Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
John 14:1-13
Our temples, synagogues, mosques and church buildings are theological statements. The ways we build our buildings communicate what we believe about God. Then the buildings we worship and meet in help to shape our theology.
There are temples and churches that communicate a stark and ascetic god. Unadorned. Somber and sober. Serious. Hard.
Jane and I worshipped in a church for a few years. The building reminded me aesthetically of what it must be like inside an ice cube. The temperature was fine. They turned on the heat. But the space looked and felt cold and hard and harsh anyway.
Until the bishop appointed as the pastor of that church a women with a sense of style. She found a stage and set designer who worked for a local theatre company in the congregation. With a couple thousand dollars worth of fabric and some paint, she turned that church sanctuary into a place of grace and beauty.
A few years later I was invited back to facilitate the meeting where the congregation voted to become a reconciling congregation. They’d been trying to get there for years. I think they could not successfully become a place of grace and inclusion until the space they met in communicated grace and beauty. That’s what I think.
I have loved every single Buddhist and Hindu temple I have ever visited. They are lush and sensual and rich and bright, as though God and the universe wants us to be happy and to love life and to be well and to do well.
I love European Cathedrals full of dramatic art about biblical and post biblical saints and sinners. They communicate a God who is present in the drama of the human story, your story, my story. They communicate a God who lives and loves, laughs and suffers, and even dies with us.
I love our sanctuary here at Foundry. When the sanctuary was redesigned in 1940, it was something of a scandal in Methodist circles at the time. The new red carpet and red pew cushions, the new center aisle, the new ornate chancel window full of historic Christian symbols, the new marble altar, the fresco above the altar with statues of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Moses and Paul, and the dramatic carving of Jesus, and the new pulpit with more statues.
Homer Caulkins says in the history of Foundry that he wrote that after the sanctuary was redesigned in 1940, one critic asked when Foundry was going to get incense, holy water and a confessional booth as well. (Castings from the Foundry Mold, p. 274). That was in 1940.
I love our sanctuary. I think that more than anything else, our congregation’s theology has been shaped by the window above the balcony. When this building was originally built in 1904 the youth group raised the money for that window and it was named the “Come Unto Me” window. I am sure all of those youth who held ice cream festivals and baked sales to pay for that window in 1904 have died by now. But their window is still here.
When the sanctuary was redesigned in 1940, the Christ above the altar was designed to mirror the message in the stained glass window above the balcony.
Come unto me. All are welcome here. All belong here. I love our sanctuary.
When we do our Mission Possible renovations, not much will happen here in the sanctuary – a new carpet, new pew cushions, some work on the organ we need to do, a new hearing assist system.
The big problem is the rest of the building. The rest of the building is old and tired and cluttered and crowded and confusing and just not very welcoming. The rest of the building.
The rest of the building is where AA and NA meet, and where day labors and restaurant workers come for English as a second language classes. It is where we make sandwiches for the homeless. It is where people whose lives are very hard come for clothing and birth certificates and comfort and to be treated decently. It is where the day laborer’s union meets. It is where we cook meals for people living with AIDS and cancer. It is where we send books to people in prison.
It is where we try to study the Bible. It is where our babies are cared for in the nursery and where our children and youth try to learn about God. It is where our depression and grief groups meet. It is where we meet to fight discrimination against LGBTQ people in the church. It is where we meet to organize to end homelessness. It is where we plan mission trips to Haiti. It is where we try to open the doors of the church wider to those alienated by church on Sunday evenings.
You know, when you are around here for a while, you stop noticing the way things look. It happened to me. When I first got here 10 years ago I was asking every week, can’t we fix these broken tiles in the floors? Can’t we do something about this elevator that’s breaking down every other month? Can’t we do something about the kitchen? Can’t we do something about the water stains in that wall?
But after a while you just get used to it. And you adjust your ministries and mission to the space you have. Instead of having space that serves your mission and ministry, you adjust your mission and ministry to the space you have.
So it is time we tackle the rest of the building. Because of Mission Possible we will have a new welcome center, new multipurpose spaces, a new modern accessible elevator, new banquet and lecture space, new multipurpose meeting rooms, new technology, a new boiler, electrical upgrades, fire suppression systems and –tada—we will have new rest rooms.
Here’s all I want to say this morning. Our building communicates our theology. Our building communicates what we believe about God. Our building helps to shape what we believe about God.
In God’s house, --the God we believe in-- there are lots of dwelling places. There is lots of good room. Everyone is welcomed. Everyone is included. It is a place of beauty and grace.
As we begin Mission Possible, we are doing theological work. When we build our new fully accessible elevator at the main entrance, we will be communicating what we believe about God. When we build our new rest rooms that everyone will be able to use with dignity from our homeless neighbors to presidents and senators, we will be communicating what we believe about God. We will teach our children what we believe about God.
We believe in a God who welcomes everyone, who makes room for everyone, who treats everyone with dignity and grace. That is what our new space will proclaim.
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