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The Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 29)
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The Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 13:1-8
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Mark 13:1-8
✛
Resurrected from the Rubble
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today in the Gospel, sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and looking across the Kidron Valley at the great Jewish Temple, Jesus, soon to undergo his crucifixion, prophesies the temple’s complete destruction – not one stone shall be left upon another. This event came to pass in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans in their reaction against a Jewish nationalist rebellion. Recent excavations near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem reveal how the Romans used fire to undermine the foundations of the walls and then tumbled the huge stones into a heap of rubble, fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy.[1] The temple has never been rebuilt; its ruins, such as the Wailing Wall, remain to be visited and lamented. Jews left the Holy Land in dispersion. Christians worshiped in a new kind of temple, the Body of Christ. Destroy this temple, Jesus said elsewhere, and in three days I will raise it up. But he was speaking of his own body. For Jews and most Christians (who were Jewish followers of Jesus), the temple’s destruction was the most significant cataclysm in their lives, a new dispensation.
Ninety-nine years ago, in 1913, the people of Saint Thomas finished eight years of work in completing the essentials of the glorious church in which we worship. Fire had brought down in one day the earlier church, an enormous gothic sandstone edifice of which the parish and the city had been proud, into a heap of rubble. The young rector, Ernest Stires, whose grandson’s[2] memorial service was held here this past Tuesday, had surveyed the 1905 smoldering ruins and determined to rebuild. A scrapbook of newspaper clippings from the time, collected by Dr. Stires himself, has come into our possession as a gift of the family. It shows vividly the shocking scene. For Saint Thomas Church in the City and County of New York, a world had certainly come to an end. A new dispensation was about to begin.
The rebuilding of Saint Thomas is a dramatic saga containing at least two crucial resolutions by the Rector, Wardens and Vestry of the day. First, they would rebuild, here. The neighborhood was already changing from residential to commercial. Nevertheless, they would stay put and rebuild on this spot. In a matter of weeks they put up a temporary wooden building right here, used it for eight years, and built the new stone building right around and over it! Second, what they would rebuild would be, as were all earlier Saint Thomas houses of worship, gothic, that wondrous style of architecture developed within, by, and for Christendom. And the architects they chose understood gothic to be an ever-living conception, always ready to be incarnated in a particular time and place. And so, though gothic, this new temple would reflect the new twentieth century, as it does – from the Guastavino tile vaulting to the symbols of suspension bridges and steam locomotives.
Next year, the centennial of the dedication of this church in 1913, we will have a whole September-to-June season of various observances commemorating this extraordinary rebuilding. But for now, let us simply realize what a gift we and the city have been given. First, our forebears saw to the putting up of this glorious temple. Subsequently, as they realized Saint Thomas’ neighborhood would indeed become commercial, they gave again of their means to endow its future. They did this by direct giving and by wills and legacies; and the Vestry guarded and grew this endowment carefully over a century.
Our generation is called to the same, and we have made good strides on a number of fronts. The current, present challenge is the Every Member Canvass, our campaign to secure pledges for the year 2013. We got off to a very good start in October. But then it seems Superstorm Sandy, for understandable reasons, took the wind out of our sails, and everyone else’s, in a mighty destruction of our entire area. Our pledge campaign has lulled a bit. While we have and will contribute to emergency relief efforts, this storm has been a reminder as well of how precious our church is as a refuge of prayer and peace, of assembling to worship in vital fellowship as the body of Christ. Saint Thomas Church is an image of New York City on its knees before Christ our Lord, a life-giving, soul-refreshing icon into the heart of God, who in his Son took upon him our flesh and shared our suffering even unto death; and then rose victorious on the third day.
Today I thank all of you have pledged to the support of Saint Thomas Church and Choir School for next year. Next I want to encourage those of you have not pledged yet, each of our members and friends, please to consider joining us in making a pledge of your own. I include those who are not here but who benefit from our ministry on the webcasting and the internet. You are part of our family too, and we need your support – not just for the money but also for the prayer and good will it signifies. Beyond this, the Prayer Book enjoins me to encourage you, if you can, to include religious and charitable institutions in your wills; if it may be Saint Thomas Church. If you are a person of means, remember as well that we seek capital gifts to build our organ and restore our windows. All these kinds of support raised this church from the rubble and preserved and enhanced it for us down to this day. May our ancestral benefactors inspire what we do here for coming generations. And Saint Thomas is a sound investment: we steward our resources in the present, and we intend to hand our patrimony over to the future, whole and secure for the grandchildren.
Truly the Church, including the Episcopal Church, isn’t what she was a century ago in terms of cultural power and sway. Yet that makes Saint Thomas, situated here and now at this street corner amidst the symbols of commerce and worldliness, all the more striking and wondrous. What a mission station for the Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord and God! What a shrine of the Anglican tradition and choral heritage! For reasons that seem good to the Holy Spirit, this temple here has been preserved by and for the Body of Christ and all who seek God as a haven and sanctuary. Don’t neglect to support this miracle of God’s grace.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[1]Sacra Pagina series, The Gospel of Mark, John R. Donahue, SJ, and Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, p. 368.
[2] Sidney Homer Stires, 1931-2012.
