Well, let me say, “Welcome home.” This place cleans up pretty nicely. Just glancing around, you may not get the
full scope of the last two months’ work, so let me list some of the
highlights: The flooring in the nave has
been replaced, so it all matches. The
broken pews have been fixed. The walls
and ceiling have been painted, and what would be the keel and the ribs of the
“ship” of the nave have been stained to match the rest of the wood. The lighting is much brighter. The sound system and speakers have been
replaced. And the work was completed
within budget and on time.
We’re pleased to have representatives
from Pearce Construction, as well as some of the subcontractors with us here
this morning. Thank you for your holy
work to renew this holy space. And to
the members of the Facilities Commission and Interiors Committee, and to the
staff – and particularly to Mary Heausler, our stunning junior warden – thank
you, thank you, thank you. You all have
served admirably as stewards of the household of God. As Jesus says in one of his parables, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been
trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter
into the joy of your master.” (Matt 25:23)
After this experience, you may not want
to be in charge of anything else, but I think the point is how much God
appreciates your work.
So we’ve spent the past
two months worshipping in the Undercroft – sitting in a semicircle around the
altar and pulpit, much closer to the action than usual, singing some different music
with different instruments, and hearing responses from you after the sermons
(at the 10:15 service). It was a chance to
experiment, so we did. And as you know,
over the past three weeks, we asked for your feedback about these changes
through a quick survey. Even someone
with my level of expertise in
statistics can interpret the results for three of the questions on the survey. Overwhelmingly, people enjoyed the different
music, the different instruments, and being closer to “the action” and to each
other. About inviting parishioners to
respond to the sermons, the survey results were a little less clear – a bimodal
distribution at both ends of the curve, if you remember your stats class. A plurality of you really liked the sermons done
that way – and coming in second were those of you who never want to see it
again. Welcome to the Episcopal Church.
So what did we learn from worshipping in
the undercroft? If nothing else, we
learned that space matters. Space
doesn’t just have utilitarian value; it has theological content. You may like one space better than another,
and the reason why might well have something to do with how you relate to God.
The comments from the survey captured a
lot about what the worship space downstairs communicated theologically. This was my favorite comment: “It feels so good [in the Undercroft], like
everyone loving each other. When we go back upstairs to the nave, I hope we’ll
keep this spirit alive.” With all its challenges,
our worship downstairs did a great job of reflecting the immanence, the intimacy,
of God’s presence. One of the things
that differentiates Christians from people of other faiths is that we put a lot
of stock in the doctrine of the Incarnation: the idea that the sovereign Lord
of the universe “became flesh and lived among us” in Jesus Christ (John 1:14). God came to save and redeem humanity from the
inside out, enabling God to experience our life and sanctify it directly. We could feel this in the Undercroft, being close
to the preacher breaking open the Word, close to the Altar where bread and wine
became Christ’s Body and Blood, close to each other – even able to look into
each other’s eyes as we worshipped. It
was a beautiful experience of the immanent presence of God.
And here we are, in a space that
communicates something different about the divine. Here, the arches and vaulted ceiling and
stained-glass windows draw your perspective up, always up. The three main sections are on three
different levels: First you have the
nave, the ship of the faithful for your voyage of discipleship. It’s at street level, welcoming everyone
aboard. Then you have the chancel or the
choir, where the clergy and musicians lead our prayers and praise. It’s raised slightly and separated from the
nave by this little wall, seeming to imply that somehow holier work happens up
here. And finally, up another step, through
the gate, and past the rail, we have the sanctuary, the holy of holies where
the Body and Blood of Christ are consecrated.
In the old days, as some of you will remember, only ordained people and
acolytes could even enter the
sanctuary – well, and the Altar Guild, who were really in charge. My point isn’t to critique the architecture
of this beautiful space but simply to observe that it communicates something
other than the immanent, personal presence of God. This space gives us an experience of
transcendence, of God’s divine otherness – beautiful and majestic and set apart
from the day-to-day-ness of our lives.
Here in this amazing space, we know
who’s in charge. And it’s not us.
We proclaimed it in the psalm this
morning, the perfect psalm for this Sunday when we’ve come back into the temple
of the Lord: “[G]reat is the Lord and greatly to be praised; he is more
to be feared than all gods…. Oh, the majesty
and magnificence of his presence! Oh,
the power and the splendor of his sanctuary! …
Worship the Lord in the
beauty of holiness; let the whole earth tremble before him. Tell it out among the nations, ‘The Lord is King!’” (Psalm 96:4,6,9-10 BCP)
You come into this space, and hear this organ, and see the light
streaming through these windows, and feel yourself drawn into the presence of
the risen Christ towering over the high altar – how can you not know that God is King? “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be
glad; let the sea thunder, and all that is in it,” for God is God, and I am not (Psalm 96:11 BCP). Many of us, if
pressed, would have to say this realization isn’t as self-evident as we might
hope. In fact, we might have to admit it
comes as a surprising relief to say
that God is God, and I am not.
In our worship here, we enact mysteries
that seek to capture ultimate mystery:
that the God who’s always been king, who created the heavens and the
earth – this eternal sovereign is enthroned again and again, right here in this
space. Every week, we remember the timeless
reality that God’s rule is both constant and constantly new, both forever and
forever surprising to us. The people of
ancient Israel had no trouble wrapping their minds around this mystery of a God
who was, and is, and is to come. We remind
ourselves of the same truth here as we consecrate the bread and wine,
remembering out loud that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come
again.” Every week in our worship here,
the Word and the prayers and the sacrament remind us that God was, and is, and will be God, no matter what.
So why do it? Why do we enact this truth, week after week
after week? It’s not because God needs
the reminder. It’s for our own benefit –
and thereby, for the benefit of this world God loves so much. Gathered in this place of transcendent
beauty, performing rites handed down across the centuries, we enthrone God in
our own hearts, over and over again. And
in our hearts, the Lord of all creation takes on flesh and dwells in the world once again. You and I become the incarnation of divine
majesty, the Body of Christ given for the world God has made. We look into each other’s faces, and we love
the people we see. We look into the faces
of people we don’t know, and we reach out hands and hearts to them. We look across the street and see a
neighborhood of people who can’t name the spiritual home they need. We look down the street to Southwest High
School or Gordon Parks Elementary – or we look across the sea to our partner
school in Haiti – and we see children of God who need healing in ways that,
miraculously, we can help bring about. When our hearts are formed and reformed here
to honor the majesty of our divine king, we are made into nothing less than Jesus’
own body, broken for each other and for those we don’t yet know.
So, as we go forth from this glorious
space today – fed by Christ and with Christ to be Christ in the world – let me
offer you one small challenge.
Estimating generously, when we come to church on a Sunday, we spend half
a day in the kind of transformative worship I’ve been describing. What would happen if we worshipped God that
way the other six and a half days of the week?
I don’t mean spending all your time at church – just the opposite. I mean bringing church into all of your
time. What if, every day, we praised the
Lord, and blessed God’s name, and declared God’s wonders among the peoples?
(Psalm 96:1-3) What if, just once every
day, we actually spoke of the fact
that God is God, and we are not? It
might start with simply saying grace around your dinner table. It might grow into saying grace when the
waiter brings you lunch at a restaurant.
It might be simply observing that God did a great job with the sunset
that day. It might be a quick “Praise
God!” when someone tells you good news.
It might be “I’ll pray for you” when the news is not so good.
These small acts might not seem to
matter a bit, in the greater scheme of things.
But when we’re tempted to think this way, that’s when this beautiful
space whispers to us and reminds us of the lesson it never ceases to
teach: that we’re called to “tell it out
among the nations: the Lord is king!”
(Psalm 96:10 BCP).
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