The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost,
July 19, 2009
by The Reverend Diana Carroll
Put forth, O God, thy Spirit’s might
and bid thy Church increase,
in breadth and length, in depth and height,
her unity and peace. Amen.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Taize Community in the village of Taize in France. The Taize Community ecumenical religious community that has both protestant and catholic members. It was founded during the second world war by a man named Brother Roger, with the goal of seeking reconciliation within the worldwide church.
Almost since the beginning, Taize has attracted visitors, especially young people, who come from all over the world to share in the life of the community, and especially to experience the distinctive form of contemplative worship practiced there.
While I was in Taize, I was told this story. In the early years of the community, as the numbers of visitors grew, the church at Taize became more and more crowded, until it could no longer hold everyone who wanted to worship there. One day, a member of the community said to Brother Roger, “Brother Roger, our church is too small for all of these people.” Brother Roger looked at the church and said, “There’s only one thing to be done. We will have to tear down the walls.”
And that is exactly what they did. They took down the back wall, which was a beautiful stained-glass window, so that a tent could be added on to the church to expand its capacity during the busy summer months. For years, the community and their visitors worshiped in both the church and the tent, until they finally built a permanent addition with movable walls that allowed the worship space to expand as needed.
The name of the church in Taize is “The Church of Reconciliation.” How appropriate for a church that literally tore down the walls to let more people in.
In the letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes about the “dividing wall” between Jews and non-Jews that existed in his time. Christ, he says, “has broken down the dividing wall” and brought about reconciliation between the two groups as well as between both groups and God. Paul then uses the image of a temple—a temple like the one that David thought about building
and that his son Solomon later built—to tell the believers in Ephesus what it means to be the church. They themselves are the temple, he says, “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
When I was a kid, I learned a short rhyme that may be familiar to many of you as well: “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people.” It’s cute and a little bit funny, especially with the accompanying hand gestures, but this little poem also describes pretty accurately how most people think about “church”: as a building, usually a building with a particular kind of architecture, in which God’s people gather for worship. A building like the one we are gathered in today.
That’s a completely different picture of the church than the one that Paul gives us. For Paul, the physical buildings no longer matter, because God is present in the community itself. In the language of the new testament, the word that we translate “church” literally means “assembly.” Assembly. As in a gathering of people. Not a building at all. Wherever we gather, the church is there. We are a holy temple “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Over the past two weeks, Episcopalians from all over this country and around the world were gathered together—assembled—in Anaheim, California, for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. They came together to pray and worship, to celebrate and discuss, and to make decisions about the common life of the church. I’m very fond of telling anyone who will listen that our General Convention is the largest bicameral legislature in the world. (Bicameral meaning that it has two houses, just like our federal government.) There were literally thousands of people gathered in Anaheim. No single church was large enough to hold them all, so the convention center in Anaheim became, for a time, the physical location for the church in one of its most complete and vibrant expressions. But the convention center was not the church. The people who gathered there were the church: a holy temple “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Many things happened at Convention—far too many for most people, including myself, to keep up with them all. But among the other decisions made, the gathering in Anaheim renewed the Episcopal Church’s commitment to mission, especially in terms of support for the Millennium Development Goals, and also in terms of fully including all baptized persons in the life of the church.
In other words, the elected leadership of our church has once again challenged us not just to be in a church, but to be the church, and as the church to reach out to those who are beyond our walls.
It is a sad reality that the physical walls of our churches can all too easily become the dividing wall of which Paul speaks, leaving those on the outside feeling like strangers and aliens, far away from both the people of God and the presence of God. Not every church can or should physically tear down the walls, as the church at Taize did. But we are all called to continue Christ’s work of reconciliation, breaking down the barriers that keep people apart and that keep people from experiencing God in their lives.
Here in this church, there was at one point in the past a literal tearing down of a wall. As you might imagine, the glass wall that now stands between the sanctuary and the narthex is not original to this 19th-century building. I don’t know the exact circumstances, but at some point in the middle of the last century, the decision was made to take out the original wooden wall and replace it with glass, and also to add glass doors to the outer entrance of the church. I assume that the goal was to make the church building more inviting to those who might feel hesitant about coming inside. And the glass does have that effect, minimizing the physical barrier between outside and inside, between them and us.
But physical walls are only one of the challenges. There are many other barriers that stop people from walking through our doors—mental barriers, emotional barriers, even social barriers—and they are often far more intimidating and impermeable than walls of wood and stone. What would it take to tear down some of those walls, the invisible walls that keep people from coming to see what’s going on in our church community?
The Christian Century magazine recently reported on a new study about mega-churches, which revealed that 87 percent of the people who attended those churches had invited someone to come to church with them in the past year. 87 percent! That’s compared to only 55 percent of people attending mainline protestant churches. (And even that sounds awfully high to me.) Small wonder, then, that most megachurches are growing so quickly. Nothing breaks down a barrier faster than a personal invitation.
Since Alan is away, I think I can get away with complimenting him from the pulpit without either embarrassing him or sounding like I’m trying to butter him up. I have been here for almost exactly a year now, and one of the things that has both impressed me and challenged me the most so far is the ability of the rector to invite people into the church. Alan takes any excuse to step outside these walls and invite people to come and see. People he meets in the street, people in restaurants, people sitting on a park bench. Over and over, I have seen him engage with someone and then extend an invitation in a way that I still find very hard to do—even when I’m standing right in front of the church dressed in all of my vestments.
That is the kind of action it will take for us to break down those invisible barriers around us. We have to invite people in, so that they no longer feel like strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens and members of the household of God.
It should go without saying, but this is not just the work of the clergy. There are only two of us here most of the time. We can only reach so many people, no matter how outgoing and proactive we may be. (Or rather, no matter how outgoing and proactive Alan may be, and no matter how hard I may try to keep up with him.) Imagine what it would be like if every one of us in this room were to invite another person to join us here next week. Now that’s the way to start dismantling some walls.
Christ came to us and broke down barriers, barriers between us, and barriers between us and God. Christ tore down the dividing walls and showed us that God does not dwell in a temple but in the gathered community of the people of God: a living temple that is still being constructed, as the church continues to grow and expand.
Now it’s our turn to follow Christ’s example, and the example of Brother Roger of Taize. There’s only one thing to be done. We will have to tear down the walls. Amen.
