Cornerstones - the Heart of God's Building Program
David C. Myers
April 20, 2008
I Peter 2:2 - 10
John 14:1 - 14
Text: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner," . . . . . . I Peter 2:7
These days, a cornerstone is basically a ceremonial block that is placed in a prominent position on a building. It generally notes the date of completion of the structure, and sometimes isn't actually placed in a corner. But in earlier times, the cornerstone was vital to support the building. It was not only placed in one of the corners; it was the first stone of the foundation. The remainder of the structure depended on the sturdiness of the cornerstone. The cornerstone symbolized the foundation upon which all the rest depended. Thus it was not long before the writers began to use "cornerstone" as a figure of speech.
Bob Gray, our resident Washington, DC tour guide will tell you a story that happened some years ago. It seemed that they were trying to find the cornerstone of the United States Capital Building. The only indicator of the stone's whereabouts is a plaque that reads, "Beneath this tablet is the original cornerstone for this building." Much to the dismay of researchers and excavators, there was no cornerstone.
For years it was assumed that the tablet's guidance was correct. Published reports of George Washington's presence at the cornerstone ceremony led researchers to place the tablet at this particular site. Historians believed that all they had to do was dig beneath centuries of building debris and foundation modifications to find the precious rock, possibly loaded with a marvelous time capsule full of artifacts. But their assumptions were wrong. Years of work, using advanced scientific instruments, have not yielded a find. To this day there is no cornerstone to our nation's Capital Building.
I think there is a sermon there - somewhere, . . . about politics, . . . but I'm not going to go there.
Today we study the Epistle Peter and his assertion that "[Christ is] the stone that the builders rejected [and] has become the very head of the corner."
In our reading from First Peter, the writer declares that Christ is the cornerstone of the community of faith. Peter underscores that Christ is our foundation, without Him we would crumble. But Peter does not go on to say that we are simply nothing; that Christ is the only stone. Christ is the cornerstone, the foundation stone, but we are also stones in this important structure called the household of God. Peter calls us "living stones," which denotes that the members of the church have now become God's unique incarnation in the world. God works through the members of the community of faith to spread Christ-like love throughout the world.
This is hard to do in America. We pride ourselves on rugged individualism. From tales of the earliest settlers of the British colonies to our contemporary advertisements that tell us "have it your way!" or songs that proclaim, "I gotta be me!" American culture proclaims an "I can do it" mentality which pits the individual against the world. We are proud of our "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" mentality. And, no doubt for many of us here today, it has worked for us!
"Not so," says the church. Our sacred Scriptures are really not about heroes that are self- made or that are perfect in every way; rather our Bible is a about Covenants and being a covenant people. With God's help, heroes like Abraham, Moses, and David - each with larger than life flaws - work together with God's chosen people. Those of you who done the Disciple Bible Study know that the study of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament is a study of covenant making on God's part and covenant breaking on our part. . . . Anyone who has raised teenagers can relate to this.
And this faithfulness of God toward humanity continues through the New Testament. God, despite the covenant-breaking efforts of humanity, continues to be loving and gracious toward us.
In my monthly "Myers' Musings" column in Highlights this past month I spoke about the video Dust produced by the Rev. Rob Bell and NOOMA. It is a very fascinating video that helps us understand this. In it we see the Hebraic rabbinical tradition where the very best of the best students would at a very young age be chosen by the rabbis to become disciples. The very best of the best! The only problem is that Jesus, Himself a rabbi, chose not the very best of the best to be His disciples, but Jesus choose a bunch of fisherman, tax collectors, and other stragglers - certainly not the star students of religious training! Strangely, it shows God's faith in us!
We spend a lot of time in our faith disciplines trying to increase our faith in God. But did you ever think about the faith that God has in you?! By not choosing the best of the best to be His disciples, but by choosing very ordinary people, Jesus reveals the faith that He and God have in us to be faithful and to communicate to people like us the love and grace of God.
It is through such ordinary people that God builds the church. In Peter's Epistle we are called "living stones". John's Gospel reminds us that we did not choose God, but that God choose us! And in today's reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus says that "the one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do."
Roger Swanson, former Director of the United Methodist Board of Evangelism used to define the church in this manner - "the church is what is left when the building burns down and the preacher leaves town."
Which brings us back to Peter. Peter's Epistle is one of the great reminders of God's work for us. In it Peter states that the "stone" that the builder's rejected has become the very head of the corner. This is the foundation of the church. Christ is our cornerstone.
The fact that Christ is referred to as the one whom the builders rejected reminds us again that the church has different values than the world. We are reminded of how Christ, the Messiah, came into a world that was expecting a Messiah. But the images they expected were ones that were political - that God would someone that would restore Israel to be dominant once again. That Christ would come as a King, in princely royalty. That Christ would restore and emphasize all the religious traditions.
But the cornerstone that the builders rejected came born not as one of royalty, but in the midst of scandal and then born in an animal barn. Christ did not restore all the temple and priestly traditions, instead Christ upset the vendor's carts in the temples; Christ did not come as a King to restore Israel, but rather said, "It is not for you to know the times or seasons which [God] has fixed by His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
Once again we see the confidence that God has in us. While we are the ones that make up the church and carry out its work; we are clearly reminded that God, through Jesus - the head and cornerstone - is the basis for this work. And God will guide us, sending us the Holy Spirit so that we may witness in Chevy Chase, the District and Maryland, and to the ends of the earth - Nicaragua, the Middle East, Russia and Africa!
In other words, with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit we become the living stones.
But we cannot be faithful to our task, if a loving spirit is not present within us. It's not common to think that way. We have become, in this culture, a collection of individuals rather than a people who think collectively. Our most wholesome conceptions of the church rarely resemble a unified house anchored by a precious cornerstone. We're more apt to think of ourselves as individual rocks strewn about a building site, awaiting the builder's chisel or the soft mortar or the dreaded toss of rejection. Idolatrous forms of individualism entice us. A strong sense of community is more a dream than a pursuit in many quarters.
But Peter's perspective and the understanding of the New Testament world in general, was far more attuned to people becoming part of a corporate body. This emphasis on the collective or communal character of faith is hard to appreciate in an era in which many Christians no longer consider identification with a specific church community to be central to their identity. But the early church understood itself differently. God does not make covenants with individuals. Covenants are made with the community of faith. "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people." The people who were once considered a heap of dry and disparate bones have become a house of living stones.
And even more than that! Peter says that we are called "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, . . . God's own people, . . . Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; . . ." (from I Peter 2:9-10)
In his work God Speaks, poet Charles Peguy writes that after all the magnificence of mountains and depth of seas, God wanted something else. God did not want power or might, the submission of slaves or the automatic response of robots. God wanted covenant. Consent. The joy of knowing that Creation would love God in return . . . the sense that "God's own people might proclaim the glorious deeds of God Who called (them) out of darkness into His marvelous light."
God has made a covenant with God's people - the community of faith grounded in praise of Christ Jesus, the cornerstone. It's that living stone that offers the new identity and new life we seek. That's the rock on which we build.
Then we will be able to proclaim, "Once we were no people, but now we are God's people!"