“Do you see these great buildings?”
And now a word from our building committee…
Do you see these great buildings?
Well, guess what…
It’s a heck of a time to bring up such things. This is Stewardship Season, after all. So it’s a good thing it is also Gratitude Season.
Traditionally this time of year is called, with some derision, the October Ask-a-thon. That is because once a year congregations plan their budgets and how to meet them. And so, modeling on the old sobriety pledge, many congregations ask for a simple commitment, based on faith, that will guide their financial movements during the next year.
This causes some anxiety. After all, who knows what is going to happen? And who knows, really, if they will be able to meet any promise they make ahead of time?
Piled on top of that are the real worries that gather. Personal tragedies, uncertainties, infirmities. Social and public problems. Extreme weather events that make the inconvenient truth of climate change all too real. It is scary.
And there is frustration. But we are not the first to face these fears. The people of God have experienced fear before.
Anticipations and predictions of the end of all things are not new.
For the people huddled around the reassuring, well somewhat reassuring, figure of Jesus, there was personal impoverishment, the oppression of an occupation under the Roman Empire, and the frequent rumors of revolutionary change.
Since their time, there have been times of plague and times of war. Empires rose and fell. Strange new places have become home. And familiar places have been transformed.
Through all these times there has been a thread of hope. We sing the songs of ancient times, brought forward into the present, because they remind us of things that last, that remain true.
We pray. We sing. We celebrate the Eucharist, we baptize the new to faith and welcome the stranger. We tell the story of love.
We can see beyond our anxiety and predictions of destruction to something that lasts. And that is God’s faithfulness.
“My heart exults; my strength is exalted in my God;” even, “my mouth derides my enemies”, all these are words of praise and even joy from Hannah which we hear echoed from Mary in the Magnificat when she sings “my soul magnifies the Lord”.
Hannah says “those were full now scrounge for bread” and Mary says “the rich he sends empty away”-- these are words of joyous praise for that they are certainly words of assurance of God’s faithfulness and vindication.
The letter to the Hebrews assures us that having been forgiven and accepted by God we can approach his throne -- and we can approach life -- with confidence: for he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. He is faithful and our hope is sure.
And so we pass from gratitude to confidence in knowing that the promise of the one in whom we put our trust is sure: he is faithful and this gives us the attitude, the fortitude, the ---, to face the new possibilities that come with troubled times. He is faithful: confidence, gratitude, Steadfast hope.
Martin Luther put his finger on something we do well to remember today. We do not give out of fear or obligation, we do not obey in order to be safe: we are saved. That single offering by Christ has once for all made our hopes sure and our faith complete.
We respond to God’s grace with gratitude and in gratitude we respond with our lives, our hearts, all we have to offer; and this is what it means to say all things come from God and of his own I have given him. For he is the source of all being and from him is the satisfaction of our hearts: all we do in gratitude is from the eternal words spoken for all. “You are my beloved child.”
When David dedicated the site of the temple he offered the first fruits of the harvest in thanksgiving. Even of the building materials he brought to the site he said “all this abundance we have provided for a house for your holy name comes from you and is all your own”. In that new confidence in the love of God the gifts, the faith in the Lord, and obedience of a faithful servant, are all offerings given freely and joyfully.
Over and over again we hear in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the Song of Hannah that was our response to the first reading today, of God’s steadfastness. We hear of the grace of God and love of God that last forever. And we hear also of how the people of God have responded with gratitude and love.
And we hear of how God has vindicated the downfallen, protected the poor, and liberated the oppressed. And the people of God have been the hands of hope that have fashioned the future.
In other words (and council, cover your ears) what really lasts is not our structures, or even our achievements, but the love of God and our love for God and of each other and all of creation.
But don’t shred that pledge card yet!
It still has a purpose.
For the living church that is built is built out of our hearts, our hands, and our response of gratitude for all that God is accomplishing – including in us and through us … and despite us.
Christ’s work in us is not on some ethereal, ideal, unreal plane, but is accomplished here and now, where we can see it.
Indeed, we recall the apostle who said, “I speak to you of what I have seen and heard and held in my arms.”
“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—” (1 Jn 1.1)
God’s love is physical – manifest – at work in the world. That this world is made by God and saved by God and charged with the power of God is what Incarnation is all about.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (Jn 3.16)
Therefore we acknowledge that all is gift: every day is a gift, every breath, even all we accomplish, comes as a gift from God and so we pray, along with the ancient servant of God, “…all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.” (1 Ch 29:14b)
That familiar prayer of offering comes from the first book of Chronicles, from the story of how David, at the end of his long and eventful life, came within an inch of his dream, to build a house for God, and indeed laid the foundation for what his son Solomon would accomplish. The building of the first Temple, the magnificent structure and opulent furnishings the Torah describes.
That Temple was destroyed, the people it sheltered scattered and dispersed among the nations surrounding them. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and forgotten lands beyond, became the new homes of a generation of pilgrims, of refugees that would never see what they had left behind.
Instead their children and grandchildren who returned found a lot of work to be done, to reclaim what they could of what had been lost, and to build a shallow replica of what had gone before.
Among them also were those who did the more glorious work of reclaiming the spiritual heritage, bringing back with them solid achievements of preserving past teachings and developing new understanding of the living truth of the love of God for humankind.
And the Temple that was eventually built was grand indeed, great indeed, and its builders were put to the work by a king himself called Great, Herod, whose monuments still rear above the inhabitants of Palestine and Israel. His tomb, his retreat at Masada, the Temple remnant we now call the Western Wall.
When Jesus asked, “Do you see these great buildings?” it was those proud structures he was talking about.
What was happening, on the surface, was an occupation, an oppression, a time of turmoil, disturbance, and woe. But what was really going on, deep in the hidden purposes of God, was the building of a new Temple, a new house of God, that is his people.
Those are the living stones: the people to whom Jesus preached and ministered and brought salvation. And it is the building up of that living Temple, not made by hands, to which we are called.
Direct our hearts to you O God:
For you are the source of all being, eternal word and Holy Spirit. Amen.
November 14th 2021
BProper28(33)
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp28_RCL.html
Daniel 12:1-3
1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
