Preached on Sunday, January 5, 2025, the Second Sunday after Christmas, at St. Margaret’s Church, Little Rock.

Before we get to work, a word of gratitude: thank you, Mary, for inviting me to preach, and thank you all for welcoming me. For those I don’t know, I’m Thomas, and I grew up here at St. Margaret’s. And I mean “grew up” in a really strong sense: I learned who I am here; I learned Who God is here; and I learned what God has in store for my life here. So much of who I am and what I do I attribute to what God has done and is doing in this place: through my parents and siblings; through friends; through Sunday school teachers and youth ministers; through the clergy and staff; through all of you, the members of this parish, who make this such a wonderful place to “grow up.” So, thank you for welcoming me home.

I preach this morning on a verse from Psalm 84: “One day in your courts [O LORD] is better than a thousand in my own room” (Psalm 84:9a).

Whenever I try to put into words what St. Margaret’s meant to me growing up, I fail. But thankfully, God gives us Holy Scripture to give us words when we fall silent: “One day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room” (Psalm 84:9a), the Psalmist has me sing. That’s just it. That’s what this place meant to me. This place was a safe haven from all the ups and downs of life and from the awkwardness of teenage years, a “place” for me. And why? Because it wasn’t my own room, but God’s own court. This was—is!—the place of God’s choosing, and I knew it and I was blessed by it. One day here was far better than any day elsewhere.

What is your relationship to this place? That’s an excellent question for the Christmas season. It’s an excellent question for the Christmas season because Christmas is all about “place.” In this season, we celebrate the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of God choosing to be present with us. And God is not present with us in an abstract, theoretical way, but in an exact and concrete way, in a particular place: a child born for us in Bethlehem, and in these latter days, bread broken at this table, a remembrance of God choosing a place “for us and for our salvation.” Christmas is all about “place.”

But there’s a second part to all of this. There’s a second part to the Incarnation. And thank goodness Christmas is a season, because if we didn’t have these 11 extra days, we might miss it. The second part is this: if God is present with us, what, then, is our response? If God chooses this place, how do we relate to this place? Christmas is all about God’s presence, and therefore, being a Christian is all about how we position ourselves in proximity to God’s presence. And so, this season, we ask ourselves the question again: what is our relationship to the place of God’s dwelling, and in particular, then, to this place, to our particular congregations––for me, Trinity Cathedral, for you, St. Margaret’s Church?

For those of us who may struggle to find words in response to this question, Scripture comes to help us. Here is what the Psalmist would have us say:

“How dear to me is your dwelling, O LORD of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by the side of your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God Happy are they who dwell in your house! They will always be praising you” (Psalm 84:1–3).

There’s something about the presence of God in this place that makes us want to stay here. That’s what you all helped me to see as I grew up here. Just as God dwells with us, so we find ourselves wanting to dwell with God, like a sparrow who has found her a house here, a nest where the shallow may lay her young. We long for it. We desire it. Our heart and our flesh rejoice in it. God comes to be with us, and we are drawn towards being with God: the two sides of the Incarnation, God dwelling with us, and our dwelling with God. And those who do so are “happy,” the Psalmist says, ashrey in the Hebrew, “happy” or “blessed,” not our usual way of thinking about happiness, fleeting and earthly, but a happiness or blessedness or contentment that comes from God, the source of all things, simply because we align ourselves with and draw close to Him. We long for this happiness, this blessedness, and we find it in the LORD Who finds us as He Himself draws near. Indeed, “how dear to me is your dwelling, O LORD.”

Or at least, that’s what the Psalmist has to say. But how might each of us respond for ourselves: what is our relationship to this place, this place to which God has miraculously and graciously descended? 

The miracle of Christmas demands that we evaluate our proximity to our congregation, to our church home, to this particular place in which the holy LORD chooses to dwell—not a bad thing to ask ourselves as we begin another calendar year. What has your relationship to this place been like? What could it be like? What might God have in store for it? It’s my prayer that we might all draw near to the temple of the Lord––just like our Lord Himself, Who, in His own boyhood, sat among the teachers in His Father’s House. May we all come here often, meeting the Lord Who, in this very place, runs to meet us. And in this place, may the Psalmist’s words be engraved on our hearts: “happy are they who put their trust in [Him]” (Psalm 84:12b). Amen.