Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Celebrating a building or a Church?

In the calendar of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, today recalls the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. As Episcopalians, we are rather unaccustomed to celebrating feast days in honor of buildings.  Days like this, however, are usually more than mere anniversaries of historical events. 

St. John Lateran is important to Roman Catholics because it is the Cathedral Church of Rome.  Many people mistake St. Peter's Basilica in Rome as the seat of the Roman Catholic Church because it is associated with so many papal ceremonies.  But if we look more carefully at ecclesiology (study of the church), St. John Lateran outstrips St. Peter's in importance.  As the Cathedral Church of Rome, it is where the Bishop of Rome presides AS Bishop of Rome, that is, as pope.  The Lateran (as it is often known) is to Roman Catholics as Canterbury Cathedral is to Anglicans.  It is the seat of the prime leader of the communion (with all deference to my Roman catholic friends).  To celebrate the anniversary of its dedication, then, is not merely to recall an historical event (which is interesting in its own right) but to call to mind the unity of the Church that we profess in our creeds ("one, holy catholic and apostolic"). It is an occasion to recall all the things we have in common rather than all the things that divide us.

Perhaps that is the challenge of this celebration to us in the Episcopal Church, and indeed, all Christian people.  When our society seems so divided by so much rancor and insults are hurled at one another like so many stones because we may differ on a point of doctrine or practice, we need to recall that we share one tremendous gift: "the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mk 1.1).  All Christians possess that knowledge and have the capacity to use its power to change (not dominate) the world.   


Scientists that study human genetic make-up tell us that there is so little genetic material that separate us from one another that it can hardly be put into understandable numbers (way less than one-tenth of one percent).  Why then are we so hell bent on fighting about what makes us different rather than celebrating what makes us the same?

Maybe we can look at one another differently if we recognize that the person we are looking at us is almost an exact copy of me.  Maybe we can look at each other differently as Christians when we realize that it is Christ that we have in common and that the Church is our way of celebrating that presence in and among us. By remembering the buildings in which we gather, we put down our differences as we walk the aisle: "Let us go up to the altar of God. The God who gives joy to my youth!" (Ps 43.4).

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