AU United Methodist Community

Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
May 1, 2011—Senior Farewell Sunday
Psalm 118:1, 19-24; 1 Corinthians 3:10-17; Luke 6:46-49

Psalm 118:1, 19–24 • O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his steadfast love endures forever!
Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD;
the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is the LORD’S doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

1 Corinthians 3:10–17 • According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Luke 6:46–49 • “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.”

I. BEGINNING

A year goes by fast, doesn’t it?

Does it not seem that it was just August? Wasn’t I just giving the whole “Welcome to college, freshmen” sermon?  Didn’t we just have Methodist Heritage Week?  Wasn’t the Hypothetical Christmas Party just the other day?  Didn’t we just get back from spring break?  How has it already been a week since Easter?

The older I get, the faster time goes.  I suppose that’s just a basic function of math: each year is a progressively smaller percentage of the whole and so they seem to go by quicker.  When I was two, a year was half my life.  Now it barely clocks in at a measly 2.4%.  Statistically insignificant. Within the margin of error.

And so, I find myself thinking about the impermanence of things.  I note how quickly the time goes.  How fast the brief window we here in Washington refer to as “spring” seems to yield to hazy, hot, and humid summers. I watch the different administrations and congresses come and go.  The various coaches of the Washington football team come and go.  The world is in an ever-present cycle of change.

I know that that’s disconcerting.  I merely said I thought about it a lot—I didn’t say I liked it.  And so, we do tend to look for things that are enduring.

II. TEXT

In tonight’s Gospel lesson, Jesus speaks to his disciples about things that endure.  He uses the metaphor of a man building a house to describe the difference between acting on Jesus’ words and not acting on them.  The one who hears Jesus’ words and acts upon them is like one who builds a house on a foundation of rock, so that when the river bursts its banks, the house is unmoved.  Those who do not act on Jesus’ words are like those who build their houses on the ground without a foundation, so that the rising river sweeps away the house and all is ruined.

In the context of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has just given that book’s equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount (in Luke’s gospel it’s the “Sermon on the Plain”).  He has spoken of the blessings that await those who hunger, who weep, who are persecuted.  He has told them to turn the other cheek, to give to those who beg from you. To love your enemies, be merciful to the ungrateful and the wicked. Not to judge others. Not to seek to remove the speck in a neighbor’s eye if you have a log in your own.  It is after all this teaching he says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you to do?”

That’s a pretty scathing indictment of most of Christianity, to be sure.  And then he reminds us, faith that endures is that which seeks to act out its faith, not simply to accept it.  Those who have an active faith have a faith that will endure.  Just as surely as a house built upon a solid foundation.

III. THE FOUNDATION

The metaphor of faith and building is not Jesus’ alone, of course.  Paul uses it to describe the work of a teacher in faith:

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Here, as with the passage from Luke, the foundation laid is a foundation built on Jesus.  On living out the faith that Jesus first had, that he imparted to us.

In the text from the Psalms, the same metaphor of building is used: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” A verse that we use throughout Holy Week and Easter—a recognition that the foundation for the building of God was built upon one the builders (that’s us) had initially rejected.  The reversal of Good Friday by Easter summed up in a metaphor about building.

But we don’t always have experience with buildings like that. We look across our city we see great holes where buildings once were.  Cranes loom over other great holes, raising new edifices. On this very campus we have seen buildings come and go.  They tore down Cassell and built Katzen in its place.  They gutted the Butler Instructional Center and expanded Kogod into it.  They built the new SIS over the old parking lot.  Soon they’ll tear down the old SIS building and put something new in its place, I’m sure.

So, does this metaphor work after all?  Do buildings give us a sense of the enduring?  Especially when we see them rise and fall so quickly and so often?

Of course, not every building is so transient.  Some do endure.

IV. BUILDING A CATHEDRAL

In the medieval world, the crowning jewel of any city was one building in particular: its cathedral.  These massive edifices testified to the glory and majesty of God with their very being.  Their builders took great pride in the way they would stand as a monument to faith and to God’s presence in the world.

The construction of a cathedral employed hundreds, perhaps thousands of laborers.  The construction of the cathedral would create entire economies of labor.  The master builder would stake out the plan for the cathedral with ropes and sticks.  The freemasons would lay the stones of the foundation and the base blocks.  Other masons would build the walls using brick or stone.  Carpenters would fashion the beams that would be used in making the roof and the beams were held together with iron straps made by blacksmiths. [1] Glass makers would fashion decorative windows that would in colored images retell the stories of the lives of the saints and the heroes of the Bible. A cathedral was a massive undertaking.

All the more so because the builder set out to build a cathedral that even his own grandchildren might not see finished.  Indeed, it has been noted that the greater reward for all the labor one might do on a cathedral was not in seeing it finished, but in imagining that one’s children or grandchildren would one day pray in a building that their ancestors had helped to create. [2]

A. Bricks

It strikes me that that is what we are doing here.  We are building a cathedral, and the cathedral we build is the community in which we worship.

Like all cathedrals, it starts with a vision.  A student realizes the need for a community of faith and with a couple of friends, helps to found the community.  She places that first brick of the base on the foundation of the faith she and the others have.

[Here the preacher begins to place bricks, one by one, on a table at the front of the sanctuary.]

Other students perceive the need for a ministry of music, something they call the “Fellowship of Sound” that will lead this fledgling community in worship.  And a second brick is laid next to the first. Other students decide to create opportunities for fellowship that can become a tradition and create a murder mystery party, a fall outing, and other events, placing a third brick down on the foundation.  And after this, a greater vision is articulated by yet another, a University Chaplain—we’ll call him “Joe”—who recognizes the need for a full time ministry and helps that to come into being.  And in so doing, places a brick down and completes the first level, itself built on the strong foundation of Christian faith and love.

Another comes along and establishes a social justice ministry that will define the community’s outreach and public mission.  A fifth brick.  Another, who had once felt unwelcomed in services, establishes a hospitality ministry to remind the community of its calling. A sixth brick is placed.  Another seeks to elevate the level of student involvement in planning worship and creates a committee to do just that.  A seventh brick.  Another, now having spent her four years adding to the foundation laid by others, takes the reigns of the community and helps it to grow in ways it had not before.  An eighth brick.  A second level is achieved. The building reaches higher.

Still other builders come.  One develops a newsletter and a quad-sitting ministry.  A ninth brick.  Another leads the community in a recommitment to its being a Reconciling Community and expanding ministries of justice.  A tenth.  Others come and elevate the music and worship of the community.  An eleventh.  Still others come to add student run Bible studies and Practical Christianity.  A twelfth brick.  And our tower begins reaching for the skies.

It is not a work that is finished in four years.  It is not a work finished in eight.  It is a work that continues over a lifetime.  Like the cathedral builders of old, you will not see the work on this cathedral finished.  Truth be told, if we do it right, no one will see the work on this cathedral finished.

B. Builders

And so, as you leave this place, you add your names to the list of builders who came before you, upon whose work you now stand, and to whose work you have greatly added:

[Taylor Walters. Chrissy Lindstrom, Chris Slatt, Bradford Cheney, Lou Belsito, Stuart Denyer, Erin Trouth, Erin Taylor, Amber Pezan, Kate Moore, Kate Boustead, Katie Schroepfer, Dennis Rowe, Nathan Brownback, Holly Masters, Roza Guillaume, Danielle Dickey, Sidney Traynham, Ariel Schwarz, Gussie Abrahmse, Laura Peck, Kim McClain, Bryan Colombo, Jason Reimer, Velda Jones, Sarah Anderson, Allen Hays, Patrick Elliott, Eileen Barber, Eileen Hassett, Emily Randle, Erica Benjamin, Jessica Dillon, Jennifer Arver, Kate von Richthofen, Colin Mattoon, Laura Goodman, Shawna Perko, Thaddina Wiley, Adrienne Arey, Steven Bielinski, Marlon Brown, Jessica Davis, Brandy Dillingham, Kathryn Fekete, Marjorie Jeansonne, Lindsey Kerr, Jeff McAleer, Jason Shippy, Corrine Thompson, Lindsey Triplett, Lennea Bower, Bonnie Crouch, Meredith Herbert, Patty Herold, Lara Hogan, Ruth Kemmish, Jesse Marsden, Vajaah Parker, Lisa Rothman], Molly Thomas, Ali Clark, Luke Pepper, Laura Goodwin, Michael Wagner, Alex Bruce, Lia Comerford, Rachel Birkhahn-Rommelfanger, Danielle Mahaffy, Sarah and Kyle Ashworth, Sarah Simpson, Chris Smith, Justin Peck, Anna Finn, Marc Tomik, Mark Meyer, Casey McNeill, Alissa Tombaugh, Amy Robandt, Charlie Kilby, Ali Shott, Nicholas Grainger, Hannah Hanson, Amy D’Avella, Carrie Johnson, Niles Anderegg, Elizabeth Royall, Stephanie McDaniel, Robin Jones, Miriam Wood, Kelsey Poole, Jenn Wivell, Melissa Mason, Desirae Lewis,  Lauren Frail, Katie Kraft, Rachel Cannon, Carolyn Browender, Michelle Dromgold, Kristen Walling, Daniel Potts, and so many others.

All of you have contributed something to the edifice of this cathedral.  Each of you is an artisan who has contributed in the way that their gifts allow.  Some have quarried stone to provide the base.  Others have chiseled stone for the walls and carved intricate stonework for others to see.  Some have provided the timber for the roof, to give shelter to those in need of sanctuary.  Some have placed the windows to allow the light of grace to shine inside.  Others have hung the tapestries that give color to the interior.  Still yet others have done the little things that will never go truly noticed, that make the whole structure sit firmly on the ground as the earth sits on her pillars.

And each of you, through this service, has become an irrevocable part of this place.  Your work is in its walls.  Your love is in its very foundations.  Those who come after you may not know your names, but they will know the work of your hands, just as you have known the work of those who have come before.  For those of us who tend the grounds of this cathedral, we see your imprint on every rock, on every stone.

But there’s something else, too.

C. Cathedrals of God

You yourselves are the cathedrals of God.  You have spent the last four years in a construction project on yourselves.  You came in here full of ideas and expectations and assumptions, and over the last four years you tore those down, and rebuilt them from the foundation on up.

It was a risky and often-times frightening prospect.  But you had a good foundation to start with.  The foundation that Jesus speaks of: the word and love of God.  This is the foundation of your lives.  And over the last four years, upon this foundation, you have built magnificent cathedrals.  Oh, you didn’t do it alone, of course.  Each of you lent a hand in helping the other.  There were those who came before you who contributed much to what is built, just as you have contributed to the building of others’ cathedrals.  But in so doing, you leave this place, not only having left your mark upon it, but it having left its mark upon you.

You will forever be connected to this community, whether this coming August or decades down the line because of the way in which you, as cathedrals of God, have been constructed.  You have been formed by your fellow builders in this community and by the love and grace of God upon which this community has been built.

V. END

We live in a world of impermanence.  It cannot be otherwise.  But in the midst of impermanence, there are things that endure.  Just as the cathedrals of Europe have out-endured (and will likely to continue to) other buildings in their cities, so too will the cathedrals you have constructed here endure.  Built upon a solid foundation, they will, like their cousins of stone, continue to testify to the love, grace, and glory of God wherever you go.

For in you, God has wrought a great work.  “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” And in you, in the cathedral you have become, all the world shall see the glory of God, whose steadfast love endures forever.

Notes

[1] http://moncathedral.tripod.com/id3.html

[2] http://www.suite101.com/content/building-a-medieval-cathedral-a44972