I included this letter in the time capsule we put inside the cornerstone of our new buildings last week.
To the future Rector and people of Church of the Incarnation:
Hello from a hundred years ago.
As I write this letter, we are still putting the first coat of paint on the walls of the new buildings. By the time you read this, I know that these walls will have many coats, but more importantly they will be soaked by generations of prayer. How many babies will have been baptized within these walls, I wonder; how many children instructed in the faith; how many of the lost will have been found here; how many married here; how many will have made their peace with God here; how many buried from here? How many wars will these walls have seen? Who is to count the tears, who to measure the joy? And yet here you are, still standing.
We must seem to you citizens of a simpler age—not just quaint in the way we dress and live (with non-self driving cars for example) but in more profound ways. We have never had to confront directly some of the bioethical and technological questions of your generation. More painfully, you see with the clarity of hindsight our blind spots, our moral failings, our materialism and indifference to suffering, the holocausts of our time. History is an astringent schoolmistress.
Perhaps you see also the medical and material advances that have been made globally for the poor as well, and the virtues our society practices but unconsciously takes for granted.
We are bound together by a bond that transcends time. In Christ are
part of one another.
The buildings that surround you were built to glorify God and to bless our children—your ancestors—and you.
They are a seed and a sign.
As a seed, they are soon to be put into service to forward our common mission to worship God in the Great Tradition of the Church; to make disciples; to serve the poor; and to raise up leaders for the renewal of the Church. The Holy Spirit has been sowing new life in and around us in recent years. We put these buildings into your hands in the hope that he will empower you to use them to bring life to your generation.
The buildings are meant to be a sign, too.
Do you notice how everything in these buildings points upwards? The Pointed Architecture was never an exercise in nostalgia. Ours is a
horizontal age and we are much inclined to mind earthly things. So we chose this style of building to remind us that our citizenship is in heaven. The pinnacles and tall ceilings in each building draw the eye and lift the heart upward towards our only true and only home. We are only pilgrims on this earth and have nothing finally to lose here. And so we can spend our lives down here not saving but spending, spending as fire is spent, for the sake of the Lamb who was slain.
Look down and notice that the foundation stone is inscribed with the
words “Christ is Made Our Sure Foundation,” words which were
originally written in the 7th century as the first line of a hymn to be sung at the dedication of churches. They proclaim the ground of our stability. We carved these words twice, once in English, once in Latin, as a sign that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and remain in conversation with those who went before us. We are not self-made, and owe a debt of gratitude to those who served
before us.
We are praying for you from the Jerusalem above. Know that we cheer you on in your earthly race as you carry the torch forward another lap, and that we, with so many others, shall be waiting for you at the finish line.
God bless you all.
Written on this thirteen day of October, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Fifteen, I am, yours faithfully,
Anthony Burton