping kids safe.

Some are retired but very active in clubs and chores and living. During the fall some are travelling.

They are all over the place. You see the church is infiltrating the whole county right now. 

         Q: What does your church do? 

         A: I've already told you. It’s spread all through the town involved in all sorts of work. My church is doing their work in such a way and talking in such a way as to let others know what is already true: that Jesus Christ is the boss of the city and all that goes on in it. This is the church's work. And then, one day a week, we rest from our church work and gather together to hear again our Lord speaking to us, that we may go back renewed to the tasks God has set before us.

If we define the church as the writer to the Ephesians does, we see that no walls can contain such a church.  No building of marble, or gold, or brick, or straw can contain God.     

                   

Recently I was at the Montreat Youth Conference in Montreat NC where I saw a young man standing in line at the checkout in Kroger’s. He had a bright attractive shirt that had blazoned across the front in big letters, “Don’t go to church…”

I am not known to be very shy, so I went up to him and said, “Excuse me sir, but I couldn’t help noticing your shirt. I am a Presbyterian minister and I am trying to get people to go to church and your shirt says just the opposite. Can I ask you ‘Why?’”

He looked at me with a big grin on his face and turned around pointing at the back which read, “…Be the church!” He said, “Get it?” Don’t go to church, be the church.” I gave him a big hug and I said, “I’m going to remember that. Thanks.”

Pretty good. Huh? So when your next pastor comes tell her or him, “Pastor Friend, I’m not going to church anymore. I’m going to be the church forevermore!”

I’ve heard it said, going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sleeping in the garage makes you an automobile. I believe it. Don’t go to church…be the church.   

                                         

Ephesians says, we are God's household, a holy temple, a dwelling place for God. This means that the presence and power of God, God's Holy Spirit, infuses us so that we become God's own family, God's abode. God reconciles our flesh and blood and claims it as God's own, so that we are those among whom and through whom God moves and works in the world. It’s not enough that we come to church. When we are fed here, we are to go out into the world, because God dwells in you.

          Here again God's Word to us. “In Christ you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by God's Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22). May we fulfill our calling and be where God lives. Amen.