It is boring to keep a diary, to write only of the events of the day. This journal has been much deeper than that, but so often only when I was in some kind of pain. Why write when things are going well? And yet -- it is a way to pray, a way to put on paper what I need to say to God, praise and thanksgiving, blessings for those I love, and those I don't even know yet, those who are far away, or close at hand, and suffering.
The guidance I get from this scriptural work is that it is all right to buy a building as long as we are not seduced by the process or the outcome. We must not pick a building that smacks of triumphalism, of identity with the dominant political and economic classes. We must not try to build a temple that fixes God in one place and draws all our attention inward.
Scene: Overhead sign reads "Crestar Bank", altar becomes loan officer’s desk, with nameplate, stapler, papers, etc. A few feet away is a second overhead sign reading "ATM", where Sol is standing, conducting a transaction with several grocery bags at his feet. Elizabeth is working busily at the desk when 3 kings enter.
We have no choice other than to trust the mystery, to follow what we see in part. We do not stand where God stands, cannot know what is only God's to know. We follow Jesus when we embrace what is life-giving, what is eternal, even if we are misunderstood, rewarded with a shameful, painful and unjust death, separated from those we love. The saving truth is not a doctrinal statement of the unknowable but a trust that embracing, without reservation, loving, just, true and beautiful, a sufficient link to God to last a lifetime, a joy that death cannot overcome.
What if you had a dream last night that this was the last day of the world. And what if, on your way to church, you learned that other people in your household had had the same dream? And suppose, during coffee hour, you learned that other people here had also had that dream? Would you think that this might be the last day of the world? And what would you do if this was the very last day of the world?