Everybody must get stoned

Fifth Sunday of Easter – Year A

May 18, 2014

1 Peter 2:2-10

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

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. For it stands in scripture:
   "See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
      a cornerstone chosen and precious;
    and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
   "The stone that the builders rejected
      has become the very head of the corner,"

and

   "A stone that makes them stumble,
      and a rock that makes them fall."

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God's people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

When I was younger, one of my favorite toys were my Lego's. I spent literally hours putting elaborate constructions together. I had the flat sheets that had painted roads on them, I had the large green sheets, I had small pieces, and larger pieces. I had long pieces, and shorter pieces. I had pieces in all the colors that Lego made. I had thousands of those little plastic building blocks. One of the things I will always remember about playing with Legos was sorting through the boxes looking for a specific block. Maybe it was the color, maybe it was the shape. Either way, I would sort, looking, finding, rejecting piece after piece. Eventually, I would find the piece I was looking for, and be able to complete my building project.

This last year, we finally introduced our girls to Lego building blocks. Wow, have things changed. It used to be that Lego's came in about 4 or 5 colors. Now, they come in every shade of the rainbow. Back when I was playing with them, the cars and trucks you built were basically little boxes with wheels. Now, they have curved edges. You can buy a kit to construct just about anything. I was curious and found a kit that you can use to build a 3 and a half foot tall model of the Eiffel Tower out of almost 3500 pieces. It sounds awesome, and awesome comes with a price: $2500! When I saw that, all I could think about was what would happen if you lost a crucial piece or two.

Legos have changed. It used to be that you could walk into the store and find a bucket with a few hundred bricks in it, and you could build whatever you imagined with those bricks. Now, try and find a bucket of bricks. It's almost impossible. Locate a kit to build the Batmobile, no problem. A kit that you use to construct Hogwarts, no problem. Even a kit that you can use to build a yacht. Where are the buckets of bricks with all sorts of 'generic' bricks? The kits are full of special blocks that you need in order to build that special finished project – and lose a brick, and the project can never be completed. The building becomes focused on the special bricks rather than the great majority of regular bricks that are used to build.

In our texts today, there is a theme that runs through several of our texts. In our text from Acts (Acts 7:55-60), we read of the stoning of Stephen, the first of the Christian martyrs. In our Psalm (Psalm 31), we read of God being our rock and refuge, our fortress. Then, in our text from 1 Peter, we discover that the young believers in the church are called stones. Stones, rocks, bricks.

Often when we think about rocks and stones in the church, we think about Jesus, the solid rock. The one who is described by Peter as the cornerstone upon which everything else depends. We think about the God who is described in our Psalm for today, a rock , a fortress, a refuge from the turmoil around us. We all can think of songs and hymns about Jesus or God as the rock – Jesus is the rock and he rolls my blues away, on Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sand, the Lord liveth, and blessed be the rock, A mighty fortress is our God. Without question God, Jesus, is the rock, the one who we look toward, the one upon who we can build our lives of faith. But, as Peter points out, if Jesus is the Rock, then we are the stones, the building blocks.

I've spent a lot of time talking about Lego's, but there were no Lego's around when Peter wrote his letter, no Lego's around when Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. No, there were only rocks, and stones, and bricks; and that's what we are. I almost hate to admit it, but one of the first things that came to my mind as I reflected on the texts this week was the Bob Dylan song, “Everybody must get stoned.” Laugh if you want, but a little bit of research and you can easily discover that Bob Dylan wrote the song, and chose those words not as some statement about getting high, but because of what happened to Stephen in today's text from Acts. In fact, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2012, he said that people who think the song is about drugs, “aren't familiar with the Book of Acts.”¹

When you take a stand on something, when you declare a position, you place yourself at the mercy of those who stand against you. As people of faith, we all take stands about all sorts of issues. The church and individuals have staked out positions (sometimes on differing sides) on issues of racial equality, economic inequality, justice, war and peace, the environment, contraception, sexuality, poverty, just to name a few. And when we do, we open ourselves up to being figuratively 'stoned' by those who disagree with us; as we saw happen in the last week as the Pope himself came under criticism for his declaration that economic inequality was an issue of faith. And sometimes, as in the case of Stephen, people are going to throw their rocks and accusations against us, no matter who we are, and what we say in our defense. We must all be prepared to be 'stoned' for positions we take, for the causes we choose to support.

But there is more to 'being stoned' than being used as a punching bag. If we are the stones, the building blocks through which the church of God is constructed, then when we are 'stoned' we are living into our identity as children of God.

A few years ago, when I was in Germany, I had the opportunity to watch some skilled stone masons working on repairing a centuries old stone wall. As I sat in the cafe, I watched them with fascination. They spent a great deal of time searching out, looking for the right shaped stone, the right colored stone, to fit where it was needed. But, they rarely if ever just stuck it into place. They would shape it carefully. Knocking a corner off on this one, shaving an edge on this one, only when the stone was prepared, shaped, adjusted was it placed. The shaping of the stone allowed for it be a part of the wall, a part that fit and did it's part perfectly.

Just as the stones in that wall in Germany had to be shaped and formed, we too, as the stones that are the church must be formed and shaped. All of us have edges that need to be smoothed, hard corners that need to be knocked off. And we are shaped by God, not just for fun, not just to prove how much we all need to grow, how all of us need to be corrected, improved. No, but because God desires that we be a part of the realm that God has formed, the Kingdom that God is constructing here in this place. God desires each and every one of us to be a part of the proclamation of the God who has made and formed us, walking with us out of the darkness of what has been and into the light of what can be.

Chipping away at our rough edges, knocking off our sharp corners is not always a process that is comfortable; in fact, it is often a painful process. Yet, if we are to be used by God in the building of the Kingdom it's a process that we all must go through. All of us are in the process of being molded and shaped, broken and chipped, prepared for use in the Kingdom of God, prepared for use in the world that we live in, prepared to be distributors and sharers of God's grace and love. But as painful as it is for us to be remade and refashioned, we must not forget the price paid by the one who shapes us.

When I was in Germany, watching the masons laying stone, one of the things I noticed was the ways in which the bodies of the masons had been changed through a lifetime of working with rocks, bricks and stone. The signs of their work was evident in their body. Their hands and knees bore the marks of their years working with the stones. All of us know how the work we do leaves an impact on our bodies – our knees, our backs, our eyes, our hands. The master stone-shaper who shapes and reforms us also bears the marks on his body. His hands and side are marked with the love he holds for his work, with the price he willingly paid that we could know what it is like to have once been in the darkness, but now live in the light. The price he paid that we could be part of something, be shaped and built into something beautiful.

There are all sorts of things that you can build with bricks and stones. But, we are called and tasked to be the bricks and stones of the church of God. One of my favorite composers of modern church music is Marty Haugen. He was written a song that expresses the calling and tasking we have with better and more poetic words than I could ever write:

Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live,
a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive.
Built of hopes and dreams and visions, rock of faith and vault of grace;
here the love of Christ shall end divisions:

All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where prophets speak, and words are strong and true,
where all God’s children dare to seek to dream God’s reign anew.
Here the cross shall stand as witness and as symbol of God’s grace;
here as one we claim the faith of Jesus:

All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where love is found in water, wine, and wheat:
a banquet hall on holy ground where peace and justice meet.
Here the love of God, through Jesus, is revealed in time and space;
as we share in Christ the feast that free us:

All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood and stone
to heal and strengthen, serve and teach, and live the Word they’ve known.
Here the outcast and the stranger bear the image of God’s face;
let us bring an end to fear and danger:
All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where all are named, their songs and visions heard
and loved and treasured, taught and claimed as words within the Word.
Built of tears and cries and laughter, prayers of faith and songs of grace,
let this house proclaim from floor to rafter:
All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.²

Let us build, let us be built into this place. Amen.

1http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-unleashed-a-wild-ride-on-his-new-lp-and-striking-back-at-critics-20120927

2 All are Welcome, by Marty Haugen 1995, GIA Publications, Inc.