Sermon for Sunday, May 1, 2005  

THE STORY OUR BUILDING TELLS

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Psalm 122:1

 I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the Lord!"

On Wednesday of last week our building was overrun with almost 600 Methodist preachers from across America. People had gathered here in Denver for the annual meeting of large United Methodist churches to learn from each other and to share ideas about reaching more people and involving them in our congregations.

Many of you were here for that day as hosts and helpers and our guests told us again and again how impressed they were. They were impressed with our hospitality and with how efficiently we got them all fed. They were impressed with our music groups. Expressions of the Soul sang as they gathered here. Almost 80 choir members sang two anthems as we worshiped here in a full sanctuary.

They were very impressed with the vitality of this church and the story of how we have been through such tremendous change of the past few years. They were impressed with the breadth and depth and quality of ministry happening here. One senior minister from a large church in Dallas told me that this church is such an example of excellence that he wants to bring his whole staff here soon so they can learn from us. Two district superintendents from the Detroit conference have invited a couple of us to come in a year and be the speakers at their annual event for their large churches there.

And people had many compliments about this building. We said as we gathered with all of them that the church is not the building, it is the people, and that it is what happens in a church building that is important. But they really like our building and wanted to know a lot about it – like why are we arranged this way instead of like the older arrangement of people looking at the back of each other’s heads?

I want to talk about our building today. It is working well for us and it is already too small and we need more restrooms and more classrooms and our capital campaign will let us finish our unfinished space here and pay down our debt so we can expand our space.

Let’s talk about the mountain view that made this site so attractive in the first place. We had some of these ministers out on the deck here before we began just soaking up the view! The vistas from this site were one thing that helped us buy it six years ago. In fact, about a month ago when I came to work one morning about 8 o’clock I saw a car parked right at the edge of the parking lot with the driver still in it just looking over the incredible mountain view and probably praying there. I watched the car and driver a minute or two and, after being in our parking lot for just that short time they drove away. I hope that time in our parking lot with the mountains was a spiritual experience for them and I hope that sometime in the future that they are able to actually come into our building for an additional worship experience!

Mountains have been a holy place for people ever since the time the Bible was written. This was true not only for the Israelites but for other religions as well. In the stories in Greece about their gods and goddesses, the mountains were a place of divine encounter. In our Bible, Moses went up Mount Sinai to be with God and receive the Ten Commandments. Jesus went up on a mountain with his three closest friends for what is known as the transfiguration when Moses and Elijah appeared to him at the top of that mountain.

Mountains are important to us Coloradoans and to the people who visit. The group of 600 preachers were in Colorado Springs on Thursday and it was foggy and cloudy all day and the day was almost spoiled for them. Why? Because they could not see Pikes Peak!! What does it mean to us Coloradoans when we see the mountains or are in the mountains? It shows the majesty and glory of God. It reminds us of our place in nature and in the universe. It tells us again of the mightiness of God.

In our final sanctuary that space will be oriented toward the mountains so you can see out the front window the vista of Colorado’s front range.

One other architectural feature of our space is how we use natural light. We talked a great deal in our building committee and with our architects about light. The Bible says that God is light and in God there is no darkness. Those symbols of light and darkness are in our Bible a lot! Jesus says, “I am the light of the world and those who follow me, he said, will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Some churches have a dark and sometimes almost dreary atmosphere. Dark can be worshipful at times. Our committee said, we want to use God’s light to communicate about God-so we have a large and light filled space.

Perhaps that scripture about light is another one that needs to be on our walls. The verses that are on our walls – five verses in the most public areas – are very important to us. They are foundational for us and for your spiritual life. Have you located those five references and do you know what they are? They are good memory verses, and they were very intentionally chosen by our leaders and their placement was very carefully chosen also. Take a look today and see why you think we might have chosen them to capture our personality as a church.

There are some other verses that have been placed in our classrooms last week that are important to us as well, and in those classrooms our purpose statement and core values are posted as well.

Let’s talk about our classroom space. Did you know that most of our 58,000 square feet here is devoted to classrooms? All of our lower level is classrooms for children and youth with a little space for the offices to support that youth and children ministry. The largest single use of our space is for education and we chose to build lots of classrooms in this first phase and then to build our permanent sanctuary later.

Other churches do it differently. I remember one congregation I visited in Oklahoma ten years ago that had built the first phase of their project and they had built this beautiful sanctuary that seated 1800 people and was just elegant, but their classrooms for children were so tiny and cramped and totally inadequate.

What does our apportionment of space say about our values here? It says education for children and youth and adults is very important for us. It says we want people to keep learning and growing in their faith. It says we want to keep people on the journey of being saved – that we are not finished yet. It says that we believe in life long learning as adults in our Bible studies. The ministers here last week were very impressed with our deep and strong adult education program that our Pathways booklet describes—very impressed with our Disciple program that will be bringing Dr James Fleming, internationally known teacher and scholar to speak in June on Disciple Bible study graduation Sunday.

One pastor asked me on Wednesday, why are you arranged in this semicircular fashion? Why not in straight lines looking at the back of each other’s heads? I said that we want to be a family sitting around a table. That is how Christian worship began— a family around the communion table. We can see each other. We might even be able to see God in each other’s faces.

Let’s come back to the table in a moment. The central focus of worship in our church is right here: the table and the cross. The pastors here Wednesday had come up and gathered around our cross. They were touching it and standing around it. We chose this cross very purposefully. It is a rugged cross and not very prettified. That is how it was. The cross was a means of torture and execution. We don’t want that original purpose to be glossed over. The good news that we celebrate every Sunday is that God takes a terrible instrument of death and suffering and makes it into a symbol of life and hope—and God still does that in our lives through the risen Christ. It is an empty cross—Christ is not on it anymore, he is alive and working in our world.

And this cross is even more powerful because even in it ruggedness and its almost ugliness. There are holes in it and through those holes the light shines through. That is what God can do in our lives as well—take even the most painful and rugged of circumstances and still bring God’s light to shine through those painful and dark places.

I love this cross and what it says to us every time we gather around it.

Finally, the altar table. It is both. It is an altar and a table. The altar in Hebrew worship was where people brought their gifts and their offerings to God. That is what we are doing here. The money we bring here is not a collection—it is an offering of our hearts and lives. That is what an altar is for—to offer ourselves again this week, to let God work in us and through us in God’s world.

It is an altar. And it is also a table where we gather to be fed by the bread of life. Jesus says, I am the bread of life and whoever comes to me will not be hungry. That’s not just about the pieces of bread that we receive when we receive communion. It is about the spiritual food, the spiritual resources we feed on when we center our lives on Jesus Christ. We come here with hungry hearts and it is only here that our heart hungers can be satisfied. Only here—at this table.

The psalmist said, “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord.” I hope you feel that gladness and joy when you are in this space. Winston Churchill said, “we shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us.” May this building continue to shape us into committed, joyful followers of Jesus Christ.

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