Living Stones: 1 Peter 2:2-10 - Fifth Sunday of Easter

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
  ⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like 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. ⁶For 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.”
⁷To 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,”
⁸and
 “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.
  ⁹But 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.
 ¹⁰Once you were not a people,
  but now you are God’s people;
 once you had not received mercy,
  but now you have received mercy. (NRSV)

Cornerstone of First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Leechburg. Photo by author

Our main church building is constructed out of what is known as Hummelstown Brownstone. Go to any city or college campus in the Northeastern United States—and you’re going to find plenty of structures built of it—including schools, courthouses, prisons, office buildings, churches, and even bridges. It was quarried by near the town of Hummelstown, Pennsylvania—just outside of Harrisburg—and was valued for its beauty, strength, and the relative ease by which masons shape it into building stones. This stone, unlike other kinds of stone, doesn’t break apart when it’s carved or chiseled.

The fact that our building is 117-years old and that it survived the devastating St. Patrick’s Day Flood of 1936 proves that our forebears built it right. But it isn’t Hummelstown Brownstone that makes us a church.

In our second reading for today, the writer of 1 Peter describes the Body of Christ as a spiritual household built of living stones, laid upon the cornerstone of the crucified and risen Christ.

I find great comfort in this imagery in a time when this church building and others like it have been empty and lifeless for eight weeks.

Not only that, people are scared stiff by the devastation and death happening all around. Lives have been shattered, broken, and reduced to rubble. Worse yet, some people’s hearts are stone cold, as they disregard the warnings, deny the dangers, and put their neighbor’s lives at risk—in the name of profit and personal freedom.

And yet, when death knocks down what you’ve built up, God’s “reconstruction work” will soon be underway. The death and resurrection of Christ make this abundantly clear. Every day, you are a new creation. We are a new creation. Even though we are a scattered church, we are no less a church than we were when we worshipped and served here. And Jesus is no less present. In fact, God is doing something entirely new—and entirely necessary—in our common life. We are becoming a new spiritual household.

Considering the challenges of being a 21^st century congregation based in a building built before the advent of the automobile, we know that this spiritual household of living stones requires updating, renovating, strengthening, and beautifying if God’s children expect to be at home here.

At the same time, you need Jesus to do the very same in your personal life if your desire is to live in daily in God’s goodness and love. Daily life has a way of pulling you out-of-sync with the rhythms of God’s working in the world. It is our human inclination to build our lives upon our achievements, our reputations, and our ability to control circumstances and conform them to our will. If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that lives built upon these things are like houses built upon the sand.

Human sin is the refusal to lay one’s interests aside to care for the neighbor. It’s why, in the face of a pandemic, our society is striving to protect what matters most to it: power and profit. But stones must support each other if the house is going to stand. Otherwise, what you get is a pile of rubble.

Every one of our lives has been disrupted. Every one of us has experienced loss and hardship; some much more than others. But God’s reconstruction work has never ceases. Now is an ideal time to loosen your death grip upon your own interests and your desire to be in control, and trust in the new creation God is bringing.

The phrase “living stones” is a beautiful metaphor for what God is doing. What is stone? It is basically dust that has been formed into something solid and enduring with pressure and time. And when it is taken from the ground, it is shaped to build beautiful structures that bring life to the world—and stand the test of time. But living stones move. Living stones are animated by God’s love. Living stones embody the truth that Jesus does not dwell in structures made of human hands, but instead dwells with God’s people on earth—particularly the poor, the powerless, and the suffering. Living stones don’t so much build a house as they do a household—a family where all God’s children can shelter in God’s mercies.

What we are in right now as these living stones, is God’s work of reshaping, reforming, and restoring what death has knocked down. Your call and mine is not to tell Jesus how he ought to rebuild us. We’re the stones—not the architects. Your call and mine is to become the household of living stones that God desires us to be. God accomplishes this through the time you spend in God’s presence and through the good you do for the neighbor. Your acts of faith ultimately pave the way for the new creation that will be revealed at the proper time.

So be of good courage—because despite the chaos and loss happening all around us, a new spiritual household is being built. You are a new creation. You, as living stones are being formed, and strengthened into a people who bear the beauty of God’s love to the world. You, as living stones, are a household where all the weary and broken can shelter in God’s mercy and love.