I remember at different times in my life going back into the nursery room at my home church in North Carolina. It really was one of the neatest rooms in the building. There was plenty of room for cribs, toys, tables, chairs, a piano, cabinets, an altar and a huge heavy sliding curtain partition that could quickly turn it into two rooms. I remember a few things about being really small in that room. I liked playing with the 1970 Fisher Price Play Family House because it had a little working spring loaded doorbell. I liked rolling that push toy ball popper around because of the sounds it made. I remember the toilet was really small for us little people but the sound it made was absolutely loud and terrifying. I remember the face of the teacher that taught us all the little Sunday School songs and I remember the frustration of that one rhyme and closely related little song that we used the same hand motions for. Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and Ugh! The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is the people. Ugh! What’s going on here? Evidently, my church was broken or attended by no one but roofers and pigeons. Over a little time, I got it right and I found the people and learned the rest of the song. I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world, yes we’re the church together. Except on Sunday. I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. that was first to observe that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in Christian America. When I finally got all my people off the roof and inside, I can see now that they are all the same color. Not only that, but they pretty much all look alike. When I do that little song, I now realize I have a “my church” problem. It’s still kind of based around me as an individual isn’t it. To rephrase Pink Floyd a little bit, “My lips move, but I can’t hear what I’m sayin’. Or there’s lip service to the all together but not widespread practice. We would probably do better if we taught that song standing in a circle holding one another’s hands making the church. I asked my wife to come into the room where I was writing to make sure my stand in a circle theory worked and almost had a flashback to when I was three or so. So, why am I thinking about that song and the motions of Sunday School? Actually, there are a few reasons. It all started with the verse that says, “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house. This means that believers are united in Christ and being transformed into a holy temple for God. Then one very simple thing came to my attention. In the gospel, the very first verse we read today is, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Now through my friend Victor’s example, I have started to take a little more interest in the original languages in which the texts were written. I have read or have heard this text read at most of the funeral services I’ve been at. The translation is not right. It’s a very small thing, but kind of a huge thing. The word “your” is plural. That’s OK, but then for some reason the property of the grammatical number of the noun hearts is incorrect. In the original Greek your is plural but heart is singular. It points to our oneness, and because someone decided to not translate what was written but to make grammatical numbers agree and that it has consistently been mistranslated probably due to its familiarity and tradition, we lose an indicator of our intended oneness. I think that this is an example of our tendency to turn our spirituality inward. In my ministry, I have used the term “We are helping to build the kingdom of God brick by brick”. Maybe I should have been saying stone by stone. As it turns out, we are the living stones that comprise the body of Christ, the holy temple of God. The idea is that we have one heart, one faith, one baptism. Jesus went to the cross for his efforts at uniting. His efforts with the disenfranchised, the outcasts, the neglected challenged sensibilities and angered many in the world around him. We see the same thing happening to Stephen, the first recorded martyr of Christianity. His problems began in the previous chapter. There was a big dispute and schism already brewing between two groups. One group that the other group had come under too much of a Greek influence and picking up new traditions and not “keeping it pure”. This dispute led to the alienation and exclusion of those that were helpless and in need from being fed if they were not members of the right group. Specifically, the widows of that group were being ignored in the distribution of bread. It didn’t take long did it? Jesus had prayed the night before going to the cross, “ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” It is obviously a huge challenge to truly live out the sense of oneness and unity, to be one, particularly when it comes to how we segregate ourselves on Sunday morning. Think of all the things that divide us going back two thousand years. How to baptize, the practice of Holy Communion, who can do it and who can receive it, the wording in creeds, who got what share in distributions, the pursuit and acquisition of power and authority, building bigger and bigger buildings, how sins are forgiven, the creation of denominations, the color of our skin, cultural divergence, sexual identity, neurodiversity. A bunch of chaotic rock piles and stray rocks scattered far and wide. Jesus’ prayer before dying? That we would be one as he and the Father were one. That’s pretty tight. I’d say as tight as it gets. How is it that we can reverse this trend? Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” The way to the Father was through the cross, and we are called to do things and ask for things in his name. That has a little different of a connotation today than it had when Jesus said it. To do it in his name meant to take up his mission, to emulate, to carry on doing those same things and same ministry in the same way. Jesus was out there breaking down boundaries and becoming one with all people and even dying for them despite what society had to say about them. We are to be about welcoming and including. We hear that Jesus is the chief cornerstone. That’s the first stone laid. It needs to be square and perfect. It sets the direction and orientation of the building and all other stones are laid in reference to it. Walls with missing stones don’t stand and hearts with missing valves or parts do not function. We are called to be one. We are living stones seeking to be a part of something much larger than ourselves, to build the kingdom of God and be united in the Body of Christ. It’s our mission. We are seeking to work with other churches and trying to make sure that the world knows that our doors are open to everyone. That way, when we open the doors to see all the people, we see all of the people all around the world and then we will be the church together and be a part of the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer that we all be one
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