"The Temple: Where God Gathers Us" - Fr. Aaron Damiani - Deutronomy 12:1-14

A reading from the book of Deuteronomy.

Be careful to follow these statutes and ordinances in the

land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to

possess all the days that you live on the earth.

Destroy completely all the places where the nations that

you are driving out worship their gods on the high

mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.

Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn their

ashrae poles, cut down the carved images of their gods and

wipe out their names from every place.

Don't worship the Lord your God this way.

Instead, turn to the place the Lord your God chooses from all

your tribes to put His name for His dwelling and go there.

You are to bring there your burnt offerings and sacrifices,

your tents and personal contributions, your vow

offerings and free will offerings, and the first born of

your herds and flocks. You will eat there in the

presence of the Lord your God and rejoice with your household

in everything you do, because the Lord your God has blessed

you. You're not to do as we are doing

here today. Everyone is doing whatever seems

right in His own sight. Indeed, you have not yet come

into the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God

has given you. When you cross the Jordan and

live in the land the Lord your God has given you to inherit,

and He gives you rest from all the enemies around you, and you

live in security, then the Lord your God will choose the place

to have His name dwell. Bring there everything I command

you, your burnt offerings, sacrifices, offerings of the

10th, personal contributions and all your choice offerings.

You vowed to the Lord. You will rejoice before the Lord

your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female

slaves, and the Levite who is within your city gates, since he

has no portion or inheritance among you.

Be careful not to offer your bird offerings in all the sacred

places You see, you must offer your bird offerings only in the

place the Lord chooses, in one of your tribes, and there you

must do everything. I command you the word of the

Lord. Let's pray together, Lord, Your

dwelling place is lovely. In your dwelling place is where

those who are gathered in your name lift up their voices and

praise your name. Your dwelling place, Lord, is

where your Holy Spirit is present, and we thank you that

you're present here this morning.

We also ask for open ears among everyone gathered here, everyone

listening, that we would hear your word from Deuteronomy

afresh this morning. I pray that you'd set us apart,

Lord, as your holy dwelling place, your sacred space, in the

name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Please be seated. I invite you to turn to our Old

Testament reading today. It's Deuteronomy 12.

It's printed in your bulletins. You can turn there in your

Bible. It's close to the front part of

the Pentateuch, the last of the five books of Moses, and it's a

part of a sermon, extended sermon from from Moses, the

spiritual leader of the people of Israel.

We're in a series right in the middle of a series called Sacred

Spaces. Sometimes we think about heaven

and God as being distant and far away, but in this series we've

seen that what the Lord loves to do is to draw near and find

places of overlap where we can encounter Him right here in our

everyday life and be changed and set apart for His mission in the

world to renew all things. Now, today's sacred space, we,

you know, we've looked at the garden, we've looked at the

Tabernacle, we've looked at the mountain, and all of these have

different significance points. But today's sacred space is the

temple. And this one I think might bring

the greatest challenge to all of us.

Why? The temple is all about where

God chooses to dwell. It's his preference sets the

tone for where he meets with us and we are used to choosing how

we encounter God and there's a clash that we might feel

immediately as we and maybe you felt it when you were hearing

the Deuteronomy reading because so much about the temple is

where God chooses to dwell. Verse 5 turn to the place the

Lord your God chooses. Go there.

Verse 11, The Lord your God will choose the place to have His

name dwell. Verse 14 Offer burnt offerings

only in the place the Lord God chooses.

And this presents a dilemma to us who are so used to having all

kinds of choice, especially about personal things.

Will we worship the Lord God in the way He chooses or the way we

choose? Tara.

Isabella Burton is a young intellectual, and she chose for

many years how she would connect with the Divine.

I'm quoting here from an article she wrote.

She says I kept an an altar that was a fusion of Roman Saints,

icons, and Wiccan candles I purchased on the Internet.

I was a little bit Catholic, a little bit Episcopalian, a

little bit Jewish, and a little bit Pagan.

And what she was experiencing was like, hey, I have no use for

institutional religion that's failed so many people and I have

no interest in it. You don't get a choice in

institutional religion for how you connect with the divine.

And so instead she opted for what she called intuitional

religion. Intuitional religion.

She's not saying intuition's bad, but she's saying that the

way that she practiced her religious faith, the way that

she found spiritual meaning, was to make intuition the

foundation, the cornerstone of her spiritual life.

No more was it dogma. No more was it rules.

No more was it structure. It was intuition.

On that which would be built a flourishing spirituality.

In her book Strange Rights RITES, Strange Rights, Burton

describes how modern people do this.

They turn everyday experiences into something supercharged with

spirituality. So diet and exercise and

Wellness become supercharged with spirituality, or politics

and social activism become supercharged with spirituality.

Or relationships and dating and and romance become supercharged

with the divine or even technology and techno utopia

becomes this religion, almost semi religion or even immersive

theater and music and literature becomes the place where you

encounter something numinous and otherworldly.

And it's like there's little shrines everywhere, little gods

everywhere, there's spirituality everywhere.

And it sounds very trendy. It sounds very new and and some

measures of it are, but it turns out that this approach is not

new. In fact, verses 2 through 4

references many of the spiritual options available to God's

people as they approach the Promised Land.

Moses says destroy completely all the places where the nations

that you are driving out worship their gods.

On the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green

tree, tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn

their asharah poles, cut down the carved images of their gods,

and wipe out their names from every place.

That is the names of the gods represented by these totems and

these altars and these sacred shrines.

The closer Israel got from the wilderness to the Promised Land,

they encountered these upwardly mobile, urbane forms of

spirituality that were tempting them especially.

Hey, mix what you're doing with Yahweh.

That's interesting. Mix it with what we're doing,

and you'll have the optimum spiritual experience.

Everywhere they looked, there was deities and shrines.

I mean, it was right there. It was very convenient, very

pleasurable. Everywhere you hiked, everywhere

you went, there was a way to connect with something greater.

Let's say your crops weren't doing too well and you wanted

divine help. Well, you can make an offering

to bail. He was a Canaanite deity.

You had control over the agricultural situation.

And if you wanted a little bit more control over your life,

you'd make an offering to bail. And the promise would be he'd

make your crops grow. He'd make you more wealthy.

Or maybe you wanted more children for your family.

That was often a measure of survival for these families.

Would would they have children with these children survive

infancy and one of the ways that people sought a connection with

God that would help their families grow is they would make

an offering to Ashara. And Ashara was kind of Bale's

understood to be Bale's consort like his other half.

And there were temple prostitutes.

These references to the mountains and hills of every

green tree at some point in in that reference.

There's, there's a, there are prostitutes there that if you

could basically subscribe to their services, that was a way

for you to make an offering to a share.

You give some cash, you engage in, in worship of a share, and

then you're more guaranteed kids for your family.

And if and, and if the the person serving you conceives a

child, that child would be offered up in sacrifice.

And that was how the system worked.

And that was what Israel was tempted to do.

These religions, I, I think it's hard for us to understand how

much of A pull these religions had because they offered

security, they offered prosperity, they offered

pleasure, they offered everything that human beings

want. And it wasn't God choosing, it

was, it was us choosing. It was them choosing.

They got to choose all the time. And so we think about how would

this impact a community? How would this impact God's

people? And he makes an observation.

Moses makes an observation in verse 8.

You are not to do as we are doing here today.

Everyone is doing what seems right in his own sight.

Even as Moses is imparting God's word to the community, there's

chaos, it's pandemonium, it's random spiritualities

everywhere, and it's destroying the unity of the people of God.

You know, intuitional religion was not necessarily good forgot

it was leaving them scattered and confused.

And and what's underneath this is what's happening to the poor

and the marginalized who are trapped in these systems.

Think about the children being sacrificed.

Think about the women and the children serving in these

religions. Think about the the poor and the

servants who who who are breaking their backs or giving

their lives to keep the system running, keep the system going.

They were not faring well. They didn't have choice in the

matter. They were under the control of

bail and under the subtle control and tentacles of Ashara,

and they couldn't get out. And I wonder how much relief

they would feel to hear all those verbs that make us

uncomfortable in the modern era from verses 2 through 4.

Destroy completely, tear down, smash, burn, cut down, wipe out.

This was a destruction of intuitional and institutional

religion. That was that was absolutely

hurting and crushing people left and right.

How much relief would they feel, as one cultural commentator

asked, when we are all our own high priests, who is willing to

kneel? And the answer is the poor and

the marginalized and the weak. And I think that they rejoice to

hear some of those words. And some of you know what it's

like. Some of you are here and you've

been burned by institutional religion, or maybe you've been

burned by intuitional religion and you know what it's like to

be under someone's control and how hurtful that can be and how

destructive that can be. Or maybe you watch someone under

someone's control. The Lord never intended it to be

that way for us. He never intended people to be

to be crushed by the power of a system or a person.

He never intended God's people to worship, worship of the

living God and worship of Baal and to combine those things and

make a Frankenstein monster that crushes people.

And I want you to know the Lord's heart is for you and He's

the great Physician and He's here to heal you and welcoming

you into freedom and into life and into wholeness.

And I even invite you to let your heart rejoice when you hear

some of those words. Tear down, burn, destroy

completely because the Lord God is talking about foul

controlling systems that destroy the image of God.

It must no longer exists. It must be torn down.

Now, if bail represented control, Ashara represented

compromise. Compromise.

Ashara was very malleable and kind of like adjust to whatever

situation you're, you know, you're in, you're involved in

whatever commitments you have. I can work with that.

She was seen as sort of complimentary to the faith of

Yahweh, like, oh, we can worship Yahweh.

We could ever share. It's like totally like it works.

And for some people it worked, so to speak, but but the Lord

God didn't see it that way from the Lord God's perspective, like

this isn't working for me. This is spiritual adultery.

It's a betrayal of the covenant. Now, we don't worship Bashara in

our culture, but we might worship at the altar of what

Tara Isabella Burton called in between this, going back to her

spiritual life and spiritual journey.

She says this most demanding part of embracing Christianity

was sacrificing the safety of In between this I could no longer

be a little bit Pagan. Halloween parties that

ironically but not really celebrated witchcraft or other

staples of my secular New York life were no longer simply

curious parts of my spiritual eclecticism.

I had to pick a side. And she talked about how her

Christianity had to impact, if it was real, it had to impact

how much she was drinking and whether she was monogamous or

not, and how she engaged on social media and, and how she

planned her life and how she hosted parties and how she

engaged with her community. It had to impact all those

things. She had to pick a side.

And I think for some of us who've dabbled in in between

this, we've just got to ask ourselves, like, if I had to

pick a side, which side would I pick?

And if not, then when? Like when am I going to pick?

What am I going to choose? When will it matter in

betweenness? In betweenness can can wreck our

faith in our souls just like none in betweenness.

Worshipping, control and Baal. Institutional religion can leave

us hurt and disillusion. Intuitional religion can leave

us scattered and divided, as Saint Augustine prayed.

Our hearts are restless until we rest in Thee.

So true. And here's a good tonic for our

confusion and our hurt friends. It's that clear simplicity of

verse 4. Don't, don't, don't worship the

Lord your God this way. Repent.

Demolish all those foul things in your life.

Deconstruct all those false idols that hold you hostage.

But not just that. It's not just the neg.

God doesn't leave us with a void, with a negative.

He fills our life and fills our community with a positive,

unifying way forward. When we leave intuitional

religion behind, we can take up something much better, and that

is intentional worship. Intentional worship.

Intentional worship is friends, what we were made for.

Intentional worship is God's path for us, which he lays out

in verses 5 through following and I just want to like invite

you as we look at verses 5 through 9.

Investigate if your greatest fears about losing all your joy

and losing all your agency come true as the Lord God describes

it. Intentional worship starts with

showing up where God is present, showing up physically where God

is present. Verse 5 Instead, turn a great

word for leaving behind idols. Turn to the place the Lord your

God chooses from all your tribes to put His name for his dwelling

and go there. Turn and and go there.

Go where the Lord's name is. You'll notice that Moses doesn't

say go to the temple. Temple didn't exist yet.

This is the spiritual foundation of the temple, but it's not yet

the temple. He says go to the place God

chooses to place His name. The name of the Lord is his

personal presence. It's the story and reputation of

His saving acts. It's his glory and beauty.

It's his power and authority. Where the name of the Lord

dwells, there is power. And he bids us come join him, to

be in union with Him. Why do we love seeing our

favorite musicians play live? You know, like, what's the often

like? The quality of the music is not

as good as the recording, but it's so fun, isn't it?

To see the musician in person, to see them walk on stage, to

see them move around, to soak up their essence and their vibe and

watch them play and maybe even see them make some mistakes and

be like, oh, they're human too. And I love this artist and we

and walk away feeling like there was a connection made.

And This is why some some super fans follow them everywhere they

go. They they go to all of their

different concerts because they can't get enough.

Wherever the musician places their name, the fans want to go.

And wherever God shows up, he calls his people to show up

there too. Wherever he is in the

wilderness. He made his name dwell in in the

Tabernacle, as Father Samuel preached on last week.

It moved with the glory cloud and the nation followed it.

Years later, he did make his name dwell in Jerusalem in the

temple where the Ark of the Covenant was right smack in the

middle. And and God's people would make

pilgrimage from all over the world to to be in the presence

of the name of God when the Samaritan woman.

In our text today, ask Jesus where the proper place was to

worship God. She was asking where do we

physically go to gather around the name?

And Jesus said an hour is coming.

It's even here now when the true worshippers of God will worship

him in spirit and in truth. And ever since, where true or

three are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ, he's he's with

them in their midst, because in Jesus the fullness of God was

pleased to put the fullness of his name in Jesus.

And Jesus has seen fit to put the fullness of his presence in

the Holy Spirit, which is present where believers gathered

in his name. His name is the name above all

names. It's his death and resurrection.

It's his ascension, it's his sending his Spirit.

His name is his promises which are coming true and are true

already. His name is his glory and

authority. His name is the name before whom

all knee, every knee on heaven and earth will bow because He is

worthy of our, of our allegiance and our loyalty.

He's worthy of us smashing and tearing down all idols because

his name is the glory that fills the earth.

His name is the healing waters that can heal our greatest

wounds. His name is the resurrection

promised to us. When we gather here, we're

gathering around a building. We're gathering in the name of

Jesus and the building is a tool to do that.

And it's this tool goes away. He'll give us another place to

gather. But when we gather around the

name, we don't show up empty handed.

In verse 6, we are learning about something we can bring to

the celebration. Verse 6, you are to bring there

your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tents and

personal contributions, your vow offerings and free will

offerings, and the first born of your herds and flocks.

This is a description of sort of A-Z offerings that Israel will

bring throughout the year. Like you think about all the

seasons of the year, the Day of Atonement and the the Feast of

Booths and all of the different weekly and seasonal sacrifices.

It's like everything. This is the full Max of what

you're going to bring. And this is your personal

investment and contribution in worship.

And the Lord will take these contributions and he'll, he'll

bless them. And then out of this will come a

community and forgiveness and love and grace and a light for

the nations. God shows up with his name and

presence. We show up with our sacrifices

of grace, like overflowing with Thanksgiving for God.

And that's how a holy community is formed.

Now, some of you have already done this this morning.

You sacrificed something to be here, haven't you?

I think in our modern world, our wholehearted personal physical

presence is maybe our greatest sacrifice.

Our schedules, like you know how hard it is to get on someone's

schedule. The reason is because like, our

time is super precious in the city, really valuable, really

under demand, and being wholeheartedly in a place we're

all paying attention to the same thing and giving our hearts to

the same thing. Like that almost never happens

anymore unless you're being paid to do it.

And you guys aren't being paid to do it.

You're sacrificing to do it. Some of you rode 2 buses to get

here this morning. Some of you wrestled with

toddlers to put on Sunday shoes to get here this morning.

You know, some of you got up early and is.

Some of you said no to fun stuff and brunch and cool things and

festivals to be here this morning.

That was a sacrifice and it's beautiful in the sight of God.

And some of you have sacrificed much more than that.

Nights and weekends and Sunday mornings to be a part of a

ministry team or lifestyle adjustments to be sacrificially

generous so that the next generation can hear about the

deeds of God and showing up, you know, to your city groups when

you when you've got a headache after work, but you show up

anyway because you love the people there.

Those are beautiful sacrifices and God blesses it and sees fit

to form a community out of it. I was talking with someone in

our church this week about how like it makes sense for people

when you enter a nuclear family and you have kids and

everything. Like, of course I'll sacrifice

for them. Of course I'll show up to their

games. Of course I'll make dinner for

them when when I don't feel like it.

We're talking about how that that sense of like, whether I'm

feeling it or not, commitment is where the bonds of community are

formed, not only in the family, but in the church.

And thank you for showing that. Thank you for doing it, whether

you feel like it or not. It's interesting when I talk

with people who move away from Chicago, who've been part of

Emmanuel and and I talk with them about what life is like,

they're like, man, that's the best thing about Chicago was my

time at Emmanuel. But I never ever hear them

saying I really regret like the sacrifices I made to be a part

of the community. I never hear them say like I

wish I would have slept in maybe the morning of, but when they

reflect on the meaning of their life, like what was the meaning

of your time in Chicago? But like actually, the sacrifice

is part of the meaning and and the greater joy and community

and connection in the presence of with God and with others

being unified in around the name of the Lord.

Man. There was something really

precious about that. And that's that's God's way.

It it's part of the plan. Actually is is sacrifice, but

it's joyful. It's not a forced March.

It's it's not an obligation. It's it's willing and it's

joyful. As we see in verse 7.

It it's a there's an overflow. You will eat there.

Moses says you will eat there. You will eat there of Chicago.

Hear this. We will eat there in the

presence of the Lord our God and rejoice with your household and

everything you do because the Lord your God has blessed you.

He's blessed you. There's a joyful feast when God

calls us to gather in His name. You know we're at the beginning

of tailgating season. You're aware of this tailgating

season at stadiums all over this grand country, including a

Soldier Field. People show up sometimes as

early as 6:00 AM, apparently. They open their tailgates, they

start grilling their meats and young and old and people wearing

jerseys, and they're feasting with joy in the name of their

team, you know, celebrating victories past, however few they

may have been, always hoping for the victory to come, you know,

and it's joyful and it's awesome.

Now this is a much better celebration, this feasting,

verse 7, feasting in the presence of God because his

victory is a lot more sure. And there's a there's a GAT,

there's a sense of festivity and overflow of God's victories over

sin and death. We celebrate why?

Verse 7 says because the Lord your God has blessed you.

He's blessed you. The very food that you're eating

is part of his blessing. The family that you're eating

was as part of the blessing. The community that's surrounding

you is part of the blessing. The name that dwells there is

part of the blessing. Oh, the Lord your God has

blessed us. And so we gather around the

table, and we have that taste of the feast to come.

And I hope it spills out. And, and I've been talking with

people about this new season for our church, and there's this

hunger and this cry for feasting together.

And there's so many lonely people in our city who long to

be included at tables. May there be much feasting at

Emmanuel in our time. That's what it means to be a

temple of the living God. It's a feast of joy.

That's what intentional worship means.

And maybe we're intentional with our joy, and sometimes we feel

it and other times we don't. But it's the reality under which

we are standing. It's the cornerstone.

We can rejoice because God's deeds are good.

One really cool feature that the Lord has designed this

intentional worship with is is that He includes people that

would otherwise be left out, and we can even read about this in

verse 12. You will rejoice before the

Lord, your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and

female slaves, and the Levite who is within your city gates,

since he has no portion or inheritance among you.

Can we see how radically inclusive this list is?

These, these many of these people would not have been

invited to participate in the intuitional religions of their

day and in many cases would have been left out in the

institutional religions of their day.

But here with intentional worship, they're they're

included, they're invited in and other iterations of the same

command and other and other parts of the Old Testament begin

to add other groups in that were being left out, widows and

orphans. And this continues into the New

Testament as we gather around the name of Jesus, that we don't

show partiality, that we include people up and down the social

ladder. And, and actually, that's part

of the beauty of the name of Jesus is who he wants to include

and who he wants to gather in to be a part of our table

fellowship. And there's a sense of joy and

justice that flow together in intentional worship.

But this doesn't happen automatically.

You know, part of the sacrifices that we make is that we we're

looking out for people that don't have anyone to talk to.

We're looking out for people who might feel left out or

intimidated. We're looking out for people who

might feel otherwise just invisible in every other part of

life. But here we have the eyes of

Christ to see them in the hands of Christ, to include them.

It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, this intentional

worship, you know. He chose to leave the comforts

of heaven and sacrifice Himself to, to, to, to dwell with us in

a humble, lowly place. He chose that His name would

dwell with the humble with us. And when He saw us scattered on

every high mountain and on every green hill and on every green

tree, He chose to go looking after us.

He chose to leave the 99 and find us and gather us in to join

Him in this intentional worship of joyful feasting.

He chose to, to to sacrifice for us so that we could be made one.

And so we're gathered, friends, you know, we're gathered here

not by our own choosing, but because he chose us.

He's gathered us, He's invited us in.

And we have responded freely to God's invitation to to join him,

to worship his name, to love our neighbor who has gathered around

us, and to celebrate that it was His name and his sacrifice and

His victory and His feast that has made us a new people.

So let's make it our intention, friends, to forever and now keep

the feast in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy

Spirit, Amen.