i feel like i've been living in

a city with no children in it

Our building, takes a lot of maintenance, doesn’t it?

And you know, as I’ve thought about it, the school keeps trying to expand their space around the stadium, and the money for this athletic program just keeps pouring in. …So, maybe we could sell our property, move to the ‘burbs and build an energy-efficient place to gather; just ditch all this trouble.

After all, our old building is hard to cool, hard to heat, leaky and expensive; but maybe that’s the point. Perhaps this place is more than a monument to efficiency, a temple to consumerism.

In this life, the lie we’re told over and over again is that we’re worth what we contribute to the economy, we’re worth what we can buy or sell. (I’m convinced that’s one of the primary struggles with aging. The world insists we’re only worth what we can produce or consume, and as we can’t do that anymore, the world decides we’re not worth the trouble anymore and leaves us holding a broken promise.)

The thing, though, is that is NOT how it works in God’s kingdom. Just view our windows as you climb to the bell tower to see how God rules. 

God starts off the whole shoot-and-matchstick by creating everything. Then, once everything is up and running, God doesn’t move into micromanagement mode. No, God does something work-obsessed people would never do; God rests.

In a stunning act of trust, God let’s creation be creation, and God simply rests in the completed creation. If you don’t get anything else from the sermon, get this: the God we worship is NOT a workaholic!

God; GOD, dares to rest. What an act of trust. What a blow to the denizens of work-worship.

Before it was anything else, observing the sabbath was nothing other than emulating God. If God rests, than we should too.

In a world that has always been addicted to producing and consuming, though; it didn’t take long for this simple act to become dangerously subversive. In fact, I’d even argue that observing sabbath is the most radical and formative act Christians engage in.

In a world that insists you must sing the “good news” of the turning a profit; just stopping, saying no, doing nothing other than worshipping God, is an incredibly subversive, counter-cultural and trusting thing to do.

To say it another way, to just come here; to stop everything else and just worship is hard. I know all those things that clamors for our time and attention, I’ve heard their subtle threats those things make if you don’t give them all our time.

That isn’t to even say anything about the temptation to turn our gathering into yet another palace of production and consumption, either. Offering consumers one choice in an already crowed marketplace, and then producing a spiritual experience for these consumers who bear a pathetic resemblance to true Christians. 

We can fall into the ditch on either side. Yes, daring to actually live out our faith is a perilous thing!

Perhaps that is why it is so good we come to this old, difficult to maintain building at least once a week. 

After the fire, it was decided -rather imprudently- to build a worship space in the style of a european cathedral. One of the marks of these cathedrals is stained-glass windows. 

See, we don’t bear these windows to suit the taste of consumers (that would be to miss the point after all, & not to mention that stained glassed places of worship are tragically out of fashion anyway!). Stained glass windows were originally introduced to teach the faith to folks who couldn’t read -and in the middle ages many people couldn’t read.

The thing about Trinity’s windows, though, is they go a step further…

A while ago I talked about the particular way God speaks, ‘effective speech.’ When we speak, an action must follow. For instance, we might say, ‘bring me that book.’ But then the hearer must go to the book, pick it up and then bring it to you for our words to accomplish their goal. 

In God’s speech, though, the action is built right in. For instance, God says, ‘let there be light,’ and that’s all it takes. Light is created from nothing other than God’s speech. An aside, that’s how faith works - God speaks and by nothing other than God’s Word, faith is created.

Well, our windows attempt to do something similar. For instance, remember the passage, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” Well, each one of these twelve windows represent one of the 12 disciples. So when we come into this place to worship, these windows surround us with that cloud of saints. 

Not only that either, because these windows recall the saints primarily by recalling their martyrdom. When we come in here and are surrounded by the saints, we are also reminded that our faith may be costly. This is something no commercial would ever advertise!

The centerpiece, though; the window that grabs attention is this great window, front and center, depicting Christ. And nothing could be more fitting, either. Christianity is, first and foremost, having your attention captured by Christ, have your eyes fixed on Jesus. 

This window does not just depict Jesus for the sake of it, though. This window is depicting that wonderful saying from today’s Gospel. This window depicts Jesus, open handed, inviting the tired, worn out and burnt up to come to him. 

And not only that, this Jesus, with open hands, welcoming you, isn’t just looking off to nowhere. Jesus looks to our communion table. Jesus is looking to the primary place we come nearest to Jesus. This depiction of Jesus looks to where burnt, empty and broken people that need a savior, can come to find him…

These windows, held in this hard to maintain building, don’t just teach the faith; they help create it! 

When you come here, you’re surrounded by the saints; and just by sitting in their presence you become a saint, too! You come here, and you can’t help but have your attention snatched by Jesus. As we look to Jesus, we can’t help but noticing what he is looking at; the table where Christ comes to us, not through symbols, but literally giving us himself through bread and wine!

And thank God.

Thank God, for a savior who doesn’t say something as reasonable as send me your strong, intelligent and beautiful; but rather a savior who welcomes the beat-up, broke-down and half-dead!

Let me close by simply noting that this saying of Jesus is one that has taken on renewed meaning and vitality in these days when everyone feels their time and energy pulled in a hundred different directions all at once. In fact, it can be a message we seize to share the Good News. We all know plenty of folks who are stressed by all that clamors for time and attention, plenty of people who are searching desperately for rest.

A word of warning, though, this passage is also more misunderstood than ever. For a community funeral I preached on this passage. Afterward, a kind woman came up to me and told me how much she loved this passage. She was perplexed, though. She had been praying for this rest Jesus promises for quite sometime, only to get no answer, only to find more and more she had to do.

When I heard this I asked her which church she was going to, only to find out that she was far too busy to grace a church with her presence…

As she was going through the litany of all that clamored for her time and attention, everything that kept her from church; I couldn’t help but wonder…

I couldn’t help but wonder, ‘or what.”

Or what; if you didn’t do those things the world would collapse. If you didn’t check off every dot and tiddle from your to-do list, the earth would stop spinning, fall out of orbit and life as we know it would end?!?!?!

The world insists that we are worth only what we can produce and consume; that our worth consists in what we buy or sell. In other words, the lie we hear day-in and day-out is that when we make or purchase some thing we become like god. The god of productivity insists we emulate god, not through trustful rest, but through frantic consumption.

As we said, though -and as we say week-in and week-out- that isn’t how God’s kingdom works. The God who created and redeemed us is NOT a workaholic!

In fact, the first law in the Kingdom of God is always to remember that only God is God; and we are God’s beloved creation. Resting, sabbath and gathering here, worship, is one of the primary ways we remember and honor this promise that God is God, and God is trustworthy. 

The world says we’re only the product of our labor, or the value of our bank-account. God, thankfully, says otherwise.

In sabbath; in something as simple as coming to an old, probably a little too big building; we say ‘no.’ When we simply refuse to work, we insist that we aren’t God and that the economy isn’t either. When we let the to-do list sit on the counter, we admit that we can’t save ourselves and neither can the our savings account. When we do nothing more productive than sing and give away our money, we place our trust, not in ourselves or bank account; but in the God who welcomes the beat-up, broke-down and half-dead.

In this simple act of coming here; being stuck together, doing things we wouldn’t have chosen for ourself; we do the primary thing Christians do, fix our eyes on the only one who can save us; Jesus. 

And we need to do that, don’t we?

After all, for the entire week we’ve been bombarded with images more alluring than these stained-glass windows. This week we’ve wandered through the cathedral of capitalism with their billboards depicting eternal life through a new car, we’ve heard the hymns jingling worth from the right pair of designer jeans.

In this simple act of coming here and maybe singing something we don’t prefer or would stop sooner, we say ‘no’ to those false-gods. When we come here and give away our money, we place our trust in the God who welcome folks like us, folks who have been beaten up by all those false gods. 

When you come here, you come before the reckless God inviting you to come; come broken, beaten-up and half-dead as you are, and find the rest you’ve been dying to find. 

In the end, we come here because we can’t do anything else. We come here because Jesus was right all along, we are weary, we are tired, and we need rest. We come here, because one day we found ourselves here, and we found that it was actually God who had brought us here all along. It turns out that we are here because we heard that sweet Word of invitation, and as we heard that promise of rest we had been searching for, we couldn’t help but come.

That’s why we’re in the old building.

Amen