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BEpiphany2 – 2009
1 Samuel 3:1-10 Psalm 139:1-9 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 John 1:43-51 Just last week in Colorado Springs spending a few days with my children, I got to go see the Air Force Academy Chapel. To see this famous piece of architecture was my wish granted by my uninterested children…until they saw it. From the outside, this modernist building looks like the wings of a fighter jet or its needle point nose pointing up to the sky as though to pierce through the atmosphere. It looked to me as if it were going to lift off any minute. Once inside we looked up to a ceiling that seemed not to end, but to go on up into infinity. Reflections of color from the stained glass came mysteriously from behind the vertical lines and danced all the way to the top, from floor to infinity. We looked out through clear glass windows. They were framed by strong straight lines of stained glass in bold colors. Outside we saw white hillsides against a snow grey sky interrupted only by winter trees etched in black. Two different kinds of reality, in such contrast, that you wondered if they could be of the same world. Standing in the main aisle, it felt as if the building were weightless, like
a huge helium space tethered to the ground, waiting to be let loose. Those
words ‘Air’ and ‘Force’ must have influenced the architect. This modernist is a new expression of the miracle of the gothic cathedral. Some of you have read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Toward the end of the book, taking place in the latter part of the 12th century there is a description: The
cathedral, it was breathtaking. The
immensely tall nave was supported by a row of graceful flying buttresses. The
west end had three huge porticos, like giants’ doorways, and
rows of tall, slender, pointed windows above, flanked by slim towers. The
church was even more impressive inside. The
nave followed the style of the transepts, but the master builder had refined
his design, making
the columns more slender and the windows larger. There
was yet another innovation. William
had heard people talk of the colored glass made by craftsmen brought over from
Paris. He
had wondered why there was such a fuss about it, for
he imagined that a colored window would be just like a tapestry or a painting.
Now
he saw what they meant. The
light from outside shone through the colored glass, making it flow, and
the effect was quite magical. The
arches and the windows, the piers with their clustered shafts, and
the ribs and segments of the vaulted ceiling all seemed to point toward
heaven. We’ve long been trying to climb from earth to heaven. To find the connection, the portal, to take us there. There were the Babylonian temple towers, magnificent, called ziggurats, fitted with huge ascending ramps. The Assyrians built sacred pathways leading up to the temple grounds that represented the garden dwelling of the gods. The Israelites ascended to the Temple atop Mt. Zion, a symbolic journey to Eden, God’s paradise. From Psalm 43 we read: Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, And bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling; That I may go to the altar of God, to the God of my joy and gladness. The Egyptians had their pyramids. In Africa there is a folktale about the tragic loss of fellowship with God when a bluebird cut a rope that people used for climbing up and down from heaven. One version of the myth blames God’s dispatch of the bluebird on old cranky women, who got annoyed with God always looking over their shoulders and thus would go about trying to beat God off. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why, then, oh why can’t I? And the piece every beginning guitarist heads for – ‘and she’s climbing a stairway to heaven.’ Oh, the yearning we have to find our way there. And Jacob’s ladder – actually Jacob’s ramp… on which in a dream angels were ascending and descending. This meant that Jacob was experiencing that connection . Jacob heard God speak to him, “I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go. I will bring you back home.” A connection to heaven. When Jesus called Nathanael he recalled Jacob’s ladder, Jesus said, “Truly, truly – Amen, amen, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Not building or rope or ladder, but the Son of Man, the one from heaven who makes God known, will be the connection between earth and heaven. Between us and God. Between the contrast of chiseled perfection and pure color and rugged black trees against an irregular grey and white landscape. If Jesus were talking to Nathanael today, perhaps he would say that he, the Son of Man, is like the wormhole or the portal, like that scientific mystery of a 5th dimension in space. From ancient to modern, we continue to look for the way to that place in life where we can finally arrive at God. Why? That is when we arrive and settle on our selves, who we really are, why we exist. So we keep looking for ways to express that deep desire. To discover Jesus is to overcome the human dilemma of a disconnect from God. He is the ramp - or as we say, the way, the truth, the life. And Paul asks, ‘Do you not know that your body, your life is a temple? Made to house God’s glory? We, together, walking in Christ, being built up in him… Could your life be the cathedral that draws someone’s eyes upward? Could we, the church, built on Christ, be the light, the ramp, the rope that God is providing for those whose hearts are reaching for connection? |
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