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This
morning’s sermon is occasioned by a very special day in the
life of First Church, Birmingham. We gather to celebrate a
50-year anniversary in our present sanctuary, having moved
here from the corner of Maple and Henrietta in September of
1952. We also gather to break ground for a $6 million
Christian Life Center that will add 28,700 square feet to our
building and shape our ministry for years to come. Both the
title and the text for this sermon are borrowed from Dr.
Arnold Runkel who used them for his first sermon in this
pulpit, 50 years ago.
The
Preaching Text
(as translated from the Anchor Bible)
Preparations
for the building of the temple
They
also contributed money for the masons and carpenters, and
food, drink and oil for the Sidonians and Tyrians [in payment]
for bringing cedar lumber from Lebanon by sea to Joppa in
accordance with the permit granted them by Cyrus the king of
Persia.
Laying the
foundation of the temple
So
in the second month of the second year of their coming to the
house of God at Jerusalem, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel,
Jeshua the son of Jozadak and the rest of their brothers the
priests and Levites, together with all those who came to
Jerusalem from the captivity, began [operations] by appointing
some of the Levites who were twenty years old and upward to
direct the work of the house of Yahweh. Then Jeshua and his
sons and his brothers stood united with Kadmiel and his sons,
the Judeans, and the sons of Henadad and their sons and their
brothers, the Levites, to direct those who did the work on the
house of God. When the builders laid the foundation of the
temple of Yahweh, the priests in their robes stood up with
trumpets, as did the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals,
to praise Yahweh according to the order of David the king of
Israel. They sang antiphonally:
Praise
and give thanks to Yahweh
For
he is good
Eternal
in his devotion toward Israel.
Then all
the people raised a mighty shout in praising Yahweh when the
foundation of the house of Yahweh was laid. Many of the
older priests, Levites and family heads who had seen the
first house wept very loudly when the foundation of this
house was laid before their eyes, while many [others]
shouted aloud with joy, so that the people could not
differentiate between the sound of the joyful shout and that
of the weeping of the people, because the people shouted so
loudly that the sound could be heard from afar.
The Sermon
There
was a day when most funerals were conducted in funeral homes,
most burials were completed in cemeteries, and most travel
arrangements (from funeral to burial) were coordinated as
processions (hearse first….limos second….everybody else,
third to last….headlights shining ….flags tilted).
Most
of the time I rode in the hearse (albeit upright in the front,
not reclining in the back). That’s because I rode with the
funeral director, enabling him to keep a close eye on me while
enabling me to learn a great deal about him. Which was how it
came to pass, some thirty years ago, that I listened in on one
mortician’s lament about what in the world he was going to
do with his business upon retirement. And a good business it
was. He had a great name in town….the only chapel in
town….a loyal clientele in town….sixty years of history in
town. What he did not have was any offspring in town.
As
offspring went, he had but one. That being a son who didn’t
much like the funeral business….and (at that time) didn’t
much like any business. This was the early seventies,
remember, when “doing your own thing” was in, and “doing
the establishment thing” was out. And how much more
“establishment” could you get than a funeral home, owned
by a father who was also an elder in the Presbyterian Church?
The same father who was not getting any younger, and who was
not finding the daily grind any easier.
So
maybe because he liked me, or maybe because I was closer in
age to his son than himself, he asked my advice. What did I
think he should do with his funeral home?
Keep working it and die?
Sell it to strangers and bale?
Give it to the kid and pray?
His
real fear was that, for all the wrong reasons, his kid would
want it but wouldn’t love it, and wouldn’t sweat over it
and bleed into it as he had done, along with his father before
him. Which is pretty much how it turned out. His son took it
and worked it, without much of a passion for it. And, not too
many years into the future, sold it. Meaning that everybody
got mildly rich from it. Except that, today, there’s no more
family in it.
I
have to believe that a lot of you have wrestled with similar
questions from time to time. How do you pass anything on? And,
if it’s a business, how do you ensure that the recipient
will view it as a pump to be continuously primed rather than a
cash cow to be continuously milked? Will anybody love it as
you loved it….work it as you worked it….sacrifice for it
as you sacrificed for it?
That’s
what Arnold Runkel wondered about this church in 1944 (the
same year he started as our preacher). Writing to the
congregation in December, he questioned whether he was
preaching to a comfortably contented crowd or a restlessly
visionary crowd. He told them they were living off the surplus
of the past (and figured they were bright enough to know it).
What he didn’t know was whether he could motivate them to
push beyond it.
Citing
Edward Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
he described the lack of religious spirit in the monks of
tenth century Constantinople. Quoting his source (while
warming to his task), he wrote:
They
held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers,
without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved
their sacred patrimony. They read. They praised. They
compiled. But their languid souls seemed incapable of
thought and action.
Then,
laying his concern in the lap of his congregation, Arnold
added: “There is but one question that comes to me over and
over. Can it be that we hold in lifeless hands the riches of
our ancestors without inheriting their spirit?”
You
see, Arnold was about to lay something bigger on ‘em….a
building. This building. And they bristled a bit. And they
fought a bit. But then they bought more than a bit. They
bought Arnold’s impossible dream. They bought it in big
bites….at the cost of big dollars. And here we are. Meaning
that Arnold bet on the right people….believed on the right
people….built this place on the backs of the right people.
Which people? You people. Languid souls? Not yours. Lifeless
hands? Not yours. Fifty-year members, stand up and take a bow.
Congregation, applaud ‘em….praise God for ‘em….and
while you’re at it, sing a quiet doxology for Arnold who
inspired ‘em, fed ‘em and led ‘em.
Fifty
years later, they’re still around. Haven’t died off yet.
Better yet, haven’t burned out yet. Having completed one
building in ’52, another in ’57, a third in ’67, they
are here to break ground with the rest of us for a fourth to
be completed in 2003. Which means that a whole lot of us have
caught the spirit they radiated in the fifties, and answered
the bell that they rang in the fifties.
Sadly,
it is the nature of church life in mainline
Protestantism….especially mainline Protestantism in the Rust
Belt….that stories like ours don’t happen all that often,
and projects like ours aren’t launched all that often. In
this part of the world, denominationally speaking, we have
more experience with closing churches than we do with growing
churches.
Which
explains why there will be those who will look at what we are
doing, scratch their heads and wonder why. Just as there will
be those who will look at the cost of what we are doing and
question why the money wasn’t diverted elsewhere. Frankly
speaking, when you are the pastor of this church, you
sometimes feel a need to hide First Church’s light under a
bushel and talk about First Church’s future with a hint of
apology. For not everyone understands a church like ours. And
not everyone applauds a $6 million building program in times
like these.
Does
that mean we should constantly search our hearts, read our
scriptures, monitor our mission and test our motives? Of
course it does. But does that also mean we should come to a
day like this feeling more guilt than pride and more
embarrassment than joy? I think not.
So
how do we respond? Well, I suppose we start biblically. Simply
stated, the Bible is bullish on buildings. When Arnold
preached his first-ever sermon in this sanctuary, he quoted
Ezra. In 38 years of preaching, I have never quoted Ezra
(especially this particular slice of Ezra, which sounds like a
construction document for a building contractor).
At
issue is the second Temple. The first Temple….Solomon’s
Temple….was laid to waste with the destruction of the
Kingdom of Judah in 587 BC. Jerusalem, leveled. Temple,
toppled. People, bundled off to Babylon, in that tumultuous
period that Jews remember as The Exile. But now it’s 536 BC
(give or take a year). We’re talking “happy”
now….“healthy” now….“homecoming” now. It’s time
to begin the second Temple now. Altar first. Followed by the
building. And the instructions are complete, even to the
proper age of the Levitical foreman (age 20), the building
materials (stone, timber and masonry), and the sources of
cedar (felled in Lebanon, floated down the Mediterranean,
brought ashore at Joppa, according to a sub-contract with the
king of Persia).
What
I find fascinating is the number of biblical accounts that
reflect this kind of detail, the implication being not that
God designs or dictates buildings, but that God takes an
interest in buildings. To be more accurate, there are two
kinds of building projects in scripture….one kind to help
the memory, the other kind to house the people. The first kind
are in the nature of monuments or memorials. Somebody has a
religious experience of some sort and starts gathering stones
together so as to remember the place where it happened.
God
is not big on such monuments. Recall the Mount of
Transfiguration where Peter, James and John finally sensed
that Jesus was more than met the ordinary eye and bigger than
one mere moment of history. Upon experiencing this epiphany,
the first thing Peter wanted to do was build a monument
(complete, no doubt, with a gift shop). To which Jesus said:
“Aw, Peter, get on down the mountain.” But when the
building project is about the housing of God’s people
(rather than the mere stimulation of their memories), the
Bible is quite willing to talk about buildings in detail, not
only as to their necessity, but also their artistry.
Second,
I suppose this particular building can be defended
programmatically. In short, justification flows from
utilization. Friends, how else can I say it? The present place
is full. Sue Ives tells me we had 31 second graders in one
room last week. Now I ask you, how many of you would be
willing to teach 31 second graders in a room the size of those
on the second floor? And 31 second graders last week have to
be considered in light of 300 Vacation Church Schoolers last
summer. And what of the fact that there’s no real space for
recreation internally, and not much more in Birmingham,
externally? And then there’s WOW (Women of the Word). This
year they outgrew the small chapel upstairs, necessitating a
move to the big chapel downstairs. Moreover, last year there
were two Thursday night Growth Groups of young marrieds. But
over the summer they resprouted (sort of like my wife’s
hostas) into five Thursday night Growth Groups for young
marrieds. And then there’s Carl Price who sat in my office
last spring, wondering whether he’d “pretty much tapped
out the Disciple and Christian Believer market,” only to
stay on and test the waters another year. Now he and Rod have
gone from 90 to 120 in those wonderful seminars.
Even
in here, Arnold’s dream sanctuary, few envisioned how much
use we would give it. Four services on a Sunday. A concert
series. A slew of weddings. An even greater slew of funerals.
In Arnold’s day, the dead were dispatched from a funeral
home. When Wiley Groves died, 50 years ago, Arnold had to talk
his family into having the service here. Today, everybody
comes here. I’ll say a few well-chosen words over the dead
at least 40 times this year. Seventy-five percent of those
occasions will take place here. In the last three days, Rod,
Lisa and myself have done four memorials and two weddings.
That’s not the title of an offbeat British movie. That’s
our work schedule.
Finally,
I would submit that our building program can also be defended
missionally. Not just because of other buildings we support in
other places….not just because of a record-shattering
$839,000 in beyond-the-local-church funding in 2001….not
just because we’ve got adults working with hammers and saws
in places that range from Pontiac to Prague (with kids
following suit in Memphis)….and not just because of four
Habitat houses built in four years. But because this building
has consistently sent messages to this community that its
doors are openable….its rooms, usable….its programs,
attendable….its staff, available….its services,
inspirational….its sacraments, invitational….and its
people, hospitable. Quite apart from whatever signage hangs on
our walls or is suspended in our halls, I want this
building….old part….new part….to scream but one word.
And that word is “Come.” This building, quite apart from
being built by tools, is (in itself) a tool. And I think we
have demonstrated over the past 50 years….if not the whole
181 years….that we know something about how to maintain
tools, sharpen tools and use tools. Which is why I believe God
continues to trust us with tools and place them in our hands.
So what
kind of a house will this be? Well….
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And it is certainly more
than a greenhouse (reserved for plants) or a White House
(reserved for presidents), but rather an open house with
no reservations, where everybody gets in who needs in,
wants in, wanders in, or is carried in.
In
its own way, I suppose that this is….
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and, most certainly, a
rental house, wherein can be learned the delicate
difference between master and servant, landlord and
tenant, deity and disciple.
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and, of course, a
banqueting house, where the table has been set….the
board spread….the Lamb slain….the Supper served….the
bread broken….the wine poured….and the cup filled
until it overfloweth.
My
friends, let me tell you the truth. I did not come here to
build this. With three building programs on my resume, one of
the better reasons for taking this job was our conviction….Krissy’s
and mine….that in coming here, we would never have to build
anything again.
But
as Margaret Valade likes to say: “You want to make God
laugh, tell him your plans.”
Not
that we shouldn’t make them.
Not that we shouldn’t show them.
But that we should be prepared, every now and again,
for God to trump them.
Because
when God wins, everybody wins.
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