There’s a woman in a nearby Parish who is a very active Catholic.  She goes to daily Mass, she is involved with Ministry, she is also a grandmother and one of the lights of her life is babysitting her toddler grandson, but her son and daughter-in-law have a strict rule.  They have decided not to have the child baptized.  They want him to decide what faith he wants when he grows up for himself and so they said to her, “you are welcome here, we love you to be with your grandson but no churchy stuff, no religious stuff, don’t be talking religion or Church to our child”.  Now she doesn’t agree with that and I don’t either, but she follows the rule carefully and faithfully. 

One day last week little Johnny was in the highchair having lunch all over the place when the father came home early and, of course, his son was delighted to see his father, but the father was not happy to see the son and he turned to the grandmother and said, “I told you no religious stuff, no church stuff, no teaching religion.”  And she said, “What are you talking about, I haven’t done anything.”  And he said, “Just look”, and he looked at the spaghetti on the young boy and he says “its here, its here, its here and its here.”  (Pointing to indicate the sign of the Cross.  -  Laughter) 

We are people of the Cross and this weekend we celebrate the Cross and the Cross to me first of all means three important things. 

First of all it means a reverse of the values that we in society would normally claim because Jesus turns our values upside down.  Jesus says poor in spirit rather than rich in power and we have to be people who try to live by those values. 
The second thing that the Cross means to me is when we look at the witness of Jesus we see the witness that we are called to, of integrity and faithfulness because that’s what got him to the Cross, that’s what led to his death and crucifixsion.  Simply being faithful and having integrity.  It was not that God wanted to see him suffer, that’s not the reason.  It was not that God wanted to see him bleed, that’s not the reason.  It is that Jesus was faithful to the mission and the gospel and what he was preaching and he knew that put him on a collision course with the authorities and he knew it would be through his suffering and death and he still was faithful anyway.

And the third thing about the Cross is the way it’s designed.  It’s a vertical bar joined with a horizontal bar and reminds us that we need both to be people of God and people of one another, people of the earth, people of community. We have to have a relationship with God, love God above all things, but also with our neighbor and love our neighbor as ourselves.  We have to be a people who have a personal private relationship with God but also a relationship with the community, with the Body of Christ and the people of God.  We have to be a people who are both/and. 

You know this weekend and you see the brochures in the pews, I hope you pick them up and read them over.  We had them out last week also but this weekend we are having a second collection to give people an opportunity to be co-founders of our Cathedral Center.  One of the great things about our Cathedral Center is that it is both/and.  It resembles the cross.  In other words it is both a splendid worship space and it is also a free medical clinic for the uninsured.  It is both a place for private and public prayer and also a site for parish offices, parish ministry, and parish hall.  It is both a landmark cathedral and also a center for over 100 personnel to work and coordinate in the ministries of the dioceses and also a convention center to bring people together in celebration, in education, in service and in justice.  It’s BOTH/AND. 

Even though it is both/and criticism remains.  Some people have hesitation – why are we giving so much money to a building for God’s sakes?  I was with the Bishop earlier this week and I thought he had a very helpful answer.  He pointed out that first of all we must bring food and shelter to people.  That comes first.  But we must also bring people beauty, hope, and inspiration; and if we do not bring beauty and hope and inspiration to people before long there won’t be food and shelter either.  You know, this afternoon there is a gathering there.  We have representatives of our Parish going.  All the Parishes of the Diocese.  They are going to begin at the old Cathedral site six blocks away and proceed to the new Cathedral and place cornerstones and each Parish will be carrying water from their Baptismal font.  We’ll be carrying it from here.  And they will have water from 84 different Parishes, water from the Jordan River, water from St. Peter’s in Rome, Water from the springs of Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in France, and water from our own Oakland Lake Merritt, and they will be pouring it together in the Baptismal font to show that we are both local people and universal people, that we are people of God all over this planet.  It will be a great celebration. 

And when you get there, and I hope you all do get there sooner or later, one of the striking things is the image of Christ, its 80 feet tall inside the Cathedral, and it’s a duplication of a carving at the Chartres Cathedral of Jesus in the Last Judgment, which reminds me of that Chartres Cathedral in France built in the 12th Century and a famous story that goes with it.  Once upon a time when it was being built a visitor was going through Chartres and wondering what was going on and what these people were doing and he found a mason who was hard at work and he said, “What are you doing?” and he said “I’m constructing a roof for the cathedral”.  Then he found an artist who was working on stone.  He said “What are you doing?”  He said, “I’m carving a gargoyle.”  Then he went down to the basement of the Cathedral and he found a peasant woman with a straw broom sweeping away, cleaning up and he asked her, “What are you doing?”, and she said “I’m building a Cathedral.” 

You are all invited to be part once in a lifetime of building a Cathedral and we do it under the sign of the Cross.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

rjs