October 26, 2025
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus
“Construction and Reconstruction "
Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch
October 26, 2025 Based on 1 Kings 5:1-5, 13-18; 6:37-38; 8:12, 27-30 CEB
This moment in 1 Kings feels like the climax of a very long story. A few weeks ago in our reading journey, we met Moses and the People of God in slavery in Egypt. They wandered in the desert for forty years, learning how to trust.
They crossed into a new land. They went through seasons of leadership, judges and kings, victories and heartbreak.
And now, finally, there is peace. David’s wars are over and his son Solomon takes up the project David dreamed of but never saw completed: A permanent house for God.
“I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God,” Solomon writes to King Hiram. After generations of tents and wandering, the ark of God’s presence will finally have a home. A house for God. A place where people can come to encounter the Holy. A place where heaven touches earth.
It is a beautiful moment. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if something essential was lost that day too. Before Solomon’s temple, faith was portable. The ark of the covenant traveled with the people, from tent to tent, through wilderness and battle and exile. God went wherever they went. They were a pilgrim people, a people who understood that the Holy One could not be contained.
But Solomon built something magnificent: cedar and gold and stone, carved beams and polished limestone. A sanctuary of beauty, stability, permanence. And with that, something new entered the story: Faith could now be housed. Stabilized. Institutionalized. Permanence. Beauty. Security. But also rigidity. Fragility. Because once you build something permanent, you also start having to maintain it. Protect it. Defend it.
You start to say, “This is where God lives.” And suddenly the God who once traveled with you feels confined.
It’s the same risk every church since has faced. 1 Kings tells us it took seven years to build this temple. Tens of thousands of laborers. Stonecutters in the highlands. Cedar hauled down from Lebanon. Craftsmen shaping, fitting, perfecting. It was magnificent.
But when the final stone was placed and Solomon stood to dedicate the temple, his prayer was not triumphant.
It was humble. Even uneasy.
“The Lord has said he would dwell in a dark cloud, but I have built a lofty temple for you. But how could God possibly live on earth?
If heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built?”
There’s the question. It hangs in the air. If heaven cannot contain you, God, how much less this house?
Solomon knew: We can build something beautiful, something holy, and it will still fall short. No matter how excellent the thing we create is, we will still misunderstand the God who fills it. And so the tension remains for anyone seeking to act on our discernment…
Are we building something that invites God’s presence, or something that tries to hold God still? Because God will not be domesticated.
The Spirit fills our sanctuaries, yes, but the Spirit also blows right past them— as she moves through coffee shops and college dorms, quiet hospital rooms and noisy crowded streets in protest, over park benches and kitchen tables.
She moves in the space between the stones, the cracks where the wind of grace catches us off guard.
And maybe that’s why this story is perfect for today: Reformation Sunday.
Because about 2,500 years after Solomon, the Church had again built something impressive:
towering cathedrals, layers of tradition, systems of control.
And somewhere in all that building, the living faith of the people got buried. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door, he wasn’t just confronting corruption; he was opening a window. Letting the Spirit back in.
The Reformers weren’t trying to destroy the Church; they were calling it back to life.
They gave us a phrase that still guides us: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda — the church reformed, and always reforming. Always discerning. Always rebuilding. Always asking Solomon’s question: “How much less this house that we have built?”
Maybe this is part of what the Reformers were trying to remind us of: that the church is not a museum to be preserved, but a living body meant to keep moving, breathing, responding to the needs of the world God so loves.
The author and teacher Phyllis Tickle famously said that about every 500 years, the Church has what she calls a “great rummage sale.”
Every five centuries or so, she writes, the Church spreads everything out on the table: our doctrines, our structures, our worship, our habits, our assumptions, and we ask together: What still gives life? What once helped but now only weighs us down? What is the heart of the gospel that we must carry forward? And what needs to be lovingly released so that the Spirit can breathe again?
The Reformation of the 1500s was one of those moments. The Great Schism of 1054 was another.
These were eras of cultural upheaval, political conflict, technological shift—moments when the world was reorganizing itself, and the church had to decide whether to harden or to reform.
Friends, we are living in another one of those times.
We see it in global migration and climate disruption, in widening inequality and cultural polarization, in the rise of authoritarian religion in some places, and the deep longing for spiritual depth, justice, and belonging in others.
This is a moment in which the Church—every church—must decide what kind of body we will be.
Some expressions of Christianity are clinging fiercely to certainty and boundary, to walls and control, to a version of faith that is small enough to defend.
But others, including communities like ours, are rediscovering a faith that is as wide as Jesus’ welcome, as rooted as justice, as open-handed as grace. A Christianity that does not fear change, because change is part of how God keeps growing us up. A Christianity that remembers the wisdom of Solomon’s question: “If heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that we have built?”
So maybe our call in this stewardship season is not to cling harder to what has been, but to discern what God is inviting us to make room for now.
To ask: What are we being called to build next?
And just as importantly: What are we being called to release, so that the Spirit may move freely again?
Because the story of faith was never about where God lives; it has always been about where God leads. So yes, let us honor the beauty of what has been built here. Let us give thanks for those who laid these foundations with love and sacrifice. But let us also keep our hearts mobile. Let us be willing to open the windows. Let us be people who trust that God still travels.
Friends, we are not just a church with a building.
We are a church being built, stone by living stone, into a place where love can dwell.
Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.
The Church reformed, and always, always reforming.
Amen.
WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE
PRELUDE “Voluntary on Sicilian Mariners” arr. Sondra K . Tucker
INTROIT “Listen God is Calling” Kenyan Hymn
William Hughes, soloist arr. Austin Lovelace
WELCOME
One: This is the day that the Lord has made
All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
*CALL TO WORSHIP
One: God is the Master Builder, the Shaper of all that is.
Many: We come to offer our lives as living stones, shaped by love.
One: God dwells not only in temples made by hands,
Many: But in every heart that seeks justice and every home built in peace.
All: Let us worship the God who builds and rebuilds, who reforms and renews.
Let us worship the one whose Spirit cannot be contained.
*HYMN 301 “All Are Welcome” TWO OAKS
*PRAYER OF CONFESSION Jim Legg
God of creation and reformation, You call us to build holy spaces where Your love may dwell. But we confess that we have sometimes confused our work with Your presence. We protect what is familiar and resist what is new. We cling to comfort instead of courage, to tradition instead of transformation. Forgive us when our faith becomes inflexible, when what we have built becomes a burden, when our plans become idols. Make us again Your living stones: strong enough to stand, soft enough to change, ready to be shaped by Your renewing grace. Amen.
*ASSURANCE OF PARDON
*RESPONSE OF PARDON
*PASSING OF THE PEACE
One: The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,
All: And also with you.
WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD
ANTHEM “Caminante” Andrea Casarrubios
Rosa Balderama, cello
CHILDREN’S RECESSIONAL 175 “Seek Ye First” vs. 1
Children: May God be with you here
Congregation: May God be with you there
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
SCRIPTURE 1 Kings 5:1-5, 13-18; 6:37-38; 8:12, 27-30 CEB
Because King Hiram of Tyre was loyal to David throughout his rule, Hiram sent his servants to Solomon when he heard that Solomon had become king after his father. Solomon sent the following message to Hiram: “You know that my father David wasn’t able to build a temple for the name of the Lord my God. This was because of the enemies that fought him on all sides until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet. Now the Lord my God has given me peace on every side, without enemies or misfortune. So I’m planning to build a temple for the name of the Lord my God, just as the Lord indicated to my father David, ‘I will give you a son to follow you on your throne. He will build the temple for my name.’
King Solomon called up a work gang of thirty thousand workers from all over Israel. He sent ten thousand to work in Lebanon each month. Then they would spend two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the work gang. Solomon had 70,000 laborers and 80,000 stonecutters in the highlands. This doesn’t include Solomon’s 3,300 supervisors in charge of the work, who had oversight over the laborers. At the king’s command, they quarried huge stones of the finest quality in order to lay the temple’s foundation with carefully cut stone. The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram, along with those of Byblos, prepared the timber and the stones for the construction of the temple.
Solomon laid the foundation of the Lord’s temple in the fourth year in the month of Ziv. He finished the temple in all its details and measurements in the eleventh year during the eighth month, the month of Bul. He built it in seven years.
Solomon stood before the Lord’s altar in front of the entire Israelite assembly and, spreading out his hands toward the sky, he said:
“The Lord said that he would live in a dark cloud, but I have indeed built you a lofty temple as a place where you can live forever.
But how could God possibly live on earth? If heaven, even the highest heaven, can’t contain you, how can this temple that I’ve built contain you? Lord my God, listen to your servant’s prayer and request, and hear the cry and prayer that your servant prays to you today. Constantly watch over this temple, the place about which you said, “My name will be there,” and listen to the prayer that your servant is praying toward this place. Listen to the request of your servant and your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Listen from your heavenly dwelling place.
SERMON Rev. Trip Porch
WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD
*HYMN 341 “O God, Show Mercy to Us” THAXTED
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
TIME OF OFFERING online giving is available at www. indianolapres.org/give
OFFERTORY “Land of Rest” setting by Wilbur Held
Rosa Balderama, cello; Emily Foster, piano
*OFFERTORY RESPONSE 717 “For the Life That You Have Given” PLEADING SAVIOR
*PRAYER OF DEDICATION
God of abundance and renewal, We dedicate these gifts to Your service and Your glory. Use them to build not just a church, but a community of care. Use them to repair what is broken, to reform what has grown rigid, to make space where Your Spirit can dwell freely. We offer all that we are in gratitude for the foundation of grace you’ve laid beneath us. Amen.
*HMN 275 “A Mighty Fortress” EIN’ FESTE BURG
TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING
CHARGE & BENEDICTION
CHORAL RESPONSE “A Unified Prayer” B.E. Boykin
POSTLUDE
Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452