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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the second book of Chronicles, the sixth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is number 12. "Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread forth his

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hands. Solomon had made a bronze platform five cubits long, five cubits wide, and three cubits high, and had set it in the court and he stood upon it. Then he knelt upon his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven and said, 'O Lord God of Israel, there is no God

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like thee in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to thy servants who walk before thee with all their heart, who has kept with thy servant David my father what thou didst declare to him. Yea, thou didst speak with thy mouth and with thy hand hast fulfilled it this day. Now therefore, O

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Lord God of Israel, keep with thy servant David my father what thou has promised him, saying, 'There shall never fail you a man before me to sit upon the throne of Israel, if only your sons take heed to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me. Now therefore, O Lord God of Israel, let thy word be confirmed

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which thou has spoken to thy servant David. But will God dwell indeed with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built. Yet have regard to the prayer of thy servant and to his supplication, O Lord my God, hearkening to the cry and to the

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prayer which thy servant prays before thee, that thy eyes may be opened day and night toward this house, the place where thou has promised to set thy name, that thou mayest hearken to the prayer which thy servant offers toward this place, and hearken thou to the supplications of thy servant and of thy people Israel when

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they pray toward this place. Yea, hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and when thou hearest, forgive.' And may the same spirit that inspired Solomon as he prayed this prayer and that inspired the writer of Chronicles as he recorded it for us move in our hearts that we might understand it.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. There was nothing nasty in what he said. There was no belligerence in his tone. He was a young graduate student studying here at Pittsburgh, worshipped with us on

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a Sunday morning, and that morning I had been speaking of the ministry to the poor. And as he met me at the door, he said this, 'Don't you feel a bit inconsistent standing in the midst of all this beauty and loveliness and talking about the ministry to the poor?' It's a fair question. I heard it summed

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once before by Ernest Campbell, who was at that time the minister of what I believe to be the most beautiful Protestant church in America, the Riverside Church in New York City. Campbell said it's the problem of a Cadillac church in a Volkswagen H. By Cadillac, of course, we are referring to

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excellence. I've never driven a Cadillac, but I've been told that it's the Naples ultra of driving experience. And this certainly is a Cadillac church, with its computers and its beautiful glass and its television studios and its extensive kitchens, all of these things. But this is not a Cadillac age, this is a

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Volkswagen age. This is an age in which people opt for the informal more than the formal. We see more sweatsuits than we see tuxedos. People are interested more in the compact rather than in the large. They prefer pop art to masterpieces. Bill Gaither to Johann Sebastian Bach. We live in a very casual

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time, a very unrefined time, if you will, a very unsophisticated time. So how do you respond when a young man says to you, out of precisely that situation, how do you respond when he says, "Don't you feel a bit inconsistent being in the midst of all of this and speaking about the poor? What does a Cadillac church have to say

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to a Volkswagen age?" Well, I would make three suggestions this morning. First, I would say this, that what people want and what people need are not always the same thing. Some years ago when I was in seminary, I used to scout football players for my alma mater, Westminster College, and I found a young player, he

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was heading toward being All-State quarterback that I thought would be a wonderful addition to Westminster's team. It so happened that this young man was an outstanding football player, but he wasn't an outstanding student, and so I suggested to him that it might be good if I could coach him a bit before he

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went up for his interview with the school. We agreed that was a good plan, but we discovered that the only night on which the two of us could get together was the Thursday night before the Friday he was to go to the school. Now it so happened that I had two tickets for the opera that night, so I said, "Well, we'll

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just have dinner beforehand and talk there, and then we can talk during the intermissions, and we can talk as we're driving home afterwards." He said, "You want me to go to the opera?" An opera? Yuck. But it was the only choice, so we went to the opera. Now the opera of the evening was Puccini's Madame Butterfly,

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and you remember how that opera ends. Cho-Cho San, the beautiful Japanese girl, has been mistreated by Pinkerton, the American naval lieutenant. She has had a child by him, but he has broken all of his promises to her, and so being shamed, she decides, after the Japanese custom of that time, to take her own life. And she

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dresses her little son in a sailor suit, and she puts a small American flag in his hand, and then she goes behind a screen and she commits hara-kiri. And just as she falls out from behind the screen, Pinkerton, who has suddenly recognized the evil and the unfairness of what he has done, and realizes also

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that he loves her more than anyone, comes running onto the stage crying out, "Butterfly! Butterfly! Butterfly!" And she dies in his arms. And the orchestra swells with great chords, and the curtain comes down. And I turned to this young man and I said, "Well, how did you like the opera?" And there's this great big all-state

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quarterback, this powerhouse, this outstanding young athlete who said, "The opera, yuck!" Dissolved in tears. Now he didn't want to go to the opera, but he needed to go. Because he discovered a corner of himself that night that he never knew about before. He discovered some sympathy, some artistic sensitivity

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within him that he had never previously understood was there. He had seen excellence, and that excellence touched him where he'd not been touched before. Well, I'm suggesting to you this morning that a Cadillac church has to go against the culture of a Volkswagen age. I'll admit that excellence is out of style

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today, that shoddy workmanship is on every hand, that we see tastelessness in every dimension of our society, and workmanship is poor and not distinguished. I remember so many times when I would give the college students that I taught an assignment, and I'd say it was to be a 20-page paper, and then

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the questions would come, always the same questions. Can we count the title page as one of the pages? Can we count the bibliography as the pages? Is it to be single-spaced or double-spaced? Does spelling count? Which implies, of course, that if it counts, they'll spell right, and if it doesn't count, they'll spell

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wrong. They did everything they could to whittle down the assignment so it wouldn't do them any good. The least common denominator. Well, look around you. This wood is hand done. This stone is hand cut. This glass is hand made. And just as the monasteries long ago kept alive the light of learning in the Dark

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Ages, so churches like this keep alive a tribute to service and art and beauty. They stand for what is the best. In the midst of a world of blah, they provide a place where you can say, "Oh, I'll make no mistake. I'm not saying that the poor and the ignorant and the unrefined cannot worship God. You do me a disservice if

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you twist my words to make them say that kind of thing. What I'm saying is this. The Bible teaches us that to whom much is given of that one is much expected. And because we know what is good, we are expected to come before the Lord with that which is good. We are not, David says, to offer to God that which costs us

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nothing. The Holy Spirit does not opt for cheapness or for tastelessness or for the casual or for the least. That may be what the world wants, but that is not what the world needs. When Solomon built the temple, he employed a hundred fifty three thousand people and they worked for seven years and they used one hundred

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thousand talents of gold and one million talents of silver. And when they were all done building, Solomon said, and this is our text for this morning, "Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, Lord, how much less this house which I have built." Solomon knew that even with all that splendor he could not

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encapsulate God, but he knew this too, that every time his people came into that place, they would be lifted. Their eyes and their minds would be drawn up to that which was best. Politically, socially, economically, personally, they would be lifted and that was Solomon's idea. And so it is the function of the

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church not to give the world what it wants, but to give the world what it needs. The second thing I would suggest is this, that the worth of anything is best measured by the use to which it is put. My friend George Worth, who is the pastor of the Zwicky Presbyterian Church, told me about a young student in the

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field of management who, upon being graduated, took as his first assignment doing a management study for a symphony orchestra. And at the conclusion of his study, he made the following six recommendations to the orchestra. First, there are too many violins. There's lots of times when they're not all playing, so

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you can cut the number of players by a half. Second, many of the instrumentalists are playing the same notes, where you can cut out everybody who's duplicating and if you want it to be louder, just put in a loudspeaker. Third suggestion, many of the instruments, especially amongst the strings, were very old. Some of them two

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or three hundred years old. They had obviously been depreciated as far as they could be. Throw those out and get modern instruments. Fourth, he noticed that many times they were playing demi-semi quavers. Now that's a very little note and it's too refined in the music. So what you do is you eliminate

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all the demi-semi quavers. Don't play anything any shorter than a semi quaver. And that will mean you can also lessen the quality of your performers. They don't have to be very good to play those kinds of notes. His fifth suggestion was that he noticed that the brass players usually had one hand free while they

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were playing. So they could use their other hand to fold programs or things of that kind. And he also noticed that they blew very hard and suggested that all the instruments might be attached to one common wind source, which would blow them all at the same time. Finally, he recommended, on the basis of his study he

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had discovered, that many notes were repeated in the concerts. For example, in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the same four notes, da da da da, were repeated 64 times. Cut out all that repetition. That would mean that the concert would only be 30 minutes long, you wouldn't have to rent the hall so

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long, and you could eliminate the intermissions. Well, these were his suggestions, and of course they sound very silly. But let me take those suggestions and put them into another frame. An earnest Christian says to me, "Let's just buy an electronic organ and give all the rest to missions." Now that

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sounds very reasonable, doesn't it? This is a church which for years has been deeply committed to missions. But let's look at this suggestion a little more carefully. It's obvious that a person who makes this kind of suggestion does not really believe that the artistic dimensions of worship are of primary

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importance. They're minimal at best. Music and the choir and the glass, things of that kind, the kind of instrument that plays, well that's a kind of an ornament to worship. It is not really useful in worship. You might say it's the frosting on the cake and they're saying we're to feed the world and we don't

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feed them frosting, we feed them meat and potatoes. I mean, this sounds like a very practical comment. And it's a very, very old comment. You remember in Matthew 26 when a woman came and poured very expensive ointment on the feet of Jesus, and the fragment of that ointment disappeared in nothing but a moment. And

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one of the disciples, Judas, said, "You shouldn't have wasted that money on that ointment. You should have taken it and given it to the poor." And Jesus said, "What she has done is very beautiful." Now was Jesus wrong when he said that? Let's put it very baldly. Is it improper to plant roses in a place where you could plant

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onions? See, you can't feed people with roses, but you can feed them onions. The choir spends a hundred man hours and woman hours getting an anthem ready for performance. Couldn't they spend that time better cleaning up the streets here in the city of Pittsburgh? See, by reducing this argument to the reductio

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ad absurdum, I'm trying to show how dull and lifeless it is, and that it doesn't have a deep enough view of the understanding of the way God has made us. A lot of people who come to this church on a Sunday morning don't come here for any arguments, and they don't come here for any practical suggestions on living.

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They want something to touch their hearts. They want something to reach down deep inside of them. They want something which will transform them for a little while. They want something that will inspire them, that will lift them up, that will give them dignity and freedom. Take a human being and put him in a shack, and

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it won't be too long till he's planting petunias by the front door. Bind men in a cave, and it won't be long till they're painting pictures on the walls. Give a group nothing but sticks. They'll figure out how to make a flute. Chain men in slavery, and they'll shake those chains to the rhythm of the songs that they

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used to sing. Put Christians into jail, and they'll sing hymns at midnight. Why is it that the most original music that America has produced has come from its black citizens? What do blacks have to sing about in America? Why is it that our our ranks of comedians are filled with Jewish folks? Jews on whose doorway

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there's been a crepe wreath hanging for a thousand years. I'll tell you why. It's because people that hurt, and people that suffer, and people that long for more need beauty, and we must not mute these qualities as they reach out to the human soul. I said once to Sam Moffat, the missionary, "You want to know about the

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Moffats. The Moffats are one of the greatest mission families in the history of the Presbyterian Church. Father Moffat was the first Presbyterian missionary to Korea, and as you know, the Presbyterian Church is the fastest-growing church in Korea today, and his sons followed him in ministry there. Sam Moffat was there for

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40 years as a missionary, and now has returned to occupy the chair of world mission at Princeton Theological Seminary. And I said to Sam, "Sam, what would be better, for us to put in a new organ or for us to take the money that that would cost and send it to the mission field?" "Oh," he said, "no question.

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Build something beautiful. Fill your sanctuary with the most magnificent music. Lift up the spirits of your people. Let them laugh and cry and clap and respond to what they hear. Let your pulpit be a place not only of truth but also of beauty. Give to them, across the years, these things, and they will give

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much more to mission and the extension of the kingdom than the one-time gift that would be made if no organ were built. That organ will cost very little compared with what it will do to people and what they in turn will do for the ministry of the church." You know that woman who brought that anointing oil to

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Jesus' feet? That oil is described in the scriptures as being worth 300 denarii. That was one year's wages, and Christ accepted it. He accepted it as loving. My friends, what's the worth of anything? The worth of anything is measured by its use. And what do we do here? We praise God, and we minister to the unemployed, and we

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teach the Word of God to little children and to adults, and we feed the hungry, and we support missions, and we pray, and we sow things for poor people in Appalachia, and we produce television programs which go out to the sick and hospitals and to the city, and we have folks who come here and hear the Word of God and then

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develop skills like computer and German and how to paint China. We have boys and girls coming here for one of the best balanced meals they get all week and a program of spiritual uplift that goes with it. We help other Christian groups, more than 3,000 Christians a week come into this building and are ministered to

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here. Make no mistake about it, Jesus cleansed the temple, but Jesus did not say denude it or tear it down. The value of something is to be measured by its use. And very quickly I share one last thought, and that's this, that a cheap religion is worth exactly what it costs. Back in the year 1975 I was in Leningrad

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in the Soviet Union. Now when you travel in the Soviet Union you always have communist guides. You're not permitted to bring your own guides, you must get them from the government, interista guides, and they are all card-carrying communists, and every place you go they give you the red line. And we were taken to St. Isaac's

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Church, which is the largest church in Leningrad and has now been made into a museum for atheism. And we were being taken about this building and shown all these displays that proved there was no God. And I interrupted our guides presentation, I said, "May I ask a question?" "Oh yes." "I'd like to know what you

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think of this building, its size, its magnificence, its beauty, the splendor of that glass, all of these things, what do you think about that?" Now what I expected her to say was, "They should have spent this money on the masses." But that's not what she said. She said this, "Well this building certainly does say that they

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were willing to sacrifice for what they believed in." This building speaks like that. Make no mistake, a church is not a building, a church is people. But the people and the building are not exclusive of one another, because a people cannot exist in a spiritual form only. That's the reason God gave to his

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chosen ones the tabernacle and then gave to them the temple. Those were God's ideas in the first place. We had a couple worshiping here from North Carolina last Sunday morning, and when they met me at the door with tears in their eyes, they said, "When we came in, we were captured by the beauty of this place, but as we go

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out, we're remembering also the beauty of its people." The height of this building speaks of the majesty of God, and the shadows in some of its corners speak of the mystery of God, and the organ resounds to praise God, and all of it is meant to speak to this city. And the voice of the people who come here to

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worship is, "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my flesh cries out for the living God." Let this building represent us. Let our hopes be as high as its towers, our visions as glorious as its glass, our harmony as pure as the choirs,

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our convictions as straight and true as those marble aisles. A Cadillac Church in a Volkswagen age. To that I respond. What folks want is not what they most need. Let the church stand for excellence. The worth of anything is measured by its use, and here we glorify God and serve our brothers and sisters in creation. And a

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cheap religion is worth exactly what it costs. And as I say that, I remember the words of Solomon and of his father David. Solomon said, "Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee, how much less this house which we have built." But David said, "We must not offer to God that which costs us nothing."

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Let us pray. We are a sinful people, our Father, and we think sinful things and we say sinful things and we do sinful things. And we rejoice that thou art a God of grace. Even when we do our best, it's not enough. When we are most pure, our righteousness

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is as filthy rags. Grant that if some word has been said in this message, is acceptable to thy Holy Spirit. Grant that that word might be remembered by today's Israel, thy people. And if some word has been said which is not acceptable to thy Spirit, which does not praise and honor thee, which is not the truth, which

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is anything less than the truth, the whole truth, then let that word drop into the deepest seas of our forgetfulness. For we would remember only that which is approved of thee. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

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