Prelude                       Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah                           John Hughes, arr. Larry Shackley             

Call to Worship Psalm 132)

 Leader: Let us go to the sanctuary of the Lord;

 People:  let us worship at the footstool of his throne.

 Leader: May your priests be clothed in godliness;

 People:  may your loyal servants sing for joy.

 Leader: For the sake of your servants

 People: may we embrace the king you have anointed.

*Opening Hymn         In Loving Partnership                                       

1.  In loving partnership we come, seeking, O God, your will to do. Our prayers and actions now receive; we freely offer them to you.

2.  We are the hands and feet of Christ, serving by grace each other's need.  We dare to risk and sacrifice with truthful word and faithful deed.
3.  Loving community we seek; your hope and strength within us move.  The poor and rich, the strong and weak are brought together in your love.
4.  In loving partnership, O God, help us your future to proclaim.  Justice and peace be our desire, we humbly pray in Jesus' name.

Scripture Reading                 Acts 7:44-50          

Leader: This is the Word of the Lord.    

Musical Interlude      Amazing Grace        arr. Joseph M. Martin

Call to Prayer Lead Me, Lord

*Hymn of Preparation         Softly and Tenderly  

SERMON       Sanctuary: At Home with God          Rev. Gary Ritts    

                                J. Paul Williams and Michael Barrett

 

*Hymn of Parting        Blest Be the Tie That Binds    

*Benediction (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Now to him who, by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.  

Congregational Response      Go Now in Peace

POSTLUDE      Goldberg Variations 26, 28 and 29              J S Bach

We, as human beings, are always in search of sanctuary. A place of peace and safety and understanding.
  First, let’s take a look at the Biblical notion of sanctuary
  Ancient Hebrew nation: “had the Tent of God’s presence with them in the desert.”  It traveled with them wherever they went.
  Then a temple was built.  As Stephen reminds his listeners as recorded in the Book of Acts:
“David won God’s favor and asked God to allow him to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob, but it was Solomon who built him a house.”
King Solomon, King David’s son and successor to the throne, oversaw the building of Jerusalem’s first temple in the mid-10th century BCE.  It was destroyed by invaders some 400 years later.
  Stephen, urges his listeners to re-think their notion of God’s location:
“But the Most High God does not live in houses built by men; as the prophet Isaiah proclaims:
Heaven is my throne, says the Lord, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house would you build for
me? Where is the place for me to live in?
Did not I myself make all these things?”

  We, too, struggle in our attempts to “locate” God.
  As very little children, God becomes anyone who has power over our lives.  
  As we enter school, we become indoctrinated into our culture and perhaps begin to attend Sunday School, God becomes very much attached and housed in this building we call church and most specifically in this room we call Sanctuary.
  To mature spiritually, we must set God free and find that presence closer than we are to ourselves.
Roberts and Amidon again:
“This notion of a richly sacralized world may seem strange to the mainstream western culture.  We live in a secular landscape.  We have been taught to identify the sacred primarily with cathedrals, churches, and temples.  The rest of the Earth is considered real estate - a mere “it” to be used as a resource for our benefit.  This effort to desacralize the world, dispel its sacred aura, is what made possible our commercial relationship to the land. 

 It has allowed us to plunder the natural word, destroying places of more power and beauty than we will ever be able to recreate.  It’s time we set God free.”
  Sanctuary is a way of seeing a place as Sacred, where we actually experience the presence of God in a real and palpable way.
  Finding sanctuary simply requires a broadening of our way of seeing.
Roberts and Amidon:
“While the distinction between spirit and matter is valid, no one can separate the two.  Spirit and matter are not two different realms of reality, two different layers of the universe.  One and the same reality will be material or spiritual depending on how we approach it. 
". . every notion we have of the spirit has been shaped by our experience of the Earth.  If we have a wonderful sense of the divine it is because we live amid such awesome magnificence.  Clearly the Earth is our primary revelatory environment.”
  Our personal sanctuaries might include:
Christ, in prayer, in worship, in church
A favorite, special, awe-inspiring place
Cabin, woods, beach
A gathering of family or friends
Riding in the car
Time on the water in a boat: sail, power, canoe, kayak, tube down the rapids
 Thus, “sanctuary” is not so much a place of celebration as a place of contemplation and presence.  Think about where your sanctuary(s) might be.  Where are those special places?  Comforting, safe, filled with THE presence.

Hard as it may be to discover God in our lives, we must at least make sure we don’t trap God in any one particular location.  
To be sure, even as symbols like stained glass, candles, cross, pews, even smells and liturgies may focus our attention on God’s presence, we must not leave God here.  We open our hearts and minds and souls - finding God as close as the very air we breathe. 

I close with words  from “Mister God, This Is Anna,” by Fynn
God through the eyes of a child.
“When you’re little you understand Mister God.  He sits up there on his throne, a golden one of course; he has got whiskers and a crown and everyone is singing hymns like mad to him.  God is useful and usable.  You can ask him for things; he can strike your enemies deader than a doornail; and his pretty good at putting hexes on the bully next door, like warts and things.  Mister God is so understandable, so useful, and so usable, he is like some object – perhaps the most important object of all - but nevertheless an object and absolutely understandable. 
“Later on you understand him to be a bit different, but you are still able to grasp what he is.  Even though you understand him, he doesn’t seem to understand you! 

 He doesn’t seem to understand that you simply must have a new bike, so your understanding of him changes a bit more.  In whatever way or state you understand Mister God, so you diminish his size.  He becomes an understandable entity among other understandable entities.  
“So Mister God keeps on shedding bits all the way through your life until the time comes when you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all.  At this point you have let Mister God be his proper size - and, wham, there he is . . (laughing at you.)”
As Anna would say, “We go to church to understand God less.”