At first he had treated it like any other job. He had been resentful when the master builder warned him that his work was not quite up to standard. But then he realized that the walls of a cathedral had to be not just good, but perfect. This was because the cathedral was for God... The combination of a hugely ambitious building with merciless attention to the smallest detail opened Tom’s eyes.1
Cathedrals, churches, places of worship whether simple or grand and glorious open our eyes to something bigger, greater, than ourselves. They serve to give us a sense of transcendence. Their goal is to lift us out of the ordinary into the extraordinary story of Jesus Christ.
My guess is that from the beginning of time people have looked for places where the holy could be found.
The Celts, long before they were Christian, called them “thin places” where heaven comes close to earth.
Humans, being human, like to know where those places are so we build buildings and say, “Here a thin place can be found. Looking for a thin place? It’s right over here!”
For some that works and for others it doesn’t. One person’s thin place can be a formidable and imposing structure to another. Still we try our best, come as close to perfect as we can, to have places where our eyes can be opened to the presence of the Holy One.
We ‘ve been trying to build perfect places for the Holy since almost forever and in scripture since King David, one day, got the bright idea to bring the Ark of the Covenant indoors.
One morning he wakes up and says to his friend Nathan, ““Look! Here I am living in this beautiful cedar palace while the Ark of God is out in a tent!”2
Surprisingly the LORD doesn’t jump at the idea. Apparently, there is no interest in camping, not even glamping. Nathan is asked in a dream:
You’re going to build a ‘house’ for me to live in? Why, I haven’t lived in a ‘house’ from the time I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt till now. All that time I’ve moved about with nothing but a tent. And in all my travels with Israel, did I ever say to any of the leaders I commanded to shepherd Israel, ‘Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?3
Still because we are human King Solomon, David’s Son, and a master of public works projects, still builds the temple.
Today’s first reading comes after the dedication when the Ark of the Covenant [think of the famous Raiders of the Lost Ark movie] is placed in the Holy of Holies and once and for all it is settled – if you want to find God, this is the place. The perfect place and perhaps the only place. No need to look for a thin place, this is the place.
That is where we get into trouble. When we think that our place, our way, is the only way, people get excluded. People get left out. Good people are shunted aside because they are different.
In the final parish directory of my home church before it closed someone really wrote these words:
[When the] congregation entered into its fourth quarter-century ...ominous changes were underway. The very nature and character, or more inclusively, the demographics, of ... the constituent neghborhood continued to slowly evolve.
In other words: The neighbourhood changed. But the author went on completely unaware of how their words sounded.
In the parlance of the new demographics, many of the younger residents who would be classified as the “upwardly mobile,” left traditional neighborhoods for a new lifestyle offered by areas adjacent to downtown, or, more likely, in the suburbs. Older residents pondered retirement homes as an alternative to the increasing maintenance of their aging houses.
Then here came the key sentence for any who drove past and wondered, “Didn’t there used to be a Lutheran congregation in this building?”
“Their houses and apartments ... were ... filled by people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds, many directly from foreign countries.”4
I’ll give you a moment to ponder that last sentence. Different ethnic backgrounds? Many “directly from foreign countries?” In other words, people who were not like us and with whom not only did we not to associate with we didn’t even want to reach out to!
I honestly have a hard time not only believing that somebody actually wrote those words but may have even showed it to another member and asked: “How’s that sound to you?” And that person replied, “Sounds fine to me.”
No, it doesn’t! It doesn’t sound fine at all. It sounds like we have our little community, and we don’t want anybody with different backgrounds, or different ways, or different ideas, to come in and upset our tried-and-true ways of doing things.
It sounds like, we have enough of “them” and “their kind” why would be actively reach out and try to get more.
It sounds like we have built the perfect place, and we don’t want anybody to come in and mess it up.
I still live one-half-block from that church which is now an Hispanic Charismatic congregation who every year throws the best block party for the entire neighbourhood – everybody, churched or unchurched, even those of us who don’t particularly like block parties – with a far more interesting variety of foods than were offered at the white-on-white, mushroom soup based, cover dish suppers offered at that now closed congregation’s usual “pot-luck” suppers.
The reason I called an audible and read more of the appointed Gospel than was advertized is that amid all the great and grand theological debate in John’s gospel we hear Jesus say: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”5 “I give them eternal life,” he said, “and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”6
Jesus was the shepherd of all those good Swedes and maybe even some of the Norwegians who snuck in when nobody noticed. But Jesus is also the good shepherd of that Hispanic Charismatic congregation.
Jesus is also the good shepherd of our brothers and sisters down the block at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and St. Peter’s Episcopal, and First United Methodist, and Fourth Presbyterian, and Trinity United Church of Christ and all the other churches in between.
And Jesus is proclaiming that all of them, all of us, are “unsnatchable.” “No one will snatch them out of my hand,” he said. They are mine! They belong to me! So do we! And nothing, or no one, can snatch us out of Jesus’ hands.
I must confess to you that church anniversaries have always made me a little nervous if not downright uncomfortable because they tend to be just a celebration of us, what’s going on in our lives, who we are and what we’re doing. They can cause us to believe that we are God’s gift to the world.
What we are doing – educating children, caring for seniors, feeding the hungry, reaching out to the least, the lost, and the lonely is important, but it is only carrying out the work that Christ has called us to do. That is what churches and cathedrals are for.
What we are called to do from this beautiful building, of which a pastor in Bellingham said when I told him I was the interim at Saint Like, “if the Lutheran’s had a cathedral in Chicago, St. Luke would be it.” What we do from this place is to proclaim to any and all who watch and listen, by our words and our deeds, that they are “unsnatchable” from Christ love and his embrace. When we tell people, and show people that they are unsnatchable we are building a cathedral that is open to everyone, everybody.
No one can snatch any of his beloved and hard-won children from Christ’s hands and that should be not only enough good news for this day but for all the days of this church and for all the years to come.
_____________
1. Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth (New York, NY: New American Library, 2007).
2. 2 Samuel 7:2 (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, Publishers, 1971)]
3. 2 Samuel 7:4-7. [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament Palms and Proverbs [Colorado Springs,, CO: NavPress, 1998]]
4. The Parish Directory and History of Nebo Lutheran Church, 1998.
5. St. John10:16. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
6. St. John10. 28. (NRSV)
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