Episodes
Sunday Nov 11, 2012
Jesus, the Builder
Sunday Nov 11, 2012
Sunday Nov 11, 2012
Rev. Dean Snyder Matthew 16:13-19
Jesus was a carpenter. He was a builder.
In Mark 6 when Jesus got up to teach in the synagogue of his hometown, people said, “Isn’t this the carpenter?”
They did not say it kindly. It was more like, Who does this guy think he is, getting up to teach at the synagogue? Isn’t he just a carpenter?
Joseph was a carpenter and, in the culture into which Jesus was born, it would be normal for a father to teach his son his trade. In fact, it would have been highly abnormal for a son not to learn the father’s trade.
Jesus was a carpenter. He was a builder.
We don’t know what kind of carpenter Jesus was.
John Dominic Crossan speculates that he built furniture – tables and chairs – because this was the kind of work the majority of carpenters did.
But that is not the only work carpenters did. Some carpenters build houses. Most houses were made of stone or earth but carpenters were needed to build beams and doors and windows. Some carpenters build the entire house.
Jesus seemed to know something about building houses. He ended the sermon on the Mount in Matthew by contrasting a house built on sand and another built on rock.
Then there are those who speculate that Jesus could have been involved in larger.
Jesus was a builder.
This may help us understand the scripture we want to look at today. In our lesson Jesus, after he had become a rabbi, asks his disciples what people are saying about him. “Who do people say that I am?” he asks.
The disciples dutifully report what they are hearing. The present is usually understood in terms of the past. So the disciples told him: some people are saying that you are another John the Baptist, or another Elijah or another Jeremiah or another prophet like the prophets of old.
Then Jesus asks his disciples, But who do you think I am? Who do you say that I am?
Suddenly the room gets quiet. Now the question becomes personal and harder. Who do you say I am?
Only Simon Peter, who has no sense, answers the question. I think you are different from anyone else who has ever lived before. I don’t think you are another anybody. I think you are the messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God.
Jesus responds to Peter’s answer by making a joke. I can’t prove it but I think Jesus laughed as he said the next part. The name Peter means “stone” or “rock.” Jesus says: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, …”
It is a joke because it is a good pun and because the idea of Peter being a rock is funny and because Jesus being a builder is a cute reference to the way he spent his life before becoming a rabbi.
It is cute because he is still a builder … only now he is talking about a different kind of building. He is talking about building a new consciousness, an evolutionary leap in human spirituality, building a new creation.
Then he adds a few more very important words. "You are Peter,” he says, “and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
The gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Who knows the word “Hades?”
We use the word Hades as a synonym for hell. When my parents would not let me use the word hell when I was a boy, I’d tell my sister to go to Hades. I was theologically precocious.
But Hades isn’t really the same thing as hell, not the way we imagine hell. The image that most of us carry around inside of our brains of hell is an image of fire and brimstone which is really based on a place in ancient Israel called Gehenna. Gehenna was a dump where the fire never went out. In Gehenna there is everlasting fire.
Hades is different. Hades is the land of Death. Hades is the city of Death, the realm of Death, the place of no life and nothingness. Death.
Some of the ideas I talk about in this sermon were inspired by a sermon preached by John Buchanan, the pastor for many years, now retired, of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.
Buchanan says the word Hades ought to actually be translated into the English word death. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Death, the power of Death, will not prevail against it.”
I think he is right.
This is almost surely a post-resurrection story. That Jesus was the Christ and that he was building a church stronger than death are post-resurrection ideas. Matthew tells us this story as a way of teaching what the post-resurrection church came to believe: that Jesus begins a new reality, a new creation, a new consciousness against which Death battles and loses. This is a post-resurrection revelation.
Years ago I was the pastor of a downtown church in another city and we did a survey of the religious beliefs of our downtown community. Methodist was very low on the list. Very high on the list, just after Catholic and Jewish was New Age. Anybody remember the New Age movement?
So I read a lot of books trying to understand the New Age movement.
Very popular in the New Age movement at the time was an ancient philosophy called Gnosticism that early Christianity had declared a heresy. The leading academic scholar on Gnosticism was a woman named Elaine Pagels who had literally written the book about Gnosticism.
Pagels was not considered a friend of the institutional church. She poked into areas of the church’s history that the church would prefer be forgotten. She reminded us that Christianity had begun as a movement without any orthodoxy at all. It included a lot of ideas we consider unacceptable today.
Elaine Pagels did not consider herself a church person. A lot of church people did not consider her a friend of the church.
Which is why what she wrote in the introduction to her 2004 book on the Gospel of Thomas, Beyond Belief is so remarkable and powerful, John Buchanan quotes it.
On a bright, cold Sunday morning in New York, Elaine Pagels interrupted her daily run by stopping in the vestibule of an Episcopal church to get warm. Two days earlier, her two-and-a-half-year-old son had been diagnosed with an invariably fatal lung disease. The diagnosis was, of course, absolutely devastating. Elaine Pagels writes this:
Since I had not been in church for a long time, I was startled by my response to the worship in progress—the soaring harmonies of the choir singing with the congregation; and the priest, a woman in bright gold and white vestments, proclaiming the prayers in a clear resonant voice. As I stood watching, a thought came to me: Here is a family that knows how to face death. . . .
The day after we heard Mark’s diagnosis—and that he had a few months to live, maybe a few years—a team of doctors urged us to authorize a lung biopsy, a painful and invasive procedure. How could this help? It couldn’t, they explained; but the procedure would let them see how far the disease had progressed. Mark was already exhausted by the previous day’s ordeal. Holding him, I felt that if more masked strangers poked needles into him in an operating room, he might lose heart—literally—and die. We refused the biopsy, gathered Mark’s blanket, clothes, and Peter Rabbit, and carried him home.
Standing in the back of that church, I recognized, uncomfortably, that I needed to be there. Here was a place to weep without imposing tears upon a child; and here was a heterogeneous community that had gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs, and to deal with what we cannot control or imagine. (pp. 3–4)
What Elaine Pagels stepped into that cold New York morning is the church that Jesus built.
It is the church that insists that, no matter what the world seems to be like, it refuses to live in a world where Death prevails.
The church is far from perfect, of course. You remember that when Peter said Jesus was the Christ, the child of the living God, Jesus did not respond by complimenting him. He did not say, Hey, Peter, you are really smart.
He said, Bless you Peter, (He said bless you the way Southerners say Bless your heart) that revelation must have come from God because you certainly aren’t smart enough to have figured that out on our own.
It is sort of the same with the church. The church is far from perfect. The point is that God keeps using the church to make sure the power of death does not prevail.
The church that Jesus is building is, of course, not a building. It has come to have and use buildings. There are some churches that are experimenting with not owning buildings. They rent space in other buildings for worship and live on their laptops the rest of the week. I am interested to see how the experiments will turn out. Most congregations come to own buildings eventually because if you are going to do more than worship on a Sunday morning, it is hard not to have access to space to house your mission and ministry.
And as soon as you have a church building, the building wants to communicate something. I believe it wants to communicate eternity. Because it is a church that houses the church of Jesus Christ, I believe it wants to communicate resurrection. It wants to communicate a God stronger than death. It wants to communicate a love stronger than death.
When we baptize babies here, we baptize them into a life that Death will not prevail against. When we confirm people here we confirm them into a life of Christian discipleship that Death will not prevail against. When we do funerals and memorial services here, we celebrate a life that death may have taken but that Death has not prevailed against.
The church knows the reality of death as well as anyone and probably better. The church just insists in the name of Jesus Christ that the power of Death will not prevail against us. We will not be defeated by Death. We will not be defined by Death. We will not be limited by Death.
Death will not prevail over Christ’s purpose. Death will not take away the meaning of my life or yours.
I think all the mission we do here at Foundry is an expression of the conviction that the power of Death will not prevail against the church that Jesus the builder is building. The AA and NA groups that meet here, the people who are members of those groups make a decision every day to not let death prevail against them. God bless them.
The homeless people who come here looking for options decide every night not to let Death prevail against them.
Those of us in the depression group and in the grief group decide again and again not to let Death prevail. Those of us who cook meals here for people living with cancer and AIDs, those who sing in the Concert of Life, those who teach English as a Second Language, those who work for Peace and Justice, those who work against dehumanizing LGBTQ people, and on everyone is a statement that Death will not prevail.
Jesus the builder says I am building a church and the power of Death will not prevail against it.
So I think Jesus is still building. He is still building through us. I think he is still building here at 16th and P Streets.
Someone told me recently about something she saw on a trip to Manhattan. It was a church building that had been closed down as a church and turned into a high end clothing store.
A place in Manhattan where homeless people used to be able to come in out of the weather. A place that used to distribute food and clothing. A place that used to host AA groups. A place that people like Elaine Pagels used to be able to accidentally wander into and end up finding God.
That place had closed down and been reopened for only those who could pay hundreds of dollars for an outfit.
So we going to build again here at Foundry. Jesus is going to build here at Foundry.
The more generously and sacrificially each of us gives to the Mission Possible campaign, the more we will be able to build.
I have not often been sure in my heart and mind that some thing is right as I am sure it is time for us to build again. If you have not been on a tour of the building to see our plans to build, there will be a tour after this service.
We will build. Jesus will build. Jesus is still building his church and the power of Death will not prevail against it.
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