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Sermon Index

Building for the Ages

by the Reverend John Parker Manwell
and the Reverend Phyllis LeNoir Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 27th of February 2000

PHYLLIS: When we accepted the call to this church, the building wasnt what attracted me. We both loved the vision of First Unitarian, the chance to do city ministry in this eclectic neighborhood. But the building. Well, the stucco was peeling on the outside. Paint was peeling on the inside. The famed Tiffany mosaic was faded. The floor tiles were discolored and broken. The hallways were dark. Most of the bathrooms werewell, John calls them dim, grim, and hidden. Some of you remember the old ones behind the chancel. So narrow, you touched both sides, so wobbly the floors threatened to fall through, surprising all the folks in the Parish Hall.

Of course, I loved all the little lights in the barrel vault ceiling above us, and the wonderful chairs that Maximillian Godefroy designed. And as soon as I saw the antique partners desk in our office, I almost believed that we were predestined to come here. I loved the grandfathers clock in our officejust one year older than the building. I confess to a shiver of excitement the day I preached my candidating sermon from this pulpit, the very one that William Ellery Channing had used for his famous Baltimore Sermon in 1819.

That day in the pulpitas the first woman minister to be called to ministry from that spotwas the beginning of my falling in love with this building. As I began to read about the history of this church and hear stories about it from some of our amateur historianssuch as Paul Metzthe building drew me in. I was drawn again and again to the story of its founding. Henry Payson, James McCulloh, Rembrandt Peale, and other prominent merchants and civic leaders started a new faith and not with a small building but with a Greek temple, a monument, a building for the ages.

Here was a new religious movement, a split-off from the established church. But our founders believed in this faith. They committed themselves for the long haul. They wanted a building that would announce that they wanted to be a major and enduring presence in this community. They wanted a building that served the vision of this church, a Greek temple that announced that democracy and reason are important parts of religion. Here was a faith that believed in the duty and the right of each individual to reflect, to study, and to pray for wisdom rather than to accept the dictates of church authorities. The building itself stood as a monument to worth and integrity of each of us in our search for the eternal.

So our founders hired the best architect and craftsmen they could find. They used fine materialsmarble for the floors, birds eye maple for the pulpit. They went into debt. Where they couldnt afford the best, they fashioned elegant imitationsdoors painted to look like the bronze doors of the Vatican.

In 1893, the building was finally paid off, and the congregation planned a major renovation. Once again, they sought out the best. Think: today, who would we hire and at what cost to install stained glass windows by the modern day equivalent of Tiffany? A grand mosaic, valued today at more than a million dollars; modern symbols of the worlds religions? An organ the like of Henry Niemanns might cost another million dollars. Would we be willing to commit these kinds of resources today? Is this faith that important to our lives?

It is not just the money spent that impresses me. It is how important this faith became in the lives of our founders that they would make that kind of investment and take that kind of risk. Before this church existed, they were told that they were heretics, damned for eternity if their studies and their prayers and the evidence of their senses took them in a different direction from official church teachings. They did not want to leave their churches; they were told they were not welcome.

Our ancestors built this church, and for the last 182 years have come here, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in destitution, in war and in peace. Growing out of their own experiences, they increasingly saw the need for a broader embrace, a wider welcome. They have cried here, laughed here, married here, been mourned here. Here, they have called out for freedom and justice. Here, they have worked to serve humanity. They have made mistakes and sinned here as well. We cannot forget the slaves whose labor built these walls, who brought their masters to these services and were forbidden along with all women to vote in church deliberations. But we also remember those traditions that suggest that our ancestors risked their lives to hide runaway slaves inside these walls. We remember those who established a school here to help youth escape from poverty. We remember those who more recently have struggled to bring an end to segregation.

I love this building for the spirits that inhabit its walls. And after six years, I have my own spirits. I have done weddings here, child dedications, and memorial services. On this platform, we celebrated our installation five years ago this spring. From this platform we prayed for our former sexton, Tony Young, as he struggled for life. Just a few weeks ago, we announced the death of Gary Ivanish whom we had married to Tom Scarpitta just three years earlier. Every week, from this platform, we welcome everyone, young and old, parents, children, all colors, all races, all sexual orientations, all gifts, to join in worship together, seekers all, worthy all. Every Christmas Eve, we circle the sanctuary with candlelight, blessing the world, blessing one another. Every Sunday, we line up halfway down the aisle to light candles that mark and mourn the passages and people and moments that bring us joy and sorrow.

In these last years, we have devoted ourselves to the struggle for equal rights for gays and lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons. More recently, we have begun to learn about the oppression of those who are deaf, as we extend our welcome still further. Here we call for justice. Here we offer comfort. Here, too, we make mistakes. Here, we fall short. But still here, we continue to light the flame of truth. Here we continue to sing the songs of freedom.

What I have learned these last six years is that this space is sacred space. You and I, and those who have preceded us have made it so. I cannot leave it looking shabby and unloved. I want to give back that much to this city I love. I want to give that gift to those who will follow me in this congregation. I want people who walk down the sidewalk or ride up Charles Street to see a temple that is here for the ages. A place that endures. I want people who come inside our doors to find a place of light. A place where we can be stretched, renewed, and transformed. A place where hope lives. Our ancestors sacrificed for this building and this faith. Now it is our turn to pass it on.

JOHN: Its odd how I love this building. There are so many strands that it brings together in my life. I begin with the oddity that in our language, the word church can mean both the congregation and its building.

I grew up in a historic congregation with a grand old building, on a downtown street in Syracuse; a location that said, we are a part of this city; a structure that declared itself the home of people who were serious about their religious lives.

When our high school Sunday School class studied The Church Across the Street, we visited the local cathedral for midnight mass at Christmas, and I knew that those who built it were also serious, serious about building a place where the worshiper might transcend, for a time, the ordinariness of daily life.

As a student working at Star Island, I fell in love with the Islands chapel, tiny and austere on its rocky hill, yet no less than the cathedral, a window on eternity. Later, I would fall in love with the cathedrals of Europe, whose builders, no matter how different their theology from mine, envisioned a structure that for all the ages to come would invoke just such transcendence and eternity.

Gordon McKeeman is rightif we take our religion seriously, we are challenged to build cathedrals, all of us. Except as we trivialize our religious venture, there are no unimportant churches:

[E]very church [or] fellowship is a gathering place for people, battered, bruised and belittled by a culture that places too many things above human happiness, human welfare, even human survival (JOHN: SOURCE?)

Every church or fellowship should

be a reminder of what is graceful and lovely, where we can recapture the vision of human possibilities and be reminded of the so much more that life offers (JOHN: SOURCE?)

Our building does this. With a dome that rises to the sky; with stained glass that refracts the light; with a simplicity of shape that speaks of right relationship; with columns planted for the ages and grand doors that open to the world, our building reminds us of the so much more that life offers. (JOHN: SOURCE?)

But more than this invitation to transcendence, in its very location, at the corner of our citys major north/south and east/west arteries, close by our best known historical monument and beloved institutions of music, art, and culture, our grand old building cries out, We are a part of this wonderful city. We are here to stay, and to serve, and to celebrate the life of this city. Whoever you are, come in and join us.

Our building does this well. Or did. A decaying building speaks of the past more than the present, of hopes once grand but now abandoned. Our building is decaying. To the passerby, it may seem just one more boarded-up building in a dying city.

To the disrepair on Phyllis list, let me add serious dysfunctionbuildings that barely connect; offices that are remote and separated; dark, narrow stairways; and no front egress from this sanctuary in case of fire. We have no proper spaces for adult meetings, no boardroom, parlor, or library. When the doorbell rings we have no way to ask Whos there? and if youre hard of hearing, youre out of luck. In sum, our buildings have not only grown shabby. They no longer serve us well. They cry out for renewal and remodeling.

Over the past two years, our 2001 committee has been hard at work, looking at our needs and possibilities. Our architects have produced a massive report. Today, they meet with us to give us the news. The good news is that it looks feasible to meet our needs, here in these wonderful old buildings. The bad news is that it will cost us quite a lot. But I would add good news again: We can do it.

We can refinish and repaint, repair and replace, until the place looks and works like new. And, over a period of years, we can make the changes we need to adapt the building to tomorrows needs. With the finishing of our catacombs space beneath this sanctuary, and a new Charles Street entrance to connect our buildings, we can provide the new space we need, and rationalize the old.

We are still far from having a plan. We have a lot of thinking to do, a lot of alternatives to consider. Our architects will have to move from its possible to heres how its possible. Only then can we decide just how we want to go about it and what were prepared to spend.

Yes, it will cost a lot. And it may take 10 years, or even longer. It will mean giving the church a higher priority in our lives. It will mean getting over our fear of talking about money and asking for it.

But our ancestors did it. Others, in all traditions, have done it, and are doing it today.

The real question is not whether the money is there. It is whether you and I believe that what we are doing together is truly important. We have not gathered, as a private club, to serve ourselves alone. We do not seek refuge here, either from the citys dangers, or from the dangers of orthodoxy. We have come together for comfort, as people in all traditions do, but also to find wholeness by embracing the worlds diversity. We look into our hearts to find out who we are, yes, but then we follow our hearts back out into the world, to transform it.

For me, those grand doors through which we enter symbolize the most important part of who we are: a place of worship and celebration and service to which we invite the city around us. The table portrayed before us in stunning glass mosaic symbolizes this same way of being in the world: a way in which we constantly ask ourselves who is not at our table, and open ourselves and our doors and our hearts, that our table may become a welcome table.

We may never be a congregation of 10,000, or 20, but nonetheless we want to reflect the face of this community. It is in that sense that we are building a cathedralnot as a seat for our bishop, but as a place that offers a seat at the table to everyone.

This is the future you painted in your vision statement of 1993. It is the vision that drew Phyllis and me to Baltimore. It is a grand and deeply religious vision, for no goal is more religious than the goal of reaching beyond the barriers that separate us as humans and realizing our oneness.

Yes, it is a cathedral we are building. And so we shall not care how long it takes. For it is in our dreaming and our planning, in all the lives we touch along the way, that we shall become not just a cathedral of stone and stucco, but a living cathedral of compassion and justice and hope.