A View from the Attic

by Glen Wiberg

Matthew 13:52

Attics are strange and wonderful places, places of collected memory filled with mystery and intrigue. Most attics are storerooms consisting of both worthless discards and costly treasure, neither of which can be distinguished with absolute certainty. When our children were small and we would go back home for a visit, the first place they would go to play was the attic, where cast-offs became treasures, mysterious boxes to be plundered of old toys, odd hats, and clothes for dress-up. When my mother left the house where I grew up and where she had lived the greater part of her life, the last thing she did was to sweep the attic — a final act of gratitude. Strange and Wonderful!

The gospel from Matthew 13 gives us a view from the attic storeroom. As a Reformation text, it might just as well be called “a view from Wittenburg or Wartburg Castle.” “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

I

Let’s first of all do the attic chore of unpacking the text, if only to get to the treasure.

After telling several kingdom parables, Jesus turns from the crowds, who seem knuckle-headed and slow to catch on, turns from these to his disciples and asks in hope, as any teacher would ask her pupils: “Do you grasp what I’ve been trying to tell you? Are you starting to get a handle on this stuff?” And, of course, they say “Yes,” probably like we would say “Uh-huh” or “Yes-siree,” hoping for all the world that they would not be called upon to recite or explain what they understood.

Then he tells this one last parable just for them. “Okay, then listen. Every scribe — which means everyone who has been trained, instructed in matters pertaining to my kingdom, is like the master of a household, literally, ‘lord of the manor.’ As those taught, you have been given authority over an incredibly rich manor house, or let’s say a castle storeroom, where its attic treasures can’t be exhausted nor even controlled — things stored up a long time ago together with things acquired on this morning. You too will bring forth things new and old.”

The word for trained sounds very much in the original like the name Matthew, as if, in telling the story, he puts his own signature on it. That is, Matthew is the scribe, the custodian of treasures old and new; retaining the old — the scriptures of Israel, the prophetic traditions of Israel, the hopes of Israel — but now fresh and new in the telling of Christ. Old words made to speak a new thing, a new grace.

The word for treasure is thesaurus, as in Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. In this case, however, more than synonyms piled one upon another, it is words telling the full scope of God’s revelation. It is treasure, as Luther speaks of it in the 95 Theses, nailed to the door of the Castle Church of Wittenburg 476 years ago today: “the true treasure of the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.” A bringing forth by retelling the story of creation and the giving of blessing; of rescue from bondage in Egypt and the giving of law and covenant; of prophets speaking God’s searing word of love and judgment; of Word made flesh, God among us as teacher, heal-er, servant, crucified and risen Lord; of the church as his body and of Spirit poured out freely on all; of his second advent and a consummation of the story in new heavens and a new earth.

As the seer from Lake Wobegon puts it: “We don’t go to church (or chapel) to hear lectures on ethical behavior, we go to look at the mysteries (the Treasure) and all the substitutes . . . are not worthy of anyone’s time.” That’s the attic view, whether from Minnesota or Wittenburg, or Anderson Chapel on Foster Avenue where we gather today.

II

But where attics become places of preference, as in the games my children once played, places where we as consumers pick and choose whatever suits our fancy, we can so easily miss the treasure.

One finds two types of fear-mongeers in the attic treasure-trove. The first are the fear-mongers of what is old. Those driven by this fear measure the contents of the attic-storeroom by its congeniality with one’s own experience or whatever happens to be playing in the culture at the time. What I like or don’t like. To play dress-up in the old would be to appear ridiculous, out of-step with the times.

So in worship, prayers of confession are eliminated because they make people feel guilty. Or any text speaking of God in masculine language is considered to be patriarchal and oppressive. And since the historic creeds of the church do not speak for us, we will either edit them, eliminate them, or write our own. And, for heaven’s sake, get rid of those hymnals — whether brown, green, or red.

Such fear-mongers of tradition discard the old and seek to reinvent faith for every new circumstance. The Gospel is still a treasure of sorts, but without its oddity, offense; it is a user-friendly Gospel, like “an ersatz treasure hidden in a box of Cracker-Jacks,” pleasant but hardly nourishing.

One also finds in the attic storeroom fear-mongers of the new. Some cling to the original King James Bible — as God meant it — despite the fact that we get tangled up in thee’s and thou’s and words we can’t pronounce, much less understand. Shifts in the order of worship, new hymns, or praise music can create polarization of cosmic proportions. Even more destructive to mission are the static positions taken on social issues — racism, feminism, sexism, ageism — unwilling to live out the vision of an alternative community where there is “no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” Fear-mongers of innovation and change hold a dim view of new things that might appear in the attic-treasure, preferring to life safely with the old. Again, the Gospel is a treasure of sorts but more as a museum piece, something to be admired, if not protected from any alien hand that might lay claim to it.

III

Friends, what may appear to be an oddity in the attic is what I have come to announce to you today. It is what has given us this blest heritage of Reformation. The scribe trained for the kingdom does not follow his own preferences; does not pick or choose between old and new, since the treasure does not consist of certain things old and certain things new. Here is the oddity: old things are forever springing up — like brisk winds off Lake Michigan — fresh and new; and new things turn out to have been around since the morning stars sang together for joy. Kingdom treasure wherever you find it — whether in ancient texts or washing in font or pool, or eating and drinking at his table — is both an antique and a novelty at one and the same time.

Here I must add my own confession. For several months now I have been immersed in the early minutes of the Salem Church, going back to its beginnings in 1888 in order to write its centennial history. When the congregation sold its first mission house on 17th and Jefferson Street in Northeast Minneapolis, it was enlarged considerably and turned into a seven-unit apartment complex. Through a casual remark made by the present owner to Curtiss Johnson, Salem’s archivist, it was discovered that the ceiling of the old church was still intact, showing the original dimensions of the building as well as colorful ornamentation consisting of a stenciled border on the existing walls and ceiling.

One Wednesday evening this past summer, we made arrangements with the owner to go up into the attic. Climbing a ladder through a trap door in the ceiling of one of the apartments, and with the aid of a spot-light, we took turns looking at the attic. Seeing the wood beams of the roof, with walls and ceiling outlining the original structure, I felt as if the roles had been reversed. No longer was “the great cloud of witnesses” looking down on us from some higher balcony. Now we were looking down on them. The wooden beams holding up the roof since 1886 were beams soaked with Gospel — the songs, prayers, and preaching of those immigrant forebears — and with the joy, of which C. M. Youngquist spoke in those early meetings, still standing high on the ceiling.

Looking down through what seemed like a large hole in the ceiling, I saw those people, some of whom I knew, who had begun their spiritual journey in that place — people who were only children then. I heard the voices of the early preachers, including E. August Skogsbergh, fervent with Gospel proclamation, and Pastor August Sjoberg, playing his guitar and singing through a heavy bronze beard. I heard young David Nyvall teaching a Confirmation class. I also heard the sighs of penitence intermingled with the cries of rejoicing among the newborn. I even smelled the smoke of many candles rising to the ceiling at the 5:00 a.m. Julotta (Christmas matins) amid the strains of the traditional chorale so much loved by our forebears: “Var halsad skona morgonstund” (All Hail to Thee, O Blessed Morn). I also heard the custodian, brother Lundin, whisper into the ear of Pastor K. A. Jonsson: “Preach with boldness because I and others have knelt down by the stove and cried out to God for his blessing.”

The view from the attic is anything but nostalgia for the good old days. “Remembrance is a potentially revolutionary act” (William Willimon). Bringing forth of the old makes of all of us charity cases, people who know it didn’t all begin with us. As Maya Angelou says, “Remember, you are paid for.” Paid for by a 19th-century revival movement in Sweden; paid for by a 16th century Reformation in Germany; and, not least of all, paid for by a death on a cross at Golgotha, and by all that odd assortment between then and now.

But the bringing forth of treasure is like childbirth itself, evoking pain but also wonder, amazement, and awe, such as I felt in the attic of the old mission house. It calls for a life of constant renewal at the hand of God through death and resurrection. And what it promises is radical transformation, both personal and communal. For, the view from the attic calls us to see what our forebears saw, to hear what they heard and so be shaken, judged, purged, and re-made.

If I could do what Luther did, I would go outside today and take a hammer and nail on the door of this chapel an edict from the attic of 17th and Jefferson Street, which would read: Ecclesia Reformata sed semper reformata (the church reformed but always reforming). We belong to no closed system, no moribund worship of the past. The Reformation is never completed. The view from the attic is prophetic, calling this chapel and all of our churches to be a wedge of new and a foretaste of what is yet to be, a home for the odd ones, the place of remembrance of what has been, where the truth of what has been, where the truth of the Holy One is spoken, and where large dreams are entertained. A place where songs old and new are sung, where boundaries between people are crossed, where hurt is noticed, the weak honored, and the stranger welcomed. A place where walls and beams are soaked with Gospel and where joy stands high on the ceiling; where all who enter may know and encounter the One who is and ever shall be our PRICELESS TREASURE, even Jesus Christ our Lord.