Buildings and Ministry

              I’ve been in some beautiful churches over the years.  The one that sticks in my mind is the elegant cathedral in Coventry, England.  Building a marvelous house of God has been a task that humanity has set for itself from the beginning of religion.  It has to do with loving God above all things, and it has produced some great places.  It has also produced some great calamities. The Anglican cathedral in Coventry, was bombed by Germany in 1940 and destroyed.  Winston Churchill and the dean of Coventry wandered through the wreckage of this place and found a cross made of the fallen roof timbers.  This still sits in what used to be the sanctuary of the destroyed church as a reminder to all of us what the purpose of the church has always been. 

            After the war, they rebuilt that cathedral. What comes to my mind when I think of the new Coventry Cathedral is the great hung tableau of the risen Christ that hangs over the altar.  Our Lord looks over the heads of the gathered congregation, through etched glass portraits of the saints in the rear window of the church that looks over remnants of the destroyed cathedral still lingering after all of these years.  Coventry didn’t want to let the old church go away.  They have retained it as a reminder of what it is that the world does to religion and they are trying to do something positive about that.  The people of this place have created an organization called The Community of the Cross of Nails.  Their purpose is to engage with other places in the world where there has been great tragedy and to be part of a community of survivors.  They have reached out to Germany, to Japan and many other places in the world where pain and misery have gathered our attention.  The results of these offers of community has been to restore humanity in these places and to make the purpose of religion to be seen by many people to be love and understanding.

            David wanted to build a great house of God.  He got the Ark of the Covenant and was ready to build a place to store it.  He never got it done.  The building of the temple waited until his son Solomon came into power after David’s death to build the first of the great Hebrew churches in Jerusalem.  This was done to honor all that God had done for the people of Israel in giving them their common land and their heritage.  That great edifice didn’t last.  It became one of three large temples devoted to God that the Hebrew people built.  The last one in Jerusalem still has the western wall remaining where countless people come to pray constantly.  The temple mount has become the home of the great Muslim Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed is supposed to have leapt into heaven on the back of a horse.  It is also the place where many believe that Abraham offered Isaac to God as a sacrifice.

            What stands out for me in all of this is that the cathedrals and temples that we build are not scheduled to last forever.  The temple of God that lasts is the love that we pour into the world because of our faith.  When we help one another, when we provide for one another in our mutual distress, we offer to God a lasting temple of our love and understanding that far outweighs any kind of a building that we can build.  When our parishes work to clean up the world’s pain, we are doing all that we can to honor God’s love for humanity.