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let us again pray, Oh Lord! Uphold me , that I'm a uplift the Amen, who knew that God, the creator of all that is the drumbeat beneath and above all of human history, the

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ground of all being the one who births us into life itself and ultimately receives us back someday. Who knew that? That God is also believe it or not, and architecture geek. Look at the Book

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of Exodus and you catch a glimpse of God, the architect for as if the one who brought the world into being and purportedly stays close to its joys and needs and tragedies as close as your own breath

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and the hairs on your head as if this God has nothing else to do. God spends 13 long tedious chapters in the book of Exodus, preoccupied with dictating the details of every square inch of a Tabernacle

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in which, when it is finished, God plans to dwell no longer own some distant smoky, mysterious mountaintop, but in the very midst of God's people who knew that this God cares so much about the

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architecture in which God dwells, especially when, from the point of view of the Children of Israel make that problem. Children of Israel, God has hardly dwelled with him at all. Instead, as far

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as they're concerned, God has a fraud sense of direction. God has an indifference to their desire for time management. When it comes to getting from Egypt to the promised land, you can practically throw a

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rock from Egypt to the promised land. God has a penchant for neglect. Often when it comes to the immediate provision of their needs food, water, tummy robs, Bedtime stories, why does God want

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to dwell with them? Now they pout, given that God is so often so remote and diffident, and why when the world is going to hell in a handbasket is God so interested in architecture moses,

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as you remember from what happens earlier in the Book of Exodus, spend some time up on top of that mountain with God getting a crash course in liturgy and architecture and all the blueprints for the Tabernacle and

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the ark of the covenant and the lamp stand, and the curtain and the framework and the hangings and investments for the priesthood and the bronze basin on and on and on. Chapter after chapter All this meticulous

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detail, stuff like you shall make a table of a say. She would. Two cubits long, one cubit wide and a cubit and a half high . You shall overlay it with pure gold and make

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a molding of gold around it. You shall make for it Four rings of gold and fasten the rings to the four corners of its four legs. The rings that hold the poles used for carrying the table

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shall be close to the rim. You shall make the poles of a say she would and overlay them with gold. And the table will be carried with these. You shall make its plates and dishes for

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incense and its flag un's and bowls with which to pour drink offerings. You shall make them of pure gold and you shall set the bread of the presence on the table before me always. That's just one

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table. No wonder moses is up there for so long. Mhm. But when the cat's away, the mice will play because while moses is up there on top of the mountain, the people at the

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bottom of it are getting out of hand. He's been away too long. They say, this is exactly why we don't want our demon students staying at the seminary for more than two weeks at a time

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. You can't tell what mischief the people might get into while you're gone. Sometimes they will snooker the associate into remodeling the pastor's office, painting the Mantz redesigning the sanctuary, changing the order of worship.

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That's what these Israelites do. They persuade Aaron to give them the worship they want, they want something comfortable, something transactional, something that won't ask too much of them, that will entertain them and make

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them happy contrary to what God is up on top of that mountain teaching moses this doesn't take much down there at the bottom of the mountain. All the folks have to do is just throw in their rings

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and necklaces and old fraternity pins and Aaron makes a golden cat. When God finally looks down and sees it all, it's a deal breaker. What's at stake after all? Is that? All of that

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tedious detail? Chapter after chapter of the endless measurements and precise instructions, the blueprints and the dimensions and the liturgy. All of that has to do ultimately with what goes on in the realm of the Holy

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. It takes time to discover that. Take some of us a lifetime. But the golden calf doesn't take any time. It's done in two verses. So all the people took off the gold rings from

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their ears, brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it into a mold . Cast an image of a cap and they said , these are your gods, O Israel who brought

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you up out of the Land of Egypt? My friend Patrick Wilson puts it this way. If you want a homemade god and worship tailored to fit your taste, it doesn't take much, it doesn't take

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much time or a thought or effort. And when moses comes down off the mountain and asks Aaron what he was thinking, erin minimizes his responsibility, saying I said to them whoever has gold take it off

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. And so they gave it to me and I threw it in the fire and out came this calf . Yeah, not quite sure how that happened. I threw it in the fire and out came this

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calf, Aaron takes no responsibility. He didn't make it just into the fire and out came this calf . Yeah, but it takes time to discover what goes on in the realm of the Holy. Some

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of you are experiencing that in your time here, some of you here we will begin that with your time here. I love the way walter Brueggemann puts it while commanded by Yeah away. He says the

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work of constructing a house for the Holy His human work and it must be done well. The specificity and concrete nous of the work protest against any tendency to make communion with God easy or spiritual. This

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God needs place that is reserved precisely for this holiness . The creation of such a place as Brueggemann requires a combination of passion, generosity, competence and devotion . When I was in seminary, we made fun

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of architecture, we made fun of all those churches that looked too beautiful, those magnificent Gothic or colonial sanctuaries. We diminished how they matter to people. We worked hard to be as nonchalant and as casual

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with the liturgy as we possibly could. All that money. We clocked could have gone to the poor , we learned how to be above all that. When I graduated, I went to another degree program

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and then I went straight to what was now in a fluent presbyterian church, Which had been built in 1838. At the time it was built, it was in a tiny community. But over the years

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of that church's life, that early village became a suburb in that sanctuary became a kind of icon in that metropolitan area. Federal style building. Original pews rippled, antique clear glass windows. Everything was elegant

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gold cross on the communion table, always sparkling, beautiful hand sewn seasonal banners done by a well known artist that traced the christian year one season after another , a carved pulpit and a brass eagle lectern and

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an ancient font. The annual wedding issue of that city's monthly style magazine always featured the pictures of beautiful models and bridal gowns which were predictably taken in that sanctuary year after year. They were lucky to have

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me in that church. Yeah. Because I had learned in seminary what I would need to know to admonish and correct and improve the spiritual lives of all my operation hours. Those decadent rich people, they

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were lucky to have me. One sunday morning I had popped into the sanctuary to make sure all was ready. There was this lady from the chancel gill and I've forgotten her name, but she was fussing

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with the flowers. Ted, can you help me ? She said, I can't decide where these flowers should be. If I put them here on the center of the communion table, they fight with the

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cross there. But if I put them on this pedestal near the lecture and they seem to be distracting attention from the seasonal banner on the other side of the chancel, I could get some hymnals and stack

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them up so that the cross can be seen above the flowers in the middle of the table. But then the choir is less visible. And then again I could, oh, it doesn't matter where you

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put them. I said nothing in this place is sacred. I was right. Of course nothing is . I went a little john Calvin owner. Oh I went a little. I hate I despise your

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feast and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies on her. But she was right to and what she said next young man, she said, mhm I've been at this church all my life. My

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Children were baptized at that front, back there, they knelt in this chancel when they were confirmed, my husband walk my daughter down that aisle and then too soon they carried him down that same ill on

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the day of his funeral. And I'll have you know, she said that as far as I'm concerned , everything in this space is sacred. People get that way about spaces that host the holy and by

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the way before exodus is over, these Israelites get focused, at least for a defining moment on God and what delights God when we worship well. They throw out the golden calf and with it at their

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most faithful best. The notion that worship can somehow be easy and self indulgent and filled with the fluff of what entertains us and makes us happy. But there is finally both a problem and a possibility when

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we build things to host the Holy. And the problem is the way that we can take our beautiful buildings, buildings like this gorgeous building and use them to try to fix something as ultimately uncontainable as the

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presence of God and thus limit the holiness that we would offer to host. I know that risk within myself. Once in the church I served in Atlanta , we spent 13 months restoring and improving our Victorian

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sanctuary. When we were finished with it, it was a kaleidoscope of color on the inside, blues and reds speckled with gold gold leaf in the, in the ceiling and against the Chancel Rail. One

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day, long before the project was finished, I walked through the sanctuary just checking it out. It was very much a construction site and I stopped to visit with construction workers who had been taking a break

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from reinforcing the floor beneath the chancel so that it could later bear the weight of what would be a marble chancel. And while we were talking, one of the workers, we were talking casually lit a

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cigarette and began to smoke. He was standing in what had been and what would be again the chancel of a church. I heard myself say to him , would you please put that cigarette out? He

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was a big guy and he kind of looked at me like I was crazy and he said, man , this is just a building. I still remember the tightness in my chest and the tremor in my

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voice when I said, this may be just a building to you, but to me it is the house of God. So would you please put the cigarette out? I'm not sorry. I told him

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that. I'm glad he didn't beat me up. But once in a while, I do wonder a little is the chancel of a church finally, any more sacred than a classroom or a public square where

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people would gather to stand up for something important, or in the midst of the miracle of healing and operating room or a counseling chamber. Can God dwell wherever God desires, within any space within any human

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heart? Or do we run the risk of grounding God as if God were a teenager when we take our sacred spaces too seriously? That's the problematic question lurking within all of these chapters of exodus, if

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you ask me. But the possibility lies in the fact that at the end of the Book of Exodus , where our text comes from, this gorgeous architectural masterpiece that they have finally constructed, is are you

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ready for this? This gorgeous architectural masterpiece which they have finally constructed is portable. No building this fixed to its foundations with plumbing pipes and sewage drains, and all of that running deep into the ground like

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the roots of an ancient oak? No, this is a vehicle in which the God who is constantly on the move, picks up and moves alongside God's people and sometimes beyond them. Everything about it,

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the Tabernacle, the alter the polls, the basin , the priests and their rituals, everything is portable . The sanctuary is complete, and now Israel is a waiting, breathlessly, the dweller for whom the

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Tabernacle is constructed, and when the cloud from on top of that distant mountain finally descends upon the tent of meeting the astonishing bottom line of it all, which is good news for us, for all of

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us and all of time, is that God takes up habitation among a band of wandering exiles in the wilderness. Israel now has a centering place, characterized by reliable and abiding presence. And because of this

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presence, the community that worships in this Holy place will never be able to stay put, but will always be on the move. They're going to carry it around as they move forward into the promised land

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. Unlike other gods who maybe Frozen in one place , 1 ideology, one political party, whatever the God of the bible, is a God who travels with, who dwells with God's people. So in

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the end, maybe the problem and possibility inherent in hosting the holy are held together in a kind of creative tension within our big God, the one who was marked by the twin attributes of abiding presence and

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traveling fidelity. We know that creative tension when we see it at work, and sometimes we know it bites absence. Sometimes in our church conflicts, we get scared that God may not be content to dwell

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only in the holiness of our beautiful sanctuaries. We sometimes see the evidence that God has been sneaking out of them to get involved with the world beyond a place like this. And that often makes us scared

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enough to offer up our pocket change again, so that Aaron can throw it all into the oven out of which pops eventually an unchangeable, empty god of sparkling certainties with which we just happened to agree.

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And it's tempting wherever else God might be roaming in this world for us to just as they say, stick with the stained glass. I've got a friend here in texas who has recently left the church of

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his upbringing, there was a fight most um, stayed beautiful building, but my friend finally forsook the stained glass. He's trying to follow the God who is out there in the world, roaming everywhere,

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the whole thing, the fight, the schism has broken his heart, but here's a surprise, he says to me, for the first time in my life, I'm aware of how the church is never

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just a building and I'm experiencing the freedom of that . Yeah, praise be to God that this place is not ultimately an object of worship, beautiful as it is. No, it's a vehicle for worship

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, just like that Tabernacle that emerged from all the blueprints and all the lectures up there on top of that mountain praise. Be to God that the abiding presence of God is always on the move by day

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and by night before our very oz at each stage of the journey in the name of God, creator