The first warm evening in Spring of my Junior year at Virginia Theological Seminary, I arrived in the historic seminary chapel a few minutes before Evensong. I came early so I could get my preferred place in the worn yellow seats of the choir stalls. As I walked through the arched door, I saw the cloud.
My seminary’s old chapel was not my favorite building. A hodgepodge of architectures and styles, the building was historic, but I thought it was ugly. It was one of those buildings that was trying to be all things to all people, and by all means was pleasing none. Fraying red carpet, mismatched wood, bad acoustics, strange layout: I didn’t like the chapel. But on that particular evening, the old chapel played host to one of the most strangely beautiful sights I have ever seen.
We didn’t use incense much at Virginia Seminary. We were the seminary that historically emphasized the word Protestant in the full incorporated name of The Protestant Episcopal Church. The early seminarians would have been deeply opposed to smells and bells.
Incense wasn’t common at Virginia Seminary. But on Thursday evenings a group of us gathered to chant Evening Prayer. Chant and incense go together. And incense that particular Thursday, maybe by some trick of the atmosphere or the air conditioning, was hanging in a six inch thick layer, about seven feet off the ground. The air above and below was completely clear. It was as if the smoke sat on an invisible shelf. The cloud hung above our heads and over the altar as we intoned the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimmitis, the ancient hymns of evening prayer. The light shifted through the service, the setting sun slowly lifting the angle of the beams. As we sang our final prayers, the colors of the stained glass windows refracted through the smoke, the cloud lit up in bright colors. The sight was magic. I’ve never seen anything like that cloud before or since.
In the verses just before today’s lesson from the First Book of Kings, just before Solomon stands at the altar, we hear that God’s presence filled the new temple, a cloud so thick that the priests couldn’t see to do their duties.
Solomon remembers the words of God, that God “would live in a dark cloud.” The glory of God fills the temple with a dazzling darkness. There is a playfulness in the image. I bring up the cloud of the verses that come just before this reading, because without that cloud, we have a tradition that sometimes makes God’s presence seem a little too solid. We live in a world that wants very concrete answers. We want very clear definitions. We want scientifically provable theories that allow us to approach. Sometimes we even do this work with God. But God is a bit more playful. The cloud is a bit of a playful image, isn’t it? God is glorious and yet still mysterious. God is present, yet ephemeral.God is present yet ephemeral. God complicates rather than elucidates the work of the priests. God is glorious and yet still mysterious. God is present, yet never contained. The cloud is one of those multivalent images for God, pointing in too many directions to be fully explained.
It is hard to explain the gravity of this moment for Solomon. Imagine the context. As far back as his ancestor Abraham, the wandering stargazing Aramean, Solomon’s people have been on the move. God promised the ancestors they would one day settle and build a house for God, but first they were held in slavery, first God had to set them free, first they wandered in the desert. Solomon’s father David longed to build God a house, a settled place, and God told him the longing was a good thing, but the building would belong to his son. Solomon now finally stands before the altar, in a temple complex that would be called on of the great wonders of the world.
There is in this story, and in the whole idea of a temple for God, a strangeness, is there not? How odd it is to imagine that the God of all the universe can be said to dwell in one place? There is a certain scandal to locating God. It is a strange thing to claim to build a house for God.
And yet we human beings have continued to build temples. St. Michael’s is the first church I have served which still counts among its members the generation who built the current sanctuary. There is a certain pride among those who were part of building this building. When you talk of the church, a smile tends to break across your faces.
I’d argue this is one of the most beautiful churches in Albuquerque. And yet what gives me pride as your priest isn’t the building. It’s what comes next. You embrace the unlikely surprise in Solomon’s prayer.
Solomon constructed a house for God, and it seems God’s presence has agreed to dwell therein. The cloud fills the sanctuary. But then something altogether surprising is said. Listen again to Solomon’s words:
“But how could God possibly live on earth? If heaven, even the highest heaven, can’t contain you,
how can this temple that I’ve built contain you?”
Here, at the dedication of the temple, the Bible surprises us. Solomon does not relish in the glory of the work done well. Solomon does not say, “behold, o am the great King.” This may be the gift of wisdom given to Solomon. He doesn’t rest in the glory. He questions the whole enterprise. He holds the tension. Even as he asks God to hear the prayers of the faithful spoken in his new temple, he goes further. The king asks God to bless the immigrant who hears of the temple, and comes to pray. In the tribal society of Israel, this would have seemed like madness.
The temple was meant to be the marking that God belongs to Israel, has decided to dwell with Israel, blesses a particular people in a particular place. But Solomon reinterprets the temple. As the prophet Isaiah would say later: “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.” The temple is not just for insiders. God is not a God of insiders.
What makes me so glad to be your priest is that St. Michael’s has found ways to ensure our building, this place, is not just for us. We feed people from this place. We house immigrants in this place. We form people for ministry in this place. The gay men’s chorus sings in this place. We also make space for people who come to acknowledge their addiction. We care for kids, and make accessing early childhood education affordable for our neighbors. We have stood up for the rights of our undocumented neighbors, our LGBTQ+ neighbors, and our neighbors’ kids, in this place. When we are at our best, this is a house for all people, all people.
St. Michael’s, we have just been through a great deal of change. You have said goodbye not just to your previous rector, but to other clergy and staff who have served this church well. You have been through the difficulties of COVID. And I want to say to you today, I am grateful to be your priest today. I am grateful for the team we are building. I am grateful for the chance to stand with you at this time. Because there are more opportunities ahead of us, to continue to bless our city, to continue to serve as a sign and symbol of God’s love and care, to continue to point people to the work of justice and equity that is always, always, the work of God.
How strange it is that God chooses to meet us, even in buildings which will never be big enough or glorious enough to contain the fullness of God. How strange it is that we are able to catch glimpses of the Holy One behind all of creation, in spaces like this one.
And yet it is in places like this one where we come to know our God is not just the God of the insiders. God hears the cry of the immigrant, of the foreigner. Even in the story of the dedication of the temple, God points beyond the walls. God invites us to see the humanity of our neighbors. God also hears the cry of all of those outside the church. God is with those who have been betrayed, belittled, and abused by institutions. God is already there, standing with them. God will not be silent. The church should not be either.
Our faith is a faith that invites us again and again to question the boundary lines between insiders and outsiders. Our faith invites us to open our doors to all sorts of folks. Gods love is too expansive for us ever to grasp or control.
The cloud of smoke is an odd mystical image. I won’t say I definitively saw God’s presence all those years ago in Virginia Seminary’s ugly old chapel. There is a part of me that thinks it might just have been the humidity. I will never quite bottle up the meaning of that beautiful cloud. But I am with Solomon this morning: I think no one building, no one experience, no one scripture, no one community, can ever fully capture God. With Solomon, I pray that this building, this community, can point us in the right direction. With Solomon I hope we can point to a God who we will never fully capture, a God is always bigger than our church, a God who invites us always beyond our sacred walls, working for justice for the outsiders.
Mike Angell 