Well, friends, we made it.
We made it to the final stop on our Summer Road Trip through the national parks and monuments.
And today, we actually aren’t too far from home in St. Louis, Missouri at the Gateway Arch National Park.
Today on Labor Day Sunday, I chose this location because Gateway Arch National Park is the ONLY national park in the middle of a city and the ONLY national park centered on a human-made structure instead of a natural feature of the landscape. Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty and even Effigy Mounds are labeled as monuments, rather than having the designations of national parks.
On this weekend in which we celebrate the labor of so many, it seemed appropriate to visit a national park that required the skills and talents and hard work of engineers and welders and workers.
This site, this project, this feat of imagination and engineering, is an ode to western settlement and expansion and the key role that St. Louis played as the launching off point for so many. It is a symbol of opportunity and the path to wide open spaces.
Our scripture for this morning speaks of another feat of human construction… the temple.
Last week, we touched on how King David rescued the ark of the covenant and returned it to Jerusalem and he was determined to build the house of God.
As he cries out in 2 Samuel 7: “Look, I am living in a palace made of cedar wood, but the Ark of God is in a tent!”
Unfortunately, God really didn’t care about living in a tent.
God moved among the people, tabernacled in their midst.
It was not God’s desire that we build a grand, permanent structure for the presence of the Lord to dwell.
It was ours.
And God saw that yearning, that impulse to settle down and give glory and praise to God through a magnificent structure.
God saw David’s desire to have a centralized place of worship and devotion.
And God relented.
So like Eero Saarinen pulled together teams of welders and craftsmen and laborers to construct the Gateway Arch, David began to stockpile supplies and stonecutters and carpenters and weavers and craftsmen. He carefully discerned by the Spirit all of the plans for the temple and the treasuries and the dedicated things and the people who would fill every task.
There was only one problem.
God didn’t want David to build the temple.
There was too much blood on his hands.
Too much violence and too many missteps.
David was still beloved in God’s eyes, but the temple was not his to build.
His son, Solomon, a man of peace and rest and prosperity… in Solomon’s time the temple would be built.
I’ve been to the Gateway Arch multiple times. I’ve seen it towering over the city as you drive in. I’ve stood beneath it’s glimmering structure and laid on the grass to try to capture the whole thing. I’ve take the ride up to the top in the carnival-like tram.
But before this summer and this series did I realize that
this National Park also contains the old St. Louis Courthouse. This is the historic location where the case
of Dred Scott v. Sanford was heard twice. Dred and Harriet Scott were both born
into slavery, later married, and eventually found themselves the property of John and Irene Emerson who moved
them to Wisconsin and Iowa before returning to St. Louis.
Because they had been taken to free territory, they legally had a case for
their own emancipation. Yet the Missouri Supreme Court and eventually the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled against them.
In Scott v. Sanford, the highest court of our land declared that all people of African descent, free or enslaved, were NOT U.S. citizens. According to the majority opinion, our Constitution demonstrated a “perpetual and impassible barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery.”
The decision also nullified the Missouri Compromise, a congressional act which declared free all territories west and north of Missouri, because it violated the 5th Amendment – denying slaveowners their property.
In this National Park we have an incredible juxtaposition.
Where 100 years earlier, freedom was denied for our African American siblings, people came together and selected a design for a new monument… a gateway, celebrating the spirit of western pioneers and the opportunity and freedom and persistence of creating a new future.
Though the past of this location, like King David’s own troubled past, was filled with missteps and harmful decisions that impacted the lives of people who were enslaved for decades to come… there was later a time of peace and rest, just like in the time of Solomon.
A time in which people could build different sort of reality for their community – one of revitalization and celebration of the spirit which leads us onward.
Skilled builders and artisans and welders and more all came together to create something that would outlast them all.
Something that would stand as a testament to who they were and where they had been and where they were headed.
On this Labor Day, the question that is at the back of my mind is: how are we using the gifts and the skills that we have been given today?
Is this a moment in which our gifts are being used to harm or divide or separate?
Will we look back upon this time and see the missteps and the failures?
Did we spend our time and talents sowing conflict?
Or is this a time we are invited to use everything we have been given in labor for the Lord?
Are we using God’s gifts to create hope and life and possibility?
Is the Spirit preparing us, equipping us, to build something new?
I’m not talking about a monument. Or a temple. Or even a church building.
This is a beautiful building.
Skilled artisans have crafted our gorgeous stained glass.
Teams of carpenters from the church built this chancel area.
Craftsmen created and installed these pews and chairs just last year.
Over the course of the next week or two, some incredibly talented folks will come in and dismantle our organ, and send it off so that technicians can refurbish and refinish all sorts of little pieces and parts.
This is a building that much of your… our… blood, sweat, and tears has gone into.
But that isn’t the kind of building and craftsmanship I’m talking about.
You see, the future that God wants us to build, the church Jesus has in mind, has nothing to do with 2x4s or levels or hammers… or even pews or organs.
But it has everything to do with the people God has called together to build it.
If we go back to our scriptures and look at the word used for church in the original Greek – ecclesia – it literally means the “called out ones.”
Every one of us has been called out, called together, called into this place to BE the church Christ is building.
We are the 2x4s.
We are the nails.
We are the foundation.
We are the supporting structure and insulation and windows and doors.
We are the organ and we are the pews.
We are the church!
Jesus began the work and drew up the blueprints and started laying the foundation for the Kingdom of God with Simon Peter.
He gives him the nickname Peter, or petra in Greek, which literally means rock.
“On this rock, I will build my church.”
It’s as if he is telling his friend, YOU are going to be the foundation of this ecclesia, this called out community.
YOUR ministry, Jesus proclaims, will lay the groundwork for the Kingdom.
And then I remember that Simon Peter made countless mistakes in the gospels. He took missteps. He denied Jesus three times and seemed to fail in every way possible.
Kind of sounds like our carpenter was using shoddy materials and faulty labor, doesn’t it?
And yet, like King David, Simon Peter came to know God’s love and grace and forgiveness extend beyond our failures.
Peter Gomes, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, once said “the church will never be any better than we are.”
Let me say it again, because I think it’s important.
The church will never be any better than we are.
If we can’t offer up our failures to God, and let God transform them, then they will always be a part of us.
If we can’t offer our mistakes up to God and let God forgive them, those mistakes will always be carried through.
If we can’t admit that we have had blood on our hands, like King David did, and create space for those who come behind us to lead in a different way, then that history will be embedded into the future we create.
In the only National Park that is contained within a city there is a gleaming arch that is a testament to human creativity and ingenuity and the persistence that drove us westward.
But there also sits a courthouse, that reminds us of the darker side of our past.
That history pushes us onward and we are invited to walk through it, transform it, redeem it, by how we build our future.
In the same way, the church will never be any better than we are and it is our responsibility to clearly examine who we are and who we have been so that we can embrace who God wants us to become.
The future of the church God wants us to build.
You see, Christ is the one with the blueprints… and he has the ability to take all of our mistakes and shortcomings and put us together with one another and strengthen us by the Holy Spirit.
It’s God’s design… not our own.
Our job is simply to do our part.
To listen.
To confess.
To repent.
To embrace our gifts.
To labor for God’s glory.
Every day.
In every way.
God is using us to build the kingdom. Amen.
