Fifth Sunday of Easter

26:18 and then turned to paint the lilac and tune the trill of the sparrow we ask that you would stand alongside us this day. Ground our feet in your abiding truths. Enlist us in your divine purposes.

26:47 All this we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. What are we calling today? The bonanza extravaganza? Yeah. It works. Earlier this year, the congregation of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church began a study focused on God's names. Names recorded in scripture. Names used by Christians in corporate worship and individual prayer down through the centuries. In recent months, we've uncovered, considered, and made use of so many evocative, curious, spiritually stirring names. On this auspicious Sunday, as we prepare to bless and re-enter a sacred space that we've been renovating for over two years, we're going to take a look at names for God connected to construction and building, artisans and artists.

28:11 In the pages of the good book, the Holy One is associated with carpentry and ceramics. I am the potter, you are the clay. Weaving and masonry, behold, I am laying in Zion. a cornerstone, metalwork, and architecture. Who, God asks Job, who determined the measurements of the earth? Surely you know. Or who stretched and snapped a chalk line on it? According to scripture, God loves a good building project. Our first lesson for today concerns a rather famous set of blueprints. In this passage from Exodus, God instructs Moses on how to build a tent that people will gather in for communal worship.

29:15 And how to build the Ark of the Covenant, an ancient mobile home for God. Listen now, my friends, for God's word as it echoes to us from Exodus chapter 31, beginning with the first verse.

31:24 This is the word of God for you, the people of God. Thanks be to God. So there are two other readings listed in the bulletin for this morning. We'll come back to them in a minute. First, let's talk Exodus. When I went to Divinity School, first-year students were tasked over their first two semesters of study with reading the entire Bible, the whole thing, Genesis to Revelation. It was quite an experience. I had, of course, read portions of the good book before, although whenever it got too boring or too strange, I would set it aside. Reading the Bible from start to finish as an assignment was a different experience. It exposes you to wild and unsettling stories.

32:30 Did God really send a worm to eat the prophet Jonah's only source of shade? Did Paul really preach such a long and boring sermon that a member of the youth group fell asleep and then fell out the window?

32:53 Book of Acts. Traveling the arc of scripture, you encounter all sorts of things. Family tragedies, political disorder, hopeful journeys, broken hearts, demonic possessions, healed souls, and times when people are just plain weeping and gnashing their teeth. Do we still use the word gnash? moving through scripture and not bailing out when things get boring or weird a reader will plow through lengthy sections that make you feel like you're studying for the bar exam in ancient judah you come across dusty genealogies extensive family trees tracing the ancestry of people you do not know at all.

34:03 And then you'll turn the page and find poetry that simply soars. You listen to people lament their misfortune. More gnashing. And you read some pretty funky dreams too. Ezekiel, brilliant or unstable? You be the judge. I must admit, as I flipped those impossibly thin pages exactly 40 years ago, the portions of scripture that I found most difficult to slog through, just to keep going, were the building projects. Who cares how many cubits of gopher wood it took to build the deck of the ark? Do we really need to preserve in our holy book the fact that the windows in Solomon's temple were recessed?

35:04 Once, late at night, I was plowing through Nehemiah's description of a renovation project in ancient Jerusalem. And I rolled my eyes on reading Nehemiah 3.14. It goes like this. Then Melchijah, son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-Hakram, repaired the dung gate. He rebuilt it and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars. Passages like that bewildered me. Melchizedek repaired the dung gate. Who decided that that little tidbit was worth recording in holy writ? This is the word of the Lord.

35:57 Yeah, yeah. Now, some may accuse me of cherry-picking this morning, but I'm not. The good book gives account of dozens of building projects, temples, and walls, and whole cities, towers, and homes, and ships. As a first-year student, I had trouble seeing the relevance of these texts for the modern life of faith. Can it possibly be important that Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, provided design schematics for the Ark of the Covenant? Well, I have a confession to make.

36:47 I've changed my mind. This church has changed my mind. The work that we have done together has changed my mind. I now think that Bezalel and his artistic labors matter. They matter a great deal. And I think a project like the one that we celebrate today is important. Very important.

37:21 Why? Why does the good book spill so much ink describing the spaces and places constructed by people of faith? Good question. First, I think Scripture wants us to go about construction with a caution or two in mind. It warns the faithful not to build monuments to their own egos. Remember the Tower of Babel? the Bible counsels people not to approach construction as a vanity project. Now it's a good thing of course that that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore.

38:13 At the same time, Scripture wants to celebrate those who use their resources to create safe, beautiful, welcoming places. places where all of God's children might gather to pray and sing, to mourn their losses, to celebrate their joys, to care for those in need, and to commune with the maker of all. In a way, the Bible's message is simple and clear on buildings. Don't build monuments to your own glory. Be humble. Do carve out a space for the wider community.

39:08 Shape an oasis for a world that hungers and thirsts for righteousness. After laying out this hopeful vision, the good book then typically salutes the artisans and artists whose vision, skill, and talents brought these ancient sacred spaces to life. In other words, the Bible reminds us that Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, matters. He matters like Moira McClintock, chief architect on the Kirkland Chapel renovation, matters. Like our general contractors matter. The demolition team matters. The steelworkers, the plumbers, the electricians, the lighting techs, and especially the woodworkers matter.

40:12 A couple of weeks ago, I was standing in Kirkland Chapel, talking with one of the restoration carpenters. These people are amazing. I was talking to a woman who carefully and beautifully worked on the chairs in the chapel chancel. When you go in there today, look at these chairs. Look at the arms on them. Look at the faces of the cherubs carved into the arms of those chairs. She said quietly to me, Pastor, we take this work very seriously. We feel the importance of tradition here. We know the sort of things that happen in a space like this. we know the sort of things that happen in a space like this. Her words sent me straight down memory lane.

41:15 I began thinking about funerals and weddings and concerts and baptisms. I pictured times when people on an icy November day sat quietly in the back of the chapel warming up while waiting to speak with one of our social workers. I recalled racks of costumes and children getting outfitted with angels' wings and shepherd's tunics. My mind flipped to bright chapel church choruses, ash Wednesday smudges, and Christmas carols sung by candlelight. I pictured beauty, reverence, joy, and compassion.

42:06 We know the sort of things that happen in Kirkland Chapel. Holy things. in the book of Amos chapter 7 the prophet describes the almighty wearing a tool belt standing in the midst of human society holding up a plumb line a plumb line is an ancient beautifully simple architectural tool. It's still in use today. I have one right here with me. This is how it works. A plumb bob is a weight suspended from a thread. This one is an American cast iron one, about 100 years old. Once the weight settles under the pull of Earth's gravity, Let's see if I can do this without smashing the flowers.

43:11 Once the weight settles under the pull of Earth's gravity, once it stops swinging and twisting, the thread provides a vertical reference point, a perfectly straight line up and down. According to the prophet Amos, God stretches a plumb line in the middle of human society. God tests our care and compassion with thread and a lump of cast iron. God provides humanity with a vertical reference point. Now at the risk of oversimplifying things, I think that's why we renovated Kirkland Chapel. At our best, the faithful work to create places where people can stand and sit and pray and sing and listen for the voice of the one who crafted the cosmos. We yearn to share spaces where our hearts will connect with God's plumb line.

44:24 And we want to gift future generations with these holy places with a vertical reference point. so yes God loves a good building project and God also likes a good renovation now when renovating of course you do not start from scratch renovators seek to preserve and honor an architectural tradition at the same time renovators look to embrace new technologies and a community's changing needs. In a renovation, you find that the inadequate lights meant to illumine stained glass windows were actually encased in Folgers coffee cans.

45:20 True. So you bring in new fixtures, some hidden, some obvious, that will draw people's eyes to God's plumb line. In a renovation, you discover that your structure will not support the weight of a new organ. So, you install steel I-beams. In a renovation, you come across building materials that were once considered standard, and you remove them because they are now considered hazardous. Do you sense a preacher's metaphor brewing here? You're bright people. My friends, God is at heart a renovator. God sent Melchizedek, son of Rechab, ruler of the district of Beth-Herachem, to repair the dung gate, to rebuild it, to set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars.

46:23 God takes an interest in renovating society and in renovating souls. And this brings us to the other two passages in your bulletin. The first comes from the book of Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 4. I know it's second in the bulletin, but it's first on my paper here. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. And our final passage comes from Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, chapter 1, beginning with the third verse.

47:06 I thank my God for every remembrance of you. Always, in every one of my prayers, for all of you. praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, I'm confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. This is the word of God for you, the people of God. God, says the apostle, has begun a good work in you. And God, says Paul, will continue to complete it. God will keep after it, hammering and sawing and sanding away at your soul.

48:03 God will find asbestos in there and remediate it. God will toss out old coffee can light fixtures and invite you to see things that you have never seen before. God is careful in renovating and persistent in renovating. The Holy One will continue the good work going on in you until you are fully renovated. this sacred work the apostle promises will persist through all time until the day of Jesus Christ may it be so friends I invite you to stand in body or in spirit and to add your voices to today's prayer for the day the text can be found printed in your bulletins and on your screens Renovator of sacred spaces, architect of holiness, we ask that you would roll up your sleeves and show us how to fix the broken places in our families, our nation, and in this whole world.

49:20 Refurbish our souls with your grace. Tear out what is rotten. Preserve what needs preserving. Build hearts that lean forward in love and communities fueled by compassion. This we ask in the name of the one who makes all things new. Amen.