Murmerimg

In Luke's Gospel there is the story of a very short man, Zacchaeus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus going by. It is used in the church as an appropriate gospel reading when we celebrate the anniversary of the completion of a church building. When Jesus saw Zacchaeus He said to him: "Hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today." Zacchaeus was a wealthy tax collector and accordingly suspected of ill-gotten gain. The locals "murmur," Luke says: "He has gone to a sinner's house as a guest" (Luke 19:1-10). Churches are buildings we human beings put up as places in which to honor God, reminders of God's presence with us. They are primarily our creation and serve our needs, definitely the houses of sinners in that sense. We might say they are places where God's glory and love meet human need and sinfulness. God's love and mercy meet human emptiness and sin in the church building. To those for whom the "bottom line" is everything, church buildings must seem a profound waste of space and means. But probably more even than we need such other "useless" things as music and art we need a place for worship, a visible reminder of the invisible God. The church building says of itself that God is with and among us, that like His Son God is profoundly interested in us sinners. Like Zacchaeus we are hosts to the Lord in the church building and outside of it, too, insofar as we serve our fellow human beings.