Living Stones and Sentence Diagrams (1 Peter 2:2-10)

Note: Most of my preached sermons stick close to what I've written and posted here. I added enough to this in the pulpit that I thought it made sense to include the live version here. It starts just before the 25 minute mark in the video above.

During this Easter season, we’ve heard several passages from the Book of First Peter. This morning, we read what I believe is the most famous one–verses from the book’s second chapter that compare the Risen Christ and his followers to a most unusual kind of rock.

Come to him, a living stone though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like 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. (1 Peter: 2:4-5)

Now, let’s be clear. There’s no evidence that Peter was thinking about some naturally occurring phenomenon here.

The living stones he describes aren’t anything like the trolls in Frozen.

Rather, he seems to be deliberately stretching his audience’s imagination a little bit—using contrast and even humor to get them thinking about their relationship with Jesus in a new way.

Talk of living stones brings to mind images of growth, movement, and vitality–not the sort of things one usually looks for in building materials, but qualities Christians have associated with discipleship since the Church’s inception.

Reading the passage, I also can’t help but think about the role idols and temples played in the Roman Empire. That is, after all, the cultural background for this scripture.

Written in Rome and delivered to Christians who were facing hardships because of their beliefs in another part of the Empire, the author and audience were surrounded by statues and structures dedicated to the pantheon of Roman gods and goddesses.

Today, we call the remains of those statues and structures archaeological treasures, but to many of our spiritual ancestors they were symbols of an Imperial cult built on forced obedience and their oppression.

According to Peter, they were really just rocks.

Instead, he wanted the people to think about their relationship with Christ not as one thinks about a shrine to which they bring an offering or a temple that they visit, but as a force of life and energy to which they are intimately connected.

Like newborn infants, 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. (1 Peter 2:2-3)

Because of their connection with that force, the people take on its characteristics, too.

Peter reminds the Church that things that detract from and destroy relationships must find no room in their hearts.

Things like malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander–you don’t build God’s spiritual house with junk like that.

Living stones, on the other hand, are holy, chosen, and set apart for awesome work.

Peter wrote,

You [Church] are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)

As my friends and I discussed these verses at our preacher’s Bible Study this week we noted the generous use of adjectives in the passage.

If you grew up diagramming sentences in English class, this passage might give you flashbacks, because it seems as though almost every noun has a modifier connected to it.

Of course, sometimes writing like that comes across as pedantic or ostentatious, and sometimes it reflects a student’s desperate attempt to reach the minimum word court for their assignment.

But here, it reads as excitement, like this is really wonderful, important, life changing news that the apostle is almost straining to put it into words.

Just listen again to some of the adjectives he uses—newborn, pure, spiritual, living, chosen, precious, holy, royal, marvellous—and all those words either describe the people or the Church’s mission.

What beautiful and evocative descriptions of who we are and what the Church is all about.

Come to him, a living stone though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like 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. (1 Peter: 2:4-5)

I suppose another way to say all this is that Jesus is on the move and we’re called to go, too.

To go with him to those who are hurting with grace that brings healing.

To go with him to those who have been pushed aside and forgotten with grace that welcomes and restores.

To go with Christ to those who are buried under lifeless stones with grace that sets free and gives life.

As Peter wrote in the letter’s opening chapter,

Prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed….[Do] not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:13-16)

You and I, the people of Asbury Church, have been through and, even now, are going through a lot.

There’s heartbreak in our stories, grief in our stories, screw ups and losses and mistakes and troubles in our stories, but, thanks be to God, God isn’t done with our stories just yet.

The message of First Peter is that God’s love is still at work within and among us–speaking hope into our hearts, helping us to bear one another’s burdens, and building us into something beautiful–a real, vibrant, and living community centered in Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.