For about the last six weeks I’ve been watching this retaining wall go up down the street from my house.
When I first started watching the process it was before a long weekend. I thought the project was to be a modest one to make a small (about 2 foot high) wall around a small flowerbed on the street side of the house.
Since then the scope and ambition of the project has emerged. The wall is almost 5 feet tall and turns the corner from the front of the house.
Stone by Stone
I don’t pretend to know just what exactly the ultimate purpose of the wall is. That being said, I’m intrigued to see what plans are to follow. I’m imagining that an extensive landscaping plan is in the offing. But, as always, I could be wrong.
Two things about this wall and its construction have been most intriguing. The first I mentioned above. What’s going to be the finished product?
The second, and more interesting for me, is observing the skill and patience of the guy (yup, just one person) who’s building the wall. I’ve spent a few minutes here and there watching him work. He moves slowly and with purpose. He ponders and places, imagines, forms and then finally places the stones where they’re going to go. One of the remarkable things is that he keeps very few stones on the corner at any given time. I’d love to ask him how he chooses them. Does he look for particular pieces? Or, does he make the wall so brilliantly with the stones that come his way? I’d like to believe it’s the latter.
So it is with God, it seems to me. In Jesus, God has begun the work of completing the plan of redemption, reconciliation and re-creation. Brennan Manning has famously called the band of disciples (then and now) a bunch of ragamuffins. From where I look in the church, that’s a tremendous asset. I believe that whatever God’s work of building the kingdom will ultimately look like, the first stone in building this wall is the ‘cornerstone’ Jesus. The perfect example of incarnate divinity. The first stone doesn’t complete the wall but makes every other stone utterly dependent on it.
We Anglicans are noted for our ‘Incarnational Eucharistic Theology’. Our view of the Church in the world (our ecclesiology) takes seriously Paul’s characterization of the Church as ‘the Body of Christ’ in the world. Specifically we are the church as an ongoing expression of the Incarnation, not merely as a result of it.
The Church mystifies me at times. God’s method is as wonderful and mysterious to me as is the method the builder of this wall’s is. One thing I am sure of, I am somehow more connected to the building of something special when I am witness to the process than I am when I worry primarily about the result.
Stone by Stone, Person by Person, Community by Community God is building something truly wonderful and I’m humbled, honored and blessed to be another stone in that wall.
