Pentecost 18A (lectionary 27A)
Texts: Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
October 4, 2020
Architecture Lesson
In memory of Phil Radloff
If you are a Chicagoan, and you don’t know the name of the architect Louis Sullivan, well, you should. Sullivan worked in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, and he is a seminal figure in the architectural world; he is called the father of the skyscraper and was one of the founding figures of what is called the Chicago School of architecture. Important buildings that he designed include the Auditorium Theater Building; the old Carson, Pirie, Scott department store on State and Madison; and the old Chicago Stock Exchange, a building so beautiful and influential that when it was demolished in the 1970’s whole rooms of it were moved to the Art Institute of Chicago, where you can walk through them to this day.
He is long gone and you don’t hear Sullivan’s name much, but when you do it is almost always in connection with his famous architectural and philosophical principle, form follows function. See, even back in his day there were architects whose works were flights of fancy, drawing more attention to the design itself than to the utility of the building. But Sullivan was a Chicagoan, a City-of-the-Big-Shoulders kind of guy and the child of Irish immigrants, and so he was a person of earthy, connected, and practical mind. His buildings were not to be monuments, or things of beauty alone, but beautiful, working buildings. So it is that the Auditorium Theater building – more than 130 years old now! – is to this day a hive of music studios, artist shops, and in its 4,000-seat theater space, home to the Chicago Joffrey Ballet. That’s a working building. Form? It follows function.
I submit to you that the apostle Paul was an architect, the primary designer and builder of our Christian faith. Furthermore I submit that St. Paul was in fact an architect of the Chicago School; in matters of faith, he tells us in the lesson from Philippians this morning, form must follow function.
Oh, it’s not that form isn’t important! Paul begins this passage reciting all the forms his life has taken, and the list is long. He takes out his wallet and shows us all his membership cards: looka that!, he says: I was circumcised on the 8th day, I’m a card-carrying member of the people Israel. This one says that my Benjaminite tribal dues are paid up. And here, here is my badge, from my days working in Pharisee law enforcement; I carry a badge. These things are important, Paul wants us to know, they have formed me.
You have things that have formed you, too, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and a lot to be proud of. Psychologists teach us that we all develop our own architecture of ego; we spend a lifetime building the structures of our identity. You gotta be somebody, get clear about who you are, before you can share yourself with others; before you can aspire to what else God might call you to be.
And it’s that last part – aspiring to what God might call you to be – where a Christian writer named Richard Rohr gives me an insight. Rohr writes that there comes a time in our spiritual growth and formation when the architecture of our own identity has to be held up against the greater goal and purpose of our living. To put it in the language of St. Paul, if the architecture of our ego is not contributing to the larger, truer function of “wanting to know Christ,” then it’s all rubbish anyway. All of it then becomes nothing but the window-dressing of one of those fanciful, ginger-bread architects, the kind of mere ornamentation that distracts you from what the building of your life is really all about.
This insight is illustrated beautifully in the letter to the Philippians, and in the arc of St. Paul’s life. The form of his life is now shaped, he writes, by his longing “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” It’s no longer a building of his own making, but instead is being formed as he seeks to know Christ and share the Good News with the world. Now concerning this new life, it’s not that it is without suffering – remember that Paul writes this letter from prison, on his way to suffer and die for his faith. But this new life has brought him true joy – in the letter he uses the words “joy” and “rejoice” no fewer than 12 times; I looked it up. When the form of your life follows its true function in Christ, it brings a lightness of being and a peace that the world cannot give.
We live in a time when so many of the forms that our lives have trusted have betrayed us badly. So many of us now out of the jobs and careers that have shaped so much of our lives. So many of us who have been students, now with our studies so disrupted. Our image of ourselves as most powerful nation in the world, best health care in the world, shattered as the statistics show us just how poorly among the nations of the world we have handled the pandemic. It’s a new life before us now, and it’s not that this new life is without suffering.
And yet, and yet: may we not move from a life where the architecture of our ego is of our own devising – our image as most powerful – into a life where we align ourselves instead with, build ourselves into, God’s true purpose for us? Can we use tis pandemic time to do that? Those of you who have come to the Faith community through Presbyterian and other Reformed traditions often quote the very first question of the Westminster catechism: The chief end of every man and woman is to glorify God, and to enjoy God forever. Even in pandemic, that is as true as ever. Let our form follow that function, then, in every sacrifice we make in this time, in every difficult circumstance we know these days, behind every mask and in every new thing we need to learn, let it still be said: We are God’s people, built by the Great Architect, and even now we are built to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.
That’s the point of St. Paul in Philippians, and you know it’s the point of our Gospel passage this morning, too. Those tenants in Jesus’ parable have got it all so wrong. There they are, guarding the form and forgetting the function. They are so invested in keeping the vineyard for themselves that they’ve forgotten what the thing is really for. The vineyard was never theirs; it was not built of their own creation! It was given over, lent, to them, that they might do good work in it. Our world, our churches, our lives, are not really our own, either. They are gifts from God, given over, lent to us that we may glorify God and enjoy God forever. Too much time, energy, and suffering have been spent fortifying the form, and forgetting the function.
So, I say that following the Great Architect of it all, and following St. Paul the architect of our faith, let’s be about building something different. Lay aside everything that has been merely ornamental, all that has been self-built and self-aggrandizing. Instead let’s build a church, and let’s build lives together, in which the form of it follows the function of knowing Christ, and knowing the power of his resurrection, in our lives, and in our world.