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May 2, l999 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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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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