1 Peter 2:2-10
May 18, 2014
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco
Earlier this year, I led a group to Italy. Our purpose was to look at religious art to deepen our faith. But unsurprisingly, most of the art are in cathedrals and churches. They were first commissioned by the church to teach people the Christian way. Some wealthy families commissioned artwork to hang in their homes and the predominant subject in those days would be Christian topics. So whether it was Da Vinci’s The Last Supper fresco or Michelangelo’s David sculpture, they are found in churches or museums. You wonder where are the living people in these cathedrals and churches?
In our previous travels to Germany and to Greece and Turkey, we visited old churches too where we saw some spectacular architecture and artwork. And in all of these places including St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, there are tombs of past disciples and saints underneath them. There were plenty of dead people but where are the living ones?
The Anglican Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Bath, England is having a problem today not from the living people but because of the dead ones. When they were worshiping, the floors started to collapse under them over the estimated tombs of 6000 people’s graves. They are disintegrating! The massive 500 year-old Norman Cathedral was built over a 7th century monastery. This church is threatened because it sits on too many bones. Under this church, thousands of bones are shifting and the church is about to come down.
Aren’t we glad that after the 1906 Earthquake, all of the cemeteries were relocated to Colma!
God’s Living People
In today’s passage, 1 Peter 2, we have the metaphor of Jesus Christ as the Cornerstone, to whom we can come to be built “like living stones…into a spiritual house.” With this image, Christians are every part of the building except the Cornerstone—not as dead bones, but living stones.
Let’s be clear here. We are talking about living stones, not a living stone. It’s not possible to build a building with only the cornerstone and with one other stone. Or to use Peter’s language from this passage, we’re not God’s own person, but God’s own people. In fact, except when speaking of the Cornerstone that is Christ, all of the other metaphors in these verses are in the plural form.
One can’t just be holy with the Lord alone but that holiness or becoming “living stones” only comes when we are in community together. The point is that not only that holiness, good deeds, spiritual growth and the like are best fostered by a faith community, but also that the community itself, and not the individual, is the primary way to faith.
These stones become “living” by coming to the Cornerstone. That’s where they—we—find out where we fit into God’s design.
After visiting some of the great cathedrals and churches in Europe, one can’t avoid thinking about what is happening in churches in the United States. According to most surveys, church attendance, at least in the northern hemisphere, is dropping off. And a growing number of people are saying that they like Jesus but not the church. Perhaps they see more bones and just dead stones than they would like to see.
If you were to Google the question: “Is it necessary to go to church to be a Christian?” you would find several sites that urge regular attendance at church. The argument is made in 2 ways. 1. By telling what benefits you receive by going to church—things like fellowship, moral guidance, biblical instruction, opportunities to recharge, spiritual encouragement and so on. At FCBC, we might include: helping to raise up your children, Day Camp and Youth Camp that have transformed lives, great fellowship groups and so on.
Number 2 is quoting Scripture. The writer in Hebrews 10:25 speaks about not neglecting to meet together to anticipate the day of the Lord is coming. Romans 12:5 speaks about we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. And in 1 Corinthians 12:12, Paul makes this same point. These texts and others speak about the importance of the church.
The list of benefits is valid and those Scripture verses are correct, but they are being used in what we call as the “carrot and the stick.” The carrot is the benefits and the stick is the Bible verses. And since the “carrot-and-stick” idiom arose from the reward-punishment technique for getting mules to go where you want them to go, we have to wonder how much spiritual value they have even if they actually help build church attendance.
Do you understand this? We are waving this “carrot” of great programs in front of people to entice them to come to church while at the same time saying that if they don’t, then there’s a “stick” that will punish them. Is this really a good way to encourage people to come to church?
What’s more, not everybody feels the need of a church body to offer fellowship and moral guidance, especially if they are comfortably introverted, have close family ties and good friendships—or maybe have a whole bunch of upright and supportive people who “like” them on Facebook. Why would people like this need the church anyway?
Living Stones
Peter is not talking about “carrot-and-stick” stuff here nor is he talking about increasing church attendance. Instead, he calls us to come to Christ the Cornerstone, and let ourselves, like living stones, be built into a spiritual house.
For many people, coming to Christ awakens a hunger to learn more and go deeper, and even find ways to serve. Those are the things that bring us to church. But even more, they help to make us the church. Christ asks us to let ourselves be built into a spiritual house. This means to function as part of what God is building in this world and for the next world, and it’s what he asks us to do. God wants us to be part of the church where people can meet God.
While we often hear when we introduced ourselves to others that we are members of FCBC, people would say, “Oh, that’s James Chuck’s church!” We know that it’s Christ’s church. And as members of Christ’s church, the truth is that we are integral members, the living stones that make up this church.
There’s an old story where a Spartan king boasted to a visiting king about the walls of Sparta. The visiting royal looked around but could not see any barricade, and so he said, “Where are these walls about which you boast so much?”
The Spartan king pointed to his troops and said, “These are the walls of Sparta—every man a brick.”
That’s a living wall. Since the Spartan brick wall was mainly for defense, it eventually failed. But God calls us to come to Christ with the variety of talents and gifts we have and let ourselves be cemented into the structure of the church. We have many different roles that make this living church function together—outreach, fellowship, discipleship, Baptist witness, youth ministry, children’s ministry, senior ministry and many more places to be living stones.
Even Greater Works
When Jesus was teaching the disciples about what will be happening after the betrayals and denials, the disciples started to worry about how would they know where to find him. They were looking for a way to be with Jesus again.
In John 14:1-14, Jesus first tells them that in his Father’s house, there are many places for all of them and that he is the way, the truth and the life to eventually get there. Jesus then reminded them that if they have seen him, they have also seen the Father because the Father has been in him. The words that he’s been saying are the Father’s words.
But here is the point. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” (John 14:12-14).
How many of us hears this and believes it? The remarkable truth is that the disciples will do greater works than Christ has done. If they ask for anything, he will do it.
Can Jesus be serious? We will do “greater works” even than the works of the Son of God, the light of the world? Jesus promise us that as imperfect as we are, we will do “greater things” because he is going to the Father. As followers, we can do great things only through a relationship with Jesus who is in a unique relationship with God the Father.
When Jesus says that we will be able to do “greater works” even than he, he is not making a flattering claim about us. He is revealing himself in his unique relationship to the Father. When we in our little lives allow ourselves to become living stones to dare play a bit part in the great drama of God’s redemption story of the world, it’s something close to what Jesus has done for us dying sinners on his cross and in resurrection. Thus Jesus makes the bold claim that our deeds will be even greater. He will make our human deeds his divine deed.
Just like Jesus worked a great miracle of multiplying a few loaves and fishes into bread and food for a multitude, Jesus is using people like us to multiply the good that he wants to do in the world.
There’s a pastor who said, “I had been trying to get that church in gear for four years. Like beating my head against a brick wall. Then I preached this sermon. And I really didn’t intend to preach on the church’s mission and our need to get involved. I had given up, actually. Well, Monday morning a woman, one of our most senior members, called and said, ‘I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. I just couldn’t get your sermon out of my mind.’
“My sermon? I asked in astonishment.”
“Yep, your sermon. When you asked, in your Sunday’s sermon, ‘If this church disappeared from this town today, would anybody notice the difference?’ I just couldn’t get that out of my brain. I want you to know that I’m ready to work with you to make this church make a difference in this town. When can you meet me at the church?”
The pastor said, “That woman’s effort, spurred on by one little throw-away comment in my sermon, has given this church a new lease on life. We now have a food pantry for the poor, a clothes closet, new Bible study groups and you name it. All because one single person heard something mentioned in a sermon, heard her name called. Just one.”
Jesus says that we, despite all of our sins and faults, will do some great works when we are living stones cemented together with Christ as the Cornerstone.
Abbey Church
The practice of burying the dead within churches, or building churches atop the honored dead, dates back to the early centuries of Christianity. Saint Peter’s Basilica, for example, is the most recent of several churches built over the site that tradition said was the grave of Simon Peter. Some Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the tombs of the martyrs, partly in the belief that those honored dead were “friends of God” who would help forward their prayers in heaven. Burying the faithful in existing churches was simply another step in that process.
For many Christians, though, that idea changed with the Protestant Reformation that occurred about 500 years ago, which rejected the role of intercessory saints, promoting instead the priesthood of believers. It followed then that most Protestants like Baptists didn’t see the need to pray quite so near their dead, and burying the deceased under the floors was seldom practiced in Protestant churches.
Getting back to the Abbey Church in Bath, England, the grave stones and dead people’s bones that are creating huge voids underneath the entire structure will continue to threaten the very stability of the 500 year-old building. But as long as there are living members of the congregation who gather in Christ’s name, the spiritual house that occupies the old cathedral will still stand.
Next year, our church will be completing 135 years of ministry in San Francisco nothing compared to the old churches in Europe. Last week, the Long-range Planning Committee appointed by the Deacons in March 2013 met for the last time and is completing its report about the priorities that we face in the next 5 years. Our 1888 church building burned down in 1906 and this one rebuilt in 1908 has withstood the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The challenge facing us today is: Are we living stones with Christ as our Cornerstone ready to do even greater things for God? If our church were suddenly gone from this corner in Chinatown, would anyone notice?
Present yourselves as living stone building materials for the construction of the living church not threatened by old bones but vibrant and alive with the life that Christ gives, where you and all the rest of the people in the world can meet with God.
Let us pray.
Dear God who built the whole world with your own hands and breathed life and spirit into all living creatures. Thank you for Jesus Christ who is your Son and the Cornerstone of the church comprised of living stones. Remind us Lord that when we serve you through the ministries of this church, we will do great things to advance your kingdom on earth as we know is already in heaven. Cement our lives with you and we pray that we remain living witnesses of Good News today. In the name of Christ, the Cornerstone in the world, we pray. Amen.