The Western ("Wailing") Wall, sole remnant of the podium on which the Jerusalem Temple was built.
Living Stones
14 May 2017
Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
(Oregon)
8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Mass
God, give us hearts open to change and
growth,
Ground us in You, Our Rock and
Unshakeable Refuge.
Amen.
Most of our readings today have stones
or rocks in them. The Psalm says, "O God, You are my Rock!" The
Epistle talks about Christ being a stone giving us life, the capstone of the
Temple, though once rejected in the quarry as flawed, and of us believers all
being stones infused with Christ’s life in a Temple—the House of God—built to
give acceptable offerings to God. The Gospel talks about that House of God
where Jesus invites us to follow him:
“In my Father’s House, there is more than enough room. Otherwise, why do you think I’d invite you to
come there with me? I am the way to that House, the truth, and the life.” He might as well has said, “I am the Rock all
this is built on.” And the first
lesson—that horrible story of the murder by stoning
of one of the first seven deacons of the Church, Stephen.
In today’s Acts story, some people are
unhappy with the competition the deacon Stephen presents them. They accuse him of blaspheming the House of
God and the Law of Moses that it embodies, saying that Jesus of Nazareth will
come back to destroy the Temple and change the Laws. Stephen, “looking like an angel,” reacts in
kind, harshly saying “you are … always opposing the Holy Spirit, and killing
the prophets as your ancestors did” (Acts 7:51-53). “You” and “Us.” Clear divisions between good
guys and bad guys, whether you are on Stephen’s side or his opponents’. Stephen’s accusers pick up stones and kill
him. How could they not be bad guys?
Dividing the world into “good guys” and
“bad guys” may be satisfying for telling a riveting story and stirring the
fires of tribal and family attachment.
But it is contrary to Jesus’ teachings:
“Be wholly complete like God—who impartially gives the blessing of rain
and sunshine equally to the ‘righteous’ and the ‘wicked’” (Matt. 5:44,
48). “The first will be last and the
last first”… the ‘good guys’ will be turn out to be bad, and the ‘bad guys’
turn out good (Matt. 20:16). A pillar
of righteous living goes to the Temple to pray and so does a notorious
sinner—the Pharisee and the Tax Collector—and guess who goes home right with
God? (Luke 18:9-14).
If I owe my neighbor love, who is my
neighbor? Who is on this side of that
line? Jesus replies with a story of
hated foreigner showing compassion while the religious stalwarts walk on
by. You create neighbors by being
compassionate with them, not by drawing lines between our tribe and its
barbarian enemies.
“Forgive others as you would want to be forgiven.”
Then, on the cross, a line that is quoted by Stephen as the stones begin to
rain down upon him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are
doing.”
Every single one of us is a mixture of
good and bad. We are all God’s
creatures. Labeling a whole person or
group as “Good” or “Bad” only confuses matters.
The line between good and bad is not between groups of people, but runs
down the middle of each and every human heart. So we need to pray even for our
enemies. We are all in this
together.
In the Harry Potter books, Harry’s
Godfather tells him, “We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters
is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” His mentor Professor Dumbledore tells him: “It is our choices, Harry, that show
what we truly are….”
If these stories are
not about good guys vs. bad guys, why do some people in these stories accept
Jesus as the Rock, and others pick up rocks to kill people like Stephen? What is it in our hearts that allows some of us
to accept the apostles’ witness, yet others to reject it and try to stamp out
this belief even by murder? What makes
some of us cry “Joy!” and others, “Blasphemy!” What in our hearts leads us to
be living stones or to pick up stones of death?
There are some hints in the Hebrew Scriptures that 1 Peter quotes, all with references to rocks and stones. 1 Peter quotes from Isaiah about those who try to seek a sense of security by deceiving themselves:
There are some hints in the Hebrew Scriptures that 1 Peter quotes, all with references to rocks and stones. 1 Peter quotes from Isaiah about those who try to seek a sense of security by deceiving themselves:
“Look! I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem, a firm and tested stone, a precious
cornerstone, safe to build on. Whoever
trusts in it need never be shaken. I will test you with the measuring
line of justice and the plumb line of
uprightness. Since
you have made your refuge out of lies, a hailstorm will knock it down. Since it is made of deception, a flood will sweep it away. [Not so, the
Rock I offer!]” (Isaiah 28:15-17).
This was probably the passage Jesus was thinking about when he gave his parable of the house built on a rock and when he gave Peter his name, meaning “Rock,” after his declaration of faith in Jesus.
Faith based on the Rock is grounded in truth, not self-deception. It must respond to the realities of our experiences. And its ultimate measure is justice, fairness, and right dealing with others. Not bullying or high-pressure sales tactics, just gentle, loving truth.
1 Peter also quotes a Psalm of praise
to God from someone who had been in horrible straits, set upon by persecutors
until almost dead, whom God surprisingly rescues. The turnaround is described this way:
17-20 I didn’t die. I lived!
And now I’m telling the world what Yahweh did.
…21-25 Thank you for responding to me;
you’ve truly become my salvation!
The stone the masons discarded as flawed
is now the capstone!
This is Yahweh’s work.
We rub our eyes—we can hardly believe it!
On this day, Yahweh has acted!let’s celebrate and be festive! (Psalm 118:17-24)
Christians ever since the beginning
have used this Psalm to describe the resurrection of Jesus. It is a mainstay in
our Easter liturgies. The very fact that
Jesus’ case was so hopeless—dead and buried in a quarried tomb—is why Peter
uses this image of a flawed quarry stone once cast away, but wondrously now a
finished, precious, capstone of a great building.
Peter adds a final passage to tell us
of this mystery of the heart, another oracle from Isaiah:
14The Holy One can be either a Hiding Place
or a Boulder blocking your way,
The Rock standing in the way of the willful …
A net preventing trespass…
15Many are going to run into that Rock
and get their bones broken,
Get tangled up in that net
and not get free of it.” (Isa 8:14-15)
I do not know why sometimes we are able
to joyfully accept new things from God and other times we aren’t.
Part of it comes from enjoying and
loving what we have received from God in the past. New things present themselves as strange,
risky, and possibly a betrayal.
Sometimes in these matters, bitterness can grow where we are feeling
uncertain, on shaky ground. The Rock we
thought was unshakeable has turned
out to be unstable. We perhaps talk to others rather than to the
one we think is strange. As seen in this
Synagogue in Acts, gossip and grumbling thus can become the first step on the
possibly deadly road of faction and schism.
We begin by trying to relieve our own anxiety and fear by labeling the
others as bad guys.
It is important to honor and value
where we have come from. This is why we
must not demonize or belittle Judaism.
It is also why we must not belittle or demonize Eastern Orthodoxy or
Roman Catholicism, or the great insights of the Reformation. We must in this all be open to God doing a
new, wondrous act.
C.S. Lewis wrote famously, the one
prayer that God can never grant, will never grant, is the prayer after we have
received grace and light from God, the prayer that says, “Encore!”
We need to base ourselves on Jesus as
the living Rock, have full assurance of being beloved by him, and no fear. Only thus can we serve as living stones for
others. Only thus can the House of which
we are part make truly acceptable sacrifices to God.
In reflecting of these stories this
week, I invite us all to apply Isaiah’s standards of truth, justice, and
fairness with others when looking at our own attachments to the past. Are our feelings in any of these matters
firmly grounded in confidence in Jesus who will never let us down? Or does it grow from fear of losing what we
once enjoyed, and that now find fading or gone?
Do we choose to label and draw lines, rather than take responsibility
for our feelings and enter into uncomfortable conversations with the strange?
Do we choose to be living stones, or
stones of death?
In
the name of God, Amen.
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