• Sending this with prayer that the truth and power of the Resurrection still burns within your hearts this week. And in the weeks to come.
• Since we built our new building, I’ve had in the back of my mind comments that came to us from the time of construction regarding excesses: too much attention to the beauty of the sanctuary (exposed beams and all the wood paneling), the wastefulness of a large room dedicated to worship exclusively, and the high costs of construction in general. At the dedication one speaker obliquely alluded to the idolatry of new buildings and the inherent temptation to pride. I think he was speaking to me and I hope, before the Lord, I have taken him seriously. Since then, on a remotely parallel track, I’ve thought from time to time about the great cathedrals of Europe, many of which (all of which?), were obscenely expensive in terms of capital and human lives lost in construction.
• The themes that run behind most of these criticisms (not all) are generally pragmatic and imply that the highest ethic is usefulness, use of money, specifically, being the most crucial consideration. Maybe more accurately, there is a calculation of worth that goes on in people’s minds, a cost-to-value calculation. Many people will admit to inner conflict here: while they love the beauty of certain places of worship, they feel uneasy about the costs involved. Many wrestle, maybe unknowingly, with Gnosticism, holding that the material world is of little significance and that real Christianity is an invisible, internal phenomenon. (This would be a highly underdeveloped doctrine of Creation.)
• Not meaning to be cute, God himself is obviously not a pragmatist and not a Gnostic. On a climbing trip last summer we eventually found ourselves alone in the midst of hundreds of thousands of acres of genuinely epic beauty. Because of last year’s immense and late snow pack, which buried all the access trails, the only other tracks we saw were mountain goat, bear, deer and various small animals. During our stay at elevation, I thought several times each day about God’s creating and sustaining such vast expanses for nothing other than his own pleasure and glory. In that context, my life with all my possessions was, literally, a small consideration and seemed entirely expendable before a God whose person and glory are, for all practical purposes, infinite.
• Soon we will come to the place in John’s gospel where the Lord tells Peter how his death will bring glory to God. In God’s cost-to-value calculation, Peter’s death (an upside-down crucifixion if history has it right) is worthwhile. To a pure pragmatist, such cost is obscenely, if not prohibitively, expensive. The Lord has a tendency to such acts. Remember the woman who poured the alabaster flask of ointment on Jesus’ head. The disciples said “why this waste?” to which the Lord answered, in effect, “you are confused about my worth.”
• Admittedly, I am asking far more questions than I am answering here, but we must at least begin to consider that we do not value people and things as God values them. Most of us think in terms of usefulness and cost-effectiveness. We would be spending our money, and ourselves, more wisely if we thought in terms of God’s glory. What if your natural, daily calculations were cost-to-glory calculations, not cost-to-value or cost-benefit? Who would you be? What would you do?