Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Genesis 28.10-17
1 Peter 2.1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21.12-16

From ancient times, human beings have set apart sacred space. In the Bible, such spaces are typically associated with great events – times of thanksgiving or deliverance or intense encounters with the divine. You have all read or heard these stories. These encounters between God and humanity occur in what seem to be ordinary places and they appear to be unique events. But the places where they occur frequently begin to attract people. They take on the character of holiness as of the result of those events. Locations that are sanctified by a unique experience of divine presence become identified as places where God is experienced at all times.
Our church building did not come about in that way. The holiness of our sacred space began with a building that suspends time and invites reverence. It grew from there through the lives that were touched by this place- the joys, sorrows, failures and accomplishments are reflected within its history and its fabric.
Today we begin a six-week celebration of some of those persons whose lives were touched by this building. It is called “The Saints of St. Mary’s.” We aren’t the first to use that expression or to identify these persons as saints. Their faith and their spiritual legacy to us merit the recognition and thanksgiving of every new generation of parishioners. Today as we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of this building, we take particular note of William Halsey Wood, the architect who designed it and the Rev’d. John Sword, the Rector at the time of its construction.
William Halsey Wood was a high church Episcopalian from the day he was born. He was a choir boy as a child and served his apprenticeship in the firm of a well-known architect of the High-Church movement in England. Wood embraced the principles of the Oxford movement as an ideal and translated them into designs to be realized in bricks and mortar. His career was sadly brief. He died at the age of 41. He was fortunate to have a combination of innate skill and excellent training that allowed him to advance to the mature phase of his career in his late 20s. Wood was described by Ralph Adams Cram, one of the great church architects of the last century, as someone who understood the meaning of gothic as well as the most accomplished 13th century stone mason. But he was enough of a modernist to design a building with a space between the inner and outer brick walls that gave St. Mary’s the distinction of being the coolest church in town during hot weather. Wood lived and worked in the midst of a theoretical and stylistic transition in architecture. He died before his part in that transition was fully realized. The church that he designed for us would live on through many great transitions.
In the spring of 1886, parishioners of St. Mary’s were only a few months past the shocking death of their rector, Fr. Jardine. In March of that year, the Vestry issued a call to The Rev’d. John Sword. A month later, they hired an architect to design this church and they broke ground for it four months after that. There had been some controversy over building the church on this spot which the parish had received as a bequest from Mary Troost. Some people thought it was too far out in the country. They wanted to build at 11th & Central. The history of the Episcopal Church in Kansas City might have been very different if they had. But Fr. Sword is said to have persuaded them that the city was going to grow in this direction.
The Vestry took the bold step of selling the land where the old church building stood and demolishing the building. You can see a picture of that building with Fr. Sword and Fr. Betts standing on the front porch hanging on the wall by the entrance to the nave. The congregation moved to this building and worshipped in what we now call the parish hall while the nave was being constructed. They expected to spend $75,000 on the building and they had enough money in hand to do it without incurring any debt. And then the tower began to lean. It appears that the tower was constructed close enough to an underground spring for the water to have undermined its foundation. No one knew the spring was there until it was too late. The Vestry discussed their possible options, one of which was to take the architect or the builder to court to get some money out of the deal. In the end they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Fr. Sword had left a law practice to enter the priesthood. One wonders if his past experience informed the judgment of the Vestry. They borrowed $12,000 rebuilt the tower and finished the building.
It opened in early June, 1888. Fr. Sword proved to be right – people did move into the neighborhood. He stayed another three years and then resigned to move back east, much to the disappointment of the Vestry. When the building opened, the windows were made of small panes of colored glass alternating with clear glass. You can still see one if you look up the little stairway going up to the balcony in the corner of the nave. The rood screen wasn’t yet installed, the organ was the little instrument in the chapel, there were no stations of the cross. People began to fill this space with the stories of their lives. They began with a few things from the old building at 8th & Walnut: the wooden cross suspended in the rafters, the window in the northwest balcony that you can see if you look closely at the picture of the old building; the desk at the main entrance made from materials salvaged after the old church was demolished.
The first couple to be married here celebrated their wedding in October 1889 with Fr. Sword officiating. They were William and Georgine Huddle Stephens. The St. Stephen window in the north balcony was a gift in memory of William. The window that the congregation brought with them from the old building was a memorial to a child who died at the age of three. Her parents made the move with St. Mary’s from 8th & Walnut to 13th & Holmes. The daughter’s window is the small round one in the northwest balcony. When her father died about 10 years after this building was constructed, his wife gave a window in his memory – the far right window on the west wall. When she died, a window was created in her memory and installed next to her daughter’s window. It’s hard to see that one from the nave, but there’s a picture of it in our tour guidebook. This family is the reason why the windows on the west wall are out of order. You see gethsemane, then the resurrection then the ascension. The risen Christ should be the next one in line, but it’s all the way at the other end. It was installed there so that the windows memorializing this husband and wife and their child would be as close together as possible.
This sacred space of ours ties us to other people and other times. It also links us with other places. William Halsey Wood designed more than forty churches in a 16-year time span. One of them was St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis. One of our windows commemorates a tragic and momentous event in the life of that city that is woven into the history of the Episcopal Church – the priests and nuns who lost their lives in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 who are known as the martyr’s of Memphis. Their image is prominent in that other church that our architect designed. An unlikely pairing between Kansas city and the Yukon territory is reflected in our sled dog window in the northwest balcony. Its subject – an English archdeacon named Hudson Stuck was a missionary there. A parishioner of St. Mary’s by the name of Hannah Ragan was a great supporter of church missionary activities and particularly interested in the exotic endeavors of Archdeacon Stuck. Miss Ragan was eventually homebound by chronic illness. Her friends created a window in thanksgiving for her and gave St. Mary’s one of the most curious works of art displayed in a Kansas City church.
The stories of William Halsey Wood and John Sword are only a few stories reflected in the fabric of this building. Those stories – the lives lived in relationship to this building – impart its sacredness. It has been entrusted to us. It is a heavy responsibility which does not always translate easily into late twentieth and twenty-first century values that involve calculations of cost and efficiency and economies of scale. This is an age when decommissioned Wal-Mart stores frequently become houses of worship. Whether they become sacred space, I don’t know.
Today we give thanks and bless the new doors that have been installed at the many entrances to our church. Some of them you have seen at the main entrance, the west end of the parish hall and the tower room. One of them you may not have paid attention to. It’s visible on the northeast corner of the building as you drive west on 13th Street. It is the exterior entrance to the sacristy. Interior remodeling has made it impractical to use this entrance any more, but as the doors were being renovated, we discovered the original 1888 door in that location under a newer outer batten. We removed the outer covering, restored and protected the door and it is there now. Fr. John Sword no doubt walked through it several days a week.
In dedicating these doors, we give thanks for those who have added a new chapter to the story of St. Mary’s church: The members of the Vestry and Building Work Group who guided the decision making, Susan Richards Johnson and Julie Arntson, the architects for the project, Richard Herndon, the engineer, Bryan Parris the builder who fabricated the doors and the Kemper family whose generous gift supported the work.
Faith, commitment, determination and love built this building and filled its space with life stories. Its future is in our hands now. The community outside our parish will help, but we have to show them that we are committed to the keeping alive the story of this building and the lives it has touched in three different centuries and across time and place in this – our sacred space.