Yesterday at Salem we honored my brother Glen Wiberg in all three services, praying for him and dedicating his new book on Housing the Sacred: What I Have Learned and Still Am Learning about Preaching. It was a day full of joy and celebration, as God himself drew near in his house to honor one of his choice servants, and multiply his legacy as a passionate and disiplined servant of the Word.As always when God draws near, the celebration magnified memories of all kinds of people, lay and clergy, that God has used to awaken faith in us and sustain our deep love for his house. The many we were at Salem were few compared to the multitude we became as God moved in through biblical history and our own to bless. A prayer for the day follows:
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!“ With the psalmist, “Our souls long, yea, even faint, for the courts of the Lord. Our hearts and our flesh sing for joy to the living God.
“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young at your altars, O Lord of hosts, our King and our God. Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.
“Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are all the highways to Zion…
“A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. We would rather be doorkeepers in the house of our God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness…
“O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you” (Psalm 84).
How is it, Lord, that we have thus come over years to trust in you and love your house? Today we celebrate all those who have paved the way for us, and pave it still. Parents, Sunday School teachers, deacons, choir masters, organists and pianists, youth leaders, office and kitchen workers—and pastors, shepherds under the Good Shepherd, filled with your Spirit, passionate about proclaiming your Word, and humble in serving us all at table and font.
Today we thank you especially for Glen Vernon Wiberg, whose whole life has been, in one way or another, about Housing the Sacred. We thank you for the range of his mind, his dedication to the framing of life with worship, and the discipline he has shown over nearly six decades in proclaiming thoughtfully and carefully the good news of your word. We thank you, too, Lord, for his devotion to the sacramental nature of all life, inside and outside the church.
May now your blessing rest on him and this latest of his gifts to us, capturing what he has learned over years and still is learning about preaching—about what it means to both feed and tend your flock. Open our hearts and minds to the bountiful table he has set before us, that feasting with him on what it means to house the sacred we may ourselves become more and more the temples you created us to be, fit for your dwelling.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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