Psalm 84:1-4 (Antioch Community Church)
Yesterday and today as part of the national Heritage Weekend we have opened up our church to visitors. And as you may already have noticed, or as you can see after the service, the sanctuary is full of little notes about what happens where in this church and why. The lecturn is where we read the Bible in public worship. The pulpit is where God's word is preached. The font is where people are welcomed into the Christian family through baptism. The organ is the instrument we use to help us sing to God.
Of course, not every church does things the same way. When I worshipped with the Antioch Church, which regularly meets in St Andrew's for their Sunday evening service and weekday activities - their Children's Pastor, Janette Stanberry, has just read from Psalm 84 for us - there was a baptism, but instead of using a wooden font indoors, they used a paddling pool in the church garden! People in the Antioch Church write their own songs to sing with drums and guitars. They cover the floor with beanbags and the walls with banners. People in the Congolese Church, who also use our building, sing and pray in French as well as in English, and their prayer is powerfully loud. And in some ways we, and the Congolese and the Antioch Church, have all moved a long way from the worship described in Psalm 84. The worship in God's temple in Jerusalem was based around the sacrifice of animals. The people of Israel spoke and sang in a very different language and culture from any of ours. Yet the words Janette read for us just now, describing the worshipper's delight at being in God's house, God's presence, could be ours today. That doesn't change.
Today we are celebrating all the uses made of St Andrew's church building. Groups that are church don't always meet in the sanctuary - the University computing prayer group is always to be found in the Garden Room. And as we shall see, not all the groups that use our church use it for worship. But today we are celebrating all the people God has made, and giving thanks for all the ways our buildings are used, sacred and secular.

Psalm 19:1-6 (Green Party)
It has taken the Christian church an embarrassingly long time to work out that the environment is part of God's creation and deserves our care and support. For too long, we thought our instructions from the beginning of Genesis were to use the earth however we wished, since we were the pinnacle of creation. But when we look more closely, our proper role is as God's gardeners, taking care of all the good things God has made. So it is fitting that from time to time the Green Party has used our premises for its meetings, that party which brought the natural environment onto the political agenda, and must sometimes feel the other political parties are trying to steal all its policies.
Other political parties also number people of faith in their membership, of course, and rightly so. No party holds the blueprint for how we should be governed, and I believe every party should be informed by the values Christians hold: of care and honour for the weakest members of society, of forgiveness for wrongs and of love even for those who fight against us. And it doesn't stop with political parties, either. There are so many points of view looking for us to agree with them that sometimes it seems there aren't enough hours in a day to find out about them all. And Christians who follow their enthusiasms and play their part in local and national decision-making are living out their faith as surely as when we gather for worship.
How can I make that claim? Because we believe that the whole universe was made by God, all the world is important to God, not just the religious parts. As the psalm Jillian Creasy, our local Green councillor in Broomhall, has just read reminds us, The heavens are telling God's glory; day speaks to day and night to night about their Creator. And that's not just true of astronomy! Geography and botany, politics and economics, arts and sciences, the natural world and the human world speak to us of God. True, they have no voices to be heard. But anyone who listens can hear God's call to transformation through all the current issues of our world.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (St Andrew's tennis club)
The property we own at St Andrew's isn't only used for worship; it isn't only used for information and decision-making; it's also used for entertainment; and the tennis club which the church has owned for decades certainly comes under that heading. Not all St Andrew's members are fit or active enough to play tennis these days - I'm certainly not, as the tennis club coach can testify - and many members of the tennis club have faith connections beyond St Andrew's and beyond Christianity; but still the tennis club bears witness that, contrary to popular belief, Presbyterians do believe in having fun.
But Presbyterians do not believe in pointless fun. You do something, whether it's playing bridge or golf or gardening or painting, in order to make proper use of your gifts. And according to what Kevin Exell of the Tennis club has just read us, that's not so far from Paul, writing to the church at Corinth about the Isthmian games held there, almost as famous in their time as the games at Olympus, in which runners competed for a crown of parsley, of all things. Parsley being prone to wilting, you can see Paul's point about runners punishing their bodies only in order to gain a crown that's about to wither. Surely, he asks the Corinthians, we can put as much or more effort into running the race of the Christian life, a race which will bring those who complete it the prize of life in all its fullness?
People do put a lot of effort into physical exercise, whether it's walking, Pilates or chairobics. It makes sense to do so - for our bodies and minds are intimately connected, and anything which helps the body to be fit can also ease the mind of worries. But Paul seems to be encouraging the church at Corinth to link the punishing regime athletes put themselves through with our efforts to live the Christian life. And that's something for us to ponder. How fit are we spiritually? Do we make time in our busy lives for prayer and Bible study? Do we think about what values are important to us? Or do we make do with an hour a week some Sundays?

Mark 9:33-37 (St Andrew's Child Contact Centre)
It's clear to see, just looking round this room, how worship is an integral part of Christianity. It takes a bit more thought to see how politics and exercise fit into the Christian life, and you may or may not think I've made a good case for them to be considered in church on a Sunday. But the last representative of the groups that use our buildings, St Andrew's Child Contact Centre, needs no defence from me. For as we've just heard from xx, representing the Contact Centre, Jesus reckoned children should come right at the centre of life, and not be ignored by adults with more apparently important things like power and wealth and status on their minds.
Traditionally, ministers and churches have been expected to tell people loudly what sinners they are and condemn anyone who has gone wrong. And quite a lot have lived up to that expectation - just look at Robert Burns, up before the Kirk session for fathering yet another child by yet another woman, forced to sit on the stool of repentance in church.
But it seems to me that the Contact Centre shows a more Christian spirit. It acknowledges that things have gone wrong in a marriage or partnership, and looks to the interests of the most vulnerable people concerned: the children. It does not seek to apportion blame, but allows parents to arrive and leave without having to meet each other, and gives a safe space, along with lots of toys, for the non-resident parent to maintain relationship with their child. Sometimes this breathing space helps to bring reconciliation between parents, or at least to defuse the situation. But it is not the Centre's task to try to make people feel guilty at having failed. They feel that already. SACCC is there to offer support and help.
And that's true of churches too, when they work well. We are people who make mistakes, so we know what it's like. But we also know we are loved and have been forgiven for our mistakes, so we can pass on that gift to others. And that ability comes from the fact that we follow Jesus, a man whose love for all was so strong that even death could not stop it.