Well, now it has been a few years down the road, and we are quite pleased with our choice. We have wonderful neighbors, a great yard with lots of trees, a cul-de-sac where Cade learned to ride his bike, but unfortunately, the house came with appliances that were probably purchased when Chuck and I were still learning to ride our bikes. So we have decided that it’s time for our beloved home to get a kitchen makeover.

We’ve asked for advice from neighbors and friends, from family and from members of the church. We’ve consulted consumer reports, had our kitchen measured by Home Depot, and before long the destruction will begin. I know, I know, you expected me to say that the CONstruction is about to begin, but in my mind, that’s not how I see it. We’ve got plans to remove 1 or 2 walls, the existing cabinets have to come out, the dishes and food need to find a new place for awhile, and the appliances may be out of commission for several weeks. It sounds a lot more like DEstruction to me!

It would probably help for you to know that although I’m not the world’s best housekeeper, I don’t do well when things feel “out of order” to me. Chaos is not my friend. I like enough organization that I can feel in control. I sneeze at the dust, I scoff at the mess, and I’m not even the one who cooks in our kitchen! My idea of a perfect stove is any one that can boil water for macaroni and cheese.

So one might say, the worry that I’m expending on what is yet to come isn’t worth it. Even in the midst of destruction, we will still have a great house, beds to sleep in, running water, and thanks to the George Foreman grill that didn’t get set out for our yard sale, we have plenty of ways to make something to eat which is much more than the folks on the Gulf Coast or the multitudes in Pakistan are currently able to say. Nevertheless my past still haunts me. In the echoes of the women who taught me about cleaning house, cleanliness still ranks up there with godliness.

However, I don’t think that a house of “good order” was what Paul’s ghostwriter had in mind when talking about strangers and aliens coming together to be members in the household of God. The talk of strangers and aliens indicates something more messy than neat. The metaphorical foundation that is built up on the apostles and prophets with Christ as the cornerstone is quite unconcerned with whether or not I can survive a kitchen remodeling without making myself crazy. The structure that grows in and out of our relationships with each other, that holy temple, will survive well beyond the livability of my far more temporary dwelling place on Willow Lane in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

When we think about our house of worship, do we envision it as God’s house, or as us making a dwelling place for God? I suspect it’s not the first thing on our minds. When we think about our church building, we’re more likely to imagine the kind of scenario that pops into my mind about the kitchen remodeling process. We just got done getting the sanctuary to picture perfection with the new organ and cross, just in time to think about construction crews, scaffolding, and the dusty work of replacing faulty heat and air conditioning systems. This kind of chaos seems highly unlikely to be a friendly witness to the visitors that might happen through our doors next spring or summer. But it’s important for us to remember that we’re not building this household on the critiques of visitors who are inspecting for cobwebs in the corners of the bathroom, or checking to see if we’ve done all the proper maintenance on our equipment.

In building God’s house, the work gets far messier than any construction crew can devise. We are in the business of taking the alien and stranger into our home. The prophet Ezekiel reminds us that we are to prepare a safe place, not for the clean and fluffy sheep, but for the sheep who have been rejected. We are to welcome the lost and the strayed, we are to bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. And to the strong, we are to bring God’s justice. This is messy work indeed. It means that we have to be open to personalities far different than our own. We are to house those who have no home, and if you’ve even had relatives stay for a few days, you’ll know just how hard it is to adapt to another toothbrush in the bathroom and dirty socks thrown on your living room floor.

These verses from Ephesians have been my guiding passage as I’ve thought about the start of the season of giving and how it relates to our church by means of the stewardship of our resources. This is more than simply collecting the building blocks for a “Habitat for Humanity” project; our project is to build a dwelling place for God. Now, I don’t know what exactly that will mean for us in terms of heat pumps or insulation. I also don’t know if God is in the business of giving raises, but I hope we can generate the income necessary to thank the church employees for their work this coming year in that way. We do our best to honor God’s purposes as we make such decisions in the life of the church.

However, what I do know is that it takes great love and a whole lot of patience to live together in the household of faith. For us to be a community with doors open to the stranger and alien requires much forbearance. I want to thank you now for the great strides I have seen you take in this regard since making Oak Ridge my home. We’ve sent people to Belize to build a laundry facility for an impoverished community, and we returned with new people included in our household of faith: both our new Christian friends who remain in Belize, and those who returned to us with hearts changed by their experience. We have chosen to have meals together more often – 12 more times each year – and making that choice is a conscious decision not to close ourselves off in our own separate homes when we make the Fellowship Hall our family table on those Wednesday nights. And speaking of eating, we have offered an open door to teenagers on Fridays during the school year, and these strange aliens have discovered a home where Christ is the silent but sturdy cornerstone. Many new people have visited this church and decided that it could be a safe home. Some will become members in the official sense of membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and yet all are welcome as members of the household of God on this journey of faith we’re walking together.

But you know of more examples than I do. What else can we share with each other as ways in which we are building a dwelling place for God right here?

There are numerous more examples of how you have grown in prayer for one another, and honed your faith against one another’s stories of triumph and tragedy. Instead of feeling the burden of destruction that comes with gossip, and hurtfulness, and tearing one another down, we are feeling the joy of construction, and noticing that even this messy work has the most beautiful results. Making room for the stranger, the alien, the lost, the strayed, the injured, the weak, the lonely requires busting down the walls and doors that have said “keep out” in days gone by. Those may have been walls that kept us feeling safe, but feeling safe in God’s house means having openings for anyone who needs to enter, building our foundation on the prophets and apostles who were constantly making and adding new rooms, and finally resting on Christ who is our cornerstone. With the presence of Christ in our midst, we are at home, and God is at home among us.

Amen.