Part of Watts Towers |
In 1920, an Italian tile setter called Simon Rodia bought an unwanted triangle of land in the city of Los Angeles. It was in the very unfashionable suburb of Watts, but on this land Simon Rodia built the most wonderful and fantastic towers. They were made of short lengths of scrap steel, overlaid with a special cement mix in which were embedded tens of thousands of pieces of broken bottles, dinner plates, coloured tiles and seashells.
There are three main towers, a huge dome a fountain, a fish pond and several structures that Simon Rodia called ships. And all this amazing structure was held together with the sort of cement which sticks tiles to the wall. Simon took thirty five years to complete the towers, and he was seventy-five years old when he did so. Then he gave the whole thing to a Mexican friend and disappeared. Simon had done his work so well that the towers survived an earthquake undamaged. Then building inspectors of the city of Los Angeles declared them unsafe, but the towers, over 30 metres high were able to withstand a horizontal pull of over ten tonnes. The city engineers reversed their condemnation of the towers, and they are now considered to incorporate the longest unwelded columns in the world. |
I am using this as a parable of the kingdom of God. Simon Rodia stands in the place of God and the cement that God uses is the cement of love. You know how hard it is to get tiles off a wall, well, nothing can break the love of God. Simon Rodia's towers stood up to a pull of ten tons, God's love can take all the forces of nature, things that are, things that were and will be, powers, dominions, even death itself cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And when we look at the letter of James there is another useful comparison. Simon Rodia used a piece of land that nobody wanted as a place to build his towers, and he built them out of off-cuts of steel and broken bottles, plates and tiles, junk that nobody else wanted. Is this not how James describers the church? "Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?" Simon Rodia used whatever he could stick together with cement to build his dream, so God uses whatever he can stick together with love to build his church.
James is warning the church for not to show favouritism. Don't treat a person with gold rings and fine clothes better than a poor person with dirty clothes, he says. Do not make distinctions among yourselves, because if you do, you will become judges with evil thoughts. Do not look for the perfect bottle or unchipped plate to build your tower, remember God chooses to build with off-cuts and broken plates.
I might say that God does not choose those who are sinless to lead and to be part of his church - Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous, who do not need saving. For this reason parishes will never be able to find the perfect parish priest. And parish clergy will never be able to find the perfect parish councillors or the perfect parishioners. God's love glues together the clever and the foolish, men and women, old and young, gay and straight, and nothing is stronger than a tower built using God's love.
But our gospel teaches us another lesson. God's love uses all sorts of people to build God's church, but sometimes people have to struggle to be included. The story of the Syrophonecian women is the story of a woman who was at first rejected by Jesus himself. The woman bowed down at Jesus feet and begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Jesus said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." There is no doubt that Jesus does not want this particular broken plate as part of his tower.
But the woman insists, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Astonishingly, the woman has to argue to have herself included in the kingdom of God.
Some people cannot believe that Jesus would reject anyone, and they claim that Jesus was only testing the woman in the same way he tested the woman at the well. This is possibly so, but I think it is a parable that tells us that sometimes we must demand to be included in the kingdom of God. It is not God who keeps us out, but the divisions within human society. The woman was not a Jew, so she was discriminated against. The story tells us that it is right for her to ask for these human distinctions to be set aside.
James, in his letter, says that making distinctions is the product of evil thoughts. I believe that in order to be true to the mind of Christ, the church must set an example to the rest of the community in the way it sets aside distinctions and includes rich and poor, old and young, gold cups and broken plates.
I am ashamed to say that the church, despite all it says, still makes distinctions. Women, gays and minority groups are excluded from ordination, forbidden to preach or to hold leadership positions. James says, in his letter, that if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
However, the Syrophonecian woman shows us that those who are discriminated against have every right to ask for inclusion, indeed, they have a duty to ask for inclusion.
I said earlier that God makes his church out of imperfect and recycled materials, using the stone that the builders rejected to be the head of the corner. The church itself is imperfect; only a child's imitation of what God intends it to be. Simon Rodia took almost half his life to build his towers; God is still at work on the kingdom of God. The Anglican church is a reformed church, that is, we believe that the church needs constant work to bring it into line with the will of God. Certainly in the area of discrimination the church has a long way to go. The Syrophonecian woman asked to be allowed to gather up the crumbs under the table, but I believe that Christ invites all people, without distinction, to come up higher and to take a seat at the table, in our churches today and in the future at that table where all the saints feast with Christ for ever.