The carving on the empty font was still crisp after almost a thousand years of regular use. There were no baptisms on the day of my visit but I could hear the flow of water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The water of baptism was coursing through the ages, flowing over saints and into the stone of that ancient and venerable place.

Chester Cathedral is as solid as a rock, and as changeable. The red sandstone of Chester was affordable and close at hand when the builders began their work centuries ago. But Chester Red is soft. Time and the flow of water from the sky have done their work. And styles of worship and aesthetics always seem to change as one generation hands the world over to the next.

Whole sections of the cathedral have been reworked, restored, removed or changed, like a body sloughing off dead skin and continuing to grow into the latest version of its self. The painted ceiling under which I stood was new. The previous one had been the victim of a fire and had been restored in 1999. But even the ceiling that arched above the congregation before the fire was not the original. It dated only from Victorian times - a restyling provided by an architect who seems to have rebuilt most of the churches of England in a few short but industrious decades. The original ceiling was gone centuries ago, but we were still safely under roof in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Two.

The cathedral floor under my feet had been changed within recent memory as well. The stones bore the names of benefactors most of whom still live. The stained glass windows spanned several centuries in their style and technology. The stone columns and arches represented three distinct architectural periods. I was surrounded by things that were passing away, or being made new, and some of which steadfastly marked our connection to the distant past.

We came back to the cathedral at dusk for Evensong. I stood in the choir with the latest scaffolding was at my right hand, the Prayerbook of 1662 in my left as we listened to a liturgy that has been sung in Chester for thousands of evenings to an ever- changing procession of parishioners and strangers. The prayers have risen like incense long before anyone there was born and yet some among us were hearing them for the very first time.

And God was in that place, even as it grew and changed. God was there in the fires and the stones tumbling down, in the rising from the ashes, in the fresh hewn wood set into ancient stone sockets, in the water poured over candidates for baptism, as age gave way to age. Beginnings and endings rolled by with God's steadfast loving kindness arching over it all - more enduring than any tower, more stable than any stone.

We have seen our own tumbling towers, and fires closer to home. We know that death and destruction are not bounded by time or kept at bay by the strength of nations. Uncertainty has always been with us, but the noise and dust of its recent passage makes its presence undeniable and unmistakable. But neither anger nor hate will save us.

We are invited, instead, by our faith and by these times in which we live, to embrace a view as large as God's love. We are invited to stand on the stage of eternity and gain perspective on our daily journey, our national life and the individual choices we make that add up to the culture in which we dwell. What really matters? What is worth our time, our allegiance, and our attention? What is just the surface decoration, and what endures?

The author of Eccesiasticus sets the context for our review:

Remember the end of your life, and set enmity aside;
remember corruption and death, and be true to the commandments.
Remember the commandments, and do not be angry with your neighbor;
remember the covenant of the Most High, and overlook faults.

The anger and wrath to which we are all so quick to rise is a fire that burns the one who holds it as well as those upon whom we would cast it. We miss the mark if we embrace anger as a way of life or revel in the fire of rage.

Does this mean we should not be angry over unprovoked attacks? No. We are human after all. But it means that we should be reflective about how to respond and that we should not allow anger to consume or direct us. We do not want to become like that which we abhor. This is true on the scale of nations. It is true in a circle of friends. It is true in the privacy of our own homes.

So much that clamors for our attention in our daily lives is not of enduring significance. If we hold the latest fad, the quarterly earnings or the momentary irritants of life up against the canvas of the moment of our death, or the magnitude of God's daily grace to us, we will see what is passing away and what is important.

Life is short. Life is uncertain. We do not have control over very much at all. Why quibble over small stuff. Why leave truly important things unattended or unresolved? Why waste whatever time we have on things that do not really matter, while ignoring the precious?

In the reading from his letter to the Romans, Paul uses a discussion about worship preferences as a means of talking about how we choose to live our lives. In Paul's letter we hear that the question is not one of which day you worship or whether you eat meat or not. The issue is one of the heart's intent.

What is our intent as we move through our days? Are we trying to live in the beauty of holiness or are we travelling unconsciously down a different road? In what spirit are we living our lives? A spirit of gratitude…avarice…compassion…hatred? We cannot raise our hands in prayer on Sunday asking for God's care and forgiveness and then turn our backs on the plight of the poor every other day of the week, or curse the names of fellow human beings with whom we work or live.

God wants more for us.
God expects more from us.

We hold a treasure of inestimable worth - this life that God has given us. Our previous insurmountable debt of sin has been erased and supplanted by a fortune we did not earn and do not deserve. We are the recipients and the stewards of an abundance of grace. Let us spend it broadly and well.

Let us tell our family members that we love them. If we struggle to profess this, let us do our part to repair the breech. Let us give time to our friends and tell them the truth. We need to encourage one another to live a holy life. Life is short and love is all that endures. Let others indulge in hate and rumor and dissolution if they insist, as for you - seek light, offer forgiveness, and walk in love.

Let us be fair in our dealings with others. Not fair in the eyes of the world, that is too small, but fair in the manner in which the King was fair with the indebted slave. Some of us hold power in the world. All of us make decisions that effect others. Let us have the courage to make choices that make life better for others and that make grace apparent to all.

Let us forgive the debt of others lavishly. May we be willing to let go of old grudges.
Let no thing stand between you and your fellow human beings.

God made all the living things upon this earth. We grow and age like vines, or fish or birds. We are molded by the seasons and influenced by the amount of light around us. We need time, like fields under snowfall to be fallow and silent, to wait for greater light and the call to rapid growth. We also need time to rest, to stretch and enough distance to gain perspective on our lives if we would be truly human, truly alive.

We can choose to admit who and what we are and to lead real lives or we can choose to insist that people must dwell in the midst of lies and illusions.

Whatever choice we make, the truth is that we do not control the seasons or the rhythm of life that courses through our veins. We are not machines that are made to move in endless perfection without stopping. We were not created to work 24/7. We are flesh. We are mortal. We are capable of forgiveness and able to love. This is God's gift.

Will we allow ourselves to be human? Will we let ourselves be humane to one another? Can we let the small stuff slide, forgiving one another's transgressions and seeking to lead lives that matter? God arches over it all with a love that never ends, willing to hold whatever we insist on constructing but hoping that we might instead simply grasp the gift that has already been given. May the peace of God, the peace that the world cannot offer, be yours in abundance. May you claim it as your own. And may you spread it broadly and well.

Amen