Isaiah 65:17-25, Canticle: Isaiah 12, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19
The gospel lesson takes place a couple days before Good Friday. The disciples have no idea that Jesus will so soon be dead. He is momentarily pausing from Messianic actions; here he’s not the prince but the prophet. And with that prophetic mix of human smarts and divine inspiration he is predicting what’s bound to happen to Jerusalem, given the seething unrest of the Judeans together with the brutal habits of the Romans. Forty years later it happened—the Romans destroyed the temple.
How many temples to the gods have been erected and then demolished over time? How many churches have been built and then torn down? This congregation has erected and demolished four buildings so far. Our first one stood from 1666 to 1776, 110 years, then our second one for 31 years, our third for only 28 years, and our fourth, a great grand temple, for just 51 years to 1886. We’ve been in this one for 130 years, which makes it our longest-surviving building. But how long before this one too comes down, in the words of the Lord Jesus, not one stone left upon another?
From an old photo we have a good idea of what our fourth building looked like on the inside, but of our first three sanctuaries we can only guess. But those beakers know. On the silver surface of those beakers has been reflected every one of our interiors, the gleam of windows, the glow of lights, glimpses of furniture, whether humble or impressive, and faces, one by one, the faces of those who have lifted up those beakers to drink the Holy Wine from them.
The silver of those beakers is worn thin by all the hands that have lifted them. They are what we call thin places, thin places between the spiritual and physical, and they carry an enduring spirituality and they draw out our souls, and as the Lord Jesus says, By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Buildings are built to endure as long as they can, but our beakers symbolize something more enduring, which is communion, that connection of our souls through Lord’s Supper to Lord’s Supper before it reaching back to our first communion service ever, the date of which we do not know, but God knows, because the Lord Jesus was there with them. Our lamp was lit before the throne of God, and it does not go out. With those earliest members you share an unbroken communion in the timeless sight of God.
If you look behind you, under the balcony against the back wall, you can see the baptismal font from our fourth sanctuary. We used it a few times in the Lower Hall. In just a few minutes we will gather around that other font, there, that was made for this sanctuary, that we have now restored to use. And there, in the words of Isaiah, we shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation and baptize Pierre and John, and, as Isaiah says, they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord.
Our first recorded baptism was of little Helena Brouwer, 359 years ago on October 31st, 1660, before we had a building, when we were worshiping in a barn, and she was probably baptized from somebody’s bowl, as I was. How long she lived, I do not know. The next two infants baptized both lived only a few days. Their parents did not see Isaiah’s prophecy come true.
The prophecy of Isaiah has been speaking for 2700 years, more than seven times 365, and even though it’s metaphor, still, when will it ever come true, and how much of it will come true? What is the horizon of this prophecy, how far off into the future must we imagine it? And how does it serve us in the meantime, while the sounds of weeping continue and the cries of distress?
And how shall we understand the prophecy of the Lord Jesus—as about the end of time, or that time was up for the temple? Or both? And for every temple that we build? Should this discourage us from building and from restoration? Not if Isaiah’s right, that we shall build houses and inhabit them, and we shall not labor in vain. As long as we don’t depend on them for our endurance, or in them we will lose our souls. We place our hope in that future city coming down from God, the New Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God.
The horizon of our time is very long and our personal lives are short, but we need to meet with God in the present moments in between, and so we gather our congregations to seek God and talk with God, and before we call God will answer, and while we are yet speaking, God will hear.
In the same way, the scale of Isaiah’s prophecy is cosmic, with new heavens and a new earth, and our personal lives are small. And in between we build our buildings to make the space where we can be with God, especially when we baptize the smallest among us, and when we commune with the whole church on earth and all the company of heaven. In between the vast and the small we make space to meet with God.
I’m offering you perspective here, as on this morning we contemplate our peculiar congregation and our peculiar place in time and space within the mystery of God in history, and what’s our mission and our business as a church. We do soul business. We make momentarily visible some great unseen realities. We make tangible some cosmic truths. We touch things that we cannot fully grasp. That’s what we do here, and we keep on doing, and by our endurance we gain our souls.
That’s not all we do here. For my next point, let me direct you to the second lesson, to the Thessalonians. They were a small church, like most of them Saint Paul planted. At the time there was confusion about how soon the Lord Jesus would return, and what would happen when he did. And some of the believers were just stopping from their ordinary lives. So Saint Paul is telling them not to be so indulgent of the slackers and the disorderly busybodies among them. What this tells us is that the Thessalonian congregation must have been kindly and generous, even to a fault.
As you are, Old First, and I skip the fault. Last Monday I came home from our Deacons meeting, and as I was unwinding with Melody I said to her how just plain generous so many of you are—generous with your time, generous with your labor, with your money, with your sympathy, and generous with your concern. More generous than you have the resources for. And I want to bless you for your generosity. This is my last anniversary sermon among you, and may I bless you for your generosity?
As Melody and I kept talking, she said how much we’re going to miss this congregation, and she said it was also because you all just know that you need this spiritual connection, that from all the different places that you come from you believe in this spiritual connection with God and with each other, and you keep working at it even beyond the resources you can muster. For that I bless you too, and let me encourage you with the promise that by your endurance you will gain your souls.
It’s a strange turn of phrase, to gain your souls. Don’t you have souls already, aren’t you already souls? I’m guessing that Saint Luke means that you are gaining your full humanity, that new humanity of Jesus’ resurrection that you already are and are not fully yet. Your congregation is a laboratory of the new humanity, a fully spiritual humanity, with your souls with full capacity for the habitation of the Holy Spirit of God. Just by your endurance you are a quiet testimony to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and to the faithfulness of God, both for you as individuals and for you together as a community of Jesus extending through the many years.
Thick walls and thin places. A big space, and a long thread through the years. Baptisms and communions, a body expanding and contracting, a community of Jesus enduring, and as Jesus says, not a hair of your head will perish. Which seems to contradict what he had just said, that some of you will be put to death. What, put to death with full heads of hair?
Well, his logic is prophetic logic, which holds words in tension, and, also, he’s speaking of himself, because in a couple days his own hair will be matted with blood upon a cross, and then three days later he will rise again. And that too is our business and our mission, to testify to him, who died and rose again, and testifying not least by doing our work quietly and earning our living and not being weary in doing what is right, for however long it takes for his prophecies to come all true.
I know you. I know that your endurance is powered by your love, and I watch you gaining the souls fully to bear the love of God—the love of God that has called you, and gathered you here, the love that sustains you, and inspires you, and challenges you. And that’s the last thing I bless you for today, I bless you for the love of God that you desire and for the love of God that is within you.
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
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