On the Centennial of Our Sanctuary a sermon preached by Khleber M. Van Zandt V at the First Unitarian Church of Alton, September 11, 2005; two readings from Lottie Forcade’s History of First Unitarian Church of Alton, 1836 to 1985

A hundred years ago, in this very space, members of this church reveled in their decision to build this beautiful sanctuary. They knew when they began the project that it would cost more than $12,000, an amount more than many of them could imagine. And yet build they did, not thinking only of themselves but of the needs of the rest of the community. And not only of those alive at the time, but of the generations to come who would keep the flame of liberal religion glowing and growing here in the Riverbend region.

A hundred years ago, when the thing was done late in 1905, they knew their decision had been a good one, and they dedicated this, their new sanctuary as their religious home and as the meeting place for so many who were concerned about the morals and the ethics and the life of this entire Alton community.

A hundred years ago, they could not have conceived of the changes society would go through or of the horrors and disasters the world has since seen.

They might have had an inkling that conflict was in the offing in Europe, but the number of dead in the Great War would have defied their imaginations. They couldn’t have foreseen the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Holocausts, assassinations, economic depressions, hurricanes, famines, floods of near biblical proportions – or could they? That has been the way of the world from time immemorial – all the great religions say this is the dilemma of human life, that we must do our work in the face of overwhelming odds and leave the rest to Fate, the gods, God, Gaia, or the universe. So build they did, and we are the recipients of their decision and their dedication. And we are thankful for them.

As you look around this building, you notice it’s not the same as a lot of other churches or temples or places of religion. A Roman Catholic church would probably have statuary and stations of the cross. An Eastern Orthodox sanctuary would most likely be filled with two-dimensional paintings of religious icons. Most Protestant Christians would have crosses or depictions of Jesus on their walls. A Jewish synagogue would at least show off its treasured copy of the Torah.

But what do we see here? Besides the chalice, which is a very recent addition, and the traditional stained glass, not much. But you know what a treasure map looks like – a drawing that you have to look at for a long time and use your imagination to figure out what it means. Well, this place is a treasure map of theological messages if you take the time to look and wonder and imagine. I want to talk today about two theological messages the builders of this space left us. They may be hidden to our eyes, one message because we overlook it and one because we look at it all the time and don’t think about what it means.

If you came in through the front doors, the Third Street entrance, you walked past big limestone blocks in the wall, one on either side of the steps. On the east, the words are, "One Lord, One Faith," and we’ll leave that for another sermon. On the west side, though, the message is, "One Fold, One Shepherd." H-m-m.

A lot of our churches meet in buildings that were built by other churches in other denominations. Those buildings may have paintings or statuary or carvings that are vestiges of those previous congregations. For instance, one of our New Orleans churches bought an old UCC building. I understand they changed the crosses on the stair railings to a design that wiped out the carved wood crosses. But "One Fold, One Shepherd" is on what was built originally as a Unitarian church. What on earth could it mean?

"One Fold, One Shepherd." Well, maybe it’s about herding sheep. How many sheepherders do we have here today? How many own any sheep at all? How many have ever seen a sheep?

Okay, how many of those builders of this building do you imagine were sheepherding people? Probably not many. They were probably professional people or business people or artisans or housewives, maybe a few farmers. But shepherds? Not likely an overwhelming number of them. Now why would the builders bother to put references to sheep on their new gift to the community and its future?

The answer is simple. They put it there as a biblical reference – there is even a biblical notation under the main words that is hardly decipherable. In biblical times, there were lots of shepherds around. Remember the Christmas story and those shepherds abiding in the fields at night watching over their flocks? The folks who first heard those Bible stories before they were printed in a book would have known exactly what the storytellers were trying to say if they used shepherds as characters. It’s we who don’t know quite what to make of those metaphors, and since we can’t know exactly what they meant back then, we can try to figure out what they might mean for us today.

This church was built way back before the Universalists joined with the Unitarians in 1961. But, ironically, we can see both Universalism and Unitarianism in this message carved in stone. "One fold" – all humanity, everybody everywhere – is Universalist at its core. And "One shepherd" points directly to the oneness of the Divine, the most basic Unitarian principle. "One Fold, One Shepherd" – Universalism, Unitarianism – takes us back to our founding traditions, and ties what we do together to day with what our founding forefathers and foremothers did and believed and placed their faith in a hundred years ago and long before that.

The other theological statement left us by our early decision-makers is right before your eyes. Those of you who’ve been coming for a while sit every Sunday looking toward it and perhaps not seeing it.

It’s just this blank wall. "But there’s nothing there," I hear people say, "Why don’t we decorate it with something pretty?" One reason is that this is the center of our treasure map, the big red "X" that marks the spot. This is the fabled "Gate of Heaven," the most eloquent space in the whole place. This blank wall, which is after all just a big projection screen, allows you - even implores you - to bring your own images and project them up here and let them move across your imagination during worship.

That’s the key to our whole project here together – our individual freedom to travel our own religious journeys, and our co-existent responsibility to undertake our own searches for truth and meaning. So if science is what keeps you afloat, then maybe you see equations floating around on this wall. If nature is where you feel most whole, maybe memories of mountains or forests or beaches appear here for you. If you feel buoyed by hosts of angels, then perhaps you see those angels hovering in this space. Whether you see bodhisattvas or Allah or Elohim or God, this is the physical spot at the center of our gathering place where visions of the Divine appear and rest and play together. We don’t hang images or sayings or icons up here in the center of our worship space to tell you what you must believe – you bring your own visions and project them up here and we look them over together and, hopefully, we learn from each others’ journeys.

So there’s the secret of the treasure map, alluded to by the words on the front of the building that give us insight into what has gone before and from whence we come: it’s the blank space at the center of our worship place onto which you project your own theologies and experiences and images of faith.

We’ve talked exclusively thus far about the confines of our building and things close to home, but much has recently happened far from here that we simply must respond to. The devastation on our Gulf Coast is beyond our ability to imagine. Untold numbers of people have died in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Thousands upon thousands have lost their homes, indeed have lost everything they had. Evacuees from New Orleans have found shelter mostly in their nearby states, but as many as four thousand currently reside in the Saint Louis and Alton area, some in shelters and many in the homes of family members, some in this congregation.

No one knows when utilities in that region will again be available, when services will resume, when people can return to their homes and businesses and lives. I’ve heard from you: "We want to help," you say. It is only in the last few hours that it has become feasible for us to think about taking a group and going down bodily to help out.

Even if we can’t go down there to help yet, we can do three things right here, right now. We can support those families among us who have taken in their family members affected by the disaster, we can seek to help those in shelters here in our midst in Alton and Saint Louis, and we can send money to agencies on the ground in New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Gulf Coast.

We don’t talk much about money here at church. Back in the old days, it was felt that money was too crass a subject to bring up, that if we talked about money much at all, our members and our visitors would get the idea that we were money grubbers, and that we just wanted to pick their pockets.

But this church has a history of involvement in the wider community, in the Alton schools and free libraries and in human justice work. The disasters of recent days have affected people related to us, not only by blood but by basic humanity.

If we do not involve ourselves in the wider community now, when will we do so?

During the final hymn, we will take up your offering for our sisters and brothers affected by the hurricane. But I want to urge you: if you have an employer or other connection to someone who will match your donation, give through them instead. This money that we give is not in any way for the glory of this church, but will go directly to where it will help most – to those able to work on the ground in the devastated region. And when you’ve given all you can in money, please look for ways to help those families among us who have taken in their family members for an indefinite time and to help those in shelters here in our immediate area.

This building is a gift from those who a hundred years ago made the decision to raise funds, to ask for money, to spend their resources to help people they didn’t, couldn’t, know – those of us who are alive all these generations later. They dedicated themselves and their building to sheltering future generations, to keeping the wind and the rain and the storms of life from falling on our heads, and to sending us messages about what is important and real and true.

The least we can do is be thankful to them, to respect them and the building they left us, and to follow in their footsteps of thinking about and caring for people other than ourselves.

Let us make the decision to turn our focus from ourselves.

Let us dedicate ourselves and our resources to the larger human family.

It is there we find our real treasure, not by holding fast to our material possessions, but rather by giving them away.

That’s what the builders of this building did a hundred years ago.

And that’s how we would best honor today their decisions and their dedication and their sacrifices of so long ago.

So may it be.