Date: November 16, 2025

Readings: 1 Kings 8:22-30; 5 Matthew 21:12-16

Preacher: Sermon by Fr. Travis O'Brian

Advent 1

Last Sunday we celebrated the conclusion of our “Gifts of Love” fundraiser.  The most encouraging thing about the success of the fundraiser is not so much the number of dollars we raised, but the faith, hope, and love of which the dollars are a sign.  The most encouraging thing is our communal recognition of the importance of this parish for ourselves and for others; that St Barnabas is a sign – and beautiful proof – of God’s loving presence in the world.  We called the fundraiser “Gifts of Love” to indicate its Eucharistic intention.  In love, we lift up our money, this world’s currency, as a sign that our hope lies not in it, not in any future money can purchase, but in a future being prepared for us by the Love that is God.  So although yes, we have bills to pay, yet even those bills we lift to God in thanksgiving, for we are to regard them as symbols of the cost of discipleship, the cost of serving and loving God in the world.  We are the church, sent out, as Christ sent his Apostles, to follow him in the costly way of the cross in a world that loves money, serving Mammon, so much more than it loves Love, serving the Lord.

Today we are celebrating the anniversary of the consecration of this church building by Archbishop Sexton on November 16, 1952.  Just like our monetary gifts, we lift up this building today in thanksgiving to God.  We lift it up, this (from the outside) unremarkable, cinder-block structure, by way of our remembrance of its original dedication 73 years ago, by our constant gathering for worship, and by our continued stewardship and care.  We lift it up as an offering of praise and thanksgiving and receive it again, no longer unremarkable, but blessed and sanctified: transformed by God into a sacrament of His presence for all who gather here.  Just as Christ gives himself to us in the bread and wine that we lift to him as a sign of all that sustains our earthly life; just as Christ promises to be present for us in this material food we share and eat, so God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – promises that when we look to turn to Him, He shall be here; that He is waiting for us here, always, in this place.

“My name shall be there.”  That was the promise Solomon heard and believed as he consecrated the Temple.  And that is the promise we hear and believe as we lift up this building in Eucharist today: that God’s name shall be here, that here we shall encounter him, shall hear his word, shall taste his body and his blood.  Here we shall know forgiveness; here we shall be called to repentance; here we shall learn to grieve all that is of Satan; here we shall learn to hope in the way of the Cross and the life of the Resurrection.  Here we shall learn to love our neighbour and to pray for those who hate us.  Here we shall learn to trust our life and our death to grace, the Truth that sets us free; and to kneel at the beautiful feet of the Lord.  Here we shall learn what it means to give our life in Eucharist, or whole life made an offering of praise and thanksgiving, so we might be filled by “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23); so that we might be who we have been called to be: the church; a living stone of Christ’s own house, a limb of his visible body, a beam of his light-giving light.

           

 So we celebrate this building and its consecration.  But we don’t confuse the building with the Church.  The Church is neither a building nor is it the institution that owns the building.  We are the church.  Together with all the saints, those on earth and those (recently joined by Elizabeth and Fr Marlowe) surrounding already the heavenly throne: all whom God has called to the banquet of his Son – we are the church.  We celebrate this building, we lift it up as an offering to God, because as we do so we receive the word of God’s promise, “My name shall be there,” the name that is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named” (Eph 1:21).  God’s name is beyond our naming.  Yet God calls each one of us, His saints, by name.  “Samuel! Samuel!” He calls.  “Zacchaeus!” He calls, “come down from there!”  “Mary,” he says, “do not be afraid, for you have found favour with God.”  God calls us by name.  This is the Bible’s way of saying that God knows us entirely. He sees us, even the hidden-most recesses of our hearts, even the dark fears of our bodies, He knows us infinitely more transparently than we can ever know ourselves, and calls us – all that we can bring to him and even all that we cannot – He calls to Himself.

But where is He?  Where are we to seek him?  How call out for him, him for whom we have a thousand names, but whose name is beyond our knowing?  Yes, we are to seek him at all times and in all places.  We are to seek him in one another; we are to seek him in the stranger; we are to seek him in creation; we are to seek him in the depths of our hearts.  There is no place that God is not; “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. . . . If I say, ‘surely the darkness will cover me’ . . . even the darkness is not dark to you” (Ps.139).  So we are to seek him in the places of daylight; and we are to seek him in the places of shadow.  But then, just because God is everywhere, it can be difficult to see Him.  It’s as if His light gets lost in all the light pollution flooding the world.  It can be as if His voice gets lost in the noise and posturing and self-insistence of the world. 

Knowing our penchant for blindness, knowing our deafness, God in His mercy makes us a promise: “Go there,” he says, “go to that rather homely-looking building on the corner of Belmont and Begbie Street.  My name shall be there.  When you hear me call you, go; seek me there, and you shall find me – or rather, I shall find you.  There, I am always waiting for you.  There, as you give yourself to me, I shall give myself to you.”  That is the beauty and that is the blessing of this place.  God calls us here so that He might transform us and make us his people.

 Some months ago, a visitor came to me after Mass and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but as soon as I entered this church today, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.”  Two weeks ago, I received an email from a colleague.  His 17 year-old granddaughter had come to St Barnabas for the first time and reported back to him that she had experienced something rare.  She told him that she had experienced worship.  I tell you these things, not to boast on our behalf, but in a spirit of wonder, amazement, humility, love.  God’s name is here.  He meets us here.  That is the eucharistic mystery.  We can respond only with awe and thanksgiving.  The wonder of that encounter is not, of course, a gift of the building.  And yet, it is a gift of the building.  I mean, without it, without a place God designates for us to gather, how could we come together, how could He fill this body with the mystery of His presence?  “Will God indeed dwell on the earth?” Solomon asked in his prayer consecrating the Temple.  “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house!”  Yet God calls us here with the promise that, when we come, he will meet us, meet us and make us the church He calls us to be: God’s own people; living stones and sign of His presence in a world so desperately needing a place to seek Him and, seeking, to be found. Amen.