“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

(I Corinthians 3:11)

 

Have you ever heard the ancient Aztec legend of how Mexico City was built where it is? For centuries, the Indian tribes wandered homeless, a nomad people, looking for a sign, an omen, before they could settle down, build a city and become a nation. Their gods had told the, they believed, that when they saw an eagle with a snake in its mouth, sitting on a cactus, there they were to find their city. Finally, after years of wandering, they came upon this almost impossible omen — an eagle with a snake in its beak, perched on a cactus, in the middle of a lake. So, no matter if the location were a lake, and the poor Indians must labor to bring in rocks and soil to establish their city, such was their faith in the leading of their gods, they did it. That’s why and how Mexico City was built on a lake.

Have you ever heard the beautiful Jewish legend about how the Temple was built where it was? Two brothers lived on adjoining farms. One was a bachelor and the other a married man. One night during the harvest season these two brothers began to think of each other. The married brother thought: “There is my poor bachelor brother living all alone with little to cheer his days while I am surrounded by my dear wife and devoted children and know all the daily joys of a happy family. What can I do to make his life more blessed? Why, this I can do. I will go out under cover of darkness and carry sheaves of grain from my field into his, that he may at least know the joy of an abundant harvest.” Meanwhile, the bachelor brother began to think of his married brother: “What a time my brother must have trying to rake and scrape together enough to feed all those mouths. My needs are relatively simple. I have enough and to spare. What can I do to make his life better? Ah, this I can do. I will go out under cover of darkness and carry sheaves of grain from my field into his, that he may have the joy of an abundant harvest.” And the point where the brothers met each other carrying their sheaves, is the place where the Temple was built.

If the ancient Aztecs believed the place to build their city was at the spot of well nigh incredible supernatural sign, to insure divine blessing on the undertaking; if Jewish faith founded the temple of their religion at the spot where brother meets brother in thoughtful, generous, unselfish service, where is the right place according to Christian considerations to build a Christian church? How can we tell? (Is not this a proper question for us to raise in our Church Extension season?)

There are three invariable traditional specifications determining the right place to build a church of Jesus Christ.  First, there’s this — the church must be built where the people are. The church is no museum, no historical or antiquarian society primarily concerned with ancient relics and old traditions. Its concern is for people. Its business is saving souls.

British church leaders are persuaded that a whole generation grew in England and Scotland estranged from the church because the church at the beginning of the industrial revolution did not promptly and aggressively move into new housing settlements which sprang up about the gigantic factories.

The population shift in our nation has, for some years, been from the rural to the urban areas.  Southern cities are among the fastest growing. Memphis has been, and still is, experiencing unbelievable expansion. I drove through Frayser last week and was astonished at the acres and acres of new houses. Every time you take off from or land at our airport you cannot but be impressed with the vast new housing developments to the north and east and south.

Wherever these new houses are going up, there people are living. And if the church is to share her Founder’s concern who was moved with compassion for the multitudes when he saw them scattered abroad as sheep without a shepherd, if she is to be obedient to His great commission: “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all people,” then the church must go and build new churches where the people are.

The Baptists of Shelby County know this so well. Yesterday’s Commercial Appeal told the thrilling story of how their church extension program in the past twelve years has moved abreast of our city’s expansion. Just twelve years ago, there were 51 Baptist churches in Shelby County with a membership of 37,000. Today there are 100 churches with 85,000 members. Compare that with our Presbyterian record of 10 new churches in the past twelve years. The church must be built where the people are.

But there is a second specification for determining the proper site for a Christian church — the church must be built at the point of greatest human need. You may build a home at a spot where you get a good view, or a factory on a site convenient to railroad power and water supply, or a store where people can park their cars, but invariably a Christian church must be built at a point of great human need.

Where are the neediest spots in modern America? The slums, the underworld, the inner city, the ghetto, the dives where criminals, bums and drunken derelicts hang out? Poverty, crime, drunkenness are but the signs, the symptoms of a deeper greater, human need: namely man’s godlessness, his sad estrangement from his creator. Man’s moral and spiritual need is always his greatest need.

When we understand this, we see immediately that some of our neediest people live in our biggest houses, earn the highest salaries, spend the most lavishly. America today is ripe for destruction because many of her most favored citizens are farthest from their God. So the church now finds one of her most compelling missions is not to the down and outs, but to the up and outs. Church extension must move into the luxurious suburbs.

Someone writing for the Saturday Review notes that every college generation of America earns for itself an appropriate name. The youth of the roaring twenties were called the “jazz age,” the thirties were called “Depression Children,” and this writer says that our youth of the fifties might well go down in history as the “Egocentric Generation.” Then this author asks why has this generation of favored young Americans grown up more interested in “convertibles than in causes”? And he hazards the guess that it may be because “the adult American society has taught them it is often safer to conform than to be an individual.”

Where is the point of our greatest need in America for adequate national defense? The fact that the Russian scientists beat our American scientists in launching the first manmade satellite has everyone all a-twitter. Charges of who’s to blame for the defeat are flying back and forth. Wild are the speculations of the dire consequences to our nation because we are lagging in the race for the conquest of space, the supremacy of the universe. What if the Russians beat us to the moon and to Mars?  Oh, horror of horrors, if they should seize these celestial prizes for the U.S.S.R. before we can annex them to the U.S.A.

Well, how crazy can we get. Do we not see the more real and urgent areas of human need crying out for spiritual pioneering close at hand? After all, those supposed inhabitants on other planets may be better off than we. Yet at our very door steps, within the fast expanding limits of our city, men and women are living lives of poverty-stricken godlessness.

Mr. C. S. Lewis in his books, Perelandria and Out of the Silent Planet some years ago, pointed out what may well greet earth’s first space men to visit Mars and Venus. His character, Dr. Ransom, finds the people of Mars living in perfect peace and beautiful cooperation. The various races there differing in size and shape and color, all speak the same language and contribute each to the common welfare through performing the functions best adapted to the native endowments of each people.

But there is one thing Ransom never finds on Mars which he had seen so much of on earth. He never finds any “Fear.” Why is there no fear on Mars? Because no Martian man or woman has ever hated his brother and dealt cruelly, unjustly, oppressively with him. There is no violence, no bloodshed, no discord.

Why are we creatures of this earth plagued with fear? Because we have broken the bonds of brotherhood, dealt cruelly and unjustly and violently with one another. Therefore, are we afraid.  Does not our Bible tell us: “There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear. Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loveth is begotten of God.” This is the gospel committed to the church. And the church of Jesus Christ, the society of His redemptive love, must always be built at the point of man’s deepest need — his spiritual need of God who is love incarnate.

But there is a third specification for selecting the site of a Christian church: the church must be built where God’s mercy meets man’s need. This is what St. Paul had in mind when he wrote — “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ.”

Why do you Germantown Presbyterians think that we, at Idlewild, are able to accept with such grace your call to Denton McLellan to become your pastor? How is it that I am able to bear the loss of a competent associate and comfortable comrade on the Idlewild staff, and the Idlewild congregation endure the loss of his eloquent preaching, his scholarly teaching, and his compassionate pastoral care? Only because we are persuaded that Christ must always build His church where the people are and where human need is most apparent.

The church is no mere human institution which is built by men wherever people may congregate.  Neither is the church simply an institution of humanitarian sentiments — mere men do-gooders — who move in to the neediest spots of human existence and struggle. The church is divine in nature which comes with a power from outside the orbit of our little world. The Christian church is always built at the point where the divine love and mercy in its supreme manifestation meets human need at its lowest ghastly depths — that is at the Cross of Christ. That is why St. Paul says, “no other foundation for the church can be laid.”

Elsewhere, Paul speaks of this great divine act which is the foundation of the church as an act of “reconciliation”. Hear the Apostle: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” (II Corinthians 5:19-20)

What is this reconciliation about which Paul speaks? Does it, can it mean anything to us? Paul calls Christ’s atoning death “an act of reconciliation.” He calls the Father’s intention in the whole drama “reconciling intention.” He calls our atonement “our at-one-ment” with God in Christ, “our reconciliation.” He calls the church’s gospel which has been committed to it “the word of reconciliation.” He calls the mission of the church “a project of reconciling men to God through Christ and so of reconciliation of all men one to another through their common love and loyalty to Jesus Christ.”

So the church cannot be the church unless it is built at this point. No congenial fellowship, however placid and happy; no peace giving worship, however sentimentally, syrupy sweet; no impressive structure however elaborate and architecturally correct can achieve the status of church-hood. The church in order to be the church must live and move and have its being as Christ’s fellowship of reconciliation. Having received by divine grace and mercy “at-one-ment” with the Father through the death of the crucified, her members not only preach this gospel of reconciliation, but they live it, offering to all men everywhere the reconciling love of Christ.

What does the Christ of the Book of Revelation say to the church which prospers in material gains and grows numerically and has all the worldly signs of power and prestige and yet loses Christ’s spirit of reconciling love for the lost and the last and the least? He who is the light of the world says He will come and take the light of His truth and salvation from that church and leave it in abysmal darkness. “Thou has left thy first love,” says Christ to the church at Ephesus, “Repent and do the first works, or I will come quickly to remove thy candlestick out of this place, except thou repent.” (Revelations 2:4-5)

Where can the church of Christ be built? Well, we know, only too well. But will we build it?  Presbyterians of Memphis are now being challenged to unite in a common effort to erect new churches. The challenge to everyone of us is to give one day’s pay on next Sunday. Just one day’s pay for Him to whom we owe all in time and eternity; one day’s pay put into the extension of the only earthly enterprise which will remain when all our other investments are crumbled in dust; one day’s pay for the church for which our Lord gave gladly His life.

In a period of great national unrest in England, in a year plagued with war, famine, and disease, an English gentleman of Leicestershire, built a church. This is the inscription on the memorial tablet set into the wall of that church:

In the year 1653, when all things sacred were, throughout the nation, either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, founded this church; whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in the worst times, and hoped them in the most calamitous.

“He did the best things in the worst times.” What a tribute. What an epitaph for any man. Can you think of a better thing you can do in these times with just one day’s pay than give it to help build a church where and as it ought to be built?