(i.e.: Something that Jesus or Paul or any of the New Testament writers said that doesn’t quite work for you?)
It may not have been Paul’s best moment as a writer. It certainly does not match the poetry 10 chapters later – with those great images of love as patient and kind, not jealous, enduring and hoping and bearing all things. In fact, it is pretty blunt.
“You are God’s building.”
Really? That’s what you have for us, Paul? A building? Bricks and stones and mortar? Steel and concrete and glass? Sorry. Not doing much for me. Nor is this feast day – the feast of John Lateran. I get that it is the Pope’s cathedral church in Rome. Before the current St. Peter’s was built in the 1600’s, it was the home of the popes. It has survived fires and earthquakes. But when it is all said and done, it is just a building. Just a place where people gather, like so many other places and like our dear St. Ann’s here…
“You are God’s building.” It is just not doing it for me…
But here is where my prayer took a turn this week. What happens when you turn the noun at the end of that sentence into a VERB? You are God’s BUILDING. Not a noun, not a ‘place’ – but a ‘becoming’; an ‘experience’, a ‘creation.” You are the place where God is actively working in YOU to shape you and form you and make of your life something amazing. God is trying to make of you something for the good of our world; for the good of each of our brothers and sisters.
SO what might God want to be BUILDING in each of us? On what appears to be the eve of whatever announcement is coming down in Ferguson, what might God’s Spirit be trying to construct within and among us? There are some who will try to build a violent, vindictive world – inciting for an eye for an eye kind of response. There are others who are trying for something different. And better. Barry Buchek let me know of an initiative called Compassionate Cities – an expansion of the “Charter for Compassion” movement started by Karen Armstrong. At its heart, it is a movement to make the golden rule be the center of everything that we do – first as individuals, and then as communities.
So, what if we allowed that principal of compassion to be the “building” that God is doing in each of us? Would not that be a proper response to the days ahead? What if we made St. Ann parish an intentional community of compassion? What if the ‘building’ we let God do in us is precisely the choice to let compassion in.
Here is how the charter begins. Let me read it slowly – to see if it connects you to whatever dream God is trying to build in our hearts, both as individuals and then as members of St. Ann and our surrounding community of Ferguson:
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly
• to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures,
• to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there,
• and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and emphatically from inflicting pain.
• To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest,
• to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody,
• to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity.
We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.
Though there is more to the charter, these three movements are a wonderful starting place:
• to Act from Compassion;
• to refrain from inflicting pain;
• and to acknowledge our failures when we do indeed fall.
We are God’s building? As a matter of fact, we are. And God is not done with us yet. Thank God, God is not done with any of us yet…