Our younger daughter likes rocks,
and any little pebble or stone, no matter how nondescript, has the potential to
wind up in her collection. She’ll just be walking along the street or in the
backyard or often just in a parking lot or here at church and she’ll bend down
and grab one that fits into her hand. Usually she’ll bring them into the house and
hold onto them until she finds a little place to squirrel each of them away, and
to this day you can come over to our place and find little rocks in random
places: on the cabinet in front of the TV, on the bathroom counter…the other
day I found one (it was like a mommy-baby combo, actually) behind a picture
frame in the family room. They are all little-ish rocks of no particular beauty
or form, mostly ones that have been kicked underfoot by untold numbers of people,
but somehow special and meaningful to Laura.
One day we decided enough of
these little rocks everywhere and be bought her a box that she could put them
all in. It was one of those clear plastic sewing boxes with little
different-sized compartments. Laura went around through the house and picked up
every little rock and pebble and brought them together into that plastic box. They
had a home. The amazing thing is that for a while she could tell you where each
of those rocks came from.
I remember one time when she
was just in first grade and we were standing at the bus stop She had bent down
and was picking around through the gravel at the spot where they stand. She
settled on one little light gray rock and when the bus came she turned around
and handed it to me and said, “Dad, here. Keep this rock for me.” I’m embarrassed
to say that as soon as the bus rolled away I just tossed it back into the
gravel because she had dozens of them just like it already. That afternoon she
came plowing into the front door, furious. Believe it or not, she had that
exact rock in her hand. “Daddy!” she fumed, “Why is this rock still at the bus
stop? I told you to keep it for me!”
I had rejected it. She had
redeemed it.
In his letter meant to
encourage what appears to have been a newly-baptized group of Christians, the
apostle Peter says, “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, a holy priesthood.” We are all rocks in Laura’s
hands, Peter might say. Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people. Though
each of us is surely unique and gifted and special, we do not know our value until
we have been spotted and chosen by the God who loves us and knows we count.
God chooses what is going to
be valuable. God chooses what He wants to work with. And though we can feel
quite alone in this world, we exist to be brought together. We have been selected
for a fine collection where our stories can be told and shared, where our
redemption can be celebrated and marveled at. We are living stones, small and broken
but still important pieces of building material who find their purpose in being
connected through faith to the Living Stone that was rejected. That stone was
sneered at, deemed worthless, tossed back into the gravel pile, beaten and nailed
to the cross. But God has found it again, selected it from the grave of death and
raised it up to be the cornerstone of the entire universe.
That is the message that
Peter has for his disciples. As it happens, they are not feeling particularly
cared for and cherished by the world. We can’t tell for sure exactly what they
were enduring, but it sounds like from the whole of the letter of 1 Peter that
followers of Christ were suffering some kind of persecutions for their faith.
This was a common feature of
early Christian life, just as it is still common in many areas of the world
today. We can forget that sometimes, but the fact of the matter is that
professing a belief in God—and a God that identifies with the weakness of the
cross, at that—is liable to get you laughed at, if not worse. But God has a
strong love for the ones who are laughed at, the ones who feel like no people. And
he brings them together and lays them down with holy purpose in relationship to
the cornerstone of Jesus Christ.
In construction, the
cornerstone is the first block laid. In the time when Peter wrote this letter, it
was common for there to be great ceremony at the laying of a new building’s
cornerstone. Often it was engraved with the mark or symbol of the person who
was paying for the building. It is placed right where the first two walls come
together, and its position and evenness determines the strength and shape of
the entire structure. All other blocks and stones find their position and
placement in relation to that cornerstone. Maybe Peter just liked rocks a lot because
that’s what his name means in Greek, but the point is clear: all who have been
formed by the Creator (and that’s everyone) and redeemed by him (and that’s
everyone, too) find their true identity and purpose insofar as they show forth
Jesus and point to him.
Jesus, on the night before
his death, made clear the importance of their working together, of the communal
aspect of their discipleship. He tells them that their life of faith together would
be a way to show the world the glory of God the Father. With the help of the
Holy Spirit, they would be able to carry on the witness of Jesus himself. In
fact, they would be able to do greater works than even Jesus did. It is for
this reason that living stones are meant to be together, not just laid around
the house by themselves, tucked here and there, squirreled away for some
special point in the future. This is a message most important for today, for we
live in a time that can glorify the individual to a fault. We hear things like “Be
your own person,” and “Stand apart,” and “You do You,” and while living stones
do each bear unique attributes and intricacies that need to be nurtured and
perhaps even celebrated, the fact is we were never meant just to be our own, solitary
rock.
In her book entitled, Another Country: Navigating the Emotional
Terrain of our Elders, sociologist Mary Pipher discusses how much today’s
culture can feel like a foreign land to senior citizens, people who grew up in
the era of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. She explains
that the concept of personal maturity has changed over the last couple of
generations. Nowadays, she discerns that the sign of true maturity seems to lie
in realizing some aspect of your individuality and selfhood or in learning how
to express one’s utter dependence and uniqueness. But for earlier generations, personal
maturity involved the integration of everyone into a whole. It was found in recognizing
each one’s gifts and their need for interdependence, and seeing how each person
in a community needed to play their part. I think those who are called living
stones would have a hard time arguing against her.
The church, when at its best,
becomes the way for people to learn this and embody this lifegiving togetherness.
We are little pieces of gravel, seemingly unrelated, but by the power of Christ
the cornerstone, we form a whole. Here a community is brought together, much
like squares on a quilt. We are fed together, empowered for service to the
community together. We are collected from any old place and then Jesus’
forgiveness situates us in our proper place, and we are built into a holy dwelling
place for God on earth just as one day we will inhabit the dwelling places Jesus
prepares for us on high.
As it happens, the church
occasionally needs a physical building too, as even the earliest followers of
Christ discovered. Suburban congregations like this one—ones that serve a wide
metropolitan area—find it especially helpful to bring together real stones and
bricks to form a space that enables them to gather and do God’s works of mercy
and justice even better. We are a congregation with living stones that are
spread over a six county and one city area. Richmond City, Henrico, Hanover,
Chesterfield, Powhatan, Goochland, New Kent, and Caroline Counties are all
represented here on most Sundays. We have service outreach in at least 4 of
those areas on a regular basis. That is truly amazing.
As you know by now, Council
has formed a Building Team that has been working hard to implement some of
Epiphany’s own goals from its Vision 2020 plan, a long-range vision that was
adopted by vote of the congregation back in November. That plan identified the
need to expand and renovate some of our physical building in order to better
equip and house current ministries and staff and so that we might grow and
reach out even deeper into our ministry area. The Building Team will be
presenting some initial ideas in this plan next Sunday, and drawings for Vision
2020 will be on display over the summer.
As we all chew on these concepts,
it is important to remember that things like gathering areas and welcoming
areas are vital to the life of the church, especially in today’s world, because
they provide the space for conversations to take place and for relationships to
be built. In the old days and in more rural areas, members of a congregation could
count on overlapping with each other in meaningful ways over the course of the
whole week. Nowadays our living stones are strewn quite wide. We’ve grown, and
it has become apparent we may need our physical spaces here to grow too.
As we all pray about this
next step of the congregation together, let us think about Christ the
cornerstone, and the ways our works in his name can be a cornerstone of this
region.
As each of you living stones
ponder your own meaning and worth, may you be reminded that Christ was rejected
but is now the base of all that is good and right and true.
And as you walk the journey
and witness with joy remember that Jesus has bent down and grabbed you in
baptism, looks at his Father and says, “Daddy, I want you to hold this rock for
me. It belongs to me.”
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
