What does Paul mean? How does the foundation reflect the integrity of a church? Around what or whom does Paul believe we gather? Why, finally, come to church?

This morning we are going to look for clues to answering those questions in one of the great hymns of the church. In a few moments we will sing the hymn, "The Church's One Foundation." That hymn takes Paul's conviction, sets it to robust tune and verse and speaks to the church's authority; it rings with integrity, it sings endurance, staying power, invincibility.

I

Look at the first lines, for instance:

The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord;
We are Christ's new creation, by water and the word;

This great affirmation grounds our gathering here. We may find ourselves coming to church for tons of different reasons: fellowship, music, Bible study, social service—whatever. But what finally legitimates our existence lies in our foundation. Look at it this way. I have never forgotten an article appearing in The Christian Century entitled, "What Makes A Church Great?" Frankly I don't remember the components comprising church greatness. I suppose they included criteria we ascribe to most great things in this country: the size of the budget, the number in the pews, the public influence of the membership, the frequency in the headlines. All criteria worth thinking about. But I wonder. Can a church really be great? I'm not so sure. Churches can, I think, only be faithful.

Our Protestant tradition takes that wonderful passage from Matthew's Gospel where Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ and Jesus asserts he will build his church on Peter the Rock. We take that, now and again, not so much as a statement about Peter's person, as important as that may be, but as an affirmation about Peter's faith—a faith Matthew invites us to share. For instance, do we believe that this suffering, failed criminal, Jesus of Nazareth, really provides the clue to who really lies behind and suffuses the universe? Do we trust that love bears us through the worst life can do to us—cancer, AIDS, personal betrayal, the meaningless brutalities of the likes of 9/11, suicide, death? Do we believe, as the Gospel of John affirms and this Epiphany season proclaims, that amid darkness impinging on all sides, a light shines and the darkness can never put it out? We dare never confuse church budgets, programs, preaching, architecture, attendance or anything else, with our common faith in the triumph of capital "L" Love through the precariousness and pain of human existence. To be sure, they may provide signs pointing to the vitality and depth of our faith, but trust in God's ultimate triumph we see through Jesus Christ comprises the Church's One Foundation. Nothing we do here substitutes for it. Everything we do here should testify to it.

II

We continue:
From heaven Christ came and sought us in love to set us free;

". . . in love to set us free?" Free! Free for what? Free for obedience. As many of you know, over my word-processor at home there hangs a picture of Bishop Desmond Tutu with a greeting he passed along to Linda and to me. It hangs there, of course, as a reminder of one of the most remarkable Christian witnesses of this or any other age. Some years ago, standing before a hostile government tribunal defending his resistance to apartheid, after modest disclaimers regarding the fallibility of his convictions, Bishop Tutu continues:

Speaking for myself I want you to know that there is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe is what God wants me to do. I do not do this because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God's hand. I cannot help it: when I see injustice I cannot keep quiet, for, as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God's word burns like a fire in my breast. But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is kill me, and death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian . . .

Free for obedience. Free for service.

III

And again:
With precious blood Christ bought us, for all eternity.

What do we sing here? What does this purchase with blood intimate? Well, approximately eighty years after Jesus died, the early Christian Church, reflecting on the meaning of our Lord's life and death, concluded finally, that through the face of Jesus we could discern the heart of the universe; we could sum up Christian doctrine with the simple confession, "God is love." And what will love risk for its object? How far will love go to win over or win back those who stray and resist it? You know how far: True love risks everything to gain the loved one. No pain, no humiliation, no rejection, no risk is too great for love actively to seek and reconcile the beloved—though recalcitrant—other. How much will Love offer to seek and save another? Of course—how shall we sing it? "precious blood?"—life—death—itself?

IV And again, Elect from every nation, yet one o'er all the earth,
one charter of salvation, one God, one faith, one birth,

Are you kidding? "One o'er all the earth?"
If some cynic were to tackle this hymn it might go something like this:
A sect from every nation, scattered o'er all the earth.
Ten score ways to salvation, one God, ten faiths, what birth.
No name together blessing; few holy things we share;
To parochial dreams we're pressing;
At odds in work in prayer.

Isn't that the truth? Ask anyone outside—or inside—churches what discourages them most about the Christian Church and most will reply, "The Divisions, the fights, the mountains made from molehills." Of course. Right here in the Back Bay you can choose an Episcopal or Congregational Church—the latter tradition born from a 17th century effort to purify the first. Within four blocks you can attend a Presbyterian, Baptist, Missouri Synod Lutheran, Unitarian or Roman Catholic Church. The Lutheran won't serve Communion in the Presbyterian Church because it's against his religion. The Roman Catholic won't welcome the Baptist to the Eucharist, because it's against his religion. The Congregational Church on the Square finds difficulty speaking to the Congregational Church a mile away on the Common because the meaning of our religious code language differs. And the whole crowd disagrees among themselves for religiously grounded reasons about abortion, women in the ministry, national defense priorities, social welfare legislation, religion and politics. What a shame!

Yet, our faith, our hope, our conviction, lies in the possibility of Oneness transcending the differences of nation, race, gender, class, denomination, politics. That is why, believe it or not, the United Church of Christ was founded. Our founders, back in 1957, after two decades of struggle to bring a Presbyterian tradition together with a Congregational tradition, sought to be "united and uniting." As the preamble to our Church Constitution says, "we join to express more fully the Oneness of Christ of our separate churches in order to make more effective our common witness to Christ . . ." Our own bylaws include as a purpose of Old South, "To realize Christian fellowship and unity within this Church and the Church Universal."

You see, friends, we live in anticipation of a community where the barriers come down and we celebrate in worship and mission, "One God, one faith, one birth."

And yes, as the hymn articulates,
one name together blessing, one holy food we share,
to one hope we are pressing, at one in work and prayer.

The joining together at the Lord's table confirms our "being one o'er all the earth." At the invitation to the table at every Communion Service in this congregation we welcome everyone, bar none. It does not matter how you may be feeling today, whether you have been baptized, confirmed, how you identify yourself ethnically, racially, by sexual orientation, or religiously, at this table our foundation, Jesus Christ, "Barrier Breaker," is host, and we share here with everyone an anticipation of a joyous banquet bringing together Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Methodists—nothings—whoever wishes to join in celebration of a new humanity.

But more, the table represents the "one hope we are pressing, to be at one in work and prayer." And that one hope? That one work? That the Christian Church might be a foretaste of what God finally wants for the whole of the human race. We become what Paul called the "first fruits" of a new creation, a colony of reconciliation in this broken world of ours; an anticipation of what Dr. King presciently called "a world house." As one, we pray for that. As one, we work in neighborhood, city and world for that.

V

"'Mid toil and tribulation and turmoil of our war" really follows up on the previous verse. The author of this text, Samuel Stone, found himself in the middle of a terrible doctrinal fight within the Anglican Church. In 1856 he believed one of his colleagues a wicked heretic and describing the condition of his communion he wrote as follows:

The church shall never perish! Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide sustain and cherish is with her to the end;
Though there be those who hate her, and false sons in her pale
Against foe or traitor she ever shall prevail.

We don't sing that anymore, because just as in the last verse we prayed we might work and pray toward a common hope, thus, amid "toil and tribulation and tumult of our war, we gain the consummation of peace forever more."

VI

And finally,
Yet we on earth have union with God, the Three-in-one,
and mystic sweet communion with those rest is won.
O happy ones and holy! God give us grace that we,
like them, the meek and lowly, may live eternally.

We dare never forget, when we meet here, that we do not meet alone. The Christian Church transcends these walls, extends beyond our order of worship, includes more than the few hundred of us in this nave. We meet on this first day of the week, alongside faithful men and women in Beijing, Islamabad and Nairobi, in Berlin, Buenos Aires and Istanbul. And yes we meet not simply at the appointed time—say, 11:00 Eastern Standard time on February 13, 2002. No. We are part of a long parade, a monumental pilgrimage, a vast cloud of witnesses who join us, offering support, encouragement, embracing us: those apparently long gone—but not really—our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, our brothers and sisters in the faith: a "mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won."

William Temple, a monumental predecessor of the currently retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, beautifully captures this sense of our transcendent communion when he prays:

O Lord, our God, from whom neither life nor death can separate those who trust in your love, and whose love holds in its embrace your children in this world and the next: so unite us to yourself that in fellowship with you we may always be united to our loved ones whether here or there; give us courage, constancy, and hope; through him who died and was buried and rose again for us, Jesus Christ our Lord.

A mystic, sweet communion.

So friends, when we sing "The Church's One Foundation" in just a moment, I pray we sing it with fervor and conviction. How we live out this hymn here illustrates the legitimacy of our spiritual foundation. How we treat one another here and how it models all of our behavior in this city, nation and world is crucial demonstration to the skeptics and scoffers, the slanderers and cynics—and yes, to our brothers and sisters in the faith and to the God we serve—that here, on this corner, in this place among this people, the Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Scripture Reading

1 Corinthians 3:10-17

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14 If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.