Pentecost 26 Year B

What large stones and what large buildings! The unnamed disciple is referring to Herod’s temple, presumably with an element of awe in his voice. Wow – that is quite something, might be the contemporary equivalent. And that’s the kind of response that we routinely hear when people come into this building for the first time. The sheer size and grandeur – which is perhaps even more apparent once you’re inside – takes people’s breath away.

Herod’s temple was never going to be a modest street corner kind of affair. It needed to be big and imposing in order to feed his ego, his need to be big and imposing and to feel important. Perhaps there are some things don’t change through the centuries. We could name contemporary people who seem to meet their need to feel important by commissioning imposing buildings, just because they can, because they have the resources and the power.

If you were designing a church now, would you envisage something on the scale of this cathedral? Would you imagine that spires reaching higher than any other building in the city would somehow make the church great again?
There is clearly a difference in purpose between a place of worship that may be deliberately grand and imposing and dominant in order to say something about that which is beyond itself – pointing to the heavens, speaking of a God who is beyond anything we can reach. There’s a real difference between that and a building that speaks to the wealth and power and influence of individuals. Purpose is important.
It's not just physical buildings though that claim space in our communities and our lives. Institutions do exactly the same thing. And large, imposing institutions have a similar kind of impact, I think, to large imposing buildings. It can feel as though they are holding onto their space; that they have put down foundations within our communities; that they have their own life and norms, their own influence. And perhaps there is a need to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

The stones, the actual building blocks of the physical or metaphorical buildings we’re thinking about are weighty. It’s easy to imagine that they are unchanging, that they will be there for ever. But we know, for instance in this building, that’s not the case. The stones don’t look after themselves.
They need care and attention; they need maintenance sometimes they need to be replaced. The stones give a feeling of longevity and security, of safety perhaps. But that’s a dangerous starting place. No building can ever be 100% safe and secure, however many mitigations are put in place. You can’t plan for that which is unprecedented. Nor can you plan for that which is unprecedented in the large structures and institutions that we want to be able to describe as safe and secure and unchanging.

The weightiness of the stones themselves potentially makes things tricky. It’s not easy to make changes in a place like this; you can’t be fleet of foot because that doesn’t work in this kind of space. And large institutions can take on a weightiness; it can feel as though there are few opportunities to be proactive rather than reactive, to make decisions that seem like no-brainers but which may raise more questions than answers.

But what is really important isn’t the stones. It’s not even our beautiful cathedral that has been created by people who have the ability to work with stone. It’s what happens in the space. It’s what it speaks to.
The only real reason to maintain the stones that surround us here today is because they hold the space that then allows us to create opportunities to be God’s people in this place at this time.

The same is true of the institutions that feel as though they are immovable. It can be easy to find ourselves focussing on that which feels as though it is solid and unmoving; that which feels like it has deep foundations. But no institution has any intrinsic value. Its value is to do with what it does or what it points us towards. The problems arise when grandeur and status and influence become the drivers. Problems arise when values are turned on their heads and the priority becomes about the institution or a particular agenda or about status, not about the people.

That may all sound like easy talk but we know that dismantling those structures takes a bit more than good intentions. Structures crumble in all sorts of places and in all sorts of ways. The response is usually to try to patch them up, to find ways to replace the one or two sections that are a bit dodgy and to carry on maintaining the status quo. But sometimes that becomes too tricky.
Sometimes the damage is such that serious remedial work needs to be undertaken. Sometimes a wrecking ball needs to be taken to the entire structure in order to create an opportunity to start again, to find the new life in the ashes and dust of the old.

We don’t need to look far to see serious turmoil both in communities and in significant institutions across our world. There are numerous situations where the structures appear to be crumbling whichever way we turn.

In our Gospel passage Jesus speaks about the inevitable disruption that is to come. Disruption to the norms of day-to-day life. Disruption to the expectations that people hold dear. And that disruption is essential. Change is essential. New life, new beginnings, new opportunities are all essential.

We’re at a time in the life of our world where people are actively seeking change – voting for change; refusing to support the crumbling structures that once formed the cornerstones of societal norms; seeking more principled responses from those people who have been given authority and power.
But the way forward can’t be for the majority of us to find a cosy space within those weighty stones that we hope will keep us safe while we wait for those who we see as decision makers to sort it all out. The way forward must be predicated upon each of us taking ownership of our own prophetic voice; each of us taking responsibility for challenging the structures that no longer serve us and demanding that the people who hold the power use it ethically and wisely.

Change is all around – and change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It may be uncomfortable. It may force us out into a space that feels less safe and secure. It may feel unstable for a while. But we are called to trust. To trust in God. To trust in our sisters and brothers. To trust in ourselves.

Rebuilding may be a slow and painful process, but it will only happen when we commit to working together, when we each recognise that we need one another in order to create something that is more than any one of us could achieve alone.


God isn’t calling you, or me, to build an entire spire. God is simply calling us to pick up the stone that is in front of us and to place it, carefully, in a place where it might form one of the building blocks for the new life that is a foundation stone of God’s promise of eternal life for all of us.