“CAIRNS AND
CATHEDRALS”
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A sermon preached Readings: Acts
2:1-12, 1 Peter 2:5-10
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Cairns and
Cathedrals
It is good to thank God for 2000 yrs of the
Church
and for 190 years of this Church community.
It is good to thank God for the buildings put
up by our ancestors,
and it is exciting to plan buildings for generations not yet born.
But of course the Church we thank God for,
and the Church which we seek to build is much more than bricks and
mortar –
As that reading from 1 Peter reminds us,
we are called to build up the people of God into a building of living stones.
So today is about physical buildings –
but much more it is about the Spirit filled life of the living stones of the
living Church.
I was once unfortunate
enough to be minister of a Church which
(unbeknownst to the original congregation)
had been built on top of an old 18th Century limestone working.
They used to quarry out huge limestone caverns –
and rather than use pit props,
they simply left columns of the rock standing to support the roof.
Over 200 years the hole filled with water, and the columns slowly
dissolved.
Result – a Church built on top of a huge unsupported hole – bad news.
Every building needs a good and firm
foundation –
and for us and our Church there can be but one foundation – Jesus Christ our
Lord.
And from the foundations you move above
ground to the foundation stones.
You remember how Jesus chooses Peter as his
foundation stone -
“You are Peter” says Jesus
[Petros means rock
in Greek]
On you Rock will I build my Church
Christ the Foundations, the Saints the Foundation
stones.
And down through the ages the Saints have
added
layer after layer to the living
stones of the Church.
And today on Anniversary day many of us look
back
and give thanks for loved ones very dear to us
who were in days gone by very much involved in the life of the Church.
One of the lesser known
British Sts was called St Kessog -
As I’m sure you are
all aware, Kessog was a Scottish martyr,
murdered for his faith in the 6th C.
The spot where he was
murdered was marked with a cairn -
a great heap of stone by the side of the path.
In the 18th C a new turnpike
was made,
and the huge cairn dismantled.
At the heart of the pile of
rough stones was uncovered
a forgotten statue of Kessog at the bottom of the
cairn.
As a Church perhaps we sometimes too easily
forget
some of those who have gone before us
and upon whom we as living stones are built.
On anniversary day we give thanks for all
those -
remembered and forgotten - who have gone before us.
For those of us who feel a bit misshapen and
inadequate,
we maybe feel happier about being a stone in a rough cairn
pointing the way for God’s pilgrim people
than seeing ouselves
as polished stone in a mighty Cathedral arch.
And of course God puts us where he wants us -
But actually I suspect God is often just
waiting
to sand and smooth and mould us
for a place in the great
Cathedral wall did we but know it.
For God’s Church is for ordinary saints as
well as superstars.
And if we don’t feel up to
that, well...
In Umberto Eco’s novel The
Name of the Rose,
there is a point when two mediaeval monks
are discussing the building of a great Monastery Abbey
which has been going on for scores of years and is still incomplete.
And they bewail the fact
that the craftsmen are not as skilled as in days of old,
and the latest bits to be built look poor compared with earlier parts -
One of them says
“We no longer have the learning of the ancients -
the days of giants is gone”
To which the reply comes -
“Yes, we are dwarfs -
but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants,
and small though we are,
sometimes we manage to see farther on the horizon than they”
And so as dwarfs, or as misshepen
stones,
we are still called to be part of the great and majestic Community of faith.
One of my most treasured
possessions is a beautifully produced
Resolution of the Primitive Methodist Conference
passed in 1907 on the Centenary of the Primitive Methodist Church -
left to me by one of the ordinary saints of Methodism, my grandfather.
And if these words were true
for my grandparents in their Primitive Methodist Chapel then -
I can’t think of better
words to leave with you at our Anniversary time 100 years on -
“...this conference
places on record
its profound sense of gratitude to Almighty God
for our existence as a Church....
It recalls the lowliness of
our origin,
the difficulties that beset our
earlier course,
the disadvantages and yet at
the same time the clearness of vision,
the steadfastness of purpose,
the breadth of sympathy
the splendid heroism and unselfishness
of the pioneers who laid broad
and deep
the foundations on which we build.
The Conference is of one
mind
in its grateful recollection of the men
whose names are inscribed high on the Church’s roll,
who served in exalted
positions,
the great administrators and
ecclesiastical statesmen
who shaped the Connexion’s
policy in the past.
But not less gratefully does
it cherish the memory
of the nameless host who in town and village,
in quietness and obscurity,
served their day and generation.
making society sweetwer
by their labours
and who looked for no reward on
earth...”
Mighty pediments or rough cut stones upon the
cairn of life -
we thank God for those who have gone before us and we humbly take our place
So, as we – each in our own way –
commit ourselves afresh this day to the Lord’s work,
So we hear Christ’s words to us
as Peter heard them first by
the lakeside so many years ago:
“You are the rock I need
For on you I will continue to build my
Church”