From the Rector

Matthew preached this sermon at Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn Michigan on November 17, 2002. The Rev. Daniel Appleyard is the rector.

Good morning!

Last week your wonderful rector, Dan, asked me if I might prepare a sermon that not only covered the gospel but explained something about how we do liturgy and music at Canterbury House. I said I’d think about it; and then two nights ago I woke up from a vivid dream at 5:30 a.m.; and in the dream I preached a sermon that pretty much fulfilled Dan’s assignment so I got out of bed and wrote it down and this is it.

Good morning! This morning I am going to do something unusual for me, though it is common for other preachers: I am going to preach a 3 Point Sermon. Usually I only preach one point sermons — that’s usually about all I can handle, not to mention my congregation; but this morning I am inspired to deliver three points. I will now tell you what those three points are:

Point One is this: God is everywhere
Point Two is: God is everywhere
And Point Three is:God is everywhere.

Point One — and this is the longest of my three points — God is everywhere.

Which means that there is no place where God is not.

When I was a child, maybe five or six years old, my mother told me this, which I accepted as gospel fact: God is everywhere. I used to wonder about it a lot: God is everywhere. God is inside my body. God is inside my thumb.

I used to stare at my thumb and think about this. He’s in there.
I decided to talk to my mom about it.
“Is God inside my thumb?”
“Yes, God is everywhere.”
“And God can do anything he wants, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“So if he wanted to he could shrink his whole self into my thumb. Right?”
“Well, he could, but then he wouldn’t be anywhere else, and everyone would miss him, and that wouldn’t be fair would it?”
“Oh. Okay.”

Then I went to seminary and learned a little bit more about this whole “God is everywhere” idea. I learned that, according to the Bible, when God created the world, all things were created through what the ancient Jews called the Dabhar, which means primeval Wisdom or God’s Word; and when we became Christians we translated it as Logos and identified this as the Christ and with the person of Jesus. And we said, “through him all things were made.” Not some things; all things; in fact John goes out of his way to emphasize this; he says “not one thing came into being except through him.”

This Wisdom is not like any wisdom that we can understand; we’re talking about God’s Wisdom here; a wisdom that exists before the creation; this is that which gives all of creation its order and comprehensibility.

In other words the Bible says that God has planted this, like, hidden DNA inside all of creation. Not one thing that is made is created except through the Christ.

I was at a conference with Desmond Tutu last Spring and he was talking about God’s love and he’s a tiny little man but he actually has a surprisingly large wingspan and at one point in his sermon he spread out his arms really wide and said, “God loves all of us. Republicans. Democrats. Blacks. Whites. George Bush … and Saddam Hussein.”

This is a fundamental belief that many Christians seem to have forgotten; that God is inside every tiny little thing, every child’s thumb and little toe and hair folicle; every atom and particle and neutrino carries the light that shines in the darkness that we call The Christ.

Why do I say that many Christians seem to have forgotten this? Because according to a lot of Christians apparently God is NOT everywhere. In fact they seem to think that God has abandoned much of her Creation and left it to the devil. The world is a scary place to them, where Satan lurks in every corner; they say that the world is “enemy territory,” and this means that there are certain things that are very dangerous because God does not live there, like our minds, with all our impertinent questions and doubts; or our bodies, with all our longings and desires; or other religions, or politics of any kind, or science, or just plain other people who have the wrong skin color or the wrong gender or who simply fail to impress us with their cleanliness or hair styles.

But that is an unbiblical approach. It amazes me when I meet people who claim to believe the Bible word for word and yet they have such an unbiblical theology. Because it is impossible to read the gospels without coming to the conclusion that God is in the well-dressed and in the messy; God is in the respectable businessman and in the prostitute that he visits on his business trips.

And if this is true, if there is no place where God isn’t, then how can God not also be in the Buddhist and in the Hindu and the Muslim and even those who claim to have no faith at all? God is everywhere. Wherever there is something, there is God. The only place where God is not is where there isn’t anything. “God is isness,” to quote Meister Eckhart.

This is why, at Canterbury House, we try to open ourselves to God’s presence not just as he reveals himself in church, but as he reveals himself in the whole world. We don’t just have church music, we have music that is played in clubs and bars and taverns; we don’t just eat a symbolic meal made of stale cardboard circles, we have a hearty supper with more healthy food than anyone can possibly eat; we don’t worship in a building that looks like a church, but instead in a building that looks like a house. Because if there is no place where God is not, then let’s try to teach one another how to recognize the presence of God beyond the walls of the church.

My second point is, God is everywhere.

Which means if we are trying to get to God, there is nowhere we have to go. The place we’re trying to get to is where we already are.

This is what our Christian Buddhist friend Thich Nhat Hanh means when he says

Our true home is the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.

Now this doesn’t mean that Thich Nhat Hanh doesn’t believe in the miracles of Jesus — that’s not the point. The point is this: whenever we allow ourselves to sink into the present moment, the blessedness of this moment, that’s when we discover God. As the psalm says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Steve and I visited Plum Village in France this summer, where Thich Nhat Hanh lives with his community of Vietnamese Buddhists. It’s one of the most beautiful places on the planet, with lots of green fields and vineyards and pretty French cows grazing in pastures. And every once in a while, at random moments, a bell sounds, and everyone literally stops in their tracks, and takes a breath, and honors the creation by simply waking up to the present moment.

A Buddha, says Thich Nhat Hanh, is someone who is awake. And a Christian, according to Jesus, is someone who is at least trying not to fall asleep — which is pretty close to the same thing. Jesus was always bugging his disciples to stay awake with him, and talking ominously about what happens to bridesmaids who sleep through the wedding.

God is everywhere, and that means God is right here in this room with us, and all we need to do is wake up to God’s presence. Why are we running away from God all the time? Why do we have such a hard time sitting in silence and opening ourselves to God’s presence?

This is why at Canterbury House we take the time, at the beginning of every service, to simply sit in silence in the presence of the Holy Spirit. For some of us this is the only time in the entire week when we are sitting in silence. We take Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice literally; we sound a bell, we become still; and we wake up.

Point number Three: God is everywhere.

Which means there is no place that we can hide from God.

God is so big that it is absolutely no use trying to hide from her. I remember talking once to a man who had become a hopeless alcoholic, and he said the reason he became an alcoholic was he had been in a full-scale retreat from God. He kept trying to get so drunk that he would finally escape from God. He drank himself out of his family and his job and kept drinking until he was lying drunk and unconscious in the gutter. And finally, with resignation and almost disappointment, he realized he was never going to be able to hide from God and so he had better deal with it.

God inhabits even the darkest, dirtiest, ugliest parts of ourselves. God is the one “from whom no secret is hid.” There is absolutely nothing we can do to keep God out of our lives; and there is absolutely nothing we can do to get God to stop loving us, because that is his nature. None of us is any less beautiful than the next person; all of us shine with the light of Christ, which is emanating from the deepest parts of our selves. All we need to do is rise up; lift our hearts to God; and give praise.

Because if you can’t beat him, you might as well join him.

This is why at Canterbury House we have a strict come-as-you-are policy. Because the only spiritual community worth having is one that recognizes that there is no dress too ugly, no hair style too outrageous that it blinds us to God’s love. In fact, that’s the only real rule at Canterbury House: if you don’t come as you are, we’ll kick you out. (kidding…)

And that is why at Canterbury House we have a discussion time in the middle of the service, where we get real about our lives; where we share not just the joys and the certainties of our faith but also the dark places; the doubts and worries and tears. We think Church ought to be a place where we accept one another as Christ accepts us; as children of God; reflecting the light of Christ.

So thanks for having me and the band here to be with you this morning, and thanks be to God for the mystery of this light, which wakes us up to the presence of God’s love; and thanks be to God for this congregation, which shines so brightly with the power of that love.

AMEN.

The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology

Note: Matthew preached this sermon on All-Saints’ Sunday at the historic landmark church, St. Paul’s Episcopal in Jackson, Michigan. Fr. Larry Walters is the rector there.

All Saints’ Sunday

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Jackson, Michigan
November 3, 2002

We are here, as we often say on All-Saints Day, to sing the praises of famous, and not so famous, and downright obscure men and women. Those who have inherited the glory and the majesty of the Kingdom of God. The saints, living among us; the saints, hovering around us, who have found their place in heaven and inspire us to follow their examples.

Last Tuesday, my wife Rose and I came out to meet Fr. Larry. He took us on a tour of the church — this wonderful old building; this gift from previous generations; a gift handed down to us from something like what, the great-grandparents of our grandparents? Those were people whose work ethic would put most of us to shame — pioneers and farmers and railroad men and store-keepers and seamstresses — people who knew what to do with their hands; people who could carve stone and cast iron and blow glass; and who cared enough to invest their hard-won fortunes into the creation of this magnificent structure. They don’t make buldings like this anymore. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because they don’t make people like that anymore either.

Fr. Larry took us into the parish hall; he showed us the damage to the foundation that’s being caused by the constant flow of water at the base; he showed us how that massive stone building is literally tilting as the foundation wears away. Fr. Larry also took us into the chapel and showed us the priceless stained-glass being restored, and I was moved by how hard you are working to preserve and restore this gift you have inherited. I stared at the stained glass and remembered a little girl, twenty years ago on All Saints Day; her Sunday School teacher asked her, “Sarah, what is a saint?” And she pointed to one of the stained glass images in the church and said, “Oh, the saints? They’re the people that the light shines through.”

And then I looked up at this ceiling, and wondered how heavy it is. This is the kind of building that invites us to pause and reflect on the sheer tonnage of our inheritance — not just this church, St. Paul’s, Jackson; but the whole heavy weight of Christianity; the whole constellation of stone cathedrals and basilicas and parishes throughout the world. I found myself wondering how much do they weigh, all combined?

All that weight. All those churches in the world like this one, built by generations past, handed down to us as a gift, and I imagine it must also sometimes feel like a heavy burden. Because it’s not really these pillars and walls that keep this ceiling from collapsing; it’s all of you, with your pledges of time and treasure and labor and sweat; you are the pillars of this church; without the faith and commitment of the people in these pews this place would have fallen down years ago; and I imagine that must like a pretty heavy burden to bear sometimes.

Isn’t it ironic — that this building was built by people who were thinking of nothing but the future; who were so driven by a dream of future generations — us — worshiping and praising God in this building that they gave freely of their time and their wealth to create it; and yet for us — those future generations they dreamed of — this building functions in so many ways to keep us mindful of and tied to the past?

For our ancestors this building drew them into the future; and yet for us, this building draws us into the past.

This building is a touchstone between the past and the present; it connects us to our ancestors and our ancestors to us; in a very real way it allows our ancestors to reach right into this present moment, 150 years after they have died; just as it gives us the ability to reach back to their time, and honor them.

But if that is all it is, of course, if all that this building accomplishes is get us in touch with our past, then this building fails as a church. Last summer my music director and I went to France to do some research on a project we’re working on and we visited a lot of old churches that have become more museums and tourist attractions than living houses of worship; these are churches that are dedicated to preserving the memory of days gone by, but are doing nothing to express a living faith, failing to create fresh expressions of what it’s like to be a Christian today; failing to use the very best of today’s art and music and literature to proclaim the gospel for present moment, just as their ancestors did.

In too many of those European churches the sad impression one gets is that Christianity is an obsolete religion; only relevant to previous generations; having nothing to say to the present except that it was better back in the day.

When you talk to a lot of young people in college these days, you’d think they were living in Europe. For so many young people, Christianity is a relic from a bygone era. And we need to answer the question: what do we do about that?

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, complained that the “world has become a museum”. Certainly in Europe, and more and more in the United States, Christianity has become a museum; more dedicated to preserving the past than living into the future. The question that we must answer is this: what are we doing to honor not just our past, but our future? Yes, of course you are called to save this treasure of a building from becoming a ruin; there is no question about that: as Christians we make a vow to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and that means honoring and preserving our past; but it also means honoring our future; taking steps so that our children will come to love God just as much as our ancestors did; so that the fellowship of saints doesn’t end with us.

This is what we’re trying to do at Canterbury House; and that is what Fr. Larry doing here at St. Paul’s; he showed me the lounge that you’ve created for the youth group, with its brand new sofas and very nice TV and stereo. That’s honoring the future. Treating young people as important parts of your community. Baptizing your children — that’s a critical element to honoring your future. But taking seriously the spiritual lives of your teenagers and young adults — that’s equally important — because that’s when we lose them.

Jesus understood this. The religion of his time felt like a museum to many of his people; a burden to be endured, full of laws and traditions and rules of the past that felt repressive rather than liberating. Jesus saw that their faith was a matter of obedience to the past rather than a living response to the realm of God breaking in right now. But Jesus also knew something about the power of God, a God that breaks through time and history and defeats the power of death with life everlasting.

So confident was Jesus about this that he actually marched right into the ancient Temple, that treasure of the past, and declared God’s power to destroy the Temple and raise it again, completely renewed and restored, in 3 days.

The Historic Preservation Society of Jerusalem didn’t much like that kind of talk. In his defense the Bible says he was only speaking metaphorically, about his body, not about the Temple per se. But to the Historic Preservationists of his time, them was fighting words, he was talking about tearing down the Temple! And that’s all they heard — the tearing down part; they never heard the raise it back up part; they didn’t get his point, which is that there is a resurrection; there is a raising up; there is a new day being born, a new creation breaking through. They didn’t get the resurrection part; they could only get the tearing down part. And so they made him pay.

Again and again Jesus is calling us to honor the past, but not get consumed by it; Let the dead bury the dead; the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume. Again and again Jesus calls us to turn our face to the future; embrace the Kingdom of God breaking in right now, and join him as people of the resurrection. You know what I’m talking about when I talk about resurrection people, right? You know them — they’re all around us. It’s as if they have a kind of anti-gravity device inside them; they have a kind of helium inside them; they have a tendency to raise things up; they raise our spirits; they raise money for good causes; and on Sunday mornings when they get together, when they raise their hearts to God, they can raise the roof. It is resurrection people who are the saints of God; they are the ones that the light shines through; they are the ones depicted on this stained glass. It was resurrection people who raised up this wonderful building; and it’s resurrection people who are keeping this building from falling down. They are practical visionaries; they are realistic dreamers who get caught up in a vision of what God would have us do and they make it happen. Their names are inscribed on the walls and on the stained glass; they are the saints of this parish.

You are resurrection people; for you this building is not a burden because you have this anti-gravity device inside you; you know that as long as your faith is alive; as long as your heart belongs to Jesus and you trust is in the power of the resurrection there is nothing in this world that can bring you down; as St. Paul himself said, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The saints of this church know this; they don’t just believe it they know it and they trust it; they live it; they are joined in a communion of saints hovering among us right now; they are here, in the rafters and in the cross beams, praising God for the faith of this church. They are in the air; they are gathering above the baptismal font — can you see them — waiting to receive into their fellowship the people who will be baptized today; they are gathering above this altar of God, which stands as a doorway to the beyond, where we will soon gather to receive the sacred elements of Christ. To be in the presence of this altar, in the sanctuary of this place, is to stand with one foot in this world, and the other foot in the infinite realm of eternity, where angels come and go; where saints converse with mortals; where prayers are offered and blessings are received. Praise God, on this All Saints’ Day, that we have this legacy, this sacred place; and pray to God that with the gift of his resurrection power, we will pass along this gift to future generations: not just the gift of a building; but the gift of faith in the resurrection into new life

We are trav’ling in the footsteps
Of those who’ve gone before
And we’ll all be reunited,
On a new and sunlit shore

AMEN.

The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology