Living Stones and More

LIVING STONES…AND MORE

1 Peter 2:2-10

A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on

May 22, 2011

As some of you know, the week before last week, I went on a road trip with my 87 year-old parents. They are in relatively good health, but extended trips to see family and friends are growing increasingly hard for them – and for those they want to see. So, we drove 1725 miles in five days – it was they who planned this itinerary, not I – so that we could see family and friends and their birthplaces in Indiana and Tennessee. There was one day where we had breakfast with friends in Indianapolis, Indiana, lunch with a friend in Salem, Indiana, dinner with friends in Paducah, Kentucky, before stumbling into our beds in Jackson, Tennessee, after a 15-hour, 500-mile day.

It may not have been a relaxing week, but it was a great week – despite the speeding ticket I got in a newly installed speed trap in Medina, Tennessee. It was a great trip because of the time I got to spend with my parents, the stories I got to hear, or re-hear, from their days long before they welcomed me into the world – and because of the people I got to meet on what they called their “Friendship Tour.”

For example, there was Bill, a college fraternity brother and army friend of my Dad’s. Bill was indirectly responsible for helping an Indiana farm boy meet his future small-town Tennessee wife not long after the end of World War II. Bill took my Dad to his first Catholic mass. What Dad remembers is being so enthralled with the beauty of the altar that when his friend knelt and genuflected in the aisle, Dad went sprawling over him.

There were Paul and Lois. Dad and Paul talked about the time Life magazine visited their Salem, Indiana high school for an article, “Life Visits an Indiana High School Basketball Game – while Lois, now needing a walker to get around, talked about the first time she soloed as a pilot.

We had a lunch with Julia, who has just gotten back from her Florida home. At 88 years-old, she still drives back and forth by herself. She still plays tennis, although now she only plays once or twice a week. And before she set off for lunch, she showed me her newly restored Karmen Ghia convertible.

There was Weezie and her husband, Gene, both long-time residents of Paducah, Kentucky. In the midst of the Midwest flooding we encountered, Weezie recalled the great flood of 1937 that was the worst flood before now – she remembers riding with her dad in a boat downtown as a 13 year-old, and entering a downtown hotel by stepping off the boat and through a second floor window.

What linked all of these people besides their ages and their friendships with my parents was this: they were all “living stones.” That is, they were all lively, and they were all grateful to be members of their own church congregations – which were big city and small-town, – Catholic, UCC, Episcopal, and Presbyterian.

Peter uses the image of “living stones,” among other images to describe the people he is writing to. His audience is made up of former Gentiles, now converted and part of a string of small congregations in the interior of what is now Turkey. They didn’t have much before they converted and joined the church, and now they have even less, at least in worldly terms, because of the persecution that the church was going through at that time in the Roman empire.

“Living stones.” What does Peter mean when he uses that phrase here 1 Peter 2? And, what does it mean for us and our congregation to be “living stones” today?

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,” Peter writes. “Be built” – the verb is passive. The first thing to note about being living stones is that we are not the builder – God is. If we talk about “building a church,” then long-range plans, capital campaigns, and renovating the sanctuary or adding a gym may come to mind.

But God is the one doing the building, and the building that God does when it comes to the church is not a matter of capital campaigns or long-range planning. The building that God does is more a matter of transforming people and communities.

In verse 6, Peter goes on to write, “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever trusts in him will not be put to shame.” Peter is quoting Isaiah 28. He is reminding us of the second thing we need to know about being living stones: Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.

In the ancient world, stones, of course, did not come in consistent factory-cut block sizes. When building walls in that way, finding a good cornerstone would make all of the difference. As one commentator notes, “A ‘cornerstone’ is not only the stone set at the corner of two intersecting walls (as the name implies), but is one prepared and chosen for its exact 90 degree angle; as such, it is the basis for the construction of the whole building. Choosing the right corner is basic not only to the aesthetics of the building but also to its stability and longevity.”[1]

Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the church, the foundation upon which all else is built. He is the one who sets the direction for the church. Only with Jesus as our cornerstone can we, as a church, be able to reach higher and wider.

The third thing to know about living stones is this: the builder chooses each particular stone and has a special place for it. In those days, building a stone wall or building was a matter of putting together a puzzle. The stones would be there on the ground, each one uniquely sized and shaped. The builder would choose each stone with a particular place in mind for setting it.

What does it mean that we are “living stones?” Simply this: we are chosen by God to be part of his great creation. No matter what others might think of us, no matter what we might think of ourselves, we are valuable, useful, and irreplaceable in God’s eyes.

John Bishop tells the story of a London slum child, a skinny runt, who took a physical examination in his Roman Catholic parochial school. As the skinny little fellow left the doctor’s room, one of the nuns asked, “Well, Jimmy, what did the doctor say to you?” The boy replied, “He took one look at me and said, ‘What a miserable specimen you are,’ but he didn’t know that I’d had my first communion, did he, Sister?”[2]

The doctor saw a “miserable specimen.” But God sees a beloved child and part of God’s family. The world sees many people as useless rubble. But God sees stones that have a particular place to fill in God’s building of a church. “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people,” Peter writes.

Do you remember playground games where two captains would pick sides? Do you remember how great it felt when you were picked first? And how embarrassing it would feel when you were one of the picks left to the very end? With God, there are no last picks. We are all chosen first, beloved by God. God “friends” us, as if we were the only “Facebook” page that He visits. We are living stones, each one useful, each one chosen, each one needed for the building that God has in mind for the church.

Whatever our status is outside these doors, whether wealthy and successful, or struggling and unemployed, we are of equal status here, equally beloved and chosen by God. Whether we are voted “most popular” in our yearbook or if we are left out in discussions of class superlatives, we are “living stones,” chosen by God to fill a unique and valuable place in God’s building of a church.

Think about this the next time you prepare to come to worship. God is looking forward to having you here. Picture this the next time you pray: God is eager to hear from you and talk to you. Because we are chosen and beloved. This is what it means to be living stones, and this is why Peter uses this image here in 1 Peter 2. Until reading this text and preparing for this sermon, I had never really thought about this image. And I have to say, for a number of reasons, I love this image because of what it conveys about God’s choosing of us and our value and usefulness.

But there is a limit to this image of living stones – and there is a reason why Peter uses other images in 1 Peter 2. Because stones don’t move. And not all people choose to become part of the church. Then and now, Jesus, the cornerstone for those who believe, is a stumbling block for those who do not believe in Him.

What then? It seems to me that Christians can sometimes fall into one of two errors, both of which are suggested by the image of stones. In the face of opposition to the gospel, some Christians respond by thinking that God must be using us to build a fortress – a place of protection from the ways of the world. Those who are part of the fortress are safe and protected, not only now, but in the life to come. But those who lie outside of the walls of the church are destined to be broken up and burned. Or left behind on May 21, or whatever time somebody thinks they know to be God’s appointed day of judgment.

But in the Bible, the church is never described as a fortress. Only God is. We are living stones, but God has no plans to build us into a fortress. We do not flee from the world, but as Jesus says in the gospel of John, “as [the Father] has sent me into the world, so I send [you.]” (17:18). And, we are vulnerable as we are sent, just as Jesus was vulnerable for the sake of the world.

There is another error that Christians and churches can sometime fall in, and why the image of the church as “living stones,” as good as it is, is not enough. Stones don’t move. we cannot just stand there and wait for the world to come to us. “Build it and they will come,”may work for baseball fields in Iowa cornfields, as it does in the movie,Field of Dreams, but it does not work for the church, especially these days.

I am sure we have all heard the song that I sang with the children today, “We Are the Church,”[3] and there are few of us that wouldn’t agree that “the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.” But have you ever thought about how we talk about church? We talk about “going to church.” We ask if someone “was in church today.” With our words, we show that we in fact often think of the church as a particular building, a particular place, a particular gathering of people in one place – this place.

But the church is a people, and the church goes wherever we go throughout the week. So this congregation will be here at 750 N. Evans Street this week, but it will also be at PottsgroveHigh School and Boyertown Junior High East, at Vanguard in GreatValley and in Giant Supermarket, and at 1168 Crestwood Drive and 1206 Queen Street. In other words, wherever, we go.

For we are, in Peter’s words, not only “living stones,” but also “a royal priesthood” and a “holy” or “set apart” people. That is, we are a people with a particular purpose: “to proclaim the mighty acts of God,” not just with our words, but also with our actions. With our words and actions, we proclaim what God has done in Jesus Christ, and we proclaim what God thinks of each one: that there are no “miserable specimens,” but only beloved children. That there are no throwaways, but only “living stones,” that God wants to construct into something valuable and beautiful.

To be sure we want to be hospitable and welcoming to those who come through our doors. One elder spoke to Kerry and me this week about how he was moved when he heard two new members mention how much it had meant to them to feel welcomed. When he came to worship, one new member said, “It felt like people wanted me to be here.”

But we don’t just want to wait on people to come to us, any more than we want to try to make the church into a fortress behind whose walls we can hide out from the world. No, we are called to go forth, to put our beliefs into action in our lives, and to share the love and grace that, hopefully, we haveexperienced from each other, and even more deeply, from God through Jesus Christ. As Rob Bell has recently written, the church is meant to be a blessing to the world, and we are at our best when we are giving ourselves away.[4] Because then we are most like Jesus, who gave himself for the world.

So friends, remember that you are living stones, chosen by God, valuable and useful. But somehow also picture that the building into which we are built is nothing like any building we have ever seen before. Because it is on wheels, able to go out in all directions. Sometimes it is a hospital for the healing of those who are hurting, and sometimes it is a school for the teaching of the faith. Sometimes it is an emergency shelterand sometimes it is a kitchen where people are given nourishment for their bodies and souls. Sometimes it is a sanctuary and sometimes it is a laboratory for transforming people and communities. But always, in God’s hands, it is intended to be something beautiful, lasting, and ever expanding: the church.

[1] Joel B. Green, “1 Peter 2:2-10: Exegetical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 463.

[2] Source unknown.

[4] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 165.