The Rich And The Poor Meet Together
The Lord Is The Maker Of Them All
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
10 September 2006
Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37
I have four or five favorite places on this beautiful Cathedral campus. One of them is called the Cathedral “Overlook.” If you exit the Cathedral from one of the narthex doors, and head south, that is, towards downtown Atlanta, you will come to that place, at the very point of our stewardship.
That is the place which most of Atlanta sees when they drive north on Peachtree Road. It’s the Overlook. And on the spot is a large slab of stone from one of the first Cathedral structures. It is not the cornerstone from our second church building, but it is a piece from one of the arches over the door. Maybe it was a keystone from one of those archways.
That’s one of my favorite spots. I stand there, looking southward over Atlanta, and I read the words on the stone below. They are the same words that we heard this morning from Proverbs, chapter twenty-two, verse two:
The rich and the poor meet together.
The Lord is the maker of them all.
(Our version today reads: “The rich and the poor have this in common. The Lord is the maker of them all.”)
I know that some folks believe the Cathedral consists of only rich folks. After all, this church sits on a hill right in the middle of Buckhead, maybe one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the Southeast.
Yes, there are rich folks here. But we are also poor folks. Some folks think that only the poor and downtrodden meet here, those folks who cannot make it in any other endeavor, the unsuccessful and the hypocritical.
But the folks who meet here are both the successful and the unsuccessful; and sometimes you might have a hard time distinguishing which is which. The rich and the poor meet together here, just as they did a hundred and fifty years ago, when the Cathedral church was downtown.
The categories “rich” and “poor” have segregated humanity for thousands of years. Economic disparity has been a source of human division and human conflict, human separation, ever since we gathered in communities. Here we have the Book of Proverbs, twenty-five hundred years ago, mentioning the division.
But Proverbs, of course, says something else. The rich and the poor meet together, because it is the Lord who is the maker of them all. The God of Abraham was a god who brought together people of difference. The God of Abraham is still a god who refuses to let human social divisions be the ultimate category.
Today, “rich” and “poor” are not the only categories we use to divide ourselves. They are not the only divisions that need divine reconciliation.
Consider the ways that we divide ourselves in present times. As I say the following pairs of words, I will pause. During the pause, listen to what your own heritage and past and experience are saying to you. What do you feel when I say:
“Democrat?” Or “Republican?”
George Bush. Bill Clinton
Muslim Christian
CNN Fox News
ABC CBS NBC
Georgia Tech Georgia
Liberal Conservative
I have no question that each of these terms and names and categories is necessary. Those words do mean something. They are accurate identities for us. We need to be conservative and liberal and rich and even poor.
But what we need even more is the common acknowledgement that we belong together in the Lord. “The Lord is the Maker of them all” is what the Book of Proverbs says. That’s what was written over the doorway of the first St. Philip’s Church in Atlanta. That’s what is written beneath us as we stand overlooking Atlanta today. The Lord is the Maker of them all.
Liberal Conservative
Gay Straight
Tastes great Less Filling
India China
Old Testament New Testament
Northern Aggression Southern Heritage
Hispanic African American
Jew Gentile
The Lord is the maker of them all! What would our spiritual lives be like if we truly believed that? What would it be like if the person I was taught to despise became, in my eyes, another one of God’s creation? God did not make just me and my kind. God also made you and your kind. God made her and her kind, too.
What would it be like to acknowledge that?
What would it be like if we truly believed that God is the maker of all of us who divide ourselves by tribe or custom or economics or choice?
It would be like this story of Jesus who thought that he had been sent only to heal and to teach the children of Israel . They were his kind and his people and his mission. When a gentile woman approached him one day, begging him to cast a demon from her daughter, Jesus responded to her with one of the most vicious and prejudiced comments that we have on New Testament record.
He said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He, a Jewish man, was calling that Gentile woman a dog. That’s how deep the social divisions and customs were at the time.
But the Gentile woman had faith, didn’t she? There is enough of God’s mercy to go around. There is enough of God’s food, even if it is crumbs, to go around. The Gentile woman knew that the Lord is the maker of us all, not just the maker of the Jews, not just the maker of the rich, not just the maker of the liberal or the conservative or the white or the black or the fundamentalist or the progressive. The Lord is the maker of them all.
And Jesus was converted that day in the region of Tyre . His own eyes were opened and his ears unstopped, just like those of the deaf man with a speech impediment. Jesus’s mission changed, too.
God’s power is such that divisions and differences, deep and painful as they may be, are never as deep and wide as the generosity and grace of God.
It is the deep and wide grace of God that creates all of humankind, the rich and the poor together.
My favorite place here at the Cathedral of St. Philip is the place where I get converted, the place where I get changed and transformed. That conversion is always to a mission that is grander and broader than the one I originally thought.
May the words on the stone overlook here at the Cathedral define our mission every day in this place. People of difference meet here together. People of difference need one another here. People of difference discover God’s grace in one another here. The rich and the poor meet together here; the Lord is the maker of them all.
AMEN.
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Atlanta, Georgia
Comments? Contact Dean Candler at: SCandler@stphilipscathedral.org