Come! The drinks are on us!

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, May 12, 2013

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

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Last week, Fletcher Harper walked us through the end times in the book of Revelation – both the popular notion of what it says and what it actually says.

He reminded us that the popular view – where Jesus MediVacs Christians off the earth into the clouds and then takes off with them into deep space where God lives and when they are sufficiently far away, God presses a button and blows up the earth – that that view isn’t even close to Biblical.

Then he walked us through the text of last week’s reading from Revelation and showed us that what the Bible really says about the end times is that God gives us a renewed and rejuvenated heaven, a renewed and rejuvenated earth. That the “end times” is not the earth exploding but a heavenly city right here. A city that does not battle or exploit the created order but emerges out of it, within which the natural world and all that it represents is integrated and there is a fullness and a mutuality and a peace between the city, the height of human civilization and the natural world.

That is our destiny. That is who we are to be. That is what we are to be about. A city. A new Jerusalem that like the psalmist sings is “a city that is at unity with itself.” A city where all people are restored to unity with God and each other in Christ, where Jesus’ prayer of “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me” is reality.

A city whose streets are lined with trees bearing fruits whose “leaves are for the healing of the nations.”

A city of God. A city with waters of life and healing. Where

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

Christ Church Cathedral has stood on this spot for nearly 150 years as a living sign of all creation’s destiny. That like every city, this city of St. Louis is a work in progress, and that we aspire to and in fact believe our destiny is that renewed, rejuvenated city of which the psalmist sings and God promises. And that the work we have been given to do is to help God in that work of renewal. To make this a city that makes glad God’s heart. To be a spring from which the river of life will flow and to plant the trees whose leaves will be for the healing of the nations.

And the role of a Cathedral in that cosmic process of urban renewal is to be the place to which God gathers and from which God’s voice booms out. Our role is to be a place from where that water of life springs, and sings

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
And let everyone who hears say, "Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

It is to invite everyone in, to hold out the water of life and say

The drinks are on us.

The drinks are on us.

So what does this look like? It looks like any number of things. It looks like things of which we have not even conceived yet! It looks like ways of being the church, ways of being Christ Church Cathedral that are yet to be discovered and adventures yet to be embarked upon.

But it also looks like some things that we have seen. Places where we have looked out and seen the deep brokenness in our city and asked the question “what does the water of life look like there?” And then where we have said, “Let everyone who is thirsty, come. Take the water of life as a gift.” Where we have gone out there and invited people in here and said:

The drinks are on us.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like this past Wednesday night when 20 months after Becca Stevens brought women from the Magdalene program in Nashville into this Cathedral so we could hear their stories of coming from the depths of prostitution, violence and drug abuse into a community that bathed them and filled them with the water of life. It looks like 20 months later, 400 people filling this Cathedral – people not just from this Cathedral, not just from this diocese, but from all parts of this city coming together to dedicate their time and talent and money to open the door to Magdalene St. Louis and to be a part of opening that first house by the end of next year. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like Dr. Huldah Blamoville looking out and seeing so many homeless and low-income people with undiagnosed medical conditions and putting together her own physicians group, Mound City Medical Society with the people from BJC and coming to Chapter with a proposal that last month they unanimously approved for once or twice a month on Saturday mornings the back of this Nave and the Chapel to be used for a referral clinic for our guests at Miss Carol’s Breakfast. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us is as simple as these doors being open every day for anyone to come in and sit and think and pray. To let anyone who wants to come slake their thirst for beauty and peace in this space and at the foot of that cross. Let everyone who is thirsty come.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like Debbie Nelson Linck and the “As If We Weren’t There” photo exhibit. It looks like Lena Loewenstine gathering new, younger members of the congregation taking church outside these doors to Gelateria Tavolini on a Tuesday night to talk about The Screwtape Letters. ->->->->
It looks like Hopey Gardner taking our Lenten challenge to see what new thing God might be doing and discovering a call to teach kids to read through the YMCA community literacy program and inviting anyone in this congregation to join her.

Saying the drinks are on us looks like us as a Cathedral seeing what Hopey saw … seeing children in our city starving for education and welcoming into our space an elementary school that can give that high quality of education to children across the racial and economic spectrum. It looks like our Sunday School teachers, children and parents working so hard to share the space they love, and Cathedral members getting trained to go door to door in low income neighborhoods telling them about Lafayette Preparatory Academy. Please come and join us. I’ve gotten the training. You can get it too. It’s a public school. It’s not proselytizing and yet when we are inviting people to send their children to this school in this place where they can thrive and grow, we really are doing nothing less than saying “let everyone who is thirsty come. Take the water of life as a gift.”

The drinks are on us.

When we embrace our destiny as a spring from which the waters of life run. When we cry out to a thirsty world, “Come! The drinks are on us!” we are living not just our ultimate destiny but God’s earliest dream for us. Fletcher told us last week that God giving us dominion over creation in Genesis was not about giving us license to control and exploit but a call to nurture and tend for the common good of all creation. Well, the same is true for us and this Cathedral. If we view this Cathedral as a resource for us to control and use only for ourselves, we are no better than those who pump pollution into our air and dump chemicals in our rivers.

I don’t care what any deed of title says. This Cathedral is not the property of this congregation or Chapter or even the Diocese of Missouri or even the national Episcopal Church. This Cathedral is a herald of the heavenly Jerusalem. And we have been given the great honor and opportunity to nurture it and tend it not for ourselves but for the renewing and rejuvenating of the entire city. It is sacred public space owned by God for use by all who thirst. It is to be a place to which God gathers and from which God’s voice booms out.

And it’s the best thing ever. Because that means we don’t just have to be one more old church building. One more failing nonprofit whom people used to use looking back wistfully at the past and staring ahead at the same financial projections as newspapers and bookstores.

No. We get to be a place from which the river of life springs. We get to look out and point others to the deepest thirst that is out there and say we’ve got something here for you. And with the Spirit and the bride, say, “Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, “come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

Come. The drinks are on us!