FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

September 30, 2007

CHRIST AT THE CENTER:

WHAT DO THESE STONES MEAN?

Scripture: Joshua 4:1-3, 8-24; Mark 13:1-2

INTRODUCTION

For most of my life, beginning with growing up in a Presbyterian minister’s home and then eventually entering into the ministry myself, serving churches in suburban Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and for seventeen year now, privileged to be pastor of this dynamic urban congregation in the heart of Atlanta – for most of my life, I have heard it said, and even said it myself, that “the church is not a building made with human hands, but rather the body of Christ, people of faith, called by God to worship, work and bear witness to His holy name.” I’ve heard it said that “the real church is not bricks and mortar, stone and wood and stained glass windows, but rather men and women and children bound together by their commitment to Jesus Christ as the Lord of their lives.”

In fact, many of us as little children were taught to fold our hands together with inter-locking fingers and then say, “This is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors, see all the people” – remember?

For most of my life, I have heard it said and even said it myself, “The church is not a building, the church is a community of Christians.” But I don’t say that anymore, because I have come to believe that the church is both/and, not either/or – both a house of the Lord, and a family of faith, with Christ at the center of our life together. And so it has been for a long, long time.

I

Our scripture lesson from the 4^th chapter of Joshua reminds us that when the people of Israel finally crossed over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, they built an altar with twelve stones representing the tribes of their emerging nation. Moses had died on the other side of the river – Joshua was now their leader. And as he stood before all of the people, Joshua declared that the altar was there as a sign of God’s blessing upon them, saying “When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’, then you shall tell them that ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea…so that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” (Joshua 4:21-24)

Realizing that the twelve stones were constructed as an altar, not a full-fledged building, nevertheless those ancient people believed that the presence of God was there in that sacred place just east of Jericho called Gilgal, which in Hebrew literally means “circle of stones.” And those stones became a symbolic center of the new-born nation as the Israelites proceeded to take possession of the land which the Lord had promised to them.

Assuming the date of that historic moment was sometime around 1200 B.C., two hundred years later, King David captured Jerusalem and made it the capital city. Less than 50 years after that, in 950, David’s son and successor Solomon completed the construction of The Temple, which became one of the great wonders of the world.

It was a massive structure which took seven years and thirty thousand workers to build, with huge stones quarried from the hills surrounding the city. Imagine, in your mind’s eye, a building that would encompass the entire Woodruff Arts Center campus next door, our church and property, and then extending all the way up Peachtree to Seventeenth Street by Starbucks. The Temple and its surrounding gardens dominated the landscape in the center of Jerusalem.

And deep inside the sanctuary, the holy of holies where only the priests could go, they placed the Ark of the Covenant containing the two tablets on which were embedded the Ten Commandments (I Kings 8).

Karen Armstrong, who wrote part of this book in my hands, “Jerusalem” while she was the theologian in residence at Chautauqua Institution during the mid-1990’s, she describes the spiritual reality of that sacred place – The Temple – and what it all meant to Solomon and his people:

“Once the ark was installed there (in the temple), the site became for the Israelites ‘the center’ that linked heaven and earth…where worshippers could hope to make contact with the Divine Power…in Hebrew the word for ‘holy’ is ‘kaddosh,’ meaning ‘set apart’ …And (that) building symbolized the transcendence of the sacred.” (From “Jerusalem” by Karen Armstrong, published by Alfred A. Knoph, Inc., 1996, Pages 50-51)

So you see, in ancient days, our forbears in the faith believed that the presence and power of Yahweh, God Almighty, had come to dwell in the sanctuary of The Temple. As they entered for worship to lift up their praise, as they offered sacrifices to receive forgiveness of their sins, as they gave their tithes and committed themselves to the Lord, the lives of those people were transformed.

And remembering those twelve stones in Gilgal, when their children came with them into the great Temple of Jerusalem and asked them “What do these stones mean,” the fathers and mothers would answer: “The Lord dried up the waters as we passed over the river so that all the people of the earth would know that He is mighty and is to be feared – that is worshipped and revered – forever!”

So it can still be today as we come here to worship in this sacred place. For here in this place, we come to find God, believing in our Judeo-Christian Tradition that He is the One who has come to find us. And so it has been down through the ages. Ever since Jesus Christ “split time in two,” as Billy Graham describes the transition from B.C. to A.D., we Christians have been building houses of worship to glorify Him and to praise God’s holy name.

In my lifetime, I have been fortunate to visit and was literally dazzled by some of the great cathedrals, churches and university chapels around this world, with their tall steeples and high towers lifting up toward the Lord in heaven, and their windows and open doors inviting us to come in and sense the presence of God here on earth. Yesterday they celebrated the 100^th anniversary of Washington’s National Cathedral with worship, demonstrations about cathedral art and architecture and a climb to the top of the Gloria In Excelsis Tower for a commanding view of our nation’s capitol. It’s more than enough to take your breath away!

But like most of you, I have also visited less ornate and more modest churches in cities and out in the countryside, simple white clapboard structures and unpretentious stone and cement block buildings. In Kenya, I have seen many church buildings out in rural areas that literally don’t even have roofs over them. But people are coming to worship at those churches because that’s where they find God!

A local newspaper in a small town in Tennessee ran a survey, asking people about their church preference, trying to find out how many Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and other denominations there were in the community. One member of the Disciples of Christ answered the church preference survey with just two words: “red brick.”

The truth is, most of us do have a preference for a particular denomination and/or a local congregation where we feel at home and can sense the presence of God in a place, a building, a sanctuary, a chapel, or a Sunday school classroom. And that’s why our recently completed capital campaign, “First Things First,” has been able to raise more than $15.1 million to renovate our older facilities. It’s because you care about the sacredness of what goes on here, and I am so very grateful for your generous support!

We are starting our renovation with the exterior stones. This is the report that was given to our committee. It’s a report about the 20,476 sandstones that literally surround and encompass us here and they have not stood the test of time, having gradually deteriorated down through the years since this grand old church was officially dedicated on April 6, 1919.

So when our children ask us in time to come, “What do these stones mean?”, we will be able to tell them that the Lord God Almighty has watched over the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta since our founding date in 1848; that He guided us to cross over from downtown to what is now midtown as we laid the foundation and constructed this sandstone building as a house of worship to glorify Him; and that with His blessing and by His grace, we raised the money in 2007 A.D. to renovate and restore this sacred place as a center for ministry and a home base for mission across our city, nation and world.

And what a great privilege it is for you and for me to participate in this glorious vision and time of transition as we embrace the future which the Lord holds in store for us!

III

Now there is one final text from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 13, which helps us to remember and hopefully to never forget why we are here and what these stones mean.

Jesus entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-11) and then cleansed The Temple of the moneychangers (Mark 11:15-17). Some of the religious leaders became upset, and began to conspire against Him (Mark 11:18). Jesus, in The Temple, debated theological issues with them (Mark 11:27-12:40), and then watched a poor widow put her two coins into the offering plate, saying that she, in her poverty, had actually given more than all the rest of them (Mark 12:41-44).

After all of that had happened in The Temple, this is what Mark tells us at the beginning of Chapter 13:

And as Jesus came out of The Temple, one of His disciples said to Him “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down. (Mark 13:1-2)

Now what Jesus and His disciples and those religious leaders and all the people around them knew was that the original Temple, built by Solomon in all of its glory, had been totally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians 500 years before (587 B.C.) as the Jews were taken away into exile. They knew that The Temple had been re-built by Zerubabel and the people as they returned from captivity 50 years later (537 B.C.). And they knew that King Herod, for his own glory, had knocked down and re-constructed parts of The Temple during his reign in their own time (20 B.C. – 64 A.D.). But what Jesus foresaw and no one else could imagine, was that The Temple would once more be totally demolished by the Romans forty years later (70 A.D.), never to be restored again.

So He was telling His disciples, and all of us since then, that any house of worship built of stone to honor the Lord, would require people of faith to maintain it and preserve the purpose for which it was made. If the people disobeyed God and abandoned their promises to Him, then history had already shown that things would not go well for them. And that is an important reminder for all of us today.

CONCLUSION

In closing, I share with you a story that I told on the first Sunday I ever preached from this pulpit. It was the 13^th of May, Mother’s Day, 1990, and it was a story that I had heard in Australia on a preaching mission there in 1983. Please listen:

A life saving station was established on a dangerous seacoast, in a place where many ships were wrecked. Again and again, its brave volunteers went out into the stormy seas to rescue people from drowning. Often, those who were saved joined the corps and as it grew, they put up sheds to protect the boats and provide shelter for those who were pulled from the seas.

Then, they erected a building where the victims of shipwrecks could be made comfortable. The members took pleasure in their buildings and added a restaurant, some game rooms and a lounge for themselves. As the station grew in prestige, many more joined it on that account. Time passed, and the members hired workers to do the life saving while they enjoyed the club. At last, they held a meeting and decided to discontinue the life saving feature of the station altogether.

Some protested that this abandoned their primary purpose, so they resigned and started a real life saving station down the coast. But, as the years passed, the new station went through the same development, until another group pulled out and started all over again. And if you were to visit that seacoast today, you would find a whole series of exclusive clubs, but there are no life saving stations left anymore. (Canon Theodore Wedel)

My friends, the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta never has been and never will be an exclusive club. We are a life saving station here! We are a center for worship. We are the sacred place where people come to grow in faith. And by the grace of God with the leadership of Rev. Charles Black, we are doing community ministry here and mission outreach out there all across this world.

Since 1848 that has been our identity, and since 1919 that is what has gone on here at the corner of 16^th and Peachtree. And if, my friends, our children ask us in time to come, “What do these stones mean?”, that’s what we will tell them - that the Lord God Almighty is alive and at work in this place, and it is sacred indeed.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The sermon distribution fund has been established by the Session of First Presbyterian Church to enable friends and groups to make contributions for the printing of the Sunday sermons. Sermon leaflets will be printed from time to time, as they are requested and as funds are available. Please designate your gift for Sermon Distribution Fund. Thank you for your support.