The fountain in Century III Mall; the former Kaufmann's location is behind the fountain.
Last Saturday I visited Century III Mall. On Sunday, we considered the account of the Transfiguration as it's presented in the Gospel of Mark. I used my visit to the mall to illustrate this story. I also offered a story of transformation from a Presbyterian church in Canada.
Do not play in this fountain!
Sermon
Good morning. Yesterday I officiated a funeral at
Ferguson’s, and for reasons that are totally uninteresting, I decided to return
home by Route 51. On the way home, I stopped at Century III Mall. I didn’t need
anything; I didn’t want to shop for anything. I just wanted to see the mall.
A few tables and chairs remain in the food court area.
It’s been at least ten years, and maybe longer, since I was
there. At that time, many of the stores were still open; so was the food court.
Now there are only about twenty stores that are still open. There used to be
over two hundred. There used to be five anchor stores. Originally those were
Sears, Kaufmann’s, J.C. Penney, Gimbels, and Montgomery Ward. Now there are
only two anchor stores: J.C. Penney and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Dick’s only
occupies one floor of a two-story space; Penney’s is closing. Whole sections of
the mall are roped off.
J.C. Penney is still open, but the second-floor entrance is closed.
Dick's Sporting Goods occupies a single floor; the original anchor tenant occupied two floors.
None of this surprised me. I knew the place was a ghost
town. That’s why I stopped. I just wanted to see it for myself. What surprised
me was how cold it was inside. Yesterday was a fairly warm day—after the
funeral I was warm enough in a long-sleeved shirt, but it was just a little
chillier inside the mall.
I was probably about ten years old, the first time I
visited Century III. It was so full of people and full of life, and there were
so many different kinds of shops. It made the malls of my hometown—the
Washington Mall and the Franklin Mall—seem so rinky-dink. A visit to Century
III reminded me of all the stuff we didn’t have in Washington.
One anchor store occupied the space at the end of this corridor, another was located to the right.
Then after that first trip to Century III, my dad told me
the history of the location. He told me that used to be a slag dump, and then
he told me about the spectacle—he told me how people used to come there on a
Saturday night to watch the slag being dumped. He said the whole sky lit up
when one of those ladles was tipped over. He said it was one of the coolest
things he ever saw.
I never saw slag getting dumped. The steel mills were still
going at full blast when I was a little kid, but I was too young to appreciate
what all that meant. I couldn’t see all those jobs. I didn’t realize my own
connection to the life of the mills until the jobs began to go away in the 80s.
Those were my formative years; I only knew the spectacle of the slag dump from
the stories my father told.
Our Gospel reading this morning is Mark’s account of the
Transfiguration. This story is so important, so central to our understanding of
who Jesus is, that it appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus
is transfigured; his clothes became a dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appeared
and talked with Jesus, and then the voice of God came from the clouds: “This is
my son, the Beloved; listen to him!” In that moment, Peter, James, and John
know exactly who Jesus is and they know they’ve been commanded to follow him;
they heard the voice of God on the mountain top. They have been changed, but
they can’t stay there.
Often, in this part of the sermon, I try to explain
something in the reading. But not today. No, today, I want you to linger over
the image of the Transfiguration, of Jesus shining. Think of the dazzling,
radiant white. Hold that image in your head.
Now think of the image of the slag dump, as the railroad
cars are pouring the molten slag on the hillside. I know a lot of you are old
enough to remember what that looked like. You didn’t even have to drive to West
Mifflin; back in the day, you could see slag dumped here in Rostraver Township,
too. That was one hill over from where my dad grew up.
Slag run-off from an open hearth furnace, Republic Steel, Youngstown, OH (1941)
U.S. Steel stopped dumping slag in West Mifflin in 1969. As
the suburbs of Jefferson Hills were built out, U.S. Steel looked to unload the
land where it had dumped all that slag—the land was no longer useful to U.S.
Steel. In 1976, the DeBartolo Corporation agreed to buy part of the property in
West Mifflin and build a shopping mall. Century III opened for shoppers in 1979;
the land became useful again; it was transformed.
When I was in seminary, I had to write a paper about the
theology of a suburban shopping mall. I went to South Hills Village. I realized
that malls are constructed in such a way that you don’t really notice the
passage of time—there’s some natural light, but the mall is designed so that
you don’t really think about the amount of time that you’ve invested in your
shopping trip.
More empty spaces
As I walked through the chilly concourses of Century III
yesterday, I felt every passing second. I couldn’t have spent more than fifteen
or twenty minutes in there, but it felt like an eternity. It was depressing. I
understand that people shop in different places, or they shop online. I shop online. I suppose I don’t really
care that Sears is gone, or Montgomery Ward is gone. But I do care that a place
where I spent some of my youth is gone. I do care that a place that used to be
alive, a place that used to be a vibrant part of the community is gone.
Like our churches.
You knew I was going there, didn’t you?
I read a story this week about a Presbyterian Church in
Edmonton, Alberta. For those of you who don’t follow hockey, that’s in Canada.
Anyhow, this is the story of the Westmount Presbyterian Church.[1] As I understand it, the
church was built in the 1950s, and over the years, additions were built, each
with its own heating system.
In recent years, it became clear that it would cost a small
fortune to make repairs to the heating system, and with all of those additions
to the building, it was a heat-sieve. So even if they fixed all the furnaces,
it would still cost way too much to heat the church. Remember, this is Canada.
I’m sure they would laugh at us when we complain about the weather.
I assume that Westmount was facing the same challenges that
most Presbyterian churches face, declining and aging membership. The population
of the surrounding neighborhood was also in decline. The school board was
considering closing the neighborhood elementary school. And this is where the
story goes in a very different direction.
In recent years, Canada has been very active in resettling
refugees and accepting migrants from all over the world. Where the United
States has turned its back on Christ’s call to welcome the foreigner, Canada
has opened its doors. Where most churches would be paralyzed by fear, Westmount
Presbyterian Church saw a strategic opportunity:
Despite their decrepit
building and lack of cash, the members [of Westmount Presbyterian Church] asked
themselves a bold question: “What others can we help with the resources we
have?” says [elder Les] Young. “Our
location is ideal for families. We’re right opposite a school, which was
threatened with closure because of lack of students. And we’re on a bus route.”[2]
Instead of wringing
their hands, the elders of Westmount Presbyterian Church asked who they could
help with their limited resources. That’s astounding!
They reached out to a local nonprofit, the Right at Home
Housing Society. Right at Home deals with refugees. They came up with a plan:
the church would deed its land to the nonprofit. In exchange, Right at Home
would build a new church and sixteen units of large-family housing. The church
would get a 50-year lease on the new building, free of charge, and then
ownership would revert to the congregation. As an added bonus, with housing for
all these new families, the neighborhood school stayed open, too.
The story of Westmount Presbyterian Church is a
transfiguration story. It is the story of a congregation that was transformed
in the midst of challenging circumstances. It is the story of a congregation
that sought to share its blessings in a time of fear and scarcity, and in the
process, it lived into Christ’s call to be the Church, and it acted with
Christ’s love for all of humanity. This is an example of God’s grace made
manifest in the world.
In our story from the Gospel of Mark, God’s grace is made
manifest in two ways. Obviously, Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, James, and
John, get to learn the truth, that Jesus is the son of God. They learn the
deeper truth behind what they have seen and felt as they journeyed with Jesus.
The less obvious way in which God’s grace is made manifest is that Jesus and
the disciples come down from the mountain; Peter, James, and John are equipped
with this knowledge and they are charged with sharing the knowledge that Jesus
is the son of God—they are charged with telling the story and demonstrating the
love.
These signs are posted all over the mall; the owners of Century III don't want people to see this story.
Peter, James, and John made the choice to follow Jesus, and
to continue to follow him, even after his death and resurrection; they
established the Church. In the midst of a crisis, the folks at Westmount Presbyterian
Church chose to continue to follow Jesus, even when their congregation faced
its own death.
I don’t believe that the challenges that face Rehoboth
Church are as extreme as those that faced Westmount. But we are at a place
where we have to make decisions. Like Peter, James, and John, we cannot stay on
the mountaintop; that’s not an option. Those folks at Westmount found something
that could give them life; they weren’t trying to rehab the old shopping mall,
they sought transformation and now they’re telling the story. That’s how we
have to engage with the rest of the world. We have to show people—not tell
them—how our lives have been transformed by the love of Christ, then invite
them in. Thanks be to God. Amen!
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world today. We are
called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation.
This is how we live into our baptismal vows. Do not return evil for evil to any
person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to
reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth
and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all
God’s children say, Amen!
[1] This
story comes from a Web site called Green Energy Futures. The site describes
itself as “a multi-media storytelling project that is documenting the clean
energy revolution that’s already underway. It tells the stories of green energy
pioneers who are moving forward in their homes, businesses and communities.”
The descriptions that follow are my summary of the story and podcast that I
found on their Web site: http://www.greenenergyfutures.ca/episode/canadas-first-net-zero-church
[2]
Ibid.
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