Proper 23, Year B
October 15, 2006
Christ Church, Covington
“Brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling” (Heb. 3:1).
Do you know David Macaulay’s book Cathedral? Macaulay wrote and illustrated a
number of these books, but the one that sticks with me is his first, the story
of the construction of a cathedral church in a fictional French town in the
thirteenth century. It resonates, in part, because of the intricate drawings of
architectural detail, and also because of the theme: an entire community coming
together to build to the glory of God. Macaulay tells us laconically in the
first sentence, “For hundreds of years the people of Europe were taught by the
church that God was the most important force in their lives”. But it’s the
pictures that capture the imagination in Macaulay’s book. Macaulay’s cathedral
soars heavenward, like a sign pointing to God.
The medieval cathedral was a big project. Today, of course, these cathedrals are
dwarfed by sky scrappers, but it was not so when they were built. Construction
required the efforts of the whole community, extending over many generations. In
other words, the people who began it had enough faith to look to the future,
even though they would not see the completion of the project. Though it was
built to honor God, it was also where the community gathered to worship, as well
as for other purposes. The construction required special skills, often imported
from other places. People and their leaders had to come together to make the
cathedral possible.
So now remember the words of the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, with which
we began: “holy partners in a heavenly calling”. The writer is concerned with
the same thing: a community coming together in the presence of God, to honor
God. But notice that the “house” that’s being built is not a physical structure,
like Macaulay’s cathedral, but in fact is the community itself. “We are his
house”, the writer says, and the builder of the house is God. God’s son presides
over the house; still, the members of the church are partners in the work,
coming together to be God’s household and making the community possible by their
gathering.
This theme brings us to the present. Just like Macaulay’s cathedral, our
community of faith is the result of partnership between many people, sustained
over generations (about 160 years, in fact). Everyone has pitched in to make it
possible; special skills and experts have been brought in, but by and large it
has been sustained by its members. That’s a good lesson to remember at
stewardship time. Christ Church, Covington, exists for the glory of God, and to
make his worship possible. But remember, Christ Church, Covington, is not a
physical structure. As in our reading today, God’s household is the community of
faith, and it is this spiritual structure that requires all of us to pull
together to sustain and elaborate on the work that is before us.
To do this, we’re going to need to “hold firm the confidence and the pride that
belong to hope” (Heb. 3:6), according to our reading. That’s something to take
away. Hope is faith oriented toward the future, and the God we worship calls us
to cast our eyes in that direction. Hope breeds confidence and pride. Not
rootless confidence or foolish pride, but confidence and pride that are based in
the reasonable expectation that God has been faithful to us in the past and will
continue to be so in the future. We are, after all, “brothers and sisters, holy
partners in a heavenly calling”. And the work we are engaged in, that we sustain
and extend, is the work of community; the community that God is building in our
midst.
John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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