LIVING STONES BUILDING LIFE

(Preached on Sunday, April 20, 2008)

...like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

-1 Peter 2:5

 

We are truly blessed at Christ Congregational Church. We have beautiful buildings on a beautiful piece of land.  Everyone who comes to visit us comments on how lovely is this setting and how beautiful are the buildings.  Over our 52 years of existence we have erected structures that are inspirational, warm, welcoming and nurturing.

 

But as glorious, wonderful and useful as all these buildings are, they are not the most important thing we are constructing on this site.  We are building for God on this site and we will continue to do so in the future.  But the most important building we are erecting is not made with rocks and bricks, mortar and wood.  The most important building we are erecting is our congregation, our community, and we are the living stones which are building that community in place.

 

The poet Rilke offers us a helpful glimpse into understanding what it means to be Aliving stones.@

AWe are all workmen: prentice, journeyman,

or master, building you C you towering nave. 

And sometimes there will come to us a grave

wayfarer, who like a radiance thrills

the souls of all our hundred artisans,

trembling as he shows us a new skill.

We climb up on the rocking scaffolding,

the hammers in our hands swing heavily,

until our foreheads feel the caressing wing

of a radiant hour that knows everything

and hails from you as wind hails from the sea.

..........

Only at dusk we yield you up at last;

and slow your shaping contours dawn on us.

God, you are vast.@

 

The process of being built into a community is truly amazing.  It is an awesome process which, even though we participate in it, we do so only partially knowledgeable of how it happens.  Both the poet and the author of 1 Peter, understand that when you are talking about building a community it is primarily God=s Spirit at work.  The Holy Spirit working in us and in our midst is really the architect, general contractor, and primary laborer, building us into a spiritual house.

 

It is a wonder to behold it take place.  It is amazing how God blesses congregations with such diversity to achieve this goal.  If we had to build a house or a church we would discover enough talent to lay a foundation, raise the walls, install the air conditioning and electricity and put on a roof.  We could build a building.  We may not be bricklayers or electricians or roofers, but somewhere in our experience we could hone the talent to do so.  If we had to.

 

In a similar manner, we have members who never studied to be teachers, who became teachers of children and adults to share with them the love of God and the teachings of Jesus.  We have members who never trained as nurses or counselors ministering to the sick, visiting the homebound, bringing a listening ear and the outreach of compassion and attention.  We have members who never considered selling as a vocation sharing their faith, their church, and the amazing love and grace of God with neighbors and family members and friends.  At the same time we have people who have developed talents and skills and expertise in certain areas who never thought of using those talents for God but are now doing so: taking pictures and videos to record our community life, singing and making music to lead worship, preparing powerpoint presentations to help the community learn and grow, improving our website to share our message with the wider world, and in many, many other ways.  Together we, as the author of 1 Peter said, are being built into a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.

 

These are wonderful words of acceptance.  That acceptance is what builds a community.  It is only as we feel accepted in this place, as we feel those words to be true, as we accept one another, that we are built into this spiritual house wherein God dwells. And it happens in many varied and surprising ways.

 

One young woman, a college student found this acceptance and this truth about her own meaning, worth and place in the weekly repetition of a responsive benediction each week in Sunday chapel.  Every Sunday at the close of worship, the chaplain led them in proclaiming these words: AWe know who we are as God=s children: loved, forgiven, responsible.@  The repetition of these words week after week was powerful.  She, who felt as if she were no one, was asked to claim herself as a child of God C loved, forgiven, responsible.  She was asked to believe that if God could imagine her in this way, perhaps she too could practice such imagination until she experienced its truthfulness.  As she practiced such imagination, she felt a true presence, a presence of the Spirit, and bit by bit she began to feel also a presence that was her very own.

 

A colleague of mine, a pastor in Wisconsin, related in his newsletter how he found his acceptance in the ministry of a Youth Pastor in Columbus, Ohio growing up.  Pastor Mike shared: AExcept for the Group C ushers, First Community [Church] did not feel like my church.  I enjoyed ushering because the men of Group C were interesting and because it was an alternative to sitting through church, and because, as an usher, you spent the bulk of the hour in the church kitchen looking at the Sunday paper.  I avoided worship as often as possible, the Senior Minister was unintelligible to my disinterested mind.  The only thing I remember from a sermon of his was a beautiful description of sailing his boat in the Atlantic Ocean.  Worse than church worship was Sunday School.  I did not attend Sunday School after I was confirmed; that is, until I became involved in the youth Ministry of Gabe Campbell.  Because of his ministry, I am [a pastor] today.@ 

 

He went on to share some of Gabe Campbell=s convictions which had such an impact on the youth of that church.  Convictions like: AThe Christian faith is a way of life that should change the way you live; that God loves us without qualification or end; the task of the church is to accept and affirm all people, to love others without qualification or restriction; and Church is a place to experience God=s love, forgiveness and acceptance as well as a place to rationally confront the questions of life and to bring your intelligence to the task of interpreting the Bible.@

 

People like Gabe Campbell are God=s living stones.  Such convictions are the living mortar that hold the structure together and bond other living stones in place.  This is what Jesus was all about, loving God and loving those around you.  When Jesus said his good-byes to his followers he spoke words of love to them, not words of exclusion.  When Jesus says to his followers AI am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father but through me@ he is expressing love to those who are about to go through terrible trauma in losing him.  He is not trying to set up a religious test.  He is trying to reassure them.  He reminds them to trust in God and trust in him.  He also implicitly tells them to trust in themselves and in their relationship.  AYou do know the way,@ he asserts.  AI am the way,@ and you know me.  Trust yourself to know what you know.   Trust what we have done together.  Keep doing it.  Keep loving each other as I have loved you.  You know God, because you know me.  You know the way, because you know me.  Trust yourselves, trust me, trust God.