Thanks, and Yes
A Sermon to Celebrate 50 Years at 901 Trinity (Matthew 16)
For the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany (February 9, 2020)
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
Incarnate and Coming Christ, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Make us aware of your presence here in this space and in these words God; for if we are present to you then nothing else will matter, but if we are not present to you then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter. Amen.
Sometimes I see it – the art of remembering. I see one of you remembering something that happened here in this place; your eyes glaze over and a tear might come, you breathe deep, a smile appears at the corner of your lips and you are lost to the wonderful place of memory. It’s a glance at the baptistry that reminds you of the day you yourself were baptized in those waters or the day your child was baptized; it’s looking down the center aisle and remembering your wedding day; it’s the same aisle and the walk that seemed a mile long when you buried your beloved; it’s the nets and all they have come to mean to you; it’s the children’s fish tank and watching our kids put their hands all over, leaving fingerprints that we never want erased; it’s decades worth of Agape Meals that have taken place in our fellowship hall; it’s that Sunday school classroom that truly is so outdated but it’s where you found community; it’s the choir room where you have given your talent for years and years; it’s the pastor’s study where you went to talk about something that you never thought you would ever tell a living soul; or it’s your pews… if these pews could talk.
Place is important; it serves as this weird and beautiful living museum for our souls and we are just walking around in it all the time.
There are those sacred places where something happened in your life and that space will always carry a memory for you, and sometimes that memory is so strong that walking back into it overwhelms you. I believe this church is full of those places.
And our world is full of those places. Hospital waiting rooms you never want to set foot in again, the room where your partner proposed, the view you had when you realized you were in love, the restaurant you went to after finding out the gender of your baby, the restaurant you went to after burying a parent, the entryway to your first home, that place you and your love went to over and over until it became like a second home.
Our world is full of those places and Scripture is full of those places. I imagine Israelites for centuries going back and dipping their hand in the Red Sea to feel salvation, Moses’ great-great-grandchildren running their hand along a rock to touch a calling, David eyeing the green pastures from his days of shepherding to remember peace, people looking at the space in the Temple where Anna waited so patiently all those years and thinking of faithfulness, and Peter going back to the cliff and reminding himself of his calling… but I am getting ahead of myself.
What I am referring to comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, one of my favorite stories. Verse 13: “Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples…” Now let’s pause there. If location and place matters so very much, then what does Caesarea Philippi tell us? Caesarea Philippi was home to two gods’ temple, Baal and Pan. Both gods were very influential in Greek life at this time. Both gods had a sexual aspect to them, thus at this particular temple lewd sexual worship was offered to the gods on the steps of the temple for all the world to see. The temples were in the center of town; thus, the town was built around an altar of sexual worship.
This town was also home to worship of Caesar, thus a real political power of its day. So, we are looking at a modern-day red-light district, home to much power and sex. Imagine taking a group of young men there, most around the age of 15, to see these things. They would have heard about this place – it was legendary, and most good Jewish parents would have wanted to protect their children from ever seeing such a place, so imagine what the shock must have been to these disciples when they are taken here (and taken here by Jesus, of all people.)
Caesarea Philippi also had a unique geographical feature and design. The center of the city was built on a river surrounded by huge cliffs, in the middle of huge rock cliffs, built on bare rock. The town and area were all built on the rock cliffs.
And once the disciples and Jesus come to this place, Jesus pauses and ask them 2 questions that I think Jesus often asks: “Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?”
The disciples know how to respond to the first: you are John the Baptist, you are Elijah, you are Jeremiah, you are one of the prophets. Each comparison is very intriguing and worth some contemplation, but it’s really the lead-in question; it’s Jesus’ come on, his opening line, his enticing question. Notice he does not correct them which tells us something of their answers.
The follow-up question, the heart of the matter: who do you say that I am?
Quiet. Silence, like a pop quiz when no one has done the reading the night before. They all look at their feet, until that silence becomes unbearable and then they look at Simon Peter because when all else fails we have learned Peter is always willing to go first and to get it wrong. He realizes that once again this is all up to him. He has to go first, so without thinking it through, he blurts out what his heart knows before his mind knows it, “You are the Christ, Son of the Living God.”
Silence again… did he just say what I think he just said? Everyone had kinda been thinking about it, but now it was out in the open. Eyes back to the ground, because if he is not right…
“Well done Simon…. You are Peter and, on this rock, I will build my church.”
And a lot has been built on that response, like the very building we are celebrating today. But what is Jesus really saying there?
Some say the rock is this confession, this statement: “You are the Christ.” Those are words that change everything (and we won’t get into the entire mess that Peter recognizes Jesus as the Christ before the cross, which throws quite a bit of our poorly thought-out atonement views about why Jesus had to die). This confession, “You are Christ,” this statement of authority, this acknowledgment of power, you are the true power, the one… these are words that change everything for us, and if they don’t, we should not say them.
Some say the rock is Peter. Catholics fall in this camp, thus naming Peter as the first pope. Peter is the rock and from him Jesus is going to build his church. And remember, Peter is often a stand-in for the disciples, so perhaps Jesus is saying, with people, I will build my church; with my followers, I will build my church. It’s a huge theological statement, especially following a book in which so much ink has been spilled about building a physical building and here Jesus says it is people.
And there is a whole other element to this rock, and here we go back to location. Remember what I said about Caesarea Philippi, the city was built on a river surrounded by huge cliffs, in the middle of huge rock cliffs, built on bare rock. The town and area were all built on the rock cliffs. And progressive baptists, I am going to scare you to death, but sometimes we need to take Jesus literally. Like, he is standing on a rock when he says this, meaning maybe he means, right here I am going to build my church in the midst of all this mess around, all these people getting it wrong; right here in the heart of humanity and the brokenness of everything, here is where the church belongs.
The rock could be the confession. The rock could be Peter. The rock could be the literal rock. Or in typical Jesus fashion, which means full of paradox and as non-binary as one can be, Jesus might mean all of the above… all three. Jesus might be giving us a living definition of the church: The church is the people of God confessing the gospel of love, the truth of Jesus, in the midst of a broken world.
Which is what First Austin is; it’s what we have been and it’s what we will be.
And this building has allowed us to be and to do that.
And this building has called us to do that. Look around and see how much of our theology is represented in this building (and there can easily be a chicken and egg question here, which came first?)
When you walk into this space, it feels open. When this space was created, we gave a lot of space to openness, to bringing the outside inside, to letting the sun in, to creating space to breathe, to create growing room. And our theology centers on openness…. Welcoming all people, knowing that we are not whole until the outside comes inside, knowing that we need to always make room for people, in particular the people the world is not making room for. It’s our statement of welcoming and wanting all people regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, political party, color of skin or economic level. We are open and we will make our circle wider and wider, until it finally holds all of God’s children.
It’s looking at the baptismal waters that reflect a dove above – that was not by accident; it took huge imagination to find a way to do so. To remind ourselves that the baptismal waters call us beloved and call us to peace work; to go out and be the dove in the world today.
It’s looking at the tree in our backyard. The tree was not here originally, but you know what was? There was room for the tree. This space was created with room for growth, with room to bring the things in that the world was destroying and casting aside and for us to claim value in them and let them grow and be here, to protect the vulnerable. There is certainly some theology in that.
It’s the view of downtown. You know, that got us in a bit of trouble early on (you can read about it in this month’s Clarion). When this church was created there was some question about if we should move out to the suburbs where all the other churches were moving; why would we want to stay downtown close to the poor? Our Pastor at the time, Dr. Bill Denham, addressed this move and commitment to downtown in his weekly Clarion article stating, “One, in moving to a new location we chose to stay downtown, rather than to flee to the suburbs, because we feel that we have a ministry here. Two, in moving we did not move away from the needy, but several blocks closer.” Still true today if we are doing the Gospel right.
And it’s the other view as well, which is opposite in every way it can be, the view of the capital. To remind ourselves that the church is called to speak truth to power. That as Jesus followers we better be stirring up some trouble and every time power does something that is not just, which is the very nature of power, we better be the ones speaking up and standing up and resisting.
And it’s the way we blend in; we don’t look like a church. We don’t have a grand steeple or huge old-fashion white columns and church doors. We have a bell tower, but no one passing by looks at that. I promise, most people think we are a state building. And I am okay with that, because that seems incarnation to me, to look like the world around us but to have something holy inside.
And it’s the peace and calling this building brings, almost serving as a way station of sorts. It’s a space that provides quiet, calm, a place that we can be, a place we can pray and worship, a place we can be fed, a place we can be called. And I know that it was intended and created for all those verbs.
When this space was dreamed and created, those saints who took such a huge risk in building this space, who put their own homes on the line, who gave above and beyond the tithe to build this space, who spent years crafting it, who did things their own way…. they gave us a gift. They gave us a space that 50 years later is still allowing us to be the Church (and pay attention to that, because they did not give us the church, they gave us a space that allows us to be the church).
And I feel certain that as forward-thinking as they were, they would not want us this morning to simply say ‘thank you’ and to remember them; they would want us to look forward to the next 50 years. What are we doing that will help those who will be here on that Sunday morning when we celebrate 100 years here? Which, actually following the calendar of this celebration being the second Sunday of February, will again be February 9 of the year 2070. What will they celebrate that we did today to help them be the church then?
We gather this day to remember with great gratitude those who created this space, and for 50 years that place has held us and pushed us and called us.
And we gather to commit ourselves to whatever it takes for the next 50 years, that this space will continue to allow us to be the church…. That we stay open to all people and have open doors and open hearts, that we continue to be home for beloved peacemakers, that we continue to provide space to take in the vulnerable, forgotten and neglected, that we continue to look to those in need and be a voice of love and to look to those in power and be a voice of truth… that this space continue to provide rest, restoration and calling.
That this space helps us to be the church God needs for tomorrow.
In the words of Dag Hammarskjöld, “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.”
Amen and Amen.
*artwork: Photo of our Sanctuary, circa 1970
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