Community Church of Wilmette

May 13, 2007

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Working on it…

I saw no temple in the city,
for its temple is the Lord God
the Almighty and the Lamb.

Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed, Alleluia!

In 313 AD, the emperor of Rome, Constantine, issued the Edict of Milan. This freed the Christians of the day from persecution by the Empire. Up until this point, being a Christian was dangerous business. During his lifetime, Constantine would gradually convert on his own, following his mother’s earlier conversion. He would host ecumenical councils and sit as judge over disputes of heresy in the Church. Interestingly enough, he was baptized on his deathbed in 337 and not earlier.

This period of the life of the Church is considered by many to be a golden era of sorts. And why should it not be? They had been worshiping in graveyards and basements for a couple hundred years. Now they had the wondrous opportunity of figuring out where and how they would worship…

I saw no temple in the city,
for its temple is the Lord God
the Almighty and the Lamb.

Well, believe it or not, the Christians of the day had this verse in mind as they crafted the infrastructure of the Church. The Temple in Jerusalem, the place where Christians had first worshiped, had been torn down by the Romans. Paul had written extensively about the people of God being the Temple, their bodies being temple for God. For the early Christians, gathering was in fulfillment of the command “Do this in remembrance of me.” They gathered around the Lord’s Table. It was never about going somewhere that God resides. God has made the whole world new. God resides in the believer, in the gathered faithful…And, believe it or not, in spite of the persecutions, they grew like this…hidden and in danger. By the time Constantine issued his Edict, those professing Christ were ten percent of the population of the Empire.

Once Christianity was legalized, there was a flood of interest in the faith. And the Church had to respond somehow. They had to bring people into the existing worship life of the Church.

They had to build places of worship that were not temples.

Temples were places where gods resided. There were statues to emperors and deities in the temples. The statues were worshiped. People made sacrifice to them. This was not the model that the Christians of Constantine’s day and the days that followed wished to emulate.

So where would they turn? They would turn to the vision of a Holy City, descending from the clouds. There would be no temple. God would be its light. The city, the place itself, would shine forth God’s glory. So, the faithful chose to model their worship spaces after basilicas…places of civic gathering and work. The work of the Christian is the work of the Holy City. The redemption of the world would be the building of God’s own city.

It’s a lovely vision.

We may critique this deep marriage of church and state in our day, but this was great news to many of the Christians of Constantine’s day. The persecutions would stop. They could work openly to bring about God’s reign in the world. But something went wrong…something went awry along the way. Instead of founding the Church, they found themselves in Christendom…and not Christianity. No one knows exactly when the line was crossed. Was it when they invited the emperor to preside over ecumenical councils? Was it when the government decided that one had to be Christian to own property and hold public office? Who can say? Even in their own day, they debated the issue. Monasticism became more popular as a response against the growth of Christendom.

It is such a fine line to be certain.
It really is an easy mistake to make.

We have been given all of these images of Holy Cities…streets lined with gold, pure water flowing in the rivers, and the throne of God in every heart. And, honestly, these are great images, powerful images evoking the holy among us. So, why not build it? Is this not what we strive after? Is this not the hope of the gospel as it manifests itself in our communal lives? Our business lives? Our worship lives?

Heck, we pray for it every Sunday: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth…" We ask for this. Christ himself has asked us to pray in this way. So we do. And what is the problem?

Well, you see, this is the problem…

The holy city actually challenges empire…corporate, economic, and cultural.
The holy city does not lock its doors.
It stands before us open and vulnerable.
There are no doors.
There are no walls.
God is open and vulnerable to all of creation.
There is no Temple. God resides everywhere.

All are welcome into the city…even the Kings of the earth (George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Queen Elizabeth…), the same people (Rome, Babylon) who were the focus of God’s ire earlier in Revelation. All will come and give over their own glory. The appearance of the city means the end of all that damages, oppresses, injures, persecutes. Martyrdom will come to an end. Emperor worship, that kowtowing to the system that pervades our economic and civic life, will come to an end.

This is a complete reversal of how we understand our lives together. It is not civilization as we know it. In fact this is always the mysterious difficulty of our faith:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

What we build is always a reflection of who we think we are. Do we think that we are recipients of this blessing from Jesus? Do we realize that we have received the Holy Spirit? We celebrate Pentecost two weeks from today. Do we know what that means?

We struggle with how to receive God’s blessing.

We worship the One God, maker of all things. There are no walls, no boundaries, no barriers. God’s is present within and among us. If we were brave enough, we would take the doors off the hinges of our churches. They would be open twenty-four hours a day. We would open our hearts and our lives completely. We would tear down the walls that surround us.

But we are afraid. We are afraid of the forces of empire…even those of us who learn to navigate them successfully.

We believe on some level that our survival and salvation depend upon the forces of empire. We struggle with meritocracies. We struggle with individualism. We struggle with political strife, corporate control, terrorism, crime, homelessness, and hunger…We do not know where to turn.

There are those who are standing in the city of God. There are those who are finding ways to proclaim God’s Holy City without caving to the pressures of empire…and fear.

WEST BANK REFLECTION: From Palestine to Virginia
by Mary Wendeln (Christian Peacemaker Teams)

…

On Friday 20 April 2007, at the weekly nonviolent action held in Um Salmouna village near the West Bank City of Bethlehem, Palestinian residents and international peace activists planted thirty-two olive trees to commemorate the lives of the thirty-two Virginia Tech students and teachers. In an area where the Israeli army bulldozed the land and uprooted the trees to construct the wall, the sign near the newly planted olive trees read, "From Palestine to Virginia We Support You." In the newspaper article I read about the event, Khalid Al Azza, of the Land Defense Committee in Bethlehem was quoted as saying, "We have come to reaffirm our condemnation of all massacres and crimes carried out against civilians and innocent people regardless of sex, race and color."

At the foot of a thirty-foot wall that separates them from jobs and one another, they thought of us. In the face of oppression and brokenness, they thought of us. As their brothers and sisters are becoming terrorists, are falling victim to Israel, they thought of us. The saw past the wall into the Holy City of God…where all the faithful reside. They reached out to us and planted peace.

Empire only thinks of itself. And that is a difficult habit to break. We can see this struggle in all aspects of our lives. I began this sermon speaking the worship practices of the church…the enjoyment of the freedom from oppression. And I do not want to undervalue that freedom. But somehow Christianity became an empire. It became Christendom. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that this is simply something that was a struggle for Christians 1700 years ago. Our nation was founded on this notion.

We still struggle with this in our own way in our own day.
We are focused on our own congregations, their survival and growth. We are focused on American government demonstrating Christian values. It is a precarious line to walk…asking for justice, mercy, and greater discipleship and not asking for Christendom.

And this is why we must rely upon Christ. This is why we must focus our worship life, our personal lives upon the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. We must open ourselves to receiving Jesus’ blessing, to receive grace but not as the world would give it to us.

Sisters and brothers, we are always standing at the crossroads. Every day of our lives we stand where the early church stood. We have choices and options before us. Let us pray that God will send whom God has chosen to us on this corner. Let us pray that we will recognize them, see through the walls we have built, the doors we have erected. And may we proclaim an ever-present God...

Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!