2017-08-28
Brooke Strong
Scripture: MATTHEW 16:13-20
Rejoice & Renew Commitment Sunday
On Wednesday evening, Mary and I went with some friends to the Indians-Red Sox baseball game. Not a good game. The Indians lost decisively. But we had great fun being there on a beautiful night. As it happened, it was Terry Francona bobble head doll night, and I had hoped to get my very first bobble head doll! Unfortunately, by the time we got there, they had all been distributed. An inning or two into the game, I suddenly realized, and said aloud, that I hadn’t actually seen a single doll. Just as I said that, I turned around and noticed a box which had a doll in it. The woman behind us heard me say that and she said, “Here, take this one. We have three and we certainly don’t need them all.” And she handed me one of her bobble heads. So, on a losing night, with friendship and a gift, a little grace came my way. Right there at Progressive Field.
Progressive Field, the Q, and FirstEnergy Stadium are the site of special events here in Northeast Ohio. So are countless school athletic fields and auditoriums. And they’re remarkable facilities. They allow us to gather and share in a thrilling experience—well, not so thrilling on Wednesday evening, but generally an exciting event.
And all these sporting events need a place for them to happen. There would be no games were there not fields and arenas in which they could be played. And for the experience to be a good one, those sites have to be maintained and freshened up regularly. The sites themselves matter.
The same is true for the arts. Severance Hall is crucial for the Cleveland Orchestra, and the music is enhanced by the splendor of the architecture. The Cleveland Museum of Art provides a space for, and hugely complements, the art that hangs there. The museum atrium sets the stage for everything you see when you go there. These buildings matter.
The same is true also for us as families. All of us have a home of some sort. It may be a big house in the suburbs, or an apartment in a retirement community, or a condo in a nearby neighborhood. We go home to kitchens and living rooms and dens and bedrooms and garages that make our lives easier and more fun. Our houses matter.
And we accept all that as necessary in those areas of our lives. Not too many people would argue that we don’t need sporting arenas or arts venues or homes. Places to live and recreate and gather are fundamental to us. We prize them. And generally we work hard at keeping them up.
And what of our churches? Strangely, there is sometime a sentiment that church buildings are unimportant. Here’s what’s said: The real work of church happens outside its doors. The real work of church is to serve and make a difference. It’s frivolous, so goes this way of thinking, to put resources into a building when people are starving and hurting and dying. Let’s put as little as we can into the building, or even get rid of it, so we can put as much as we can into what’s said to be the real work of the church.
And there is much to this way of thinking. A church that doesn’t have a strong sense of mission has lost its moorings. A church that sits around and gazes at its navel has foreclosed on living out the gospel mandate. A mere pretty palace would be but a soul-less shell. We dare never forget that we are sent to those who are hungry and displaced and aching, to be vessels of God’s love. This is central to what it means to follow Jesus.
That said, though, it does not at all follow that we should treat our buildings shabbily. It’s easy to forget just how crucial having a building is. This structure isn’t just fluff. It’s a vital cog in the ministry we seek to embody. Without this place, we would likely have no ministry. Without this structure, we wouldn’t gather to hear God’s word of comfort and challenge. Without this facility, we would likely spend our Sunday mornings in our little personal ghettos, reading the news or catching up on social media or puttering around the house. Without this spiritual home, we would lose our sense of community. This building matters—greatly.
As Matthew tells the story of Jesus, there comes a point when Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is. And then he asks them who they think he is. Simon replies that Jesus is the Messiah, “the Child of the living God.” Then Jesus says something curious. Because Simon has gotten it right, Jesus says to him, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (16:18). Jesus essentially renames Simon. In a little wordplay, he says from now on Simon will be known as “Rock.” That’s the literal meaning of the name Jesus gives him, “Cephas,” in Aramaic, and “Petros” in Greek (from which we get our word “petrified”). Jesus renames Simon as “Rock.” And it’s not as though Jesus is giving Simon a popular existing name, as it is in our culture. This is the first time in recorded history that someone has been named “Rock.”
And of course Jesus doesn’t mean literally that church buildings are going to be built on top of the body of a rock-like Peter. Jesus means primarily that the church will continue and strengthen, building on the work and presence of this faithful disciple.
I don’t think it’s an accident, though, that Jesus uses these very physical images for the church. It will be “built,” says Jesus, on a “rock.” There is something solid and tactile and spatial about Jesus’ choice of words. I suspect he knew people would need spaces in which to gather, that they would need structures in which they could come together to hear the Word of God and be strengthened and uplifted and sent forth.
We sometimes forget that this building isn’t just a peripheral and unimportant space for ministry. The building is, itself, a ministry. My UCC clergy colleague, Donna Schaper, in a really superb paper she wrote about just this subject, says that in many ways we have forgotten the connection between spirit and body. Spirit is not just an abstract, ethereal, disembodied entity. Spirit is always in bodies. True spirit is deeply connected to matter, to stuff, to locations.
Why, asks my colleague and friend Donna, “do we even bother to cling to these sacred spaces? We bother because of powerful allegiance to our spiritual yearnings, some of which find a home in beautiful and not so beautiful buildings. We bother because of God. We bother because of community and its gathering and homing instinct. We bother because of place and our love of place. We bother because we need a home for our better selves. We bother for the fun of singing. We bother for the fun of eating. We bother for the fun of gathering or bringing in the sheaves. We gather for the bread and wine and its remembrance of Jesus’ body. We gather for the baptismal water for the children. We gather for the wedding rings and their circle” (“Bricks and Mortals: Sacred Space as Real Estate and Real Estate as Sacred Space,” p. 2).
“All of these reasons,” she says, “land us on a piece of land where we lay a foundation, decide on materials, build a roof and sometimes point a steeple to the sky, to acknowledge that we want to know something about heaven. The soul finds a body and lives in it and worships in it” (p. 2). “People need a space and a place in which to worship” (p. 3).
“My goal,” says Donna, “is to mend the broken link between sacred space and real estate, the gap between bricks and mortals. I want to create more spiritual leisure about our buildings. I want to restore joy to the sanctuary and unburden it of financial anxiety. There is a great story about the Spanish artist Gaudi and his benefactor. Gaudi was constantly overspending his budgets and making his [incredibly enormous and ornate] cathedral in Barcelona, The Sagrada Familia, more extravagant. He would go to his benefactor and ask for more money. [And most of us can imagine the likely hedging and resistance that would come from the benefactor.] The benefactor [though,] would say [to Gaudi], ‘That’s all you want? Why so little?’ That attitude of generosity, extravagance, even Godliness is what is missing from our disembodied, dispirited buildings today. I write to restore the fun to it—and to ask, ‘Why don’t we ask for more?’ (p. 4).
So often, she says, the problem is our false sense of scarcity. ‘There’s only so much to go around,’ we fearfully think, so we have to give that limited little bit to what’s most valuable. I’m going to say it again: our mission to the wider world is our reason for being. But our buildings are crucial to that mission. And there’s no need to ask which one we should support. We at Federated have the means. We can support both, and do so joyfully and energetically and with extravagant generosity.
Here’s the question Donna Schaper, a deeply committed social activist, asks: “Why did the progressive Christian churches of my lifetime fight nightly over the buildings budget and the missions budget? Are they really in opposition to each other? Are the buildings really unnecessary baggage? Could they bring us the excitement . . . of fresh flowers, or pressed altar cloths, of all the joy in the reasons we build them in the first place? What happened to the aesthetic of place and space? . . . Is there not spiritual joy in de-dowdyization of once spiritually rich places?” (pp. 4-5).
She says she wants church buildings to “be beautiful and useful cradles for the human spirit” (p. 5). This is where we come to be nurtured. This is where we come to be strengthened. This is where we are reminded, week after week, who and whose we are. We hear scriptural stories that remind us we are so much more than our accomplishments; stories that remind us that we are forgiven even our most grievous faults; stories that remind us that there is hope even when all seems lost and we feel as though we’re at death’s door. This is where we come to remember that God has bathed us in blessing, and because of that we can leave here every Sunday to joyfully spread that love to this broken, hurting world.
Donna remembers a quarrel she had once with one of her wealthier parishioners. “She wanted to put a carillon in the steeple. I wanted her to fund the homeless shelter in the building, which housed 150-plus people a night. She refused. The carillon went in. It cost $10,000. The first night it played at 5 p.m. At 5:15, I ran into my neighbor who was the executive director of the Methadone clinic next door. She had tears in her eyes. I asked why. She said, ‘The music is so beautiful. It pierces the sky. It is going to help me get through the day.’ Houses of worship help people of all kinds get through their day. Often we do it by feeding them spiritually. Sometimes we do it by feeding them physically. There is very little reason not to do both.”
And Donna, extremely active herself in inner-city ministries, says, “I was wrong in my approach to her gift. I was doing the ‘spirit good/money bad’ thing that so many social activists have done so long.” But here’s the thing: “If people are not spiritually filled, they won’t be able to do the good that they want to do. . . . I was also working out of a false sense of scarcity, . . . I thought there was only $10,000 in the whole world. That is fundamentally not true. When we move into the apartment of scarcity, even our closets close in on themselves. When we move into the cathedral of abundance, doors and windows open—and resources flow in. Sacred sites need real estate and can afford it. Real estate needs holiness and can’t afford to go without it. . . . Sacred sites and real estate are the same place, living nested together. They are only separated by people who forget their fundamental unity” (pp. 7-8).
So why all this about buildings today, about the church of Jesus Christ built on Peter the Rock? Because today we are celebrating Commitment Sunday in our Rejoice and Renew capital campaign. After worship, downstairs in Fellowship Hall, you have the chance to join generous church leaders in giving extravagantly to the maintenance and beautifying of these magnificent facilities. Your gift will enable us to continue to gather to hear God’s word of grace and hope. Your gift will enable children and families and elders to be nurtured in a faith that transforms the world. Your gift will remind the larger community that here something holy and beautiful happens, and that they are invited to join it. So today let’s remember just how crucial this wonderful space is, and ask ourselves that fabulous question asked by Gaudi’s benefactor: why don’t we ask for more? Let’s join each other in giving generously, that together we might “Rejoice and Renew,” and in all things give thanks to God.