|
|
Living Stones 1 Peter 2:4-5, 9 6th Sunday of Easter, Year A A sermon preached at First
UMC De Queen, AR on April 27, 2008 by the Revd David S Williams Our passage this morning illumines a few truths concerning the
nature or purpose of the Church of Jesus Christ. First, the Church is chosen
by God through Christ to be a spiritual house. Second, the Church is
chosen by God to be a holy priesthood. And third, the Church is chosen
by God to proclaim the good news. As the Church we are the “people of God.” Peter calls us
“living stones,” “a spiritual house,” “a chosen race,” “a royal priesthood,”
“a holy nation,” “God’s own people.” For Peter, as God’s people, we have been
chosen. We have received a privileged status by the shear mercy and
grace of God. “Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are God’s people;
once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy” (v. 10). This is what makes the Church unique in the world. We are not a
service organization like Rotary, or the Lions Club. You don’t join this
society by virtue of your privileged status, profession, socio-economic
status and by paying a membership fee. No. The Church is a group of people who were “no people.” We exist as
those who were the under-privileged, the nobodies – those who know what it’s
like to be excluded and unwanted. We have been included and chosen by God’s shear mercy and
grace. Our existence is indicative of God’s self-giving love revealed through
the redeeming power of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This grace grounds our reason for being; it roots our reason for
existence as the church. As a child with little athletic ability, it was challenging for me
around peers who were gifted athletes. At recess we would all meet on the
court and the two best players would become Captain 1 and Captain 2. Captains
would begin choosing. Captain 1, “I choose Johnny.” Captain 2, “I choose
Jimmy.” And I can remember the gut feeling as the numbers began to dwindle
that I may have to sit out on this one, until out of sheer compassion a
friend of mine would whisper in the ear of one of the Captains, “Choose
David, at least he tries hard.” I may have been chosen last, but at least I
was chosen. The church has a tendency to fail to understand and define our
identity as a community chosen by God. We define ourselves by our
gifted pastors, our rigid doctrines, our beautiful edifices, our gifted
musicians, our large memberships, and sad to say, our exclusive clicks.
However, none of these should define our identity as God’s people. God’s
shear grace and mercy should. As the Church, our gifts are many and our community is diverse in
its ability. And each one in our community is important to the whole and each
one should contribute to the whole. However, we have all been equally
chosen out of God’s shear love and tender mercy. Not only are we chosen by God’s mercy, we have been chosen for three
purposes. The first is to be a spiritual house firmly
rooted and grounded in our crucified and resurrected Lord. “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen
and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built
into a spiritual house …” (vv. 4-5a). Christ, our living stone, though rejected by the very ones who
crucified him, was precious and chosen in God’s sight. When we think of a
stone, we don’t normally think of something that is living. Peter has
in mind, the way people in his culture worshiped “dead idols” made of stone. Jesus
Christ is rather a living stone – rejected and crucified – but made alive
through the power of the resurrection. Christ is our living stone,
therefore we, who have come to him, are his living stones being built
into a spiritual house for God. The stones that Peter has in mind here, is not the word petros
– rock. Rather it is lithos – stone. Lithos was a stone already
cut or dressed for use in building. Peter imagines the builder being
God, Jesus, the foundation of the building, and we, the chosen people
of God, the building blocks carefully being constructed into a house
for God, the cement of love is what holds us together, firmly grounded in our
foundation Jesus Christ. You may recall in the movie Shawshank Redemption, the cruel
corruption and injustice inflicted on Andy following the discovery of his
innocence. Andy tells Red that should he ever get out of prison to promise
him to find a black onyx rock out in the middle of a hay field, in the small
town of In the church, we find the resources and valuable hidden treasure
that helps enable us to live the Christian life, to care for one another, to
give one another hope – connected to others in such a way that being
separated from one another, we find ourselves separated from the source – God
in Christ. Church is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called, “life together.” Did you know there are some precious living stones found in
rural Two of these dear living stones were Loren and Mildred
Toepfer. They were an intriguing couple, not perfect, and had their own fair
share of pain and struggles. They were very simple people, committed to their
faith in Christ and deeply devoted to their church family. Loren was a WWII veteran, retiring as a navigator and a major in the
Air Force. He shared stories with me flying missions over Following his retirement, he became a math teacher in a small public
school just north of the town where we lived. It was there, he taught young
kids math, sharing those little invaluable insights how math saved his life
and the lives of his friends flying dangerous missions over As a young pastor, finishing up college, I waited until the last
semester to take college Algebra. I dreaded the idea of taking a math class.
But when I arrived in the “not-so-significant” town of Crescent, Loren became my math tutor. I would come over to the house and
Mildred would treat me like one of the grandkids, fixing a glass of tea and
preparing a seat at the dining room table where we would work out math
equations I could not have done on my own. We shared life together. An
old man and his wife showed me what a precious living stone, chosen by
God to declare his manifold works of mercy in the world looked like. Each one of us here today is a precious living stone, gifted in so
many ways, to help construct the kind of spiritual house God desires to
build. That is why the church is not at its fullest potential when one
of God’s precious stones is missing. We are chosen to become a spiritual
house fitted together in such a way that when we are fitted together in unity
and love we become a worshiping community that is pleasing to our architect
and builder – God. The second purpose of the Church chosen by God is to be a
holy priesthood. Verses 5 and 9 illuminate for us the doctrine of the
priesthood of all believers. While very important to Protestant Christians, it is also very
misunderstood. The popular understanding is that individuals do not
need a priest since each person can be their own priest. However, this was not the intent of either Peter or the first
Protestants. The priesthood of all believers means that every believing
Christian is a priest – or has a priestly function to fulfill in Christ’s
church and in the world. Therefore, any one of us can serve as a priest for
anyone else. The idea of being a priest for oneself is a contradiction in
Scripture. We all need a priest to represent us to God and God to us on a
regular basis. And the priesthood of all believers means that an appointed or
ordained priest is not the only priest available. In many ways, when God’s people serve in a service of worship like
this, we model the priesthood of all believers. Each of these men today, have
fulfilled a role in representing us to God and God to us through the work of
our High Priest, Jesus Christ. And there are many people we come into contact with each day needing
us to be a priest to confess their sin, their struggles with an employee or
their spouse and their struggles parenting or even a painful past. There are
people in the hospital needing a believer to be their priest. There are
people on their death beds needing a believer to be their priest. There are
people alienated from their family, un-reconciled in their relationships,
needing a believer to be their priest. As the church, we exist as a community mediating grace and
reconciliation to the world through the power of the Spirit, and supporting
one another in love. When God called me to be your pastor, one of the
experiences that really ministered to me was discovering a group of men who
prayed for me through the laying on of hands. The choir does this every
Sunday, and I’ve had it done to me in my own office. Thank you men of God for
fulfilling your priestly role! Men and women of God, you are the church chosen by God to be a
holy priesthood to one another and the world that God loves. And lastly, the Church is chosen by God to proclaim the good news. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s
own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called
you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (v. 9). When the church fails to share the good news of God’s might acts in
Jesus Christ and when we fail to embody that in our way of life, we fail big
time. The purpose of the church is to proclaim the good news. We do
this when we show the world that indeed, Christ is risen through word and
deed, in our acts of mercy, and in our love toward one another. There is a lot of bad news in the world today. We are called to
share the good news in a bad news world. That good news is that in Christ,
God is reconciling the world to himself, that in Christ, God has overcome
death, hell and the grave, that in Christ, God has revealed his love toward
us in while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God is for us in a world
that is against us. Bishop Will Willimon shares the experience of being invited to
preach in a congregation located in the heart of one of our great cities. The
congregation is entirely black who live in the tenement houses in that part
of the city. Arriving at 11 o’clock, he expected about an hour of worship.
But he didn’t rise to preach until nearly 12:30 p.m. There were five or six
hymns and gospel songs, a great deal of speaking, hand-clapping, singing. He
says, “We did not have the benediction until nearly 1:15 p.m. I was
exhausted.” “Why do black people stay in church so long?” he asked his friend.
“Our worship never lasts much over an hour.” He smiled. Then explained, “Unemployment runs nearly 50 percent
here. For our youth, the unemployment rate is much higher. That means that,
when our people go about during the week, everything they see, everything
they hear tells them, ‘You’re a failure. You’re nobody. You’re nothing
because you don’t have a good job, you don’t have a fine car, you have no
money.’ “So I must gather them here, once a week, and get their heads
straight. I get them together, here, in the church, and through the hymns,
the prayers, the preaching say, ‘That’s a lie. You’re somebody. You’re
royalty! God has bought you with a price and loves you as his Chosen People.’
“It takes me so long to get them straight because the world perverts
them so terribly” (Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony [Nashville:
Abingdon, 1991] pp. 154-55). Dear people of God, today, you have been chosen. You have
been chosen to be built into a spiritual house pleasing to God, to be a holy
priesthood and to proclaim the good news of salvation to the world. “How marvelous! How wonderful! And my song shall ever be: How
marvelous! How wonderful is my Savior’s love for me!” (Charles Gabriel, I
Stand Amazed in the Presence, p. 371, The United Methodist Hymnal). Let us pray. Gracious Lord, we thank you for the “communion of saints,” for
calling us out of our own individual selves into life together in Christian
community. We thank you for your claim upon us as your chosen and precious
living stones being built up into the spiritual house that you desire –
closely connected to one another in love rooted in our foundation Jesus
Christ. Forgive us when we treat our faith as something we choose as
individuals rather than our chosen-ness as your community of priest to world.
Enable us through the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill our purpose as your
Church to give witness to your mighty works to an unbelieving world asleep in
the dark. Help us to be faithful and fruitful to this end. In the name of
Christ. Amen. |
