Of selves and saints
Mark 13.1-8,  Hebrews 11.1-12.2
Preached at the dedication of the Gurnett-Smith Memorial Window
Canberra Baptist Church 19th November 2006

On a warm spring morning in Canberra people are out walking the malls, the shops and boutiques of the city. Around the nation, across the western world people are browsing and buying - buying clothes and accessories, furniture and appliances, iPods and jewellery, magazines and music, real estate and entertainment. They encounter a cornucopia of consumer products, a smorgasbord of choice. Their spending may be a key indicator of the health of the economy, but is also a measure of modernity, of the way the world is. To the more astute commentators of the contemporary world their buying is a building of identity. They are shopping for a sense of self.

This is not simply a case of “I shop, therefore I am”, that we are constituted by what we consume. The point is that one becomes a modern self through a process similar to modern consumption. It is characterised by choice and the exercise of individual will.  It comprises the selection of individual components of culture, values and education, the furniture of the mind as much as the furniture of the flat, all artfully arranged to communicate the essence of who we really are. (refer to David Lyon)

It is true that not everybody is ‘shopping for self’ in the supermarket or the suburban malls, or the fashion magazines and other oracles of celebrity. There are the sea-changers, and the tree changers, that more meditative crowd who are exploring values and alternatives outside the commercial mainstream. But in their simple lives the same dynamics of choice and identity construction holds sway. They have exercised a different range of options but choice it still is, and though the basic building blocks of life may be macramé and not mass-produced, it is still a construction of identity from the options offered by society.

There is something of this in all of us, but I hear you protest, “No, no – we are here in church, not sating ourselves in the shops!” That is true. There are people like ourselves – found in church. Perhaps this too is a choice, one consumer option among many. Many of us are here because we want to be. You may take as unkindly and intemperate a minister who declared it to be your duty, your service, to God and humanity, to offer obedience and worship to the Lord of all! Therein is the test: whether we be here for love and duty, more than desire and enjoyment, whether we are found at worship through a sense of our utter dependence upon God in Christ or whether there was better nothing better to tempt our interest this sunny morning.

Let us admit that there be some of us, at least, who are here through that spiritual inspiration, not shopping for, so much as shaping, the self, conforming ourselves to a community and a tradition that seeks to engages with truth. We are here through conviction not consumption. Like those early disciples we come because the church of Jesus, this church of Jesus, has the words of life!  Beyond the ‘chosen’ self that is shopped and workshopped into being through the wonderful world of choices around us, is the shaped self of those who join a community and take the journey of faith and formation.

Such were the disciples of Jesus who gazed with awed appreciation on the edifice of the Temple: “See what large stones, and what large buildings!” They were part of that religious community – that was their church, their tradition. But their Teacher solemnly warned: “I tell you not one stone will be left here upon another”. 

One of my favourite shows among the lean pickings of today’s TV offering is the little half hour of archaeology hosted by Tony Robinson on Channel 2. Here a team of characters from the fringes of academic archaeology go searching for Roman ruins or old English artefacts in the backyards of ordinary Britons. Tons of earth are dug to yield a sliver of Roman mirror, a shard of Saxon pottery, a footprint in the pre-historic mud. Whole worlds are wondered out of these small pieces of the past that come down to us. Such was the destiny of those communities, and such is the destiny of our community!

The window we dedicate today is destined for the winnowing of tomorrow. The work of the artist finally becomes the work of the archaeologist. Visit the National Gallery and witness the craftsmanship of ancient Egypt – dug from the earth! What we dedicate today in love and joy and beauty is also dedicated to a distant oblivion. This church and its witness will one day finally crumble. The Temple falls. So said Jesus. So said the writer of Revelation for there is no Temple, no church, in the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem.

The day will come when this church, so dear to us, will collapse to nothing as once fell the Temple. Institutions fall into disrepute and fail – indeed, the shoppers of this world, busily building their identities, have already voted with their feet: they think the institutions have failed already!  In an age crumbling institutions the would-be leaders come, calling people to follow this way or that. Rumours of catastrophe and the end come, of wars and portents in the heavens. Jesus pointed to unstable and confusing times but they were not hopeless times!

Where then, will we find the foundations for character? Where will be find models for what it means to be human, to live fully and enduringly, to live wisely and well in such times?

The self built on choice is a chimera, a mirage, a shallow and changeable construction, desirable today and out of favour tomorrow. There is no rest in it for the act of choice begets only more choosing.

The firm and enduring institutions of tradition and community, like this congregation, offer more substance, but they too, eventually fail and depart.

The writer of Hebrews essayed a great task. He took an ancient tribe, whose Temple had fallen, whose traditions were threatened by the ways of the Greeks and the Romans, and presented to them the great High priest, Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice stood once for all in history – thus abolishing and completing their previous cult. All their traditions were taken up and redefined in him. All their fallen places of worship, their broken altars were restored, fulfilled in Jesus.

And the tribe itself was redefined! Their story was not told as a tale of triumphant leaders and great builders, nor wonderful artists or mighty writers although all these were present in their history. They were not presented as those who successfully built identities and were the great celebrities of their day. No, says Hebrews, they were the hopeful vagabonds, the wanderers in desert places, who looked beyond the cities and the temples of their day to the city which is to come. They were the suffering and the homeless, the unlikely heroes whose only hope was God. And these, he writes are “a great cloud of witnesses”!

A cloud: insubstantial, misty, appearing and dissolving in the heat of the day – but that which waters and sustains the earth, the bearer of storm and tempest and flashing fire – such is the great cloud of witnesses.

If you want to know how to live, says this writer, look not to the civilisation of Greece or Rome to all those wonderful choices that the world will offer you! Look not to the traditions of the Temple or the Church, to the unstable solidity of any human institution, any earthly community, for not one stone will be left upon another.  Look to the great cloud of witnesses!

Look to those who knew the crumbling of their careers and their fortunes. Look to those who suffered loss but journeyed on in faith. Look to those who in all their trials and uncertainty found in God a hope and assurance that was a surer foundation than anything the world can offer. Look to the cloud, to those who looked for the abiding country that is to come!

We are meeting close to the centre of government of this nation, surrounded by the imposing buildings of Australian public life. The High Court with the names of the justices inscribed on stone. The National Portrait gallery with those interpretations of hundreds of other lives from which we may pick and choose our own. Nearby are the National Archives where the records of momentous decisions are kept. You can walk to the National Library where we may read the story of our nation and its heroes and all the wisdom of the world. “See what great stones and what great buildings!” …...

And this little old church: one day it too will crumble and all that will be left to hallow this spot is the echo of prayer offered in pew and pulpit over generations, and the glint of glass in the rubble!

When the self is stripped away, when not one stone is left upon another, when leadership has degenerated into the blind guides running back and forth, all we left with is the cloud… the great cloud of witnesses.

And what do they witness to?  They witness to God’s love in Christ which holds us in life and in death, when the beast tears apart, when the sword divides, when the desert beckons and death is all around. In such hardships they conquered, and quenched the raging fire and shut the mouths of lions and won strength out of weakness. And yet, says the author of Hebrews, it is only in communion with us in Christ that they will they find the full meaning of faith.

Old people – you will soon enough end your days and enter the great mystery. Look to the cloud!  By the grace of God your faithfulness, your love, your courage might shine like the stars in the sky and you too be numbered you among the witnesses.

Young people, so busy in the ways of this world, shopping for your bright and sexy selves in college as much as in boutiques. The day may come when all you are carefully building up – education, career, networks, relationships – is cast down, when not one stone is left upon another. Look to the cloud! Look to those who made it through the only way any of us can make it through:  by faith in Christ and the discipline and courage that come from it. 

Members of this church - comfortable in your routines and your certainties, at home in your traditions. You are surrounded by the memorials of the great and the good – of Jabez Alexander Packer, the Boy Preacher, the indomitable Dr Waldock. You know the distinguished names, and the new names that are added today. Look beyond the glass and the plaques to the cloud of witnesses who risked everything for the living Lord, who stood up to the powers of this world and ventured into the highways and the waste places of the earth to share the word of Jesus.

It is not our choices that ultimately define us. It is not our membership of earthly institutions – even the church. Like the whiskey priest of ‘The Power and the Glory’ when we stand with our backs to the wall in life, we realise “there is only one thing that counted – to be a saint”.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also, lay aside every weight, and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking only to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God.”