Pentecost +8 (2 Samuel 7:1-16;  Psalm 89:20-37;  Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)

I

When I hear, in today's Old Testament reading, of King David's aspirations to build a magnificent House for God, I have to sympathize. It seemed to him that God should have a House at least as big and as beautiful as David's own home. After all, God had taken David from the pasture, where he had been a shepherd of literal sheep, and raised him up to become the chief Shepherd of the entire people of Israel. And David's heart was overflowing with gratitude. He wanted – perhaps he even needed – to express his gratitude to God in some creative and tangible way. What could be more natural?

And, David was being very polite about it all. It's always good, before giving a gift to a person, to find out whether or not what you're planning on giving is something that the person actually desires. And so, David runs his idea by the town prophet. At first, the answer that the prophet gives is an unequivocal “Yes! Go for it! – God likes the idea.” But as often happens, upon reflection, the prophet became more clear on just what it was that God was wanting from David. It was indeed a House, but not a House built of wood (Mat 7:24-25; John 2:14-22; Heb. 3:5; 1Cor 5:19-20; 2 Cor 3:3; Col. 2:9.) God wanted a much more personal habitation. A human habitation, within the hearts and minds of his people. And God did indeed want David to provide that gift... but not directly.. Instead, God wanted David to focus on being a good shepherd to God's people, caring for their wellbeing as God would, and that caring would change history. It would initiate the growth of a holy lineage, out of which another Shepherd would emerge, the Good Shepherd, Jesus of Nazareth, who would become the very dwelling place of God almighty in human flesh, the firstborn of a new human race, whose lives would become welcoming to God's taking up residence within them. So what God desired was way beyond a simple building project. But to form the kind of person who would be able to initiate such a spiritual project and see it through to the end.... was going to take generations of good pastoral leadership (see: Jer. 3:15; 1 Kings 14:8; Ezekiel 34:1-31; 37:24-28; Mat. 1:1; 12:23; 21:9; Luke 1:59; Acts 13:22-23; Rom. 1:3; Heb. 1:1-4; Rev. 3:6-8; 5:1-14; 22:16-21.) Creating the right conditions for such a revolutionary for change was going to take time.

God didn't want to discourage David in his aspirations! True, David couldn't build the kind of House God wanted on his own. But David was key in the divine plan. He was far from perfect, but he was that unusual kind of leader who, by and large, tended to place God's will, and the welfare of God's people, before his own desires. Quite a dramatic contrast from King Herod, whom we had a glimpse of in last Sunday's gospel. David's authority came from his shepherd's heart. Today's Psalm (89:20-37) is a musical proclamation of that same confidence that God had in David to start creating the conditions that one day would enable the Ultimate Good Shepherd, the Messiah, to emerge in the world. When we reach the New Testament, with today's epistle (Eph 2:11-22), we hear a much more direct and pointed statement of what God is up to in this world. It is nothing less than “creating a new human race” which will become, itself, God's Holy Temple, God's “dwelling place,” – with Christ as its cornerstone. Not the kind of super-human race, that might be imagined in some Utopian science fiction or cartoon. God wasn't out to re-create human beings as less vulnerable, just more spiritually in tune, centered, and healthy. That was, and remains today, God's great building project. And so Jesus becomes the one who, through his own life, and death, and life beyond death, teaches the entire human race how to become God's Living Temple on earth. He becomes King David's legacy and heir, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the One human being (in our tradition) who becomes worthy of our absolutely undivided attention... because he is the key to fulfilling our destiny of becoming fully human ourselves – becoming persons who are not just created in the image of God, but who are actually manifesting God's own nature in our everyday lives.

And that takes us up to this morning's gospel reading, where we see Jesus – God's Fully Human Dwelling Place – in action. Jesus stares into the crowd, that was stirring restlessly around him, searching for something that would make a real difference in their lives. And as he silently watches them, the text says that “he feels compassion for them, because they were harrassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” And he responds: he begins “to teach them many things.”

II

Today, in our church of the 21^st century, we seem to pretty much have our ways of operating down pat. We have our various ministries categorized very clearly and precisely. We know what we're doing and what we're not doing in every moment.

For example, right now we're engaging together in the 'Ministry of the Word'... where the teaching and preaching of the Holy Scriptures enable God's Spirit to develop a broad horizon of spiritual meaning in our hearts and minds, which helps us make good sense of our life experiences. In a moment from now, we will be engaging in 'Sacramental Ministry', where our deepest desires and needs for God's transforming love all get funneled down into one symbolic moment, one sacramental act of receiving the Real Presence of Christ into our hearts and minds and bodies, in the form of the Eucharist. And, then, in the many formal and informal moments in which we seek to be present with and to relate to one another, as Christ is relating to us, we engage in the 'Ministry of Pastorally Caring Relationships.'

There's great truth in this traditional trinity of Word, Sacrament, & Pastoral Care. They are indeed the three core activities which Jesus engaged in. They are indeed the three core activities, which, in various forms, the church offers the surrounding world today. We see this traditional division everywhere in the church – in our bulletins and the structure of our services, in the agendas of our meetings, in the different roles that we play, in our reporting on the work that we've accomplished, and in our discerning and our planning for where God is leading us in the future. At every turn, in the church, we are always thinking about how we're going to engage in Word, Sacrament, and Pastorally Caring Relationships – because that's essentially who we are and what we do.

But this wonderful threefold division can also lead to misunderstandings... if we start to think of it too rigidly... if we start to imagine, for example, that when we're engaging in the “Ministry of the Word” by reading and reflecting on a passage of Scripture – that that's all that's happening.... Word and Word alone – that no invisible grace is being transmitted, as happens in Sacramental Ministry; that no pastorally caring, and healing, relationship is being enacted, as happens in the Ministry of Pastoral Care. But that is not true.

In truth, wherever any one of these three ministries is genuinely happening, the other two are happening as well. For example, today or tomorrow, we may find ourself spending time, just being present to another person in their pain or difficulty or their joy... and we rightly understand that “pastoral care” is happening. Indeed it is. But the Ministry of the Word is happening there as well, even if no words are being vocalized... we are 'being the Word' to that person. And Sacramental Ministry is happening there as well. Behind that visible person-to-person encounter, there is an invisible grace, a genuinely sacramental experience, being transmitted. Our life itself, through God's grace, is becoming a living sacrament for others. True, this is God's doing, and not ours. We are just co-operating with the Spirit of Christ in that moment. But although we are not doing it by ourselves alone, it is nonetheless really happening.

III

These different ministries of Word, Sacrament, and Pastorally Caring Relationships are only different facets of the Real Presence of Christ in our midst. They are only separate from one another in the sense that, at any given moment, we are typically focusing on one facet more than the other two, but if one is happening, the other two are also present and happening as well. That is what we see in the life and ministry of Jesus. And this is apparently the kind of church, or Divine Dwelling Place, that God is in the process of building on this earth.

In today's gospel text, Jesus is not inside a religious building of any kind. He is not watching the gathered worshipers. He is outside, in the midst of an ordinary crowd of townspeople, who were wandering around aimlessly, harassed by the hardships of their lives. And as he silently watches them, he feels compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

That word “shepherd,” in Latin, is “pastor.” In today's gospel text, Jesus is having a “pastoral care experience” – and he's having this experience outside in the open air, and he is having this experience in relation to strangers... not disciples... just ordinary people on the shores of Galilee. And, in this experience of compassion, he responds to their pastoral needs, the text says, by “teaching them many things” (a type of Ministry of the Word). In next Sunday's continuation of today's gospel, we'll see this very same crowd that Jesus is pastorally caring for and teaching, receiving bread from his hands, bread that he has blessed and broken for them, and they will eat until they are satisfied (a type of Sacramental Ministry).

So, taken as a whole, what I am hearing God say through our Scriptures this morning is that the actual ministry of Jesus creates real challenges for us... if our categories about what it means to be church become too rigid. Because Jesus does it all – Word, Sacrament, Pastoral Caring Relationships – every day of the week. And he does it all not only for a select group of insiders, but for anyone who is open to receive what he has to offer. And he does all of this even without a building! He is very poor in material terms, yes; but he is very rich in resources for ministry. Because he himself has become a Walking Temple, God's Dwelling Place in the world, where one and all are welcome to enter, whether it's for a brief visit, or to stay for good.

I will leave you with the question that today's readings leave me pondering:

What would it mean, what would it actually look like – for me, for you, for us as a spiritual community – to become that kind of powerful pastoral presence, that kind of Walking Temple, out there in our world?

Amen.