"Things Are Looking UP"
A celebration of the renovated church building.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Text: Colossians 3:1-4; 12-17
It was a beautiful and still moonlit night just a few weeks ago after the atrium had been completed, and I was the last person in the building, with the exception of one of the sextons, and everything was eerily still and quiet. I came out of my office on the third floor and went to the elevator. From that vantage point, you can look down onto the atrium below, and through the glass to the sky above. The moon was bright, and illuminated the whole place, as all the other lights were out. I stood there in awe and contemplation and meditation. Then, I had a flashback: My mind reverted back to the very first day that I ever preached in a church and the very first congregation that I ever served, and I was overwhelmed by the contrast.
You see, the first church that I served was in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. When I went looking for it, I went into a black township called Mecaniscop. I drove up and down the street looking for this church where I was to serve as the new minister, and I couldn't find it anywhere. The streets were all covered in dirt and there were tracks of mud. The fences around the buildings were barbed wire and tin cans.
There, on the street just before me, was a little boy kicking a tin can. The little lad looked at me and he waved and I waved back at him, his bright black eyes gleaming up at me. I rolled down the window and said, “Can you tell me where the Congregational Church is?” The little lad said, “You are the new minister, aren't you?” And I said, “Yeah, how can you tell?” He said, “You have driven past the church probably about 12 times. It is right over there.” I turned around and went back, and sure enough, there was a sign - Livingston Congregational Church.
I got out of my car, and the whole congregation was waiting for me: all the women were seated on the right and all the men were on the left, as was their tradition, and all the deacons sat behind the pulpit. The pews had been donated from a white church that had had a fire, and they were slightly charred. The floor was dirt with flattened cardboard boxes down the aisle. The pulpit was a barrel that was cut in half. I got up to preach in my first church on my first day.
When I had that flashback in the atrium a few weeks ago, I realized something. You know, these places are very alike. After all, they consist of people whom God loves and who love God. They consist of people who come for an encounter with God, and are spiritually hungry. They consist of people who desire forgiveness and reconciliation in their lives. They are made up of people who just want to be loved, but also want to love. They are made up of people who simply want to be there to worship. They are made up of people who want a just and a fair and an equitable world. They are made up of people who make sacrifices for the house of God.
Oh, there are the differences, which I could ponder: different continents, different time zones, different times of the year, different liturgies, different hymns, different languages. We sang “Ngiyajabula ngob' ujes' usus' izano zam” “I am so glad that Jesus took my sins away” in Xhosa, but I have heard those same words sung to the words of Handel in this very sanctuary. There is not much difference. The reason there is not much difference is because the buildings are not the church; the buildings simply house the church.
There was a little girl, who after the blitz in London during World War II, was sitting on a street corner when she was approached by a reporter from the Daily News. The reporter knew that the bombs had destroyed the houses in the neighbourhood in which the girl lived. He came up to her and he put his arms around her and he said, “Isn't it just terrible that you no longer have a home!” The little girl responded, “Sir, we have a home, we just don't have a house in which to put it.” The home of the Lord is the Church, and the Church is the people who believe in the presence of the Lord.
So, I asked myself this question today: if we are rededicating the house of the Lord, what should we do? What should be the focus in this glorious place that may make it a home for people who want to know God?
In the Book of Colossians there is a wonderful line that gives the answer to that question. It simply says, “Set your hearts and set your minds on the things that are above.” Now, to understand that, you have to understand the context in which the Apostle Paul was writing. You see, in Colossae, there was a certain heresy afoot. The earliest Christian community was very free and very easy. It felt liberated from all religious appendices: Somehow, the people felt free to worship God. But, in that freedom, philosophers came along. People who had other ideas attached themselves to Christianity.
There was one particular group that believed in what Paul calls “the elemental spirits of the cosmos” - the “stoicheia.” These elemental forces that exist create what is known as a “celestial hierarchy.” The people, then, the worshippers, are supposed to fit into this hierarchy, but they have to earn their way into this hierarchy: they have to earn the favour of God. It was suggested that they become ascetic: that they banish all attachments to the world. Sometimes, this meant maintaining a proper diet. Well, I know we could all use a proper diet once in a while - it wouldn't do us any harm! But, this was a diet that was restrictive in order to earn the favour of God. The Stoics believed that the relationship that you had with the cosmos, with the forces of nature in the world, was more important than the relationship you had with other human beings and with the social order.
This led to a terrible problem. The people in Colossae felt lonely and intimidated and isolated. They felt that they had to earn God's favour. They felt that they had to do something to be righteous in the eyes of God, and that they had to appease the forces of nature and of the cosmos. But the Apostle Paul said, “No! I want you to stop your striving. As Christians, we believe that the power of Christ's resurrection is in us. We believe that the new life that we have is the life of grace and forgiveness. It is not something to be earned; it is something that is given. It is not something that has to be worked towards; it is something that has to be received. Through our baptisms, believers assert that we have already been accepted by God. We already have the power of eternal life through the resurrection within us. We can stop our striving and be at peace, and know that we are the children of God.” What he meant was, set your hearts and your minds on the things of God. Don't concern yourselves with whether or not you are doing everything that you ought to do to earn God's favour; rather, enjoy God's favour, celebrate, have a sense of peace and focus on the things that really matter in life.
What a wonderful message that is for us today, when we have reached this time of renewal. When we have helped, by God's grace, bring this building to new life, what should we do now? How should we set our hearts and our minds on the things of God? To help us, I use an acronym this morning. It is ACT: If we act in such a way we will respond to the power of the resurrection.
The first part of this ACT is to make sure that our church is Accessible, that it is open, that it is available. Many of the great people in the Bible have understood that the way that we have access to God is through faith. In the Book of Romans, Paul says, “It is by faith that we are made righteous.” In the Book of Ephesians, he says, “We have access to the Father through the power of the one Spirit.” In other words, our access to God has already been given to us in the person of Jesus Christ. We don't need to strive towards it. But, does it not follow, my friends, that we who believe this to be true should ensure that our churches are then accessible to others? Do we not then reflect the openness, the grace, the generosity of our God by the way that we open up our building and open up our lives to the other? I think we do.
This past summer, Marial and I returned to a town where I had grown up, to Darlington. It was the very first time for Marial and the first time I had been back in 30 years. I went to a department store that our family used to frequent, called Binns. I walked into Binns and I had a flashback, just like I had the flashback in the atrium. My mind spun back thirty-odd years to one time when I took my grandmother shopping at Binns. Now, my grandmother (she is dead so I can say this) was a little overweight; and like all members of my family, just a little bulky.
My grandmother was 82 years old and had a heavy coat on and a fur cap and mitts and gloves and a handbag, which doubled her weight. Just as you walk into the store there is an escalator, and my grandmother wanted “Ladies Apparel” on the second floor, so she got on the escalator and I got on right behind her. My dear grandmother, because of her trifocals and the fact that she was in a hurry, did not stand on the step, but on the crack of the step of the escalator. As we started to move up, Grandmother began to move back.
Picture this: a 15-year-old boy holding up an extremely heavy grandmother as we go up the escalator. Grandmother is crying blue murder, my mother is in tears at the bottom, my father is screaming at me at the top and I am trying to hold on to Granny for dear life. We get to the top, and I have to give her a little push to get her upright again. Grandmother flies forward, does a forward roll, and lands flat on her back. She gets up, dusts herself off and says, “Dear, where is the lingerie department?” We know why she needed it! Whenever my grandmother got cocky for years later, we reminded her of that moment and of the loving presence of her grandson.
Sometimes, on our way up, we need a little help. Sometimes, when we try to make our church accessible, we need to give a little help, and you have gone a long way in helping those who need it, those in our midst who have needed a hand and a help up. There are those in wheelchairs and in walkers; those with little children in strollers; those who come to the food bank and find it difficult to get to the Dunvegan level; those who come for the Handicapable ministry with the help of their guides and their walkers and their wheelchairs. There are those who come who are elderly and tired, and you have given them a hand up: You have made the church accessible; you have opened the door.
You have opened the door in such a way that it might enable people to worship God, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and to enjoy the fellowship of the Body of Christ. You have made this a home, and not just a house.
This must also be a place of Compassion. The philosophers did a lot of talking. The Stoics wanted everyone to have a sense of self-sufficiency: we are to be an “atakeia” to use their term. The Epicureans wanted us to be self-sufficient, but also to be impassive: they called it “ataraxia.” That was their idea of goodness - the highest, the best. But not the Apostle Paul! He says that it is love and it is compassion. As God's chosen ones, he wrote that Christians should clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other just as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
There is no house of God, if there is no compassion. It is the most powerful thing. Compassion is not just about how we treat the world. It is not just about acts of justice or kindness. Sometimes it is about what goes on amongst ourselves in this place that we call the house of the Lord.
After the Gulf War, a young soldier came home to the United States and he phoned his mother. She was hosting a big party and had all her friends over and they were all getting drunk and having a good time and having lots of food. In this very wealthy part of Boston, Massachusetts, they were whooping it up. The son was on the other end of the phone: He was home and he was calling from Virginia. He said, “Mother, I have a friend whom I would like to bring home with me tonight. Is that okay?” The mother said, “Yes, dear, that's fine. Welcome home.” The son said, “Mother, he has lost a leg and he has lost an arm and he has lost an eye and his face is disfigured from a burn.” She said, “That's all right, dear. You bring him home.”
Then, he said to his mother, “But, Mother, I was not just planning to bring him home tonight. I was bringing him home to come and stay with us and live with us.” Suddenly, she changed her mind. She was embarrassed. What would all her friend think? A man with a burnt face and one eye and without one arm and without one leg - she could never have that! That is not how society lives! It could not be seen. It was unseemly. Her son hung up the phone. Within a few hours, there was another phone call, this time from the Virginia state police. They had found a man who had shot himself: He had one leg, one arm, one eye and a burnt face. They told her that they were calling her because his identification told them that he was her son.
Sometimes, my friends, the people who are in need are right here within our walls. They are members of our household, our home, and there is a need for compassion and love and support for the wounded bodies and souls in our midst. If we have done anything in opening up this house, we have opened it up to be a compassionate place, where the wounded amongst us can still gather. The wounds are not just to the body; sometimes they are to the soul and the mind and the spirit, but still the house is open, and still it says, “Come. In this house, you are welcome!”
Paul went on to one last thing in his Thanksgiving. Paul wrote: “In whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” At the heart of everything we do today should be this sense of thanksgiving. We have been blessed in this church. We have been blessed in this congregation. Through dedication, through hard work, through sacrifice, through people giving of themselves, we have a magnificent house in which to have a welcoming and a beautiful home.
If you have done the Bethel Study, which is so much part of the life of our ministry - and as I look out I see many of you who teach Bethel and participate in Bethel - there is one line you cannot forget, and it is that we have been blessed, but to be a blessing: to take what Christ has given us and to use it for the other, for that is true thanksgiving. Not just to say “Amen” and “Alleluia,” but to say, “Lord, use us that we may be instruments of your love.”
Thinking this week of all the controversy about race that has reared its ugly head again in the world, I think of the words of Martin Luther King in one of the most beautiful sermons that I have ever read. If these are not words for us to live by, I don't know what are! “So, I say to you, seek God and discover him and make him a power in your life. Without him all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest night. Without him, life is a meaningless drama with the decisive scenes missing. But with him, we are able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. With him, we are able to rise from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy. St. Augustine was right: we were made for God and we will be restless until we find our rest in him. Love yourself, if that means rational, healthy and moral self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbour as you love yourself: you are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget, there is a first and even greater commandment: Love the Lord your God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind. This is the height of life. When you do this, you live the complete life.”
My friends, things are looking up! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.