Living Stones that Find a Place in God's House
“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, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ”
“Jesus said, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’”
Early in my time at St. Luke’s I had the chance to preach on this or a similar set of scriptural images, and the resulting sermon illustration required everyone in the congregation to stand up, reach out and hold each others’ hands as they became pillars of God’s house. The point was that we, together are what builds God’s house, and that dwelling together in community is how we experience dwelling in God. That’s still true, even as we contemplate God from our separate dwelling places, and even as we reach out to each other in new ways. Our connection to each other is a major part of our connection to God. Coming before God as a “living stone’ means being the kind of material that produces a dynamic, living edifice. The house that Peter envisions is not one that stays the same forever, but one that is built on the certainty that each part of it is precious to God.
We are, all together, the “royal priesthood,” and the collection of “living stones” that make up the temple in which we all serve. I hope you can see that in the ways that each of you is holding together the house of God right now, and making the spiritual sacrifices necessary to bring God’s mission out of the building and into the world. You are reaching out to neighbors, taking care of friends, praying every day and every night for those who are suffering and those who are in a position to help directly, you are allowing yourselves to be molded by compassion into people who will sacrifice some joy and pleasure so that others may live. You are doing all kinds of things no one knows about to keep your own mental health strong, or to help others with theirs. You are keeping your children alive and reasonably happy as they try to comprehend what is happening in the world. You know the way forward into the new thing God is doing, even when you don’t know the time when you’ll be able to move. Jesus has gone ahead of us, and we can follow him there.
Jesus has gone ahead, and we can be sure that he will prepare a place for everyone who follows the way of love. Christian practice has many disciplines, but one we have followed recently is actually called “the Way of Love” by our Presiding Bishop. Some of the practices of the Way of Love are easy to do right now: turn, learn, pray, worship, rest, bless. Right now these are a good way to start approaching God and allowing yourselves to be shaped as living stones. We have the opportunity, while we are not engaging in as much programming at church, to take up one or more of them that may help each of us be ready to do what God calls us toward.
Someday soon (though maybe not as soon as we like) we will be able to do the seventh one: go. When that time comes will we be flexible, transformable building materials for God’s next phase of building? Or will we be static, inert materials that cannot break out of their original pattern? There is a blueprint of sorts for this new future coming out from our diocese and our own committee in the next month or so, but it’s not going to give us all the plans. We will have to discover some of them for ourselves. The practices of the Christian life give us the order and structure to deal with the anxiety and fear that come from shifts as dramatic as we are going through now. Like structures built to withstand earthquakes, we will need to have a good foundation and the flexibility to move with the trembling around us. That sounds like “living stones” to me, and it sounds like people who trust Jesus enough to follow him into an uncertain future. May we all be able to approach God as living stones, ready to be shaped into the new thing God is doing.