Faith for the Future: Sanctuary
| John Wilkinson |
Third Presbyterian Church |
| April 13, 2008 |
Psalm 23 |
Our capital campaign, “Faith for the Future,” is
off to a rousing start. If you’ve been visited –
thank you for your prayerful consideration. If you’ve
done the visiting – thank you for your commitment. Rather
than seeking to make the case on continuing Sundays, what I
would invite us into now is a kind of “loose” series
of conversations, less on the campaign proper, but on the vision
and values that have given it shape.
***
Kathleen Norris has written that the only language one should
ever read the Psalms in is the King James Version. She may have
a point, but not an airtight one. We’ve done that already
this morning, through our call to worship, and we will hear
other versions musically before we head home this morning. What
I would propose is another translation, one among many, aside
from the New Standard Revised Version that we read each Sunday.
From the New Jerusalem Bible…
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing./In grassy meadows
he lets me lie.
By tranquil streams he leads me to restore my spirit./He guides
me in paths of saving justice as befits his name.
Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should
fear no danger, for you are at my side./Your staff and your
crook are there to soothe me.
You prepare a table for me under the eyes of my enemies;/
You anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over.
Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life./
I make my home in the house of God for all time to come.
***
If we were to play a little word association, what would be
the first thing to come into your mind if I were to say the
word “church?” For me, there would be several answers.
>The Worthington Presbyterian Church in Ohio, and its 1950s
colonial structure, that served as the place where my teenage
faith was nurtured.
>The St. James Presbyterian Church on the North Side of
Chicago, that welcomed me as a baby minister, hosted our wedding
and a family baptism. That church, by the way, built by German
immigrants, broke ground on its current building in October
1929, just days before the great stock market crash. They finished
the construction and paid everything off on time.
>Or I think of the Central Presbyterian Church in Zanesville,
Ohio, the closest thing I have to a childhood church. It was
a huge red sandstone building. I remember one time when it got
sandblasted; it left much of downtown Zanesville covered in
light pink dust. I went through grade school as a part of that
community. I remember a big sanctuary, similar to this one.
I remember choir directors, Sunday school teachers, a paternal
sermon or two. But what I remember most is being welcomed there,
of that place feeling like home.
I’ve visited all kinds of churches – it is part
of my pathology, as my family would attest. Big cathedrals.
Little storefronts. Brand spanking new suburban palaces and
crumbling inner-city ... whatever the opposite of palace is.
Despite differences in their appearances, their styles, their
demographics, their theological leanings – what strikes
me always, and why I love the church, is the way that they can
feel like home. Not every one, and not all the time. In fact,
church has often felt to some like anything but home.
But you know what I mean, and you know it when you experience
it. A welcoming place. A hospitable place. Home. A sanctuary.
Not a sanctuary as the formal place where worship is conducted,
though that is part of it. But sanctuary as a holy place, a
sacred space, a space for grace, that opens its doors and welcomes
us, no matter who we are. That is church at its best and most
faithful.
This fourth Sunday after Easter is the Sunday when the lectionary
draws us to the image of the shepherd, most directly through
Psalm 23. As I’ve said, we will hear and experience it
in more ways than one this morning.
The theologian Joseph Sittler writes: “Is there anything
new anyone can say about Psalm 23?” Walter Brueggemann
says that “it is almost pretentious to comment on this
psalm. The grip it has on biblical spirituality is deep and
genuine. It is such a simple statement that it can bear its
own witness without comment.” (The Message of the
Psalms, page 154)
We could study its curious shift. You would notice that halfway
through, the psalm goes from speaking about God to speaking
to God and then back again. No scholar, finally, is ever sure
about what is happening there.
Or we could talk about the metaphor – sheep and shepherd.
We may do that sometime again.
But what most compels me is this, a treatment of that last
section: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.”
It is, as Brueggemann writes, “God’s companionship
that transforms every situation.” (Page 156) Being spiritually
hungry, being spiritually lost. “The end of forlornness,”
Brueggemann writes, “is access to the temple, where life
is ordered anew.”
The psalmist is not saying that the temple is God, no more
than we are saying that the church is the only place where one
encounters God, God’s sole location of relationship and
experience. Not at all. But what these well-known words insist,
and what it worth considering, is how the church is the proxy
for God’s companionship, the place where people come and
are welcomed, where hospitality is shared, because God welcomes,
because God is hospitable.
It is the place, contrary to our culture, our social processes,
our competing life experiences, where everybody knows your name,
truly, where you are known and loved and welcomed in.
I am mindful of painting an idyllic picture, and I do not mean
to do so. We know that the church is an imperfect institution
made up of imperfect people. But we also know that when it lives
into its calling, it can be a provisional demonstration of God’s
welcome to us, God’s hospitality.
That’s one of the arguments I make about the Presbyterian
Church and human sexuality. Not only is our current belief and
practice unfair and unjust to individuals, but it prevents the
church from living fully into its vision of welcome and inclusion.
The church, as a kind of good shepherd, is called to open doors,
to set aside differences, to reflect forgiveness. It is the
place where, as the old hymn suggests, “We share each
other's woes,/ Our mutual burdens bear;/ And often for each
other flows / The sympathizing tear.”
As you might guess, I’ve been thinking about the church
quite a bit recently. It’s been more than scrutinizing
architect’s drawings and poring over financial information.
I’ve thought about who we are, and who we are called to
be.
In the news, the church has been front page. I’ve followed
with interest and some disappointment the coverage of Jeremiah
Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s
south side. What the reports have failed to do, along with hammering
home the same 20-second sound bite time after time after time,
is look at Trinity as a community, a collection of several thousand
African-American followers of Jesus, to gauge their experience,
to discern what about that place attracts them, and at a more
fundamental level, what welcomes them home in an inhospitable
world.
I will watch with interest as Pope Benedict makes his first
papal visit to the U.S. I will pay attention to the headlines,
the talk of doctrine and the like. But what the reporters will
generally be unable to grasp is the experience for the flock,
the thousands and millions who call the Roman Catholic Church
in the United States, despite all of its foibles, home.
And what any sermon, and conversation is unable to do, is to
look deeply into your own spirit, and mine, and fully understand
the experience of hospitality that draws your heart here, and
mine.
This past week, I drove up Goodman Street on the way to Rochester
General Hospital. I must have passed 20 churches. Each different.
Some big. Some small. Some might have not been my cup of tea
because of style; some because of belief. And they might say
the same about us.
But I know that for those who show up, each place is a place
for welcoming and hospitality, where babies are born and adopted
and baptized, where partners are partnered, where brokenness
is tended to, where spirits are nurtured, where people die and
are remembered.
That’s the church we hear about in the book of Acts.
It welcomes. It prays. It eats. It cares for one another, in
the face of physical and emotional and spiritual hardship.
Speaking of the great stock market crash, I pulled the Third
Church worship bulletin from the archives for November 3, 1929.
What was happening in the sanctuary, this welcoming place of
hospitality, on that fateful Sunday?
Anthems were sung. Scripture was read. Hymns shared. A sermon
preached. Sunday school happened, along with several adult classes.
That evening, young people met – a “Pioneer Vesper
Club” for junior high, and a “Fireside Forum”
where “real problems are discussed in a vital way”
for “thoughtful young people” 20-30 years. Included
in the evening’s events was supper for 25 cents! Boy Scouts
and Girl Scouts met. A midweek ballroom dancing class was held.
Rummage sale preparations were being made. Tickets to an Armistice
Day luncheon were available. The morning service was broadcast
on WHAM radio.
And I looked over this morning’s bulletin, nearly 80
years later. You could look at it as the same old thing, minus
the ballroom dancing and 25 cent meal! Or, you could look at
it as this sacred space, this place for grace, this sanctuary,
this house of the Lord, seeking to do what it does best, and
does well every once in a while, seeking to do what it is called
to do. Like a shepherd, to welcome sheep in and to provide a
place, a welcoming place of hospitality, that is a faint reflection,
but a reflection nonetheless, of God’s radical and inclusive
welcoming of all of us.
Faith for the future, faith for the past and present as well.
And faith for every moment, the goodness and mercy that follows
us, always. Amen.
