Metropolitan Dream Center Prayer Breakfast
I want to thank Margaret for her kind invitation. She is obviously a brave person, and in many ways. Look, she’s gone and invited another of these Episcopalians to speak. Because we come with a lot of baggage. I mean, literally. Forget all those stone churches with leaky roofs, iffy AC, and plumbing back to the horse-and-buggy era. There’s a lot more baggage in the bargain- Cassock, cotta, surplice, chasuble, maniple, stole, tippet, rochet, chimere, cope, beretta, mitre, purficator, burse, corporal, chalice, aumbry, dalmatic, zachetta, mosetta (this part sounds like Italian dinner), thurible, vimpa (even I had to look that one up!), monstrance, chrism, fermentum, gradual, epiclesis, no mas! we get the idea! To be sure, you can be Church without any of it- Word, people, water, bread and wine, faith- and you are good to go? Why do we do all those add ons? Old fashioned? Retro? I am the wrong person to answer the question, but I can say this- the add-ons says this- this is special, this is different from the everyday, this is holy, take your shoes off here, keep silence for a moment. In a world full of the strife of tongues, here is truth, a world that sometimes feels like a hall of mirrors, here is clarity. Forget the hardware, but remember this- the Word brings its own authority, and we mark that, on every side, with exalted song, with walls, with silence, a thousand worshippers or two or three, there the Spirit will be found, there is authority, of the kind that makes us not constrained, but free! All of this brings me back to Margaret! Each branch of the Church has its own way of raising up leadership. But what we all believe is that real leadership calls on us to open our ears to the Word, points to Jesus who is the Word, points to him in his or her life of self-sacrifice and humility and hope. And in doing that, in a way surprising to the world, is found real authority, that is what I have always seen in Margaret James, the kind of authority that shines outward from the heart, which I think makes her my right reverend bishop! Amen!
On to my task, which begins with thinking together about II Chronicles 7, containing as it does our verse this morning: ‘reach up to heaven in order to bring it to earth.’ But first, what was happening in that chapter? Talk about fancy and impressive worship with not a little baggage! The First Temple, built by David’s son Solomon, in the holy city of Jerusalem, on Mount Zion- king, priests, Levites, musicians, with trumpets and doubtless drums and tambourines, and a vast host of worshippers, right out the door and half way to Egypt! And then the mind boggling part- twenty two thousand cattle sacrifices, along with one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goals, a river of blood, the sky thick with a cloud of smoke, the fire for the offering from heaven itself, and then the feast- talk about barbeque! And none of this 55 minutes and we’re back in our cars! The celebration went on for a full seven days unceasing! Puts the Episcopalians to shame! God's voice was heard in his word, and he promised that they could come to that place and lift up their distress and they would be heard. They could confess their sins and be forgiven. They could count on God renewing their covenant in his mercy when their hearts had grown cold. There was a place where they were sure to find God, where they would be heard, forgiven, renewed. Lest we be too elated, Brothers and Sisters, the last words of the chapter from the Lord are a sharp shift. II Chronicles 7 is full of worship, wonder, and benediction. But at the end of the chapter, the Word from God becomes one of judgment- a day will come when, because of sin, this spectacular temple will be a pile of rubble, a byword to passersby. We cannot help but think about Jesus’s prediction that not one stone would remain on stone, and the way those passing by the cross, soon thereafter, would revile him. The Lord is preparing us to think about the Temple in a very different way
I have with me an illustration, thanks to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. Now modern art has a lot to do with human struggle in this modern time we live in, when many think they can live without God, or have a bone to pick with him, or think we make up our own truth. Modern art often describes very eloquently the confusion in which the children of this age live. But one sculpture caught my eye, a ladder from ground level up to the upper windows of the museum (by Martin Puryear in 1996). It is rickety, not an easy climb. Does it stop at the ceiling? Is it hopeful or doomed? Is it going up or down? Do we build our own, or can it be found? Predictably, the artist is not giving you an easy answer! But a ladder to the sky, that is what we human beings long for, what every religion and every ancient myth sought. A ladder to the sky is what sacrifice seeks to be- Zion the place where the sky parts and the voice, the presence, the promise, the fire, the blessing, all come down. And where the blessing comes down, the earth, otherwise a desert, blooms and comes to life. Sacrifice up, then blessing comes down- so we humans might think.
You can tell where I am going, the first chapter of the Gospel of John, Jacob’s ladder, the opening to heaven, where angels ascend and descend, where? Upon the Son of Man, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Every promise given to Solomon and the people of God fulfilled, but in a surprising new way! For us as Christians, we start with God’s own Son descending to us, born in a stable, refugee, man of sorrows, the crucified who counts his death to the credit of us his betrayers! Jacob’s ladder, but coming down to us. The lamb that was slain, but first for us, while we were yet sinners. But of course, says Paul in Ephesians, the Lord bowing downward to us in Jesus is itself an ascension most wonderful, so that our Lord but also our brother at the right hand of the Father. First Christ, then us, first downward, and then us able to stand. First he becoming sin who knew no sin, so that we might become, what we are not on our own, the righteousness of God. The question mark over than ladder in the modern museum is answered! And then what of us? We follow in his footsteps, as we are enabled, in works of witness and service, the kind of thing the Metropolitan Dream Center is all about. And that becomes, says then man who wrote our prayer book, Thomas Cranmer, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, lifted upward in response. Our verse this morning from II Chronicles 7 is just right- touching heaven to change earth. It’s a bit like a divine roller coaster. He comes down, that he might go on high, so that we might life up our praise to heaven, so that we might change earth as he empowers and directs. Down and up, up and down, the order and rhythm all God’s, often in spite of ourselves.
This is after all a prayer breakfast, so let me close with a word about what we are here together for the Temple foretold by Solomon is the risen body of Jesus, which is as ecumenical as you can get, and utterly one be you a Baptist or Pentecostal or Catholic or Episcopalian, bring what baggage you will. The Temple where we are surely heard, our sins miraculously forgiven, where rain comes to our dried lives, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving consumed in fire- this is anywhere and everywhere, where the name of Jesus is uttered. That is Zion, to which the nations flow! Our prayer book says that Eucharist, thanksgiving should be offered ‘at all time and all places,’ even the most distressed and hopeless in the world’s eyes, in every place and every moment, this room, in this beautiful setting, on this morning, with the certainty that our prayers reach to his ear in heaven, and our expectation of hearing, also in prayer, his mandate to be his servants of change on his earth. And we praying this morning, says Peter, stones in his temple, all together his royal priest, whatever the world may say, in our prayers, says Paul, built up as sinews and muscles into a mature person in Christ on the last day.
I am most grateful for his time, and for the remarkable and encouraging ministry of the Metropolitan Dream Center, and pray for the manifold blessings of the Holy Spirit on every one of you, Amen.
