November 18, 2012 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

A Temple Not Made with Hands

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 122
1 Peter 2:4–10
Mark 13:1–8

“Not one stone will be left here upon another.”

Mark 13:2 (NRSV)

We are your temple not made with hands.
We are your body.
If every wall should crumble and every church decay,
we are your habitation.
Nearer are you than breathing, closer than hands and feet.
Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery,
look out in compassion on the world.

George MacLeod

Yes, folks, the day is finally here for us to dedicate our new building, the Gratz Center. I’ve been walking through it these past few days and wanted to share something that I discovered.

Now I know you think everything there is to be said about this past election has been said, but I have some late-breaking news for you. I discovered that on Election Day our afternoon class at the Day School held their own election, and here are the results: It was ten votes for President Obama and five votes for Mr. Romney. So that was how the afternoon class at the Day School decided the election. (I’m not sure if you fed those numbers into Nate Silver’s model whether that would have made any difference to his projections on the outcome.)

The class also decided that it would be good to write a letter to President Obama congratulating him on his victory, but they also thought that they would offer some advice, and I would like to share just some of the things with you that they wrote to President Obama.

It starts, “Here is what we think you should do.” This is Jack, who just turned five, and he writes, “Lead the way and don’t let anyone cut in line.”

And then Quinn, who is five: “Take care of all the people.” (Good advice.)

Graham, who is three-and-a-half—this is his suggestion to the President: “Pop the popcorn.” (Something kind of Zen about that, isn’t there?)

Greer, who is also three-and-a-half, has some very practical advice for the President: “Put on your socks.”

Kendall says, “Be nice.”

Mia, four, says, “Tell jokes.”

Alan, who is four-and-a-half, says to the President, “Give people money to buy things.” (You didn’t know they were teaching Keynesian economics at the Day School of Fourth Church, did you?)

And Connor, who is four and very thoughtful, says, “Help people get to the hospital if they are sick.” (President Obama may say he has done some of that already.)

There follows an invitation to visit the Day School and then this P.S. from Cami: “I love you.”

So the letter is now posted on the wall in the Day School in the Gratz Center waiting for the President’s reply. I am sure it is up there in his priority list, along with negotiations on the fiscal cliff.

It is indeed an auspicious day in the history of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. As we like to say around here, it’s only really once in one hundred years that we dedicate a new building. It is, of course, the culmination of years of planning and preparation and work. When I arrived at Fourth Church just over fifteen years ago, the congregation was celebrating the most recent renovation that had taken place at the church. It had just been completed in, I think, 1995 or so. But even then people were starting to talk about the need to create new space for this growing congregation, so that it could grow its programs and its outreach into the community.

Many of you know that around 2000 we launched a concept in which we would build a very tall building on the space behind the church where the Gratz Center now is. That was a planned development with a developer to build not only space for the church but condos too, and it was, as you may remember, quite unpopular with our neighbors.

So we regrouped as a congregation in 2008; we undertook “Refreshing the Vision,” a new strategic plan for the church. And in that new grouping, the leadership of the church decided to go on its own and build its own building, five stories on the parcel of land behind the church.

Another story from the Day School for you: One of our elders, Linda, has two lovely girls, Tara and Jenna, who are in the Day School. They were driving to school one day recently when Tara, in the back, asked this question of her mother: “Mommy, why do turning cars have to yield to Presbyterians?” Linda thought for a moment and then realized that she had to teach Tara a new word, pedestrians. But I thought it apt, because in many senses in this project our neighbors did “yield to Presbyterians.” They did not object to our plans. Indeed, I think many people who are in our neighborhood really love this building. Our neighbors were patient dealing with our construction, and I am very grateful to them. We, together, have a new building that people in the community love and that is built for them, as it is for our congregation. The Genevieve and Wayne Gratz Center at Fourth Presbyterian Church is completed and ready to be dedicated.

And into all this now comes the Holy Spirit, guiding our meditation with a gospel reading that is set to be read in churches this Sunday morning. And what has Jesus to say to his disciples at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago on this historic November morning?

This is what Jesus has to say: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.”

I mean, I’m sorry, Jesus, but does it have to be that word this morning? Could it not have been “Well done, good and faithful servants?” or “I have come to give you life abundant.” No, the word from Jesus for today: “Not one stone will be left here upon another.”

Scripture can be like that. We buried one of our saints of this church just a couple weeks ago, Douglas Voyles, who was known to many of you. He was here every Sunday and was at every Bible study. He was a faithful Deacon in this congregation. I was honored to be a part of his memorial service. I told a story about Doug at the service. I once did a Bible study and I had found a Bible in the pew, a Fourth Church Bible, that was wrongly bound. You opened it at the front cover but the text was upside down and back to front. I used this as a metaphor for what the Bible does to us if we take it seriously. It gets in there and it turns things upside down. It takes us not to where we are expecting. Doug one day was rummaging around in a bookshop and he came across a Good News Bible, which was also printed upside down and back to front, and he presented it to me and I read from it at his funeral. Scripture is like that.

I remember Brad Braxton, a noted African American preacher, telling me that on the Sunday after Barack Obama’s election in 2008 he was preaching and his text was this from Psalm 146: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.” Scripture shattering expected outcomes.

But Jesus warning about buildings is not new here; it’s not the first time the subject has come up either in the New Testament or, indeed, in the Old Testament. You go to the prophets, and there is Jeremiah, in chapter 7, sitting at the gate of the temple preaching to the people who believe that God dwells in their midst in the temple in the holy of holies. They believe that that is God’s house and God cannot be moved from it. Jeremiah preaches to them and says, “God will abandon the temple unless you live lives of justice in which you do not oppress the widow and the stranger and the orphan.”

And in the soaring poetry of Micah in chapter six, God’s voice has spoken through Micah’s poetry saying, “It’s not your sacrifices and your worship in the temple that I need. It is that you do justice and you love kindness and you walk humbly with your God.” And even here in Mark, we are only two chapters away from Jesus having entered Jerusalem, gone straight to the temple, and cleansed it of those who used the temple as a marketplace. And as he does so, he quotes the prophet: “My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.”

Perhaps Jesus is reminding us this morning that what we are about to celebrate was called Project Second Century: Called to Love and Serve. It’s not Project Second Century: Called to Build a Building. It’s not about the building for its own sake, and of course, we all know that. It is about what will happen in there and what we will bring to that place and how it will become a focus of our community.

In 1938 in Scotland, there was a minister who was at the height of his game preaching to thousands of people on Sunday morning in Govan Parish Church in Glasgow. To his congregation’s great surprise, he abruptly resigned as the minister in Govan. His name was George MacLeod (disclosure: no relation to me). You see George MacLeod had a vision, and it was a vision to build on the Island of Iona, the Holy Isle off the west coast of Scotland, where St. Columba had brought Christianity to Scotland in the sixth century and then evangelized the Scots. It became one of the most important centers of Christianity into medieval times.

The Benedictine abbey from the twelfth century that was built on the site of Columba’s monastery had been restored in 1910. But there was nowhere for pilgrims to stay, so MacLeod had a vision of rebuilding the chapter house and the kitchen and living quarters, which were then in ruins. MacLeod had this dream of an experiment in community in which he would work with people to combine worship together with work. He would bring young ministers from the mainland who would become laborers for the artisans and masons and joiners who were working on the buildings. Many of them had become unemployed from the shipyards in Glasgow.

Out of this visionary experiment grew an organization that we know today as the Iona Community, an organization that is not just based on the island—although that’s its spiritual home—but that throughout the world has touched hundreds of thousands of lives in its work for liturgical renewal, in its work for ecumenical activities, in its commitment to working for justice and peace and finding new ways of living out the gospel in today’s world.

If you have ever been to Iona you know that it is a beautiful place, a holy place. The abbey itself is an extraordinary sanctuary. It is termed “The Glory of the West.” MacLeod, of course, loved the abbey and the chapter house and the living quarters. But MacLeod had a recurrent theme in his preaching, in his poetic prayers and it was this

We are your temple not made with hands.
If every wall should crumble and every church decay,
we are your habitation.

I wonder, is that the word that Jesus has for the disciples at Fourth Presbyterian Church this day? Do not put your trust in princes or mortals. Do not put your trust in buildings. Put your trust in the community that gathers. The temple not made with hands. Put your trust in that which is the collection of the living stones, in that rich metaphor of building from 1 Peter. The saints, the faithful, you, and you, and you, and you, and you who are called to live into this new beginning. You who collectively as a community are called, not simply to be the occupants of a building, but are called to love and serve.

Perhaps it is most elegantly and simply put in the children’s hymn that I recited at the laying of the cornerstone. Do you remember it?

The church is not a building.
The church is not a steeple.
The church is not a resting place.
The church is the people.

Alright, let’s see if we can get you going like Dr. Forbes did a couple weeks ago. So why don’t I do the first three lines and then you, the congregation, the people of God in this place respond, “The Church is the people.”

Here goes:

The church is not a building.
The church is not a steeple.
The church is not a resting place.

All: The church is the people.

Thanks be to God. Amen.