The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

What is the Church for?

This is the kind of question that can create a multitude of answers and specifically the kind of answers to which people feel deeply attached. Some may answer that the Church is primarily an educational organization meant to teach the nations about the will of God. Others may see the Church’s primary purpose for existence residing in its service to the “neighbor”. And yet others may want to reduce all the church’s activities to the category of worship? Whatever our personal answers may be to this question, I would like to seek to offer an answer from I Kings 8—our assigned OT text for this coming Sunday.

This is the passage that details the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. What might this passage have to say to us regarding the purpose of our collective existence as a church of Jesus the Christ? Can Solomon’s desires, as they are revealed in his prayer of dedication, offer illumination into our world and what Christian desire for God’s dwelling on earth might look like? I believe it can and I will attempt to share this with you all on Sunday. I hope to see you then! Peace.