Dear friends,

Last week, I gave some remarks at a meeting of the Theologies of Pastoral Ministry group in New York. I wanted to share a condensed version with you. 

Thus your fathers were made

Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD , being built upon the foundation

Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.

But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?

T.S. Eliot wrote these lines in his poetic cycle Choruses from the Rock. As a whole, it’s a meditation on what went wrong for the Church of England when the conditions of the modern world led people to abandon God, not for another God per se, but for the gods of reason, or faith in human progress, or just out of boredom and lassitude. The church, he writes is a ruined house that no one particularly wants in neighborhoods of “decent godless people, their only monument a thousand lost golf balls.”

It could have been written yesterday, but it was written in 1934. We aren’t in a unique situation as Christians in 2024. In fact, I would argue that there are perhaps no unique situations. Sins, heresies, divisions, and diversions may clothe themselves in new garments, but they are the same as they ever were. I would also argue that perhaps the church has always felt like something of a ruined house. If it didn't, there would be no need for reform.

But the church is made up of people, and the church is always rebuilding from what feels like a pile of rubble. The verses I quoted draw on Ephesians 2, where Paul is trying to argue this newborn church out of conflict over the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. He does so by reminding the Gentiles in Ephesus to keep the main thing the main thing, that “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

There’s an internet meme out there that says there are two main themes to all of Paul's epistles: First, we are heirs through unfathomable grace to unimaginable glory. And second, I am just asking you freaks to be normal for 5 minutes. Sometimes the being normal part is too much to ask in a church made up of fallen humans in need of a Savior! 

And yet, what is possible for the church is possible - not because of us, but because in God all things are possible. We are heirs through unfathomable grace to unimaginable glory. Our church is built on the one true foundation, as Paul writes in Ephesians: “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”

Here at Trinity Church, we are built together and held together in Christ; we are grafted into the Promise. We may be forever relighting the candle, forever tending the flame of which we are but stewards. But in Christ, and through Christ, we know that this house will never be ruined.

Yours in Christ, and in Christ alone,

Kara+

P.S. The photo is only peripherally related to my letter, but it’s such a beautiful room that I wanted you to see it. I don’t think I’ve ever “done my homework” in a place like this before! This is the library in the University Club, where we stayed for the meeting.