As I was reading through the readings this week, I was struck by the images of stones and of dwelling places that run through all of our readings. Kind of odd images to pull together… Certainly, the gospel for today is one that is often read at funerals in the Episcopal church. It speaks of a comforting image of being joined with Jesus; it would have been something that the disciples would have needed to hear because where this reading takes place is right before Jesus is taken away to be crucified. He tells them to not let their hearts be troubled… to believe in God and in him… that somehow, some way, things will work out… the disciples of course have no way of knowing that … and we know that they become quite troubled and quite afraid in the days to follow and with good reason…
I had a thought about the readings… What does it mean for each of us to believe in Jesus? Right after he tells the disciples not to be troubled, he asks them to believe in God and to believe in him… if we were to take the images of building, of safety, of refuge, of foundational, living stones… would belief in Jesus be one of those things in our spiritual life? Peter seems to make the comparison in our Epistle today, “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.”
As I read this, I started thinking about faith, about what we say we believe as followers of Jesus… and not just what we say, but what Christians in general say they believe… and I have to say, that as I thought about all of that, I found myself getting a bit troubled myself….
Let me tell you a little bit of a story. It is about my beloved parish of St. David’s in San Diego … It is the parish that sent me to seminary. Long before I went to seminary, our building was destroyed by an arsonist’s fire. We were incredibly blessed to have as our interim priest at the time, a dear friend and mentor, named Jack Whitehouse. Jack is now in the nearer presence of God, probably causing a bit of stir with some other friends of mine, and I hope, that when my time comes, I will find what room Jack is hanging out in, in the dwelling places prepared for us so we can talk some more, but anyway, Jack was a pretty incredible preacher; and I always knew that Jack believed in Jesus; there was never any doubt in my mind…
I will never forget a particular image of Jack preaching; I don’t remember what the readings were; I don’t remember what season of the church year it was… What I remember though, is Jack picking up his black leather bible, and saying, “We don’t worship a book! We worship a man, who is also God… we worship Jesus Christ!” He went on to say that no matter how wonderful our Book was, that worshipping Jesus was much harder… because more was required of us…we had to think, we had to act, and we had to love…
It was a powerful sermon for me, and even now I can see and hear Jack. The cornerstone of our faith, the foundation of our lives, the refuge for our battered souls is Jesus… a living, breathing person who desires a relationship with us, a relationship of love; a relationship that compels us to act in the kingdom of God as disciples… our Book is an amazing, beautiful book…. And we find in it’s pages all sorts of holiness that helps us to know God, and to know Jesus… and I would also say, that the more we read scripture, the more it speaks to us, the more we learn…. It is a living book; by that I mean that if we let it, it will always be new and always helping to point toward God…
But our Book is not God. When I look around at how “faith” is practiced by many these days, it seems to me that the foundation is a little bit misplaced… if I can take the images of stones a little further, I would say that many people use the Bible as their refuge, forgetting that it points to God… and it can lead them to a faith that can be rigid and unforgiving… Look what happened to Stephen in our reading from Acts; he treated his attackers with love and forgiveness; and they used stones to kill him, rather than using stones for a life giving purpose. That’s what can happen when we forget that our faith in God is lived out in a growing and changing relationship; God became man in Jesus as an act of love; I cannot think of anything more loving than being in relationship with another; our attachment to things, whether it’s our money or our bible can become idolatrous. It can cause us to harm others because we put our idolatry before the relationships that are before us; our idolatry can cause us to be more concerned with rules than with people. Relationships are far more difficult, don’t you think? Being in relationship asks or perhaps even demands things of us; it asks us to move beyond ourselves into places that sometimes seem dangerous; relationship asks us to risk ourselves in order to gain everything… relationship asks us to be open to where the Holy Spirit is leading us, rather than getting bogged down in rules that don’t seem to care about relationship.
Jesus knew that night that he was going to face the worst that the Empire had to offer. He knew that those who were in power were afraid even though they had all of the earthly advantages… but as Easter people, you and I know that even in the face of incredible evil, love always wins. God so loved the world… that God risked everything to be in relationship with us in the life of Jesus; Jesus who is the living stone, chosen and precious, who is the foundation of all that we are and all that we believe.
We worship a living person, who is both God and man; that relationship challenges us to act in the world as he did, bringing new life, healing and new relationships, some of which we may not really want, so that God’s kingdom might be known here and now…. We need Jesus as our foundation, now perhaps more than ever. What stones are we using for our foundation? To whom or to what will we profess our faith this day?