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May 2, l999
STONES (1 Peter 2:2-10)
It may help you focus on the text and message today by
holding a stone in your hand. Please take one from the
baskets circulating.
Stones are a mixed blessing. If you have a tiny stone
in your shoe, it's an irritant. If you stub your toe
against a big stone, it hurts. But the same stones that
make it hard for a farmer to till his land productively,
when cleared, end up constituting his fences and his
home.
Stones in one form or another bind together every
society's homes, highways, wharfs and bridges.
Stones are mentioned many times in the bible, usually
a sacred reference to note a holy place or commemorative
event. Jacob took the stone on which he slept while he
dreamed he wrestled with an angel and, when he awoke,
used the stone to erect an altar at Bethel.
Arguably, the most dramatic stones from biblical
tradition are the great blocks of stones which went into
the foundation of the first temple of Solomon and which
were used again in the second temple. Visitors to the
Wailing Wall today can cast their eyes upon the same
monumental blocks of rock which Jesus also viewed.
And so the writer of 1Peter was drawing upon a rich
stony tradition when he boldly likened Jesus to being
the cornerstone for God's new Jerusalem. He borrowed his
stone reference from one of the messianic statements of
the prophet Isaiah: SEE, I AM LAYING IN ZION A STONE, A
CORNERSTONE COSEN AND PRECIOUS…"
The prophet Isaiah went on to say something which 1
Peter does not cite but is significant for defining the
edifice of which Jesus is the cornerstone: Isaiah
continues that God is building a spiritual house in which
justice will be one measuring line and righteousness the
plum line. Using building instruments, Isaiah makes
clear that the new spiritual house is not ethereally
spiritual but a dynamic and very material edifice in
which the living stones, held together by the
cornerstone, work or justice and righteousness.
When we become believers in Jesus and followers of him
through commitment to the Church, we become a people
called to exercise the royal priesthood of believers and
to proclaim the mighty acts of God. I can't think of a
more profound association and a more meaningful edifice
toi be part of.
What a declaration of favor and noble work is this
declaration in I Peter. If any one of us here were
contacted by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to advise
and help on a matter of public concern, he or she would
rejoice at the invitation and the opportunity for favor
and status such an invitation would convey. Christ is the
cornerstone of the entire edifice known as spirituality.
Christ is the chief CEO of all CEOs and he invites each
of us to come, consult and work with him.
What a fantastic invitation.
******
This little letter was written to strengthen young
churches in Asia Minor which needed to be braced for
coming Roman persecution. The Roman trenchcoats were
about to descend upon these congregations with guns
blazing. These congregations were a hodgepodge of
veritable nobodies: men and women, free and slave, Greek
and Jew, a few rich and most poor. Not one among them on
individual merit deserved to be invited to become part of
a royal priesthood under the CEO of all CEOs, Jesus. The
one common experience they had was that they were
nobodies until bound to the Living Stone.
At that time only misfits and nobodies would have been
crazy enough to give time and devotion to the greatest
misfit of them all who was killed on a trash heap.
If you are content with who you are and what you are
able to do alone, you don't need to risk your hard won
individuality and puffed up ego by associating with a
bunch of losers led by the chief loser.
ONCE YOU WERE NOT A PEOPLE. BUT NOW YOU ARE GOD'S
PEOPLE (l Peter l:l0)
In modern congregations folks are not eager to
volunteer to being misfits and nobodies except in lower
class pentecostal and black congregations where
contrition and repentance are still in vogue. But our
social smoothness cannot hide the deeper reality of our
mixed humanity in which, apart from Christ, we would
enjoy no unity, no achievement, and no mission.
We are as mixed a humanity as the struggling
congregations in Asia Minor of long ago. Some of us are
cradle roll Christians with mature understanding of the
faith, or with depressed and diminished faith; some are
mere babes in Christ and easily led astray; some are
bland and placidly ignorant of the faith we profess.
Some among us may consider themselves or be considered
renegades, or prodigals, or saints, and each with varying
tensions to their spirituality. Some are single, some
married; some parents and some children, and all
struggling with the meaning of their faith in those
relationships. Some are heterosexual and others
homosexual and many unclear and concerned about their
spirituality and their sexuality, or their possessions,
or their careers. Absolutely no way could we come
together as living stones to uplift the cause of Christ
except through the power of the chief cornerstone to call
and engage us for his service, to combine our diversity
in his overriding unity, and to inherit from Christ the
energy to love and witness the mighty acts of God.
For those who are part of Jesus' spiritual masonry
become A CHOSEN RACE, A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION.
GOD'S OWN PEOPLE IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY PROCLAIM THE
MIGHTY ACTS OF HIM WHO CALLED THEM OUT OF DARKNESS INTO
HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT.
In a novel called HINDS FEET ON HIGH PLACES, the main
character is seeking to walk with God, and she is
surprised to find her spiritual walk rough and rocky.
Time after time she stumbles and falls, all the time
wishing that she could run like a mountain deer, with
"hinds feet on high places." An angelic companion tells
her to pick up stones from the places that are roughest,
and to keep them with her, together in a small bag.
I like that image of picking up stones to remember the
hard places in our lives after we have gotten beyond
them. What the character does at the end of the novel is
to take her stones, and just like Jacob, she builds a
small altar to God, building from the broken pieces of
her heart as it were, a sacred place.
If you want to be part of the church, each of you is
privileged to offer your stones to God and to ask Christ
to use them to build you into a royal priesthood. Each is
needed, each is chosen by God, and each is to become part
of the whole, resting on Jesus Christ, to use our diverse
and different natures and gifts, to build up the house of
Christ, to serve him faithfully, and to witness to others
the great things that God is doing.
Pastor Gene Preston
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