English Sermon, Vision 1
Text: I. Peter 2: 4 – 10
Title: Who does God think we are?
I attended an MCC Refugee Advisory Committee meeting last Thursday at Sam’s Place. Among other things, Brian Dyck, the MCC Manitoba Refugee Concerns coordinator talked about the changing rules our government is implementing, changes that will make it very difficult for people from places like Colombia to claim refugee status without first claiming asylum in a neighbouring country. It seems, for the Canadian government, it is no longer enough to be in danger and displaced within your own country. You have to be physically displaced to another country.
So why are the rules changing? Well, it is no longer very convenient for us to see the danger to people within Colombia. As Canadians, we have vested interests there...mining companies, oil companies, other commercial ventures. And why is this important? Why should we care about people half a world away?
Well, part of the answer is that our lifestyle makes us complicit. We benefit from the investments made by Canadian companies, and from the profits they make from cheap labour there. But it also is important if we take seriously what we have said in our vision statement: that ‘we see ourselves as a congregation learning from and embracing our neighbours, local and global, serving with a posture of love and humility’.
This morning, and the next two Sundays, we want to take a closer look at the work done by quite a large group of people from our congregation, all of the people in leadership, and a whole bunch of others, representing different age and interest groups...work done in articulating a vision for SHMC for the next years. Who is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? Today, and on the next two Sundays, we want to help the rest of you to catch the vision, to invite you to become excited and motivated by what God is inviting us to be a part of. We want to preach this vision. That means that we will take a close look at a number of different texts in scripture, and set our vision and continue to build our future on the solid foundation of God’s word.
For this first Sunday on which we are preaching our vision, we have chosen a text from I. Peter 2, which we just heard Janna read, and which you have printed in your bulletins. I would encourage you to keep that in front of you. The apostle Peter, writing to a group of churches, is trying to help them to understand just who they are as a people of God, as the church of Jesus Christ. And he uses an image which he finds helpful...the image of building blocks, stones, living stones, as he calls them. ‘Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight’...is how our text begins.
Jesus Christ is the first living stone, our chief cornerstone. This is not as explicit in the NRSV, but comes through very clearly in the New Living translation: You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. Jesus is the first ‘living stone’...and the cornerstone. Now I’m not a mason, and I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what a ‘cornerstone’ was. So I went right to the source....Wikipedia. Here’s a direct quote: The “cornerstone (or foundation stone) concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure .”
And then the text goes on to say: and 5like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house. “Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house” is how the NRSV translates this. Eugene Peterson, in the MESSAGE, uses “Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life...”. I like that! The New Living translation makes explicit, who is doing the building: “And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple...” (New Living) And, because I’m preaching both the English and the German sermons on this text, I noticed an intriguing difference between the German and the English translations here. The German says, ‘alslebendigeSteineerbauteuchzumgeistlichenHause’ -- ‘as living stones, build yourselves into a spiritual house’. Now I don’t have any Greek, which is the original language of the New Testament, so I needed to go to someone else to sort this out. The commentaries are pretty clear that the Greek form used here is a passive form. It is not we who are doing the building. We are, in Peterson’s words, ‘presenting ourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life’.
And that gets at the whole idea of how much is our work, and how much is God’s. It reminds us that the implementation of our vision will ultimately be much more about surrender than about our strategizing and planning. I’m reminded of the concept in the book by Rick Warren that was popular a number of years ago -- The Purpose-Driven Church. He talks about the idea, from the experience of surfers (he’s obviously from California, and not from Manitoba) that surfers do not create the wave. Let’s hear his words:
If you take a class on surfing, you’ll be taught everything you need to know about surfing: how to choose the right equipment; how to use it properly; how to recognize a ‘surfable’ wave; how to catch a wave and ride it as long as possible; and, most important of all, how to get off a wave without wiping out. But you’ll never find a course that teaches ‘How to build a Wave. Surfing is the art of riding the waves that God builds. God makes the waves; surfers just ride them.
(Warren, The Purpose Driven Church, p. 13)
The point made here, and what Peter is talking about in our text, is that it is God who is building the ‘spiritual house’, the ‘sanctuary vibrant with life’. We need to be living stones, and we declare ourselves willing to be used by God to build a structure that will advance his kingdom. In surfers’ terms, we keep our eyes open for the waves God is creating, and determine to try to ride them. It is God who does the building. We need to allow ourselves to be built up into that spiritual house. And so we need discernment about what we need to surrender, where there are things we need to change or get rid of, so that we can ride the wave.
We are living stones. Each of us is important, but none of us is the whole building.
And, if Jesus is the cornerstone, and we are living stones being built into a house on the basis of the cornerstone, we take our direction from Jesus. We keep our eyes open for the waves God is creating, preparing for what we know what we have to do; hoping we have the courage we need to be willing to commit to it. (And I will be relentlessly mixing these metaphors over the next few minutes!)
What might some of these waves be? When I look at the living stones in this congregation, I see many exciting waves on the horizon. We live in a time of increasing isolation and loneliness. If we truly radiate the ‘visible contagious warmth’ our vision statement talks about, we know that there are so many people around us in our neighbourhood who are looking for just that, for community. A while ago I was at a meeting at the River East Access building which brought together people involved in the community at different levels...schools, community organizations, and churches. Not many churches were represented. But one of the things shared with us there I won’t quickly forget. We live in an area of the city of Winnipeg that has one of the highest concentrations of senior citizens in the city. And the overwhelming concern for many of these seniors is something called ‘social isolation and loneliness’. There is a longing for community...something which we have as a basic value and expression of our faith.
We also have in our vision the desire to ‘learn from and embrace our neighbours, local and global, serving with a posture of love and humility’. What are some waves on the horizon here? We live in a world with unprecedented numbers of displaced people. We live in a country with one of the lowest population densities in the world. Our congregation is made up of people who know what it is to be a stranger in this country, not knowing the language or understanding the culture. We are connected closely to an organization, MCC, that facilitates partnerships between congregations and displaced people, and is looking for congregations to partner with.
We have a church family full of people with practical skills, actively involved in the building trades. There are many people in Winnipeg longing for a home to call their own. There is a good organization, with connections to people in our congregation, Habitat for Humanity, eagerly looking for congregations to partner with in building a home for someone who will never be able to do so without some help and support.
We are a congregation full of stable families, where children are supported and nurtured and encouraged. We live in a neighbourhood where there are many families where that is not the case, where kids have no stable home to go to after school, or nobody who speaks English well enough to help them with their homework. Is some form of concrete response to this need one of the waves that we need to discern on the horizon, and prepare to ride?
As we think about our place as a living stone in the ‘spiritual house’, the ‘sanctuary vibrant with life’ that God wants to build here with us, it is important to remember that these ‘living stones’ are not rough stones, but prepared stones. Again, I have to stand on the shoulders of people who know more than I do, when I say that the word used in the Greek text indicates not rough boulders, but stones that have been smoothed and shaped to enable them to be used in building. So, what kind of building stones are we? What rough edges need to be removed from us in order for God to be able to use us in building up his spiritual house here in this place? And, something else we see in this text is the warning: How might we be stumbling blocks instead of building blocks?
Just one observation more in the text that I would like to have you notice is what else is said about our identity in the final two verses of the text: Not only are we living stones, but we are “...a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. This is an amazing calling...do we have any idea of what it means? Ours is a high calling! It is much too significant a calling for us to just simply go through the motions here. It is a high calling, which is encouraging, but it is also intimidating. This isn’t who we always were...but since we have ‘received mercy’, we are God’s people.
And this is for a very specific purpose: so that we can proclaim the fact that we have been called ‘out of darkness into light’. We are “God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night and day difference he made for (us) -- from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.” (MESSAGE) We have the awesome opportunity, in the words of the New Living translation, to “show others the goodness of God” . We get to proclaim how the light of the world speaks to our darkness...the darkness surrounding us.
We have named some of that darkness in our neighbours, local and global -- the darkness of poverty, of homelessness, of family dysfunction. While we within the community of faith are not immune to those forms of darkness, there are further identities that the darkness has for us -- the darkness of illness, of unreconciled conflict, of bitterness and disappointment, of loneliness and despair. And yet Peter in our text insists that each of us is called to a ‘holy priesthood’ (all three translations use this formulation). We are called to be instruments of healing and of hope, to bring light to areas of darkness.
Yes, sisters and brothers this is indeed a high calling! And it is indeed much too important a calling for us to simply go through the motions here in this place. Using us as living stones, God wants to build a spiritual house of healing here in this place, a sanctuary vibrant with life and with hope.
A stone is a stone is a stone, but it becomes a ‘living stone’ when it allows itself to be built up by God into a spiritual house. The stone remains a stone, but it is a living stone because it is part of something bigger, something spiritual, something God-willed and God-made. According to our text, we, who are children of God, are these living stones, and we surrender to God, who builds us into his community, who makes us a part of his spiritual temple, the church of Jesus Christ. The Springfield Heights Mennonite Church is the church of Jesus Christ here in this place, and has been since 1964. It is a building, but it is much more than a building. It is a building made up of living stones, and we are those living stones.
Over the past months, a number of us, representing various age groups and leaders in the church have been discerning God’s vision for our community of faith as we look toward the future. And what have we discerned God calling us to be?
We at SHMC are a vibrant Christian community with a visible, contagious warmth that loves, accepts and connects with each other as we grow together in the spirit of Jesus.
Because we are each called to be disciples of Jesus we see ourselves as a congregation learning from and embracing our neighbours, local and global, serving with a posture of love and humility.
“Growing and serving together in the spirit of Jesus”... That is a high calling, a noble calling, an intimidating calling. If we live out that vision we will be challenged to see our congregation, and ourselves as members in a new light. We will be challenged to become more visible in our community. We will be challenged to radiate and embody a ‘visible warmth’, that is contagious and attractive. We will be challenged to be more than occasional Sunday morning spectators, and to truly be participants, to be leaders and to be workers. We will need to see our faith community, our building, our property, as more than something we’ve invested in and need to maintain, but as God’s house...where all who are God’s children are supposed to find a home. We will be challenged to embrace our neighbours, and our neighbours are people who are dealing with many forms of darkness, and are longing to be called out of that darkness into the light of God’s love and acceptance and reconciliation.
So are we ready for this? I’m not sure! Do we want to be formed into the kinds of living stones that God can use here in this place to build a spiritual house? Are we ready to be challenged out of the comfort zone of our status quo, and into the heady excitement of where God wants to take us? I want to challenge you to commitment. I want to challenge you to say before God and before your sisters and brothers in this community of faith: Jesus, I want to be a living stone. I want to allow myself to be used to build a spiritual house here, a place that will proclaim in new ways and in old ways, the wondrous deeds of the one who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.
If you are ready to make that commitment, I do want to challenge you to make that visible. I invite you to come forward, to take a stone from the wheelbarrow, and continue to build the walls of this structure here on the table. It is just a gesture, but it doesn’t have to be an empty gesture. It’s a sign to our sisters and brothers and to God, and it will make a difference in our lives! “Come to him, the living stone..., and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.”