Can God Be Contained?
We build beautiful places to meet God — and we should. But what happens when the very places we build for holy encounter start to feel like the only places God can be found? In his prayer at the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple, King Solomon says something unexpected, something that cuts against the grand occasion of the moment. And it still cuts, all these centuries later.
The Heavens Are Your Tabernacle
The anthem this morning opened the door beautifully: the heavens are your tabernacle, God of glory beyond our galaxy. It is a stunning theological claim — that the God we worship is not ceiling-bound, not contained within any single roof, no matter how high its arches climb or how exquisitely its stained glass catches the morning light.
And yet — we build spaces. We gather in them. We fill them with meaning and memory and love. There is nothing wrong with that. Some of the world's most extraordinary places of worship — St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Washington National Cathedral, Duke Chapel, Riverside Church in Manhattan — bear witness to the human impulse to craft something beautiful, something fitting, for an encounter with the holy.
And then there is this space. Humble in square footage, yes — but full of a different kind of grandeur. Pews with hand-carved ends, shaped by members of this congregation nearly seventy-five years ago. A communion table built by Rick Cromer, who was sung to heaven just over a year ago. Stained-glass windows purchased in the 1950s for $600 that have caught the light faithfully ever since. This sanctuary is woven through with the prayers, the tears, and the joy of generations. It is a holy place.
Solomon's Curveball
So it is significant that Solomon, at the very moment of the temple's grand dedication — after years of construction, after gathering all of Israel together in this culminating act of worship — pauses and says something that sounds almost like a warning against the whole project:
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.
That is a remarkable thing to say at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Solomon is not dismissing the temple. He is not saying the effort was wasted, the worship hollow, the gathering pointless. He is saying something more subtle and more important: this place points toward God, but it cannot hold God.
The Temptation to Domesticate the Holy
Scholar Walter Brueggemann has written extensively about the way institutions — including religious ones — can, without ever intending to, attempt to manage and domesticate the divine. The temple becomes the place where God lives, where God can be accessed on our terms, visited on our schedule. What begins as a beautiful act of devotion can quietly become an act of possession.
Solomon knew the danger. And most of us, if we're honest, have felt the pull ourselves — the subtle assumption that God is more present here on Sunday morning than in the difficult Tuesday afternoon conversations, the hospital rooms, the veterinary offices where we say goodbye to beloved animals, the kitchen tables where families sit with spreadsheets and worry about groceries and rent.
But God dwells there, too. God dwelt there, too — beside the bed of a beloved church member in his final days, where a family gathered and sang There Is a Balm in Gilead. God dwells in the auditorium where graduates wonder what comes next. God will dwell wherever today's communion bread is carried after worship, to those who are sick and homebound.
Come to the Table — And Then Leave with God
This is part of what makes communion so profound. We share it mostly in this room — but not always — because this beautiful space draws us together to dwell with God, and then we are sent out. We leave with God. God goes with us.
The assignment for today is a simple one: come to this table exactly as you are — with whatever brokenness you carry, whatever joy, whatever burden. Meet God here, really here. And then carry the God you meet in this place out into all the places in the world where God already dwells and is already waiting for you.
The heavens are God's tabernacle. We cannot contain the holy. But we can, with gratitude and humility, point toward it — and then go where it leads.
Questions for Reflection
- Are there places — beyond your church building — where you have unexpectedly encountered God? What was it about that moment or space that felt holy?
- Solomon praised the temple and then immediately acknowledged its limits. How do you hold together deep love for a particular place of worship with the recognition that God cannot be contained there?
- Walter Brueggemann warns that our sacred spaces can become places where we try to "manage and possess" the holy. Have you ever experienced that temptation — personally or collectively? What does it look like?
- Where, this week, do you expect to carry the God you meet at the communion table? Where might God already be waiting for you?
- This sanctuary carries the memory and labor of generations — carvings, windows, a handmade table. How does tangible, physical history shape your experience of worship?
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