Unfinished

9th Sunday after Pentecost
July 22, 2018

¹¹Remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—¹²remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. ¹⁵He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. ¹⁷So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; ¹⁸for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. – Ephesians 2:11-22

¹Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, ²the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” ³Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”
  ⁴But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: ⁵Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? ⁶I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. ⁷Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ⁸Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; ⁹and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. ¹⁰And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, ¹¹from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. ¹²When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ^14aI will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. – 2 Samuel 7:1-14a

When I was 6, we moved to a newly constructed house, and throughout the process of building we visited, sometimes sneaking into the construction site – fascinating for kid and adult alike to see how the house was coming together. To imagine a home first on top of a big hole in the red clay dirt. Then to imagine it on top of a concrete foundation. Then to imagine walls where there was only framing, then to imagine what things would look like once it was all finished even though it was still a drafty construction site. Finally, after what seemed a very long time to a six-year-old, the house was finished and we could move in. But the neighborhood wasn’t yet finished, so for a year or so after we moved in I had a construction site just beyond our backyard – lots of fun to be had even by bookish 6-year-old who wasn’t overly fond of playing outdoors. There is something exciting about the process of building – of watching something come together, of imagining how it will look when it is finished, of the dramatic changes that happen, perhaps even the possibility that it could still be significantly altered and changed as the process evolves.

Of course much that was exciting happened in that house as I grew up there, and there certainly was work my parents had to do to keep the house maintained throughout the years we lived there. But the house itself was basically done, and the upkeep was mostly about sprucing up a room or adjusting the garden here, fixing something broken over there. Those projects lacked the excitement of the building process.

Today we read about King David, now settled in his own house, one we might presume has been built rather well and richly. But he’s itching to build again. Maybe it’s out of genuine love for God, or maybe he just misses the excitement of a good building project, but he tells God it’s time to build God’s house. Even the prophet, the religious advisor to the king, the one who speaks God’s message, even he thinks it’s a grand idea: honor God with a proper temple.

But, as is often the case when we make decisions about what God wants and what we will do for God, God has other plans in mind. God speaks in a vision to the prophet to say that it is not for David to build God a house. God kicks that can down the road at least to the next generation. God seems to be in no real hurry to settle down. God takes the role not of the one who dwells in a house but the role of one who builds one. The Holy Construction Worker promises instead to build David himself into a house, a promise extended and opened up to all the nations in our reading from Ephesians:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are being built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

God’s house will be the one God builds out of David and his descendants and all the people that are welcomed into that ever-growing house over the generations. There is a sense in the original language if not in the particular translation we read today that the building is not a finished project. I think it’s because God likes the excitement, possibility, and playfulness of the construction. God, after all, built a world and then continued to tinker with it, co-creating with us new things all the time. God called a single family to bless and be a blessing and then kept opening that family up to wider and wider circles. God assured the world of new life through Jesus but also invited us into the ongoing work of sharing that life with the world.

But we are too often King David, ready to settle down in a finished house. Don’t we like to think of ourselves as finished products? As if we do, or at least should, have everything figured out. We sometimes hold ourselves and others accountable to standards that expect us to be finished houses instead of works in progress. We are, I think, too often afraid of learning the really hard lessons, engaging the really deep work, of changing as we grow, admitting we still have work to be done on ourselves. We ask young people what they want to be when they grow up but we expect adults to have it all figured out. If we began to think of ourselves and those around us as ongoing construction projects, might we find more gentleness in ourselves when we judge our actions and experiences andthose of others?  Would that give us permission to be learning together all the time?

And if we do it to ourselves, we do it with our institutions, too. We tend to want, even when we talk about growth and mission, a stable church. One that has been builtrather than one that is being built. A built church is one that is safe and comfortable. A built church is one that doesn’t require ongoing effort to maintain. A built church allows one to enjoy the fruits of the labor of those who have gone before us without expending the same level of effort. It’s nice to be in a built church, or so I would imagine. I’ve never been in one. I’ve only ever attended, visited, and studied about churches that are being built. Of course there are plenty of well established churches with built buildings and even big churches that run more programs than you can imagine like a well-oiled machine. But I don’t know of one that’s done growing and changing. There are only churches that are in the process of becoming.

As this community experiences continued changes as we look to hire new staff and as I prepare to begin a new call and you prepare to welcome new pastoral leadership, we are reminded that we are not a built church. We are not a church that is finished, but rather one that is always being built, always learning, growing, changing. That requires investment of resources – time, money, energy. It requires teamwork and imagination. It requires attention to the structure that holds the community and vision for what might yet be. And as wonderfully fun as that can be, it can also be tiring, unsettling, and just plain hard.

But know this: the foundation is Jesus Christ. Whatever evolves in this living, breathing, growing, unfinished church is built on as solid a foundation as one can find. I don’t know what the finished project looks like, and none of us will till the whole creation is resurrected and renewed. But what we can do is take delight in the building process. To live into the twists and turns that emerge, the things that have to be dismantled and reassembled to make way for some new part of the design. And we are set free to be gracious with one another as we do that, because we know the foundation and we know the builder. We know them to be faithful. We know them to be wise and strong and compassionate. We know our God to be building us in ways that bring forth a home for all life in our living, breathing, growing, unfinished world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco