Come to the Living Stone
“2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. The Living Stone and a Chosen People
4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—
5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”[b]
7 Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”[c]
8 and,
“A stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”[d]
They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,
that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God;
once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”1 Peter 2:2-10
Intro: A brick and a block were walking down a road
when a piece of concrete jumped up and made a funny face, screamed and ran off.
The brick asked the block, “what’s up with him?”
The block replied, don’t pay him no mind, he is a “cycle path.”
Today's scripture talks a lot about stones: cornerstones, stumbling stones, living stones, precious stones.
Jesus had renamed Simon to Peter—the Rock.
The Rock described Christ as a cornerstone, and the community of faith as living stones.
From that comparison I want to build on our understanding of Christian Community.
We Are All God Children At the Table
That makes us brothers and sisters in Christ.
We belong. We belong to Christ. We belong to one another.
WE BELONG TO GOD THROUGH CHRIST, THE CHIEF CORNERSTONE
The Bible is full of references to God as a rock.
Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “God is the rock, his works are perfect and all his ways are just.”
When Hannah prayed for a child in I Samuel she said, “There is no rock like our God.”
Psalm 28 said, “To you I call, 0 Lord my Rock; do not turn a deaf ear to me.”
Psalm 18 says, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress in whom I take refuge.”
And it is also a common threaded throughout the liturgy and Communion Service,
the phrases that we use in the community of faith—
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.
He is the Anchor that keeps the soul, steadfast and sure while the billows roll.
The Lord is the Rock of our Salvation. His banner over us is love.
Taking that image,
Peter offers an invitation.
Did you hear it in the opening Scripture reading?
The invitation is this: Come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him.
Come to the Living Stone.
You who are broken, come.
God uses broken things.
He uses broken soil to produce a crop,
He uses broken clouds to give rain,
He uses broken grain to give bread,
and He uses broken bread to give salvation and strength.
Peter, of all the disciples, surely understood that.
He knows how strong you can become in the broken places of your life.
When Jesus came to repair his denial and to put him together again following his resurrection,
Peter found his greatest strength at the places where he had his greatest problems.
You, who are broken, come to the Living Stone.
You who are wounded, come to the Lord’s Table.
It is one thing to feel loved by God when our life is all together
and all our support systems are in place.
When life is relatively easy and life is relatively good.
But what happens when life falls through the cracks,
when we sin and fail,
when our dreams are shattered
when our investments crash,
when we are regarded with suspicion,
when illness and grief come stalking into our daily lives?
What happens when we come face to face with the human condition?
And Peter says to these struggling Christians in Asia Minor who are undergoing persecution,
even in times like that, come to the Living Stone; come to the Stone.
You who are wounded, come.
You who are needy, come.
We send mission teams to third world countries and every time they come back with similar stories.
They find these congregations in third world countries to be far more alive and spiritually alert than their counterparts in the United States.
One African bishop explained it this way:
"You don't need God in your country.
By contrast, churches under daily persecution turn to their faith because they have no place else to go."
Of course they are right. You, who are needy, come.
It has been said, “We cannot know that God is all we need until God is all we have.”
Of this I am absolutely certain.
When you touch the bottom, the bottom is solid.
Jesus is a Rock in a weary land,
a Shelter in the time of storm.
Then Peter gets even more specific.
Not any old rock will do.
Christ is the Chief Cornerstone in this text.
"The stone that the builders rejected became the very head corner” (Verse 7).
We take our cues and align our lives and set our priorities
according to the ways of Christ who has gone before us on the journey.
That is true not only in our good times and our times of brilliant faith
but it is also true in our weak times, in our difficult moments, when it is hard and the suffering is real.
Remember that Christ endured suffering.
As the Apostles Creed says, He “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
Isaiah, looking through the eyes of prophesy said, "He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering."
If Christ suffered, why should we expect to be exempt from suffering?
The real question is not why do bad things happen to good people?
I’m sorry but that’s not the question.
The question is why do good things happen to bad people?
That’s the real question in life.
If I should become ill or have an accident is no cause to question.
The question is, how do so many others get off the hook?
To endure suffering is to be a part of life.
Life has an ‘if’ right in the middle of it.
We ought not to be surprised when it lands on our table and comes to our lives.
It’s an illusion to think otherwise.
Christ endured suffering. Shall not we likewise endure?
Christ redeemed suffering.
He was no joyful martyr.
He didn’t enjoy a single moment of it.
He sweat drops of blood in Gethsemane.
He cried out in human pain from the cross.
He healed many people as He traveled from village to village in His earthly ministry.
He was forever looking out, trying to heal the hurts of human beings around Him.
He was no joyful martyr, our Christ.
He came to make the world whole.
At last He took up the cross, that emblem of suffering and shame
and transformed it into something to which we can cling until we exchange it someday for a crown.
Christ redeemed our suffering.
There’s one more thing about this Christ;
He shares our suffering.
Remember His last words to the disciples in Matthew's gospel before His ascension?
"Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
You can take that promise and live by it.
Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Now I ask you today, in our transient, iffy world, what is always?
Life is not always.
Peter just said earlier in this passage:
All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall.
Spring is beautiful- but spring is brief.
It blooms today and is gone tomorrow. Life is not always.
It has an ‘if’ right in the middle of it.
The Amish have a saying “We grow old too soon and smart too late.”
In 1847 Henry Lehman started Lehman Brothers Financial Investment Corporation.
It grew to the fourth largest banking company in America.
But in 2008 they filed for bankruptcy to the tune $691 billion dollars.
Even money is not always.
So I ask you, what is always?
I have but one answer to that question, one simple answer. Jesus is Always.
He is always there.
Days may not be fair, always, but that's when He is there, always.
Not for just an hour,
not for just a day,
not for just a year, but always.
Come to Him, the Chief Cornerstone, by which you can build a life.
Closing: Church can happen anywhere -- in a sanctuary or gymnasium, in the middle of the woods or at the beach. Where have you experienced the living Jesus? With such dramatic and strong effect, like the impact and unstoppable force of a collision that it strikes something and immediately the effect is real? Communion is as real as it gets.
