Living Stones

  1 Peter 2: 2-10                                                                                Nancy Willet

Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                                            April 24, 2005

         Most of you know that I have three children—Danny, Carol, and Keith. What most of you probably don’t know is how important it was for me to breast feed my children during the first few years of their life.

         I did a lot of reading before Danny, my first, was born. I read about how beneficial mother’s milk is for a newborn, how it is so much more easily digested, how the baby is less prone to allergies, and digestive problems. Especially important is the milk the baby gets from the mother the first few days of life. This milk is especially rich in the nutrients the baby will need to thrive during its first few weeks of life.

         Did you know that the more milk the baby drinks, the more milk the mother produces? It’s really pretty how that works out. It’s about the most natural, organic sense of supply and demand there can be!

         The author of the first letter of Peter calls his readers infants. This letter was probably written to the newly baptized Gentiles; pointing out that in their baptisms they we re-born as infants to a new life in Christ.

         The author says to drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God. You’ve had a taste of God—you’ve seen how good God can be. And just like the infant at the breast, the more you drink, the more of God’s love and kindness you’ll experience. The feeding is for growth—and the goal is wholeness and maturity in our faith. As we mature and grow in our faith, our relationship with God becomes strengthened.

For most of us, we would really like to know where God is. We would like to be able to locate God. All religions tend to locate God—some in shrines or temples, some in holy lands. Perhaps you can say you found God in the mountains, or at the seaside, or in the forest.

In the New Testament, God’s location takes on a whole new twist. In the Old Testament the Jews located and encountered God in the temple in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, God is not located in a place, God is located in a person.

         The author of 1 Peter calls this person the Living Stone. “Welcome the Living Stone, the source of life” (2:4). This Living Stone—Jesus Christ—though rejected by the workmen, “God set in a place of honor” (2:4).

You see, what human beings want to build and what God is building are not always the same. God is God, and human rejection or refusals do not finally defeat the plan of God.

God chose Jesus to be the foundation. Jesus is the cornerstone of the building—the very foundation upon which our faith is built. God chose Jesus as the cornerstone upon which we, also living stones, are to build the church community.

We all have been chiseled, hammered, and polished through our experiences in life to bring us to the goal of being like the character of Christ—our Living Stone—our cornerstone.

We are not just random stones, but stones for a purpose, called to build on the cornerstone. We come in all shapes and sizes, strengths, and ages, and we all are useful—we all belong in the building.

The text says we are “the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do God’s work and speak out for God, to tell others of the night and day difference God made for you—“ (2:9).

The church is not the building in which we meet, but the building we have become. We are the living stones that form the building of Bethany, not these walls and floors and windows. God does not live in this building—God lives in the hearts of each one of you here. This building is not God’s house, this is not God’s sanctuary—You are God’s sanctuary!

This means we can meet together on Sunday mornings to worship God anywhere. We could meet in the park, we could meet under a bridge—we could meet down the street at JR’s. Because, my friends, it’s not the building that is holy—YOU—The people of God are holy, and that is where God dwells.

In all reality, though, I guess we do need to put this into perspective. Most of us here are pretty anxious about what is going to happen to Bethany in the future. We’ve talked about merging with another church, we have explored other options, and we have even mentioned under our breath that we may have to close the doors at Bethany and disperse.

The day may come when God will take away our physical building from us—when we might have to relocate to one place or another. But, remember this: this will not in any significant way affect the church of Jesus Christ.

You are living stones, created for a purpose. In the New Revised Standard translation, verse 5 says: “Like living stones, let yourself be built into a spiritual house. . .” Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, put that same verse this way: “Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life. . .” I like that—“a sanctuary vibrant with life.:

Aren’t the metaphors in this passage great? First we have the image of a nurturing, feminine God who feeds us pure kindness. As we grow on this spiritual milk from God, we become living stones. Then we build ourselves into a sanctuary vibrant with life.

Think about stones for a minute. Think about some of their attributes—they are solid and firm. Is that what God wants us to be? I don’t think so. That’s why the important descriptor was added to that word “stone”—we are to be living stones, with all the strength, solidity, and firmness of a stone. Yet through the nourishment of God’s spiritual milk we become alive, having vitality and warmth as well.

So, as a congregation—as you individually go through this period of discernment in figuring our where God is in the future of Bethany Presbyterian Church, remember—God is right here (God is in your heart). The church is you. You are the living stones, which build upon the cornerstone and make up the church.

Amen.