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Last updated on
Oct. 23, 2003
Stones that live and move... Renewal for the Future
Delivered Oct. 19,
by Pastor Pauline Steinmann
Text: 1 Peter 2:4-10, 4:7-11
When I was a child growing up on the farm, the task I least enjoyed was picking up stones. I couldn't understand how these heavy dead objects could multiply year after year. Each spring we'd head out to the field, the lucky one of us girls got to drive the tractor, the rest of us walked and picked, walked and picked. It seemed like a never ending job. Stones were a hindrance to farming. These lifeless rock formations could bend a plow or be picked up in a bailer and damage its inner gears. We had little use for stones on our farm. Yet I know that stones can make beautiful houses. One can see many beautiful old stone houses in Ontario where I grew up. Each stone is hewn and carved to snuggly fit against the stone next to it, joined only by a thin layer of mortar. The diversity of stone shapes, colours and sizes adds beauty and uniqueness to each house. I have a fossilized stone that was given to me by a friend as a reminder that she prays for me regularly and one with a small cross carved into it that came from a Celtic Christian community in Scotland. It was given to me by my spiritual director. Unlike the fieldstones I used to pick up, these stones carry memories for me that remind me of God's faithfulness in the past and into the future. They represent some of my history, just as did the stones we brought here last evening. They remind me that I am part of a much broader community in this world, a community of living stones.
Living stones: that's quite a paradox. How can a lifeless object be living? The Bible is full of these paradoxical images and metaphors. I think they keep us from putting God in a box. In the Old Testament the psalmist often refers to God as a Rock. "The Lord is my Rock in whom I take refuge." (Ps. 18:2) We sing the African spiritual "My God is a Rock in a weary land." Because God is our Rock and our salvation, we need not worry about being shaken.(Ps. 62:2) In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul, in recounting Israel's history talks about how the Israelites drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, the rock out of which living water gushed, and that Rock was Christ himself (1Cor. 10:4). Peter described the Christian church as being built on the cornerstone, that which is Jesus Christ, the true living stone. He likens us, Christ's followers, to this living stone. We are living stones, fashioned after Christ.
A stone is firm, durable, it takes a lot to destroy it. This was an accurate metaphor for a people who were alienated from the surrounding society, persecuted for their faith, and facing torture and death. In a world hostile to them, Peter called them to be living stones; stones that leapt to life as representatives of Christ, holy and chosen by God. You, here in Petitcodiac are living stones, chosen too, by God to be the stones which are being built into a spiritual house in this community. You too are geographically alienated from the rest of the Canadian Mennonite community. And at times, that creates a hardship for you and for the Mennonite Church and perhaps even feels at times as though you are being persecuted because of the distance. Yet God has chosen you to journey to this land, to be the living stones who help to create the foundation and the rooms of this community. You, these living stones, created the foundations of OPAL, joined in the building of the prison ministry at Dorchester, brought to life the praises of God through the Passion Play. You, as living stones, continue to create an anchor for many people like myself, who settle for a time in the Maritimes. You have attracted those outside the founding families. You are like the early Christian church who incorporated the Gentiles into their midst. Once you were not a family together. But now you are a family, the family of God's people, first generation and third generation, ethnic Mennonite and new Mennonite, relatives by blood and relatives by faith. Looking into the future, what is it that you need so that God's vision for you will remain vibrant and alive? How will you listen to God so that you continue to create the bridges and pathways into the future, so that outsiders will continue to be brought into the inside, so that your faith continues to grow and strengthen, so that you continue to step outside the walls of this church ready to serve the community?
As you look into the future, I challenge you to let Peter's words renew your commitment to be living stones. First you need to remember who you are: You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. Your first allegiance is to God, not to this community or even to the Mennonite Church. Your identity comes from being placed here by God to enter into God's work in this community. In your covenant you claim a certain identity based on your commitments. I know you recently re-covenanted together, but I invite you to do so again - this time reflecting on your identity as God's people and on your future dreams as a church of living stones. (Let's read this together.)
You are a royal priesthood, a holy people! Why? What is your response to this identity to be? You spoke to part of this through your covenant - sharing your love, time, talents with each other, bringing good news to the poor and setting the oppressed free. It is all of this, but Peter tells us that it is that you may declare the praise of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light! You are not a royal priesthood for your own sake but for the sake of God! You are to sing God's praises, tell of his mighty acts. When was the last time you talked to each other about how God is working in your life? About how God taught you to trust in God? How you saw and felt God's movement in your life or your child's life? You are a holy people so that you can declare God's praises! To each other and to the world! If we do not tell of what God has done for us we become dead and lifeless stones. "What do these stones mean?" "God brought you to Petitcodiac. Here God led you, walked with you, wept with you through the deaths of two young men, rejoiced with you as you helped to set free prisoners, both those in Dorchester and those from mental institutions. Here God is going before you, so that Petitcodiac and Moncton and surrounding communities will know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and that you will always trust and bring glory to God." In declaring God's praises, others will hear the good news and be set free. They will learn to know Jesus as Liberator and Lord.
Remembering who you are and who God is, is the foundation for looking into the future. As a holy nation you pattern yourself after the cornerstone, Jesus Christ. Just as stones that are used in building are hewn and chiselled, shaped and formed to fit beside each other, so too are you hewn and chiselled by the guiding hand of God. As you learn to love each other, you are being shaped into the spiritual house. In chapter 4 Peter notes a number of qualitites that will characterize the church as living stones: we must be a praying community, must love each other deeply, offer hospitality, serve others, use the gifts that God has given us, be grace to one another, speak as though it were Christ speaking, and lastly do everything in God's strength.
Each one of these qualities is necessary - they are not optional. Christ's love identifies us as Christians. Offering hospitality to outsiders, being of service to those currently outside the community, speaking as Christ would, being priests or mediators for others, lifting them up in our prayers of intercession to the Christ who heals and saves – all of these things point to the love that flows from us as God's holy people. Love covers a multitude of sins, Peter says. This doesn't mean it covers them up, or disregards them, or shoves them under the rug. No, this means that the power of love is to transform. Erland Waltner in his commentary on Peter, says that it means love actually brings sin to an end, it transforms sin and evil into good.
Last summer a 12 year old girl in our congregation was diagnosed as anorexic. She was ill enough that hospitalization was just around the corner. Her parents sought prayer support from the church, counselling support for their daughter and themselves as a family, and read as many books on the subject as they could get their hands on. The young girl did not want to be centre stage at church with her illness and so in consultation with her, small groups of people within the congregation were informed of the situation. They were asked to pray that this evil that had taken hold of her mind and body be released, to be supportive of her through cards, conversations, telephone calls, and any other ways they felt called. I believe that the tangible love that was shown her, transformed the harm and damage that this illness was doing to her. Today, she is growing both in height and weight, she is confident, she is participating in track once again and her smile is beaming. God's love covers over, transforms a multitude of sins. When love is put into action, God's grace abounds.
This is who we are to be as a community of living stones, patterned after Jesus Christ himself. We look to the past, draw the line through all these stones and extend it into the unknown future. Here in Petitcodiac Mennonite Church you can face this unknown future with hope because of the steadfast love of God in the past, because your eyes are focused on Christ the cornerstone, and because you are practised in telling your stories of how God is your Rock and refuge. When your children and your children's children ask "What do these stones mean?" you can say, "They remind us of who God is, where we have come from and where we are going." You are living stones. For you "declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." As you leave our worship time this morning, I invite you to take with you a stone, one that is yet unwritten, one that will carry you into your future in God. Go well into your future, trusting God as your Rock and Christ as your living cornerstone! To God belong the glory and power forever and ever. Amen.