Don Friesen
Sam Goldwyn (1882-1974), well-known Hollywood producer, had a way with language that ignored many of the rules of English usage. It was Goldwyn who uttered the famous, "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." He also told someone, "I never liked you and I always will." And in response to the dawn of the nuclear age, Goldwyn exclaimed, "This new atom bomb is dynamite."
Sometimes Goldwyn mangled the English language randomly; at other times he mixed his metaphors so badly, one suspects he may have done so with great care. For example, he said of movie directors, "The trouble with directors is that they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg." He also said, "I felt like we were on the brink of an abscess," which describes many movies very well. And I wonder about the authenticity of the statement attributed to Goldwyn as he lay on his death bed; he said, "I never thought I'd live to see the day."
Living Stones?
Goldwyn's ability to mix his metaphors has a biblical precedent. In our reading from 1 Peter we have the curious phrase, "like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:5) Living stones? Or, keeping in mind the exterior of our own church building, "living bricks?" Sounds like an oxymoron! On the other hand, perhaps the mixing of metaphors was intentional. Used together, the two words, "living" and "stones" convey something dynamic, yet solid and unmoving; they convey something enduring, yet at the same time something of vitality, containing the breath of life. Intentional or not, it's an arresting image, an image Peter uses to describe the church, which he also refers to as a "chosen race," a "royal priesthood," a "holy nation," and "God's own people". (1 Peter 2:9)
The Church Is a People and a Place
Our own tradition is very comfortable with the idea of the church as a people. We emphasize that the church is essentially a community. We are quick to say that the church is not a building; it is the people inside the building, and it's one of the reasons a day like this is slightly embarrassing to us. The church is a living organism, a network of relationships that needs to be nurtured. It's like a tree, a living thing that, with God's grace, grows from a seedling into a mighty oak.
What did Peter mean by referring to the church as something built of living stones? Unless you spiritualise them right out of existence, stones speak to me of something enduring, like tradition. It conjures up an image of a solid, enduring edifice, a building. It even makes me think of the church as--dare I say it--an institution. To many of us the Church-as-institution sounds stodgy and stuffy and overbearing, but perhaps it's a good antidote to the presumptuous attitude that we are the important generation of the Church, and that all that has gone on before is chaff and all that follows is unimportant.
Yes, the church is a people, a community, but it's also a place. Our church has had an address for some time. And the importance of place was brought home to me at the last service we held in our old sanctuary in June, as people shared their memories of sacred moments in that place. Churches are important places, places where people have said "yes" to God and to God's people. It's a unique place where we hear the words and wisdom of our Scriptural tradition. It's a place where we hear glorious music. It's a place where we play with children and laugh with them. It's a place where youth have a place. It's a place where people have gone to reflect upon and pray about important matters, like their future; their choice of spouse; their work; their direction in life; their struggles with health; their destiny with death.
So let's celebrate the fact that God reveals Himself to us in specific places, and let's thank God for this place, a place of worship and nurture and service important to all of us.
The Church Is a Gift and a Responsibility
The church is a people and the church is a place. Let me add one more couplet to the mix, even if they not be metaphors, and that is to say that the Church is a gift as well as a responsibility. The Ottawa Mennonite Church is a gift to us; it is a gift from God through people who came before us. We've worshipped and nurtured and served together for forty-four years--thirty-eight years (December 5, 1965) at this particular place--and while that isn't a long time, few of us have been here for the duration. This church is a gift from those who worshipped and nurtured and served here before us. It began with a handful of families, but the mustard seed of their faith has grown into a place that has served as a spiritual home for many more, both those present and the many who have passed through this church.
Someone (Thomas K. Tewell) tells of seeing a sign in a tree nursery that read, "The best time to plant a tree was twenty-five years ago." When Dorothy and I purchased a home in Ottawa, one of the things that attracted us to our home was the mature trees around the house. That was twenty-five years ago, and we should have planted some seedlings then, because in the intervening years two trees have died, and two more are terminally ill. The tree nursery with the sign that said, "The best time to plant a tree was twenty-five years ago" also had a companion sign that read, "The second best time to plant a tree is today." Both of those statements are true of the church. The best time to plant the Ottawa Mennonite Church was forty-four years ago, but the nature of the church being what it is, it requires continual re-seeding.
Peter and Helen Wiens may have welcomed a Mennonite Church in the National Capital Region seventy years ago, but the soil was not right at the time. Sometimes the soil is too hard to plant a congregational seedling. Sometimes the soil is too shallow. Sometimes it's cluttered with weeds and other things. Though a congregational seedling matures with time, it still requires continued care, lest the congregational soil be allowed, through neglect, to harden, or to grow shallow, or to become cluttered.
To add yet another metaphor to this mangled mix, someone has pointed out that just as the human body contains a variety of bones, so too one finds at least four types of bones in church bodies: There are wish-bones, those who wish somebody would do something about such and such a problem; there are jaw-bones, those who do all the talking but little else; there are knuckle-bones, those who knock everything; and there are the back-bones, those who carry the brunt of the congregational load and who do most of the work. These people are referred to in one church as "willing workers," people described as those "who are willing to do the thing that nobody else will do and they are willing to do it without criticizing the people who should have done it in the first place." (Calvin Butts, Abyssinian Baptist Church)
Forty-four years ago the OMC seedling was planted in receptive soil, and by the grace of God it has blossomed and bloomed. By the grace of God and our humble efforts it will continue to thrive. Ottawa Mennonite Church is a gift to us, but it is also our responsibility, so that we will be able to pass it on as a gift to those who will worship and nurture and serve here in the future--say, the year 2059--when I and those of you who are left will celebrate our congregation's 100th anniversary!
Thanks be to God for this church, for its people and their faith, and thanks be to God for Jesus Christ, the foundation upon which all of our efforts lie.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.