12th Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 23rd August 2015 – 1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41-43

12th Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 23rd August 2015 – 1 Kings 8:1,6,10-11,22-30,41-43

Where are the surprises?

Whose voices do we not hear?

What challenges us?

Surprises – do you agree with what I find surprising in the text?

1. Read the full text. It’s amazing. Solomon, such a contrary man. Such understanding of God yet has such self-aggrandisement. The final words in this passage ‘on this house that I have built’. (also v27)
2. Solomon wants the temple to ‘work’; people need to get what they ask for. He’s had the temple built; now it’s up to God to do God’s part. Will God oblige?
3. That Solomon remembers the ‘foreigners’ and asks their prayers be answered too. (Or is he wanting the adulation from all the world for the house he has built?)

The voices we don’t hear – What might they say?

1. It’s the Solomon Show – what are the priests thinking?
2. The people who were enslaved to build it. Perhaps they were also proud to see the finished marvel they had actually built.

What challenges us in 2015?

1. Do you think in our secular society our beautiful holy places are needed more than ever? How might our building show God’s glory? (v11)
2. Does the building serve the needs of the people? Or do the people serve the needs of the building?
3. The Church is the people. What people are these: those who live in the parish, the visitors or those who use the building for worship?