This Old Church

Note:  Matthew preached this sermon on All-Saints' Sunday at the historic landmark church, St. Paul's Episcopal in Jackson, Michigan. Fr. Larry Walters is the rector there.

All Saints' Sunday
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Jackson, Michigan
November 3, 2002


We are here, as we often say on All-Saints Day, to sing the praises of famous, and not so famous, and downright obscure men and women.  Those who have inherited the glory and the majesty of the Kingdom of God.  The saints, living among us; the saints, hovering around us, who have found their place in heaven and inspire us to follow their examples.

 Last Tuesday, my wife Rose and I came out to meet Fr. Larry. He took us on a tour of the church -- this wonderful old building; this gift from previous generations; a gift handed down to us from something like what, the great-grandparents of our grandparents?     Those were people whose work ethic would put most of us to shame -- pioneers and farmers and railroad men and store-keepers and seamstresses -- people who knew what to do with their hands; people who could carve stone and cast iron and blow glass; and who cared enough to invest their hard-won fortunes into the creation of this magnificent structure.         They don't make buldings like this anymore.  Sometimes I wonder if it's because they don't make people like that anymore either.

Fr. Larry took us into the parish hall; he showed us the damage to the foundation that's being caused by the constant flow of water at the base; he showed us how that massive stone building is literally tilting as the foundation wears away.  Fr. Larry also took us into the chapel and showed us the priceless stained-glass being restored, and I was moved by how hard you are working to preserve and restore this gift you have inherited.    I stared at the stained glass and remembered a little girl, twenty years ago on All Saints Day; her Sunday School teacher asked her, "Sarah, what is a saint?"  And she pointed to one of the stained glass images in the church and said, "Oh, the saints?  They're the people that the light shines through."

And then I looked up at this ceiling, and wondered how heavy it is.  This is the kind of building that invites us to pause and reflect on the sheer tonnage of our inheritance -- not just this church, St. Paul's, Jackson; but the whole heavy weight of Christianity; the whole constellation of stone cathedrals and basilicas and parishes throughout the world.  I found myself wondering how much do they weigh, all combined?

All that weight.  All those churches in the world like this one, built by generations past, handed down to us as a gift, and I imagine it must also sometimes feel like a heavy burden.  Because it's not really these pillars and walls that keep this ceiling from collapsing; it's all of you, with your pledges of time and treasure and labor and sweat; you are the pillars of this church; without the faith and commitment of the people in these pews this place would have fallen down years ago; and I imagine that must like a pretty heavy burden to bear sometimes.

Isn't it ironic -- that this building was built by people who were thinking of nothing but the future; who were so driven by a dream of future generations -- us -- worshiping and praising God in this building that they gave freely of their time and their wealth to create it; and yet for us -- those future generations they dreamed of -- this building functions in so many ways to keep us mindful of and tied to the past?

For our ancestors this building drew them into the future; and yet for us, this building draws us into the past.

This building is a touchstone between the past and the present; it connects us to our ancestors and our ancestors to us; in a very real way it allows our ancestors to reach right into this present moment, 150 years after they have died; just as it gives us the ability to reach back to their time, and honor them.

But if that is all it is, of course, if all that this building accomplishes is get us in touch with our past, then this building fails as a church.     Last summer my music director and I went to France to do some research on a project we're working on and we visited a lot of old churches that have become more museums and tourist attractions than living houses of worship; these are churches that are dedicated to preserving the memory of days gone by, but are doing nothing to express a living faith, failing to create fresh expressions of what it's like to be a Christian today; failing to use the very best of today's art and music and literature to proclaim the gospel for present moment, just as their ancestors did.

In too many of those European churches the sad impression one gets is that Christianity is an obsolete religion; only relevant to previous generations; having nothing to say to the present except that it was better back in the day.

When you talk to a lot of young people in college these days, you'd think they were living in Europe.  For so many young people, Christianity is a relic from a bygone era.  And we need to answer the question: what do we do about that?

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, complained that the "world has become a museum".  Certainly in Europe, and more and more in the United States, Christianity has become a museum; more dedicated to preserving the past than living into the future.   The question that we must answer is this: what are we doing to honor not just our past, but our future?  Yes, of course you are called to save this treasure of a building from becoming a ruin; there is no question about that: as Christians we make a vow to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship and that means honoring and preserving our past; but it also means honoring our future; taking steps so that our children will come to love God just as much as our ancestors did; so that the fellowship of saints doesn't end with us.

This is what we're trying to do at Canterbury House; and that is what Fr. Larry doing here at St. Paul's; he showed me the lounge that you've created for the youth group, with its brand new sofas and very nice TV and stereo.  That's honoring the future.  Treating young people as important parts of your community.  Baptizing your children -- that's a critical element to honoring your future.  But taking seriously the spiritual lives of your teenagers and young adults -- that's equally important -- because that's when we lose them.

Jesus understood this.  The religion of his time felt like a museum to many of his people; a burden to be endured, full of laws and traditions and rules of the past that felt repressive rather than liberating.  Jesus saw that their faith was a matter of obedience to the past rather than a living response to the realm of God breaking in right now.  But Jesus also knew something about the power of God, a God that breaks through time and history and defeats the power of death with life everlasting.

So confident was Jesus about this that he actually marched right into the ancient Temple, that treasure of the past, and declared God's power to destroy the Temple and raise it again, completely renewed and restored, in 3 days.

The Historic Preservation Society of Jerusalem didn't much like that kind of talk.  In his defense the Bible says he was only speaking metaphorically, about his body, not about the Temple per se. But to the Historic Preservationists of his time, them was fighting words, he was talking about tearing down the Temple!  And that's all they heard -- the tearing down part; they never heard the raise it back up part; they didn't get his point, which is that there is a resurrection; there is a raising up; there is a new day being born, a new creation breaking through.  They didn't get the resurrection part; they could only get the tearing down part.  And so they made him pay.

Again and again Jesus is calling us to honor the past, but not get consumed by it; Let the dead bury the dead; the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume.  Again and again Jesus calls us to turn our face to the future; embrace the Kingdom of God breaking in right now, and join him as people of the resurrection.     You know what I'm talking about when I talk about resurrection people, right?  You know them -- they're all around us. It's as if they have a kind of anti-gravity device inside them; they have a kind of helium inside them; they have a tendency to raise things up; they raise our spirits; they raise money for good causes; and on Sunday mornings when they get together, when they raise their hearts to God, they can raise the roof.  It is resurrection people who are the saints of God; they are the ones that the light shines through; they are the ones depicted on this stained glass.  It was resurrection people who raised up this wonderful building; and it's resurrection people who are keeping this building from falling down.  They are practical visionaries; they are realistic dreamers who get caught up in a vision of what God would have us do and they make it happen.  Their names are inscribed on the walls and on the stained glass; they are the saints of this parish.

You are resurrection people; for you this building is not a burden because you have this anti-gravity device inside you; you know that as long as your faith is alive; as long as your heart belongs to Jesus and you trust is in the power of the resurrection there is nothing in this world that can bring you down; as St. Paul himself said, "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The saints of this church know this; they don't just believe it they know it and they trust it; they live it; they are joined in a communion of saints hovering among us right now; they are here, in the rafters and in the cross beams, praising God for the faith of this church.  They are in the air; they are gathering above the baptismal font -- can you see them -- waiting to receive into their fellowship the people who will be baptized today; they are gathering above this altar of God, which stands as a doorway to the beyond, where we will soon gather to receive the sacred elements of Christ.  To be in the presence of this altar, in the sanctuary of this place, is to stand with one foot in this world, and the other foot in the infinite realm of eternity, where angels come and go; where saints converse with mortals; where prayers are offered and blessings are received.  Praise God, on this All Saints' Day, that we have this legacy, this sacred place; and pray to God that with the gift of his resurrection power, we will pass along this gift to future generations: not just the gift of a building; but the gift of faith in the resurrection into new life

We are trav'ling in the footsteps
Of those who've gone before
And we'll all be reunited,
On a new and sunlit shore

AMEN.

The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology