Bound Together in Christ
All Saints’ Sunday
November 6, 2022
Fr. Tim Nunez
Salisbury Cathedral stands on a plain in Wiltshire, England, a couple of hours west of London. That area has been inhabited by people for thousands of years. It’s just 9 miles south of Stonehenge, which is 5,000 years old (1,000 or more years older than Abraham) and built by the people who lived in that area. Christians evangelized the area during Roman times. The old city was called by its Latin name of Sarum, and it remained a vital religious and economic center perched on a high hill for defensive purposes.
In the early 1200’s, they got the bright idea of moving the city down from its hill onto the plain near the river. In 1220 they began to construct this amazing and stunningly beautiful cathedral. The first wall went up that year and remains at the very east end, which is Trinity Chapel. They completed it in just 38 years.
Meg and I could go on at great length about the beauty of this cathedral. It has astounding stone work, arches, ceilings and on and on. You may have seen the pictures we posted online. At 404 feet, it also has the highest spire of any cathedral in the United Kingdom. That’s about twice as high as Bok Tower. Its stone columns actually flex a bit to hold it up!
But what is underneath the cathedral is also astounding and that is what draws our attention this morning. The building is enormous and solid stone. The spire alone weighs almost 15 million pounds and the cathedral as a whole weighs 165 million pounds, which is a lot! It has stood all these centuries. But its foundation is only four feet thick. How can that be?
They love to show you. They have this little six inch square stone in the floor they lift to reveal a small hole. They drop a long measuring stick into it to show you the water level underneath. The foundation of the cathedral rests on a bed of wet gravel. That gives it enormous strength, more than it needs. That is surprising, isn’t it?
They described it this way. Think about walking on the beach. If you are on the wet sand just at the water’s edge, your feet barely leave a footprint. If you’re going to run on that part of the beach you really should wear shoes because it’s almost like concrete. If you go up above the waterline, the sand is soft. If you’re going to run up there you can be barefoot but you’re not going to last very long unless you’re training to be a Navy Seal or something.
Beneath the cathedral, the water gives the foundation all the strength it needs to hold up that massive cathedral. It is astounding that they knew all that plus had the artisanship and technology to build that cathedral way back in 1220, 900 years ago.
Salisbury has several rivers nearby and the River Avon loops around the cathedral, so there’s plenty of water. They have to watch the water level carefully and they’ve built controls for it. The cathedral last flooded in 1915. But if they ever let that gravel get dry, the whole building would become unstable.
The same is true of our bodies. We are about 2/3rds water. If we dry out, we become dust.
It isn’t just water that gives us form and structure. We all need a binding agent to pull our bones, muscles, brains and nerves together for purpose, for direction. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? We cannot measure or pin these down, but they are imperative. It’s very difficult to be unsure of where you are and where you are going whether you’re a young person trying to figure life out or a retiree sick of the daily crossword and finding golf or fishing is only so much fun.
We find that intangible, unmeasurable force pulling us together. Teams, be they formed and driven by athletic or academic or business or service goals.
And we find it in families, which at our very best are bound together in love. It’s love that pulls us together, love that holds us together, and love that enables us to endure all the challenges and tragedies we face together.
Love that is good and right and true is a precious example of God moving among us, for God is love. Love is not just something God does, it is what he is. He breathes life into us and through us by the power of his Holy Spirit, and when we become attuned to that then life takes on the greatest meaning and purpose.
The Holy Spirit binds the church together. Otherwise, acting on our own, we are as bits of dry gravel. Without it, nothing can stand, nothing can last. With it, we are bound together in one sure foundation, one unbreakable body. This morning we are surrounded by almost 300 names of personal saints, some living some no longer with us. I have a list of our members who have died since All Saints Sunday last year.
Helen Nelson, Peter Kline, Dick Hankins, Mary Wagoner, Paula Alford, Dick Wagoner, Diana Kastner, Fay Roberts, John Seymour, Bette Ryan and Penny Updike. And we had 3, yes 3, deaths yesterday; Bob Decker, Andrea Littleton and Bob Peppel.
Yet they are all with us. They remain part of our lives, part of our story. We are bound together in the Holy Spirit and the water of baptism.
When we speak of baptism we tend to think about the water as the symbolic washing away of our sinful nature, which is a vital part of it. But if we stopped there that would be the baptism of John the Baptist. Baptism in Christ not only includes baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but also anointing by the Holy Spirit, whereupon the person is sealed in the power of the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. Hear again the words of St. Paul:
In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14)
Our hope and prayer, reflected in the commitments and promises we will affirm in just a few minutes. I look at Leah and Salem, mother and daughter who will be baptized together. You are already bound by love in a way Leah and Matt could not have imagined before Salem. Their wedding was filled to overflowing with love. I know because I was there. But Salem took you to a whole new place, didn’t she?
The same is true with Andrew and Kelly with little Jackson. Your wedding was overflowing with love. Now you have Jackson and it’s at a whole level, a whole new place. You didn’t know that much love could exist, did you?
Nhyira, we call her Blessing because that’s what her name means and so much easier for us to say. Nhyira and Xavier have been watching everyone around them receive communion. They feel the grace, they feel the love, and they want to be included in it.
This is what we proclaim. In Jesus we find a whole new level of love, a whole new vision and guide that brings the ultimate sense of meaning and purpose to our lives, and thanks to Jesus a life that never ends.
May we all be refreshed and restored in the love of Christ as we support these five in their baptisms and continue to follow Jesus wherever he leads.
AMEN