The Rev. Noah Van Niel

Christ and St. Luke’s

November 13^th, 2022

Proper 28 (C): Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

To listen to audio of this sermon click here.

            Percy Bysshe Shelley was a 19^th century British Romantic poet who lived only 30 years but, in that time, produced some of the most highly regarded poems in the English language. Perhaps his best-known poem is Ozymandias, a sonnet from 1818, which imagines the story of a ruined statue of a cruel and powerful King which now lies in pieces in the desert. You may have heard it before:

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I find this poem to be one of the most succinct and effective encapsulations of the reality of temporality; a poem which puts to lie the fiction we live by that if we just build it tall enough, if we just make it strong enough, it will somehow escape the ravages of time, and last for eternity. And yet each and every quest to do so fails. Our human endeavors are stamped with an expiration date, and time will make a fool of those who think otherwise.

            I think of this poem every time we read the story of Jesus predicting the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, as we just did this morning. Such a prediction comes in all three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke at this time of year, as we are turning towards the end of story before starting again at the beginning in Advent. Jesus has come into Jerusalem for the last time, and of all the things he said and did during these final days, this prediction of the destruction of the Temple was one of the most shocking. For the Temple was the holiest place for the holiest people in the holiest city, in the holiest land. To predict its downfall was downright sacrilegious.

            But of course, Jesus was right. He was right in the particular sense—the Temple was destroyed, in 70 AD. And never fully rebuilt. The most you can see of it now is the Western or “wailing” wall which is one of the most sacred sites for Jews in the entire world. And he was also right in the general sense. Like the poem, Jesus is reminding us of the temporality of all our human endeavors. No matter how well, or how strong, or how high, or how holy our buildings, even the most stable and sacred ones will eventually crumble to dust.

            And while I might have chosen a different passage to help us complete our stewardship season this year (especially as we are trying to close out a capital campaign for a church which is adorned with many beautiful stones and gifts!), I think ultimately this passage is the right one for us today. It’s a good reminder of what has always been true: that this entire renovation has never actually been about the buildings. It’s always been about what happens in these buildings and what these renewed buildings could help us do. What we have asked you to invest in, with your prayers, and your patience, and your finances, is the creation and preservation of space that is meant to be used, whose intent was always to function because we believed not in our mortar but in our mission, not in our edifice but in our purpose. Buildings that are ends in themselves are idols, doomed to dust. But buildings that are used as tools, buildings that are used as places of transformation and connection, as places of help, of healing, of hope, of happiness, well they start to surpass their temporary nature, by bringing us in touch with things that are eternal. And that has always been the motivation behind all this construction: to create facilities that facilitate an encounter with the presence of the living God and give us the chance to continue to do something meaningful and helpful and good in this place for as long as these walls will stand.

            Imagine with me, a Thursday a year from now.  The day starts early, with dozens of 3 and 4 year -old’s getting dropped off at preschool for a full day using the magic of music and art for their learning and development. Soon after they arrive our devoted Lunch Ministry volunteers come into the new kitchen to start cooking a meal for our homeless and low-income neighbors. Those guests show up late morning and are served the meal at tables in a space that is now dignified, and dry, and welcoming.  Meanwhile, over in the Parish House, the lunch hour sees a neighborhood group in need of meeting space holding their monthly gathering in one of our new rooms. Later that afternoon our parlor is filled with a group of parishioners coming for prayer and study. While parents taking a break from the hospital bedside of their sick child sit quietly in our garden to pray. Upstairs one priest is meeting with a widow to plan the funeral of her beloved husband while another is talking a new family through the baptismal rite and welcoming them to the church. Kathy is working furiously to prepare materials for our youngest children and plan the next event for our youth so that they may grow up secure in the knowledge that they are loved. Kevin and Marj sit around the piano in the new choir room debriefing after a night of rehearsals and planning the next season of transcendent music. And down in the church Bob, David and Vince are setting up for the inaugural Jim Sell Community Conversation which invites people from across the city to come together to learn and share about issues that are relevant to our collective well-being. Meanwhile Judie is keeping everybody in line and organizing it all. And before the lights are turned out for the day, our Thursday night AA meeting has slipped in and out of Lower Lloyd Hall so those who desperately need that support will have it, once again, available to them in a central location.

            Friends, these are just some of the things that could be happening in this place, and they are the kinds of things our building should be about. It should be about welcoming, and worshipping, and helping and empowering. Those are things that transform lives because they are the things that transcend our temporality. And that is the purpose of the Church—to bring into being and put into practice those aspects of life which echo beyond its limits. If we’re lucky, this new building will have maybe another 100 years, and hopefully, if future generations are wise and prudent in their stewardship, even more than that. But we’d be lucky not because the building lasted, but because it would have given us that many more opportunities to love, and serve—to pray, and cry, and laugh, and sing. Many more opportunities to bring people in touch with God, and let that reality permeate their earthly existence. Yes, eventually, at some point, this church will be gone. But when the time comes that the waters rise too high, or the stones break and fall, we will have done something meaningful, something lasting, something of ultimate value in this place.

It’s really, not unlike the problem posed in each of our lives, except with more mortar. As Jesus is trying to make clear to the disciples, the question is not “When will the end come?” It is, “When it does come, will you be ready? Will you have done all you can to do something meaningful—not important but meaningful? Something that will transcend your life?” This is a highly personal question for Jesus at this moment. As he stands and looks at the Temple, foreseeing its destruction, he is also aware that in just a few days’ time, his own earthly life will be at an end. The Cross is rising on the horizon. So what does he choose to do with the time he has left? He teaches, he gathers, he feeds, he prays all, in an attempt to transmit something lasting to the people he has been given, in the place he has been given to do it, in the time that he has. This is our work. And this is the place we have been given to do it in, and the people we have been given to do it with, as well as we can for as long as we can. For if, in this place, we can foster things like love and community, wonder and beauty, caring and comfort, healing and hope then we will have brought something of the eternal into the temporal, something of heaven down to earth. And there could be no more worthwhile work for us to do with our lives.

The fate of Ozymandias awaits us all. One day this building will fall. What story will they tell about us when it does?

The Rev. Noah Van Niel

Christ and St. Luke’s

November 6^th, 2022

All Saints’ Sunday (C): Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Ps 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

To listen to audio of this sermon click here.

A couple weeks after we had celebrated the Feast of St. Luke, I was talking to a parishioner who is relatively new to the Episcopal Church and she said that, while she was very much enjoying becoming familiar with some of our particular ways of doing things, we had to stop talking about all these “feasts” because, “Honey, I was raised Baptist, and if you say ‘feast’ I’m saying, ‘where’s the food?’” It’s a fair point. Especially because today, we celebrate another feast day, and not just any feast day: The Feast of All Saints which is, after Christmas and Easter, one of the principal feasts in the Church year. This conversation is a good reminder that not all of us come from traditions that venerate the Saints with special days of celebration, and in fact many of us may even come from traditions that actively discourage doing so.

This skepticism of the Saints is not without good reason. In the New Testament all faithful Christians were referred to by the Greek word, “hagios” or “holy ones,” which is translated as, “saints,” with a lower-case ‘s.’ Thus the differentiation of “Saints” with a capital S—the distinguishment of certain holy people as especially worthy of veneration over and above all the typical followers of Jesus—is not scriptural; it is an invention of the Church as it evolved over time. And while it can be helpful to have heroes in the faith, people to look up to and to inspire you, things did get a little out of hand. Over the years, Saints became something like demigods, serving as intermediaries in the faith, assigned certain tasks or things that they were the patron of, as if Heaven had a highly complicated org chart with the Godhead at the top and all the Saints functioning as middle management. And then there are the elaborate stories that evolved around some of these holy women and men. These hagiographies, as they are called, can stretch the credulity of even the staunchest of believers. One of my favorites is St. Denis, the renowned 3^rd century preacher who was so committed to spreading the Gospel of Christ that, it is said, even after he was decapitated, he walked for miles, carrying his head in his hands, preaching all the way. I believe God can do some amazing things, but that story is a little hard for me to swallow. But then again, what do I know, for despite the dubious biography, beloved St. Denis, became the patron saint for all of France, and, not ironically, headaches.

So, given all these complicating aspects surrounding the Saints, it is fair to ask, why do we celebrate them at all? What good –for you, for me, for Christians living in the 21^st century—is a Saint?

I believe Saints are worthy of our attention and adulation not because of the miraculous things they may (or may not) have done, but because they are people who heard the words of Jesus and somehow caught the fever of faith, from which they never recovered. When they heard words like we just heard today from Jesus’ sermon on the plane in Luke Chapter 6, it caused them to dream strange dreams, and have bizarre visions. Visions of a world…upside down, and inside out.  Like Daniel did in days of old, they caught a glimpse not of what is, but what could be; and that made them wonder things like…what if the poor were blessed, rather than wretched? What if the hungry were filled and not left empty? What if those who were hated, and excluded and reviled were beloved, included and respected? And what if those who were powerful or proud decided that their comfort was nothing so long as so many others were suffering? What if we loved our enemies? What if we blessed those who cursed us? What if we didn’t retaliate? What if we shared everything we had? What if….what if…we actually did unto others as we would have them do unto us? What would that mean?  Wouldn’t that mean a world of generosity and justice? Wouldn’t that mean a life of fullness and goodness? Wouldn’t that put an end to anger and violence? Wouldn’t that bring a sense of personal peace and collective prosperity to all people? And might that just be what God intended for the state of this world to begin with? Saints are people who found those questions so infectious, that they could not stop asking them and could not stop living them. They found the potency of this possibility so compelling they gave their life to it…completely. For a Saint is really just a human being who had a vision of what this world could be if we actually took seriously the teachings of our Lord and sought to live them here and now.

It is this completeness of their commitment to their life of faith that remains the most important legacy of the Saints and why they are worthy of our special veneration. For while the New Testament may have referred to all Christians as “saints” the truth is few of us ever achieve the level of follow-through on our beliefs that the Saints with a capital ‘S’ did. Their examples make clear how far we still have to go in our faith and grow in our hearts. But they also remind us that despite the deficiencies of our discipleship, we have, each of us, been given all the makings of sainthood. Yes, each of us. For the diversity of the Saints makes clear that there is no saintly gene; they come in all shapes and sizes. Saints are made, not born. And you, each of you, has what it takes to become one.

How do I know you have the makings of a Saint? Baptism. For in your baptism, you have been granted the assurance, in no uncertain terms, that your fundamental identity is as a beloved child of God and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. And we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us; even become a Saint. But the baptismal service doesn’t just establish our identity as a beloved child of God, it then goes on to ask us, “What are you going to do about it? What difference is it going to make?” The answer to which is our baptismal covenant, which we will soon recite together. Those words are a sainthood schematic. They outline visible, active ways in which we can participate in bringing about God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Those words are the promises of Saints in the making, whether that Saint is beautiful baby Catherine who we will baptize this morning, or any of us who stand and proclaim those words for ourselves.

In baptism we’ve been given everything we need to become Saints. So what’s stopping us? Maybe it’s doubt; maybe it’s fear; maybe it’s inertia; maybe it’s not believing that one person can actually make a difference. If any of those reasons are yours and keeping you from giving your life completely to the way of Jesus, then you are just the person the Saints are for. Because they are people who made difficult sacrifices in their lives but received great joys from them; people who challenged the world to change with enough conviction that their message long outlasted their earthly life; people whose individual witness did measurably transform the world. And above all they are people whose legacy of faith has proven so persistent that they stand as their own testament to the reality of God and the eternal truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Saints are worthy of our celebration this day, and every day, because they show us that with Jesus at the center our world could heavenly, and our lives could legendary.

So what good are the Saints? They are good because they teach us this: that you are not yet a Saint….but you could be.

The Rev. Noah Van Niel

Christ and St. Luke’s

October 16^th, 2022

The Feast of St. Luke: Sirach 38:1-4,6-10,12-14; Psalm 147:1-7; 2 Timothy 4:5-13; Luke 4:14-21

            Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Luke, which is known in The Episcopal Church as our “patronal feast” or our “Feast of Title” since we bear St. Luke’s name in ours. (As I wrote in the Friday email the Episcopal Church does not designate a specific day to celebrate “Christ” which is the other half of our parish’s title, but I would argue that every Sunday is feast of Jesus Christ, and therefore we are sufficiently covered.) Like any feast day, today’s service is a celebration! But it’s also an opportunity for us to reflect on the life of a particularly faithful individual and see what they might have to teach us as we seek to live faithful lives of our own. And St. Luke gives us much to ponder.

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