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Easter 5A April 24, 2005
Hamlet soliloquizes, “To be, or not to be: that is the
question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by
opposing end them.” Great literature is not concerned with petty matters
like mixed metaphors.
Today’s reading from the first letter of Peter includes an
exuberant selection of figures of speech. These young churches in
northern and western continental Turkey are described as “newborn infants
longing for the pure, spiritual milk,” as “living stones built into a
spiritual house” as “a holy priesthood” offering “spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” They are “a chosen race . . . a
holy nation, God’s own people . . .called out of darkness into his
marvelous light.” They are those who now “have received mercy.” They
are aliens and exiles.
Because they are all these things they have received the grace
and power of God to live godly lives. They are free from slavery to the
“desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.” They have the
grace necessary to “conduct themselves honorably” and provide their
neighbors reason to “glorify God when he comes to judge.” In an place
and time where banditry and rebellion were common, Peter urges the new
Christians to “accept the authority of every human institution,” to
“silence the ignorance of the foolish” and as servants of God, to live as
free people,
not using freedom as a pretext for evil. Honor everyone. Love the family
of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
Many of us remember parents and grandparents telling us as we
went out into the world, to school, to play, to situations where we had
to make decisions about our behavior, “Remember who you are.” Either said
or implied was the second part, “Remember who you are, And behave
accordingly.” Self-image is important. We generally try live up to who we
think we really are. Identity counts. There is truth in identity
politics. Churches and other institutions have to pay attention to
questions of identity. One way to see the present conflict in the
Episcopal Church is as a question of identity. Identity can be positive
and negative. For example, the Episcopal Church is a church of the bible.
Positively that means we look to what the Articles of Religion call “the
Word of God written” to guide us in our life together. At ordination
clergy promise that we “do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to
salvation.” Negatively being a church of the bible means that we
distinguish ourselves from those who look to other sources of religious
truth. The God we worship is God revealed in Holy Scripture, as the hymn
has it, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”
I was at lunch Tuesday with the clergy of our deanery – the 10
churches in the area that goes from Newton to Marion to Wilkesboro
including Hickory, Morganton, and Lenoir - at the restaurant on King
Street across from our bank when we heard that Cardinal Ratzinger had
been elected pope. As Benedict 16th he will influence the identity of the
Roman Catholic church. The General Convention of 2006 will elect a
Presiding Bishop, and he will have some influence on the identity of the
Episcopal Church. The Di ocese of Western North Carolina with Porter
Taylor as bishop is slightly different from the diocese when Robert
Johnson was bishop, different from when Bill Weinhauer was bishop,
different from when George Henry was bishop and so on. Every one of us
has an influence on the identity of the church and the community and the
job and the family where we serve Christ. We are baptized in the name of
God, and that baptism and how we live into it shapes our identity.
We begin as newborn babes, fed on milk, able to grab on and
suck. Remember that Peter is writing to churches who were as close in
time to the Resurrection of Jesus as we are to the Vietnam War. He’s
writing to first generation Christians. We’re about 60th generation
Christians. In one sense we stand on the spiritual shoulders of those who
have gone before. St. Paul wrote to Timothy about the faith that came to
him from his grandmother Lois. In another sense Christ has to come to us
as individually and as immediately as he did to Peter fishing beside the
lake. He was fishing by the Sea of Galilee; we’re fishing by Lake James.
But we’re both fishing for souls, our own and our family’s and our
cousins’ and our aunts’ and our friends’.
As Christian people we are a new people, servants and slaves
not of our own wills and desires but servants and slaves of Christ,
ransomed, redeemed, bought at the price of the death of the son of God,
given the assurance of new life by his resurrection. It’s God’s church,
not ours. We are stewards, called on to do the best we can day by day by
God’s grace, called to pass on to the next generation the good news we
have received. That’s why Christian Education is important, why we need
to be reading our bibles, be informed about God’s work in the world he
has redeemed, blooming where he has planted us.
The first image Peter uses is “newborn infants who 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.” The second is “living stones . .
. built into a spiritual house.” People sometimes tell me, “I can worship
anywhere.” My response, sometimes silent, sometimes spoken, is “Do you?”
Most of us need to set aside a time and a place for special things.
Mediterranean cities have a marketplace forum, an outdoor theatre, and
lots of temples dedicated to lots of diving beings. The early Christians
to whom Peter was writing shared the desire to have a place of their own
to worship the Lord who is good. Last week I got an e-mail note from the
people at St. Thomas, Burnsville. They have been worshipping at the
American Legion Hall; now they want to build a church, and they ask help.
This congregation has been there within the living memory of some of you.
When I was vicar at Resurrection, Joppatowne, Maryland we build first a
parish house and then a church. The parish house was cinder block inside,
and we painted the block with sealer. I can show you where I painted.
Buildings have corner stones. When this church was built you brought the
one from the old church. Peter reminds us that our corner stone is Jesus
Christ.
He quotes the verse from Psalm 118:22 that formed part of the
early church’s statement of identity in conflict with the Jewish
religious establishment, “The stone that the builders rejected has become
the very head of the corner.” He brackets that with two verses from
Isaiah, one about the assurance of faith in Christ, “whoever believes in
him will not be put to shame” and the other about how we stumble when we
follow “the devices and desires of our own hearts” rather than the will
of the God who made us and loves us and wants what is best for us.
The question of why folks stumble on the solid rock of Christ
is way too complex to try to deal with in a few minutes. St. Peter simply
says, “they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined
to do.” I’ve had enough experience following my own path until I get lost
in the swamp up to my hips in alligators that I have begun to learn to
look for the rocks and the tree blazes and the other signs of God’s will.
St. Peter’s point is that we are living stones, built into the
spiritual house of Christ’s church for a purpose, “to offer spiritual
sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” The great spiritual
sacrifice we offer is ourselves, our souls and bodies, in the gifts of
bread and wine at the altar, praying that God the Holy Spirit will make
us holy – sanctify us – “that we may faithfully (in true faith) receive
this Holy Sacrament, and serve God in “unity, constancy, and peace” so
that at the last day he may bring us with all the saints into the joy of
his eternal kingdom.
Until that last great day we live as aliens and exiles, called
and empowered by the Holy Spirit to “abstain from the desires of the
flesh that wage war against the soul, called and empowered to conduct
ourselves honorably, as servants of God, living as free people. “Honor
everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear only God.” Amen.
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