Brick-and-Mortar Faith - August 17
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm [120], 121, 122, 123; PM Psalm 124, 125, 126, [127]
2 Samuel 18:9-18; Acts 23:12-24; Mark 11:27-12:12
Today’s Reflection
This past week, I started reading another memoir (see my reflection from last Friday for more on memoirs and the power of our stories). Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir is written by Stanley Hauerwas, who worked for many years as a theological ethicist at Duke Divinity School. He begins his memoir by telling of his working-class Texas roots, including vivid stories of his father Coffee Hauerwas, a bricklayer. When Stanley was about 7 or 8 years old, his dad started taking him out “on the job” over his summer breaks from school. Stanley started out as the one who caught the bricks that are thrown from ground level to someone up on the scaffolding, who then arranges the bricks in such a way that they will be easier for the bricklayers and their helpers to pick up to work with in building structures.
Over the years of working with his father and his entire bricklaying crew, Stanley worked his way up from brick catcher to brick thrower, and then to one of the helpers who “cut” the mortar and “made the mud. Eventually, he became one of those entrusted with carefully placing the bricks onto the mortar and amongst the other bricks to build a well-crafted, stable brick wall. But before Stanley was allowed to graduate to this final level in the work of bricklaying, his dad made him practice laying bricks in their backyard: “God knows how many four-foot-high walls I built, tore down, only to build again. That is the way you learned to lay brick.”
Reading this part of Hauerwas’ memoir has expanded my appreciation for the great craftsmanship that goes into building structures with brick and stone. Hauerwas himself makes connections between the skills and work ethic he learned on the job with his father and his crew and the work he has gone on to do as a theologian. He sees a parallel between the importance of intimately knowing the materials with which one is working, whether in masonry or in theology: “Like stonecutters and bricklayers, theologians must come to terms with the material upon which they work. In particular, they must learn to respect the simple complexity of the language of faith, so that they might reflect the radical character of orthodoxy.” The materials with which theologians—and all of us who want to know God better—work are the scriptures, our own experiences of faith, being in community with people of faith, and how all of this helps us to understand more deeply the God who made us and loves us.
In today’s Gospel account from Mark 11 and 12, we find people yet again questioning Jesus: “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?” After reading through the Gospels together over this past year and a half, we are not surprised to hear that Jesus does not give them a direct answer. Instead, Jesus told them he would not give them an explanation and then pivots into another parable to make his point. This parable is a very violent parable in which a vineyard is left in the care of tenants, but when the landowner sends servants to collect the rent, each servant sent is killed. Finally, the landowner sends his own son, and the tenants kill him, too. Jesus asks, “What then will the owner of vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
Here, Jesus is referring his listeners back to one of the Psalms (118, verse 22. At every turn, Jesus is questioned and rejected—all the way to the point of crucifixion. But this rejection, and ultimate sacrifice of his human life on the cross, ended up being the means by which Jesus became the cornerstone of our faith. Jesus poured out his life for us so that we, in turn, would have life.
In our community of faith (and in our world overall), our lives are interconnected—like the bricks so carefully selected and arranged by bricklayers like Coffee Hauerwas and his son, Stanley. The mortar that holds us together is, I believe, the Holy Spirit, encouraging us in our love and sacrifice for one another. But at the very foundation there must be the cornerstone (or keystone), carefully placed to give stability and strength to entire structure. Though rejected by the builders (the leaders of the church and society in his own time), in the end Jesus became the cornerstone on which the entire church over the centuries has been built. Our faith community, Saint Stephen’s, is built on this cornerstone—and each time we do something to stay interconnected with one another and the world in which we live, we continue this work of holy bricklaying. Brick by brick we continue the work of building up the church and the kingdom of God in our own place and time.
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
What are the materials of your faith? How do you see your life as interconnected with others in a way that builds up the church?
Daily Challenge
Deepen your understanding of the craft of building a brick wall by watching this video about how to build a brick corner.