Cornerstone

This week Joshua went on a workplace assignment at a builders out at Maraetai. The builders house has fabulous 180° views of the sea and Rangitoto, Motutapu and Waiheke Islands. I remembered one of my friends from school who invited me to his birthday party on Motatau Road here in Papatoetoe shortly after we first arrived in New Zealand in 1974, though he didn’t really know me, which made me feel welcome. Later on he moved to Maraetai to the same road where Joshua’s builder lives now. It was a new build back then, really modern and big for the time and you can walk from the house down to Omana beach where we used to go and play cricket on the reserve. But shortly after his family moved there, his Dad died at 50 years old during my friends 1st year at University so it always has bittersweet memories. His Dad never got to enjoy for long the place that he had envisioned and built for his family.

I’m sure you will know this building. Yes it is the very famous Notre Dame Cathedral, the most visited place in France ahead of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. And of course it is the location of Victor Hugo’s famous story, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story, not the movie, has a very sad ending but from an eternal perspective, perhaps not. Victor Hugo was a Catholic and believed in God. What may look sad down here looks different from up there.

These old cathedrals were not built in a few months or even a few years. Notre Dame took nearly 200 years to build.

General knowledge : how long did Solomon’s temple take to build? Answer: 20 years
At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built these two buildings—the temple of the Lord and the royal palace— 
1 Kings 9:10

But the Notre Dame has been standing through 10 centuries so those old builders knew a thing or two.
 • 1160 Maurice de Sully (named Bishop of Paris) orders the original cathedral demolished.
 • 1163 Cornerstone laid for Notre-Dame de Paris; construction begins.
 • 1182 Apse and choir completed.
 • 1196 Bishop Maurice de Sully dies.
 • c.1200 Work begins on western facade.
 • 1208 Bishop Eudes de Sully dies. Nave vaults nearing completion.
 • 1225 Western facade completed.
 • 1250 Western towers and north rose window completed.
 • c.1245–1260s Transepts remodelled in the Rayonnant style by Jean de Chelles then Pierre de Montreuil
 • 1250–1345 Remaining elements completed.

Construction began in 1163 during the reign of Louis VII, and opinion differs as to whether The Bishop or Pope Alexander III laid the foundation stone of the cathedral. However, both were at the ceremony. Bishop Maurice de Sully went on to devote most of his life and wealth to the cathedral's construction.

The cathedral was essentially complete by 1345. The cathedral has a narrow climb of 387 steps at the top of several spiral staircases; along the climb it is possible to view its most famous bell and its gargoyles in close quarters, as well as having a spectacular view across Paris when reaching the top.

In architecture, a gargoyle is designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between.

During the French Revolution, the Notre Dame was taken over by the Rationalists and Atheists and at this time the government and country became secular. They thought they were part of the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment getting rid of religion and replacing it with science and reason. They did not foresee 2 World Wars nor all the trouble in our world and in France today. How Satan would have been laughing then and now.

The biggest attenders at the Notre Dame these days are tourists. A lot of people think the Church is a museum, a relic of the past. A recent article in Time Magazine magazine revealed that the Notre Dame is crumbling after all the centuries since it was built and no one is prepared to finance the reconstruction work that Is required. Soon the building may be off limits to visitors.

We should not worry when the media say that the buildings are decaying, the pews are empty and Christianity is in decline. Jesus will build his Church! If he cannot find willing workers in this generation, he will find them in the next. If the ones he’s calling today reject his call, he will go out to the highways and byways and find the least likely, the least talented, the poorest, the weakest the least likely candidates and he will use them. Jesus will build his Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 
Matthew 16:13-19

Jesus has an announcement for La République and Mr Macron 😊 Your time is nearly up !

Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. 
John 2:19-22

He is not building a church of stone. The Notre Dame is only a building albeit a good one that has stood for 673 years since completion. On my walk this week I saw a grand old building sitting at the top of the Ellerslie hill that has been pulled down. When you see an old building lying broken and in rubble you realise how weak they really are. We can easily spend a $1m to buy a house in Auckland these days and we think it is a solid investment but when you see an old building that has been torn down, it doesn’t look so solid after all. It is made of materials that break and fall down in time!

Some of his disciples began talking about the beautiful stonework of the Temple and the memorial decorations on the walls. But Jesus said, “The time is coming when all these things you are admiring will be knocked down, and not one stone will be left on top of another; all will become one vast heap of rubble.” 
Luke 21:5-6

Jesus was declaring that the Temple, as magnificent as it looked was only a building that could easily be torn down. The Romans did tear it down in 70 AD and it has never been rebuilt. Jesus is the true temple, living not made of wood and stone. He cannot be torn down, he stands forever. When we go to Church we are really going to Jesus, he is the temple we worship in.

Of course we should look after the PACT building because we come here every week, it is our current home. But we don’t have to worry that if we lose this building that the Church will end. Jesus will build his Church with or without an official building. Work by human hands will decay. Satan can destroy a building but he cannot touch even 2 gathered in Jesus name!

But the Master Builder still needs labourers for his Church that he is building!

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” 
Matthew 18:18-20

And when we pray together, an earthquake rumbles down in Hell! The excavators start moving, the ground is loosened and moved. The cornerstone can be laid and then construction can begin.

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. 
Psalm 118:22-23

The cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.

Cornerstones have a very interesting history. Today we might see the mayor’s name on a plaque but in ancient days there was a ceremony of a different kind!

Often, the ceremony involved the placing of offerings of grain, wine and oil on or under the stone. These were symbolic of the produce and the people of the land and the means of their subsistence. This in turn derived from the practice in still more ancient times of making an animal or human sacrifice that was laid in the foundations.

In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building.

Sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the foundation-stone; or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man's shadow. It is believed that the man will die within the year. The Romanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, Beware lest they take thy shadow!

So the Cornerstone is very much like an altar. When on arriving in the promised land, Abraham built an altar to the Lord at Shechem, it was like making a declaration that this was where God is going to build his house. Christ really is the cornerstone of the Church. The Cross at Calvary, driven in the Golgotha rock was the laying of the foundation.

For any Church, we have to lay Christ as the cornerstone and build from there. It is utterly foundational that we accept the work done by Christ in laying his sacrifice on the cornerstone made of Golgotha rock.

But there is one more final thing. We can do everything right up to this point but if we get some cowboy to do the construction, we will be disappointed with the final result. We need a Master Builder.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. 
Psalm 127:1

Our agendas for building the church are often short-term focussed, limited to our thinking and our lifetimes. We need to let the Lord build the house. We are just labourers under his instructions. So we need to spend some time to listen for his instructions! The Notre Dame took nearly 200 years and that’s well beyond a lifetime. I’ll be lucky if I can give even a tithe of 20 years to such a project! But I want to live to see that cornerstone laid in Brittany so I’m praying hard for this to happen! It will be an honour to be part of it 😊