“Almighty God, you have built your church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” These words from our Collect today point to something important about the nature of the church and its relationship to Jesus. We have this metaphor of the church as a building. Colloquially we often say “down at the church”, meaning the church building, but as we have talked about before, the church is not the building. The church is the people. The church is the people, not the steeple. More properly, this is the church’s building, because we are the church and this is the building where we gather together.
The church is us, but the Collect is using the metaphor of a building to describe us. We, together in this metaphor, are a building, a building that is ultimately a temple for God to dwell. The Collect says the foundation of this building is the Apostles, Prophets, more properly their teachings, and the chief cornerstone is Jesus Christ. Both of these, the foundation and the cornerstone, are critically important for the structural integrity of a building. If you don’t have a foundation, the building is going to sink into the earth, it will probably do it inconsistently which will cause things to break apart and the building to collapse. A cornerstone is the first stone you put down. It is the one that all the other stones are put down in relationship to, so the cornerstone has to be really square, otherwise the building will be a little bit wonky. So there must be a good foundation and a good cornerstone to have a solid building. That for us, as the church, is the teaching of the Apostles and Jesus. These are not different things, they are mutually reinforcing concepts. The Apostles are basing their teaching on Jesus as well.
At the heart of the Apostles’ teaching, as we heard in the words of one of those Apostles today in our reading from Galatians, the heart of that teaching is love. As St. Paul says, for the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is not the only time he talks about love. You know from many weddings you have attended and heard 1st Corinthians thirteen, if I have prophecy but do not have love it is not worth much of anything. If I give everything away but don’t have love, it does not have much value. Faith, hope, love abide, and the greatest of these is love. St. Paul is not the only Apostle, all the Apostles talk about love, most profoundly from James and First John. Beloved, let us love one another for God is love. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Love is also at the heart of Jesus, his message, his life, his teachings. We hear a similar thing to the Epistle reading today when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. He said it was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. When he is pressed by a lawyer who asks, who is my neighbor, Jesus says your neighbor is probably not who you think it is. It has to stretch your boundaries. If you lived in the 1st Century, it is clear he was talking about the Samaritans. It’s not so clear to us because we don’t have a relationship with Samaritans that way. But there was enmity between Jesus and those people hearing his message and the Samaritans. You can hear that in the Gospel reading today. Jesus shows up and they won’t offer hospitality to him, so the Disciples ask, with glee in their voices, can we burn them down? Jesus says no, of course not, because of this sense of love.
Toward the end of his life, Jesus gives a new commandment, love others as I have loved you. As he is going to the cross he describes the meaning of the cross in terms of love, there is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. He embodies that love from the cross when he forgives those who have done this to him. In John’s Gospel he is explaining what Jesus is all about and why he’s here. We hear those famous words that we all know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. In the end, the core message for the Apostles and for Jesus is love. The foundation and the chief cornerstone of our faith, of our community, has to be love. If it is not, there is no structural integrity to this building that is us, and it cannot hold together. We need that love.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like love is in short supply these days. Two years of a pandemic made us all grumpier, a little shorter with each other, it’s harder to pull that love together. We realize this was going on before the pandemic. If you read history, you know it has always been this way. Love has always been in short supply, even among those of us who profess to follow a God who is love, a teacher who taught us to love, inviting us to love. We all too often find ourselves short on that love. Love is not easy. It is not just a feel-good feeling. Love is a decision we have to make day in and day out. Love has to be embodied in actions, in kindness, in generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, as St. Paul talks about in the Epistle today. It is not easy, but it is critical. It is the foundation. It is the chief cornerstone. We need to nurture and we need to nourish that love day in and day out, for that love is a reflection of the God who made us in love. We need to try and walk in that love each and every day.
So, my friends in Christ, I encourage you to nurture and nourish that love in your life. Don’t let the grumpiness, the shortness, get in the way. But make the decision every day when you wake up to love. To love as Christ loved, to love as he taught, to love as the foundation and cornerstone of who we are.
AMEN.
