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"Of Sand and Stone" by Rev. Charles Hoffman
June 2, 2002 Second Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 8:21-29The Gospel lesson says that you can't have a good building if you don't have a good foundation. Just about everyone knows that. And in the same way you can't have a good life if you don't build it on a firm footing. As Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount he makes it clear. Ignore his teachings at your peril. If you do that your life will eventually come crashing down like a sand castle.
On the other hand, his teachings are a firm foundation for life. Build on him and you'll be able to withstand just about any ill wind that blows against your life.
As I read the Gospel lesson for today I was reminded of an article I came across about four years ago. It was about the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. By the time the Spanish set out to build that church in 1563 they already knew about great cathedrals. They envisioned something as grand as the great edifices of Spain. They'd seen them in places like Granada and Seville. That was their goal. And in that sense they succeeded. Metropolitan Cathedral has been described by one art historian as "the most notable monument of the colonial period in the Americas" (Manuel Toussaint).
For many Mexicans it stands as the Mother Church. The project took over two hundred years. In fact, it was 250 years before they had the final consecration. (And some of you thought our building program was slow! I have to think it was hard to find someone to chair the building committee for that church.) The end product is a church with five naves, fourteen chapels, and two massive bell towers. It is 400 feet long and weighs close to 130,000 tons.
Ordinarily most of us don't pay attention to how much a building weighs, but in this case weight is significant. The reason has to do with the building's foundation and, of course, that brings us back to our text for the day. Here's what happened. In the last century downtown Mexico City has sunk more than 25 feet. It's a situation where far too many people are drawing far too much water from the ground until the soil has compressed beneath the city. You can imagine what this does to the buildings. But it gets worse. The soil didn't compress evenly. It settled more in some areas than others. And the old cathedral paid a heavy price. Floors buckled and waved. Walls and roofs cracked. One of the towers sank three feet lower than the other. One end of the building was eight feet lower than the other.
The church lost its balance and in 1989 the mounting pressures forced a serious crack along the building's spine. At this point the Mexican government set out to save the cathedral with scaffolding and reinforcement beams. I read that there were 55 miles of scaffolding in the interior of the church. It was a major challenge to the modern engineers as they tried to reverse 400 years of deterioration. And in the end they decided that rather than raising the lower end of the church they would lower the higher end in an attempt to restore a measure of equilibrium.
In 1998, after five years of labor, they had moved the building a little over three feet toward level, and were ready to call the project a success at least for the time being. Who knows what will happen in the future?
The story of Metropolitan Cathedral dramatically illustrates the truth of our Lord's teaching. You can't make it if you don't start with a good foundation. That's clearly what happened to this church.
But the story of the cathedral is more than a study in physics. It also has something to tell us about spiritual foundations. The Spanish built the church as a majestic symbol of power and conquest. In fact, they built it squarely on top of Aztec ruins to punctuate the fact that the Church has dominion over the lives and souls of its colonial subjects. It was the wrong thing on which to build. They thought it was theirs to conquer under the sign of the Cross; they forgot that their real calling was to serve under the sign of the Cross.
Way back in 1563 when they started building the cathedral there were warnings that the ground was too unstable for such a structure. But they wouldn't listen; they were arrogant and proud. Nothing could stop them. Again, pride and arrogance are the wrong things on which to build the church. When his disciples asked Jesus about greatness he set before them a child. And he said, Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:4). On another occasion he made it clear that the Son of Man had come to serve and not to be served.
One more thing. I have no clear documentation to prove it, but I'm sure injustice and exploitation figured significantly into the long years of cathedral construction. I doubt there were any exceptions. The cost of labor and lives was borne on the backs of the poor. Caught up in the intoxication of power the Church forgot the meaning of righteousness. It said the words, Lord, Lord. It said them eloquently but they didn't get translated into action.
Domination, pride, arrogance, and injustice: you can't build a church on that. You can't build a life on it either. Service to others, humility and righteousness: you can build a church on that. You can build a life on it, too. And when the rains fall, and the floods rise, and the wind blows it will stand.
By all means, let us build. But let us build on such a foundation that what we leave will be an asset and not a liability to future generations.
Let us pray: Dear God, we thank you for all the signs of life that we see in our church. We pray that in our concern for building we will not lose sight of our mission. We pray that in our preoccupations with plans we will not lose contact with individuals. Amen.