Bricks and mortar
November 18, 2018 - Commitment Sunday
The message this morning was in two parts: the Finance Committee shared a skit and I followed it with an extended invitation to the offering.
Setting the stage:
Narrator: Two parishioners are discussing a community pot-luck dinner to be held collectively by several area churches. They are excited about the prospect of visiting a large church which is hosting the event - the two have never been inside and wonder what the building is like. They are heading there together.
Gladys: Mildred, what did you bring for the pot luck dinner at the Centre Street UCC?
Mildred: Well, there wasn’t a sign-up sheet like we have in our church. I thought perhaps a chicken casserole would be good. How about you, Gladys?
Gladys: I brought some pumpkin bars – seems the like the time of year to have some pumpkin.
Mildred: Without a sign-up sheet we could end up with a bunch of crock pots full of chili! Best not to think about “beans, beans the musical fruit…” Hee, hee!
Okay, we are almost there.
Gladys: Wow, what a big church it is! Look at those stained glass windows! I wonder how many members there are. I bet they don’t have any problems recruiting folks for the choir. Let’s go around to the back, Mildred - information on the flyer said the back door near the kitchen would be open.
Mildred: Hope we’ll see some folks from their church who might show us around before the event gets underway.
Gary: Hello, ladies, welcome! My name is Gary – some of us from our facilities group will be setting up for the dinner. Would you like a quick tour?
Mildred and Gladys: Yes, please!
Mildred: Tell us all about your church…must be wonderful to hear hymns being played on that big pipe organ.
Gary: Well, we’re glad to have the pipe organ working again – took a long time to raise the money to get it fixed. There was damage to the ceiling area above the organ. Believe it or not we had actual bats in the belfry – made a terrible mess.
Gladys: Look at that beautiful carpet down the center aisle. Imagine having a center aisle.
Gary: Carpet was just replaced because we had floorboards that were soft from some plumbing issues underneath that area.
Mildred: The wood on those pews must be oak – look at the grain!
Gary: The facilities group hired a contractor recently to remove some of the pews to accommodate wheelchairs – there wasn’t enough room for them to maneuver.
Gladys: Best to get back to the kitchen now – it is getting late. Thank you so much for the tour, Gary.
Narrator: As the two parishioners are setting up for the potluck dinner, they look out and see a homeless person on the corner and invite them in. They decline but they thank Mildred and Gladys for their kindness. After the gathering, Gladys and Mildred give them a bag with some water and a plate from the potluck buffet.
Mildred: You know, Gladys, after getting that tour and hearing about some of the problems they’ve had to wrestle with, makes you feel different about a great big church. Perhaps it is not so much about the bricks and mortar that matters, but how we live our lives after leaving the building that is important.
The End
When Jesus said to his disciples that
not one stone would be left upon another, that all would be thrown down, the
temple was already rubble, the city of Jerusalem in ruins. The gospel of Mark was written around the
year 70 CE, when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans and the Second Temple was
destroyed. The First Temple, built by
King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Second Temple, built by groups of Jews
returning from exile, stood on the Temple Mount from 516 BCE until its
destruction in 70 CE.
During the reign
of King Herod the Great (the one that ordered the death of all boys under the
age of two around the time when Jesus was born), the temple was expanded and
completely refurbished into something that would have indeed inspired awe but
also deep disgust. Opulence comes not
only from wealth but from the exploitation of the poor.
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| Our Savior Lutheran Church, Paradise, CA |
Mark’s
proximate readers would have known all this.
And so through a conflation of history with Jesus’ teaching, we have a
parable of sorts, a wisdom story. We too
are awed by great buildings and structures.
We too appreciate the accumulation of wealth because of what it can
do. I had the good fortune to visit the
cathedral in Mainz, Germany. It was
begun in 976 CE and was added onto and renovated over the next thousand
years. It survived WWI and multiple
bombing raids in WWII. And yet in Syria,
ancient cities such as Damascus and Aleppo are in ruins. Not to mention the devastating forest fires
in California destroying homes and communities and lives.
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| Damascus, Syria |
We’ve
seen the devastation to human lives in the systems, structures, and
institutions we created. We are also witnessing
structural and institutional change all around us. The hope for every generation is that world
we live in is not the one in which we were born. Just as walls and barriers to justice and
access and acceptance are coming down, for some not nearly fast enough, there
are some who are furiously trying to keep them in place. Systems built with evil intent, that effect
evil in human lives, and the life of this planet, must come down. And unfortunately the Church has played a
part in perpetrating evil in human lives and in the life of this planet.
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| The Great Mosque of Aleppo |
When
we pledge, when we make a commitment to the church, we are invited to be
mindful that we are making a commitment not to a building or an institution or
even a religion or denomination but what those things stand for.
Yesterday
at the meeting of the Central Atlantic Conference to call Rev. Freeman Palmer
as our next Conference Minister, in his enthusiasm for the United Church of
Christ, Freeman said that he wanted the UCC to take over the world. I’m not sure I want that to happen but I think
what he meant was, I want peace to take over the world. I want justice to take over the world. I want kindness and compassion to take over
the world. I want safety in public space
for everyone to take over the world. I
want dignity and respect to take over. I
want forgiveness and responsibility to take over. I want equality to take over. I want everyone to have enough to take
over. I want unconditional love to take
over the world.
Not
everyone has to be Christian or believe in God for this to happen. But we do have to choose. I believe that when we pledge to the ministry
of the United Church of Christ and to the New Ark, when we make a commitment as
a member of the church, we are making a choice:
the choice that what was—oppression, exploitation, abuse, and everything
that goes with them—must go and that the new—freedom, wholeness, unity—will not
come unless we work for them, give toward them, believe in them, and live into
them.
Today
I invite you to make that choice and to worship God, to make an offering with
that choice.
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