Scripture Reading: Philippians 2:12-18
While I knowingly risk
adding a shade of narcissism to the homily in doing so, I did not feel I could remain
both authentic and pass over sharing
with you my own felt irony in the intersection of Roger’s contributions to the
institutional church and my own pastoral work.
Here I am, a reluctant church
plant pastor, finding literal shelter
surrounded by the bricks and mortar of a church Roger himself contributed to
crafting, as I work with a team building a church without walls in the middle
of nowhere.
As long as I have known
Roger, this discrepancy has always been an issue for me. I imagine, that
knowing Roger as well as she did, Marilynn may snicker at this, but knowing that
Roger’s life’s work had been committed to building churches around the world often
led me to worry my pastoral presence lingered as some type of passive insult;
as if my inheritance of an institutional church deconstructing was an
admonishment to the institutional church building he had spent his life doing.
To complicate the connection,
it seemed that when glancing over the trajectory of our stories there most
certainly remained some missing piece. Perhaps a lost or unwritten chapter meant
to bridge this gap between the work that Roger had done and the work that I had
picked up; a turning point or plot twist unrevealed illuminating the moment we
ceased to build buildings and began to sell them.
How, in just one lifetime,
did the appearance of ministry change so drastically? And, why, in spite of all
of our best efforts, insightful critiques, and poignant commentary, have we not
been able to turn this ship around; to recreate the era of church building that
so tangibly represented the health and vitality of the church as institution
all across the world?
And without any good
answers, without any characters to place at the end of a finger pointing blame,
a question has plagued my path: Will this work be in vain?
Marilyn described Roger
walking into church buildings and hearing what no one else noticed, seeing what
no one else imagined, and creating what no one else envisioned. Roger walked
into a building and created church; he shaped shelter.
Perhaps the nature of his
Real Work became the most obvious to me in reflecting upon the years in which
he lived his life without the ability to see and thus without the ability to shape
shelter in the more obvious ways many had become accustomed to witnessing.
Without the outward production
of this traditional work came the opportunity to partake in a reality that had
been present all along. Roger was an embodiment of the structures he sought to
create; an open, creative, safe space. Always aware of the human needs
surrounding him and responsive in his form. Actively removing walls with quick
wit. Silently welcoming the other with soft words of life’s goodness in the
midst of obvious challenges.
You can argue that this is
simply a complex, theological rationalization for our institutionalized
inadequacies, but I believe the Real Work Roger did, the Real Work we are all called
to do, is defined less in the walls we will build and more completely in the
shelter we will provide.
Roger did not just walk in a
building and conjure up a vision of what a certain church should become; Roger was the vision of what a church could be;
a shelter with a heartbeat calling us home.
Roger not only imprinted
this way of being within each of his architectural design; he lived this way in
the world, functioning as a shelter to the people who surrounded and needed him
the most.
Knowing this now, I imagine
that it was never Roger’s ability to see that made him a capable and gifted
architect for the Church, but his ability to feel. To walk into a room and feel
the weight of another’s sorrow and transform it into a moment of laughter and
joy. To welcome the wanderer into a space of quiet and calm so they might experience
a sense of home.
TS Eliot spoke of our life’s
translucent and transformative purpose in these words:
And what you thought you
came for
is only a shell, a husk of
meaning
from which the purpose
breaks only when it is fulfilled
if at all. Either you had no
purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the
end you figured
and is altered in
fulfillment.”
If there was a gift in Roger’s
blindness perhaps it was for those of us who witnessed the loss of his sight
and the retention of his vision. That the purpose fulfilled in his life was not
the walls built but the shelter that his soul offered.
And we gather together today
because we have felt this sense of shelter. And so too, do we know a sense of
great sorrow. We can only identify Real Work because in its absence we
experience Real Loss. For losing someone with an ability to offer shelter creates
an unexpected sense of homelessness within each of us; as if we had been silently
evicted from a residence we had not known we had.
And so, here lies the power
of Paul’s message to us. For we are reminded of this: that which provided
shelter for us in Roger, is also that of Christ which abides in each and every
one of us. “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to
do what pleases him.” And so, too are we called into dark buildings to shine
like bright lights in a church surrounded by broken and lost people. That in
this light, they might find shelter, and slowly know this light to be their
home.
This is the work we can continue.
These are the instructions Roger has left us to follow. This spiritual labor of
creating safe space, of cultivating that of Christ which resides in us and
finding creative ways to knock down the walls that block the doors of our souls
from becoming the safe space this world so desperately needs. This inner work of
rearranging our internal architect to make room for one more; One more person,
one more idea, one more dream.
If there is to be a gift in
Roger’s death, if his work was lasting and his race was victorious, that which
remains standing will be the Real Work of his shelter given to each and every
one of us. We will carry this forward and build up our lives, that the warmth
of Christ, and the grace of our God, might be a shelter for all those living in
our midst. For whether the building is present or absent, it will be our lives,
like Roger’s life, that we build up to serve as a shelter to a world in a need.
