Old South Sermons:

Prepare

by Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, Senior Minister

Based on Isaiah 40:1-11

Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Second Sunday in Advent

Listen to this sermon

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It is a construction project ... a big one. It involves machinery and men, rock and steal and earth-moving equipment. It involves shaping and building something new and better. It is a large project for a large and holy purpose: building a highway in the desert … because God is coming.

The construction supervisor is a prophet by the name of Isaiah. I imagine him in his hard hat and reflective vest. He has gathered a mighty team of experts: geotechnical engineers, environmental engineers, surveyors, excavators, and road works specialists.

Working from his construction documents, Isaiah barks his orders and makes assignments: “Lift that valley! Lower that mountain! Make the uneven ground level! Make those rough places smooth!”

It is a massive and important construction project … it has to be … it has to be worthy … equal to the moment …  After all, he is engineering a highway in the desert …God is coming.

God is coming to a people as miserable and demoralized as any on earth. The people of Israel are in exile, in Babylon, oppressed, cut off from everything they know and love: their culture, their religion, their homes and homeland.

Isaiah, however, has heard word that God is coming. God is coming. And so he organizes the people to prepare to be visited … he constructs a highway in the desert … a grand road … a way for our God.

It is as if to say: We heard you were coming. We believed it. We were expecting you. We prepared the way!

Let us move ahead in time … to a different a construction project … also a big one. It, too, involves machinery and men, rock and steal and earth-moving equipment.

The purpose of this construction project is also to make something better … something holy: to make the rough places plain and the uneven ground level … its purpose: a handicap accessible T Station at Copley Square …  Its purpose: to make mountains of stairs level, to lift up from inaccessible tunnels, elders and the lame and persons in wheelchairs.

 

It is as if to say: we were expecting you. We were hoping you would come. We have made a way for you.

A good and holy purpose.

I don’t know this for a fact, but it would be an educated to guess to suggest that the ancients in their construction projects also experienced crises and delays, disasters and disappointments.

Construction projects are by definition messy and mysterious, complicated and confounding. There will be surprises.

Here in Boston’s Back Bay at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets … working amid venerable architectural structures built on fill, construction projects are by definition complicated … even risky.

From the beginning Old South has supported, indeed, we have ached for the Copley T Station to become handicap accessible.

At the same time, from the beginning, we dreaded the prospect of this sort of excavation this near to our foundation and structure. We did everything we could to have the work removed to the other side of Dartmouth Street. Failing that, we worked as best we could with the MBTA to ensure the protection of our building.

On Tuesday night our worst fears were realized. A crack we had been monitoring – a crack that began at the foundation and went up to the windows – ripped all the way, right up from the foundation to the top of the wall and onto the roof.

Quinn has a Layzer pointer with him and will show you on the wall itself behind me what we are concerned about. There is a visible crack in the plaster that angles out from the arch.  Follow that up from there … you can see that the crack goes all the way up to the very top of the wall then carries on to the ceiling. Moving down from there, follow the Layzer beam against the side of the window on the right and you can see a large, visible separation. This goes down the length of the window, then under the windows, and down to the foundation.

What does this mean? I am going to let Roger Burke (Operations Committee and former Trustee) and Tom Bulkeley (the point-person for our work with the MBTA and former chairperson of the Operations Committee) speak to that at our Forum in the Gordon Chapel following worship. In the meantime, I would like you to hear some other voices …

Emily Click, a relatively new member of Old South, wrote this in an email:

I am just not a bricks and mortar kind of gal.  I did not join Old South in the slightest because of its beautiful building.  Thus I was shocked … when I found myself teary eyed just looking at the photos posted on the news website. Why would I cry about a crack? Not fear about my safety or others.  Not fear it will get worse. Literally grief over seeing what has become very dear to me, out of association with a church that now means SO much to me, cracked.  Broken. 

Then she goes on to speak theologically:

… the body of Christ, where it is broken, is at its most creative, open, ready to share … I already see that it true even of these troublesome cracks. 

Our Senior Minister Emeritus, Jim Crawford, who worried over this building for 28 years, has this to say:

Linda and I … read the article in the GLOBE. Enough to put a boulder in the pit of one's stomach. In perfect New Testament fashion Christmas comes to Old South in disconcerting and unusual circumstances. 

Jo-Ann Bowen lives in western Massachusetts and has worshipped here on many occasions. She saw the news report on our crack. Referring to the recent split in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of gay and lesbian persons, she wrote this:

The Episcopal church has been on my heart this week, a different kind of cracking from foundation to roof.  Interesting to contemplate the common crack theme of inclusion and access.

Old South member Lois Corman (chairperson of our Operations Committee) wrote a report to the members of our Operations Committee. At the end of her report she reminded them:

…. remember that an extraordinary amount of other things are happening at Old South this week, including the Christmas tree and decorations going up (concerts, wedding, Children’s Christmas pageant rehearsal and more). Don't be so obsessed with looking at the crack in the wall during the service that you forget to look at the wonderful Christmas window next to it. The crack is real and it's serious. But Christmas is just as real and considerably more serious. 

Church member Dick Yeo was quoted this morning in an article in the Globe:

Tourists look at it as a historical landmark. But for parishioners, it's our home. Holy ground.

On Friday evening I had dinner with a group of clergy colleagues. They wanted you to hear a verse from a poem/anthem by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

The prophet Isaiah cries out: prepare in the desert a highway for our God. That is the gift and burden of the Advent season. The season itself is a construction project … a preparing of ourselves, our hearts, our homes, our church, our world … for the coming of God to earth.

We do this through greening the church, Christmas trees, crèches, advents candles and wreaths, through music and readings, through gift giving and prayers; through the giving and receiving of communion … the sharing together of the broken body of Christ. We do this in honor of the Savior and infant Jesus, by our compassion for the poor, by our feeding of the hungry, sheltering the homeless, comforting the lonely, and by working for peace in a manifestly violent world.

In a time of war, of a world-wide economic crisis, of bank failures, mortgages in default, soaring unemployment, world hunger, terrorism and pandemics, we acknowledge that the fractures in our world and in our lives are real and painful. And yet, with Isaiah, despite the world’s bad news we will cry out what we know and see: God is coming.

We have a massive and holy construction project before us this season: preparing the way of God.

Let’s get cracking!

 

 

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