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“Living Stones”

1 Peter 2:2-10

April 20, 2008

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk,

so that b it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 

Come to him, a living stone, through 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.

 For it stands in scripture, ‘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.’ 

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people

in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you 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.

A Hidden House

Someone asked me recently how long Kyle and I had been living in Michigan.  When I did the finger math, I realized it’s been nearly nine months since that hot day when all our earthly belongings were stuffed in cardboard boxes, that difficult day we said goodbye to our little town of Florence.  Nine months—how time flies! 

Now that we’ve survived our first record breaking Michigan winter, we are enjoying our first beautiful Michigan spring!  I’ve found myself drawn down to the beach in Beulah. I like hearing the water lap on the shore, and Sedona and I enjoy hunting for pretty rocks on the sandy bottom.  My 3-year-old has become quite the rock collector.  Many of you have probably been the recipient of her treasured finds.  About once a month I do a walk through condo and collect the many stones that she’s squirreled away from the school playground, our backyard, and the grounds here at St. Andrews.  We share that in common, she and I, a simple love of stones.

And thinking about this stones this week, and my 9 months “up north” has made me recall a special place I used to visit, a stony place cool and damp, even in the dry heat of the desert.  It was at a place at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, about a half hour’s drive up I-60 from our AZ manse. We had a family membership there—as we do now up at Sleeping Bear Dunes.  And we’d drive up after worship for a Sunday afternoon of peace and quiet, pushing Sedona in her stroller (back when she’d tolerate such things) and watching the cacti change from season to season.

We always encouraged our parishioners to visit that old park, the way I encourage locals here to go and rediscover the beauty of the dunes.  If it was to be their first visit, I’d warn them.  Whatever you do, don’t forget the Herb Garden, because the herb garden was my favorite spot.  You’d be walking down this dusty dry trail when it sneaks up on your right, hidden behind an ivy arched entranceway.  And when you peak your head in, the herb garden overpowered you like an Italian restaurant: rosemary, thyme, basil.  On my first visit, I walked in just following my nose and found myself into a maze of manicured bushes and vines.  But when you’re done smelling, I’d tell them, don’t leave yet or you’ll miss the best part.  Off to your right, if you look hard, you’ll find a tiny casita: a three room hut named the Clevenger House.  You have to be looking for it because it blends right into the side of the mountain.  The outside walls are made entirely out of desert stones.   My favorite time to visit the Clevenger House was the middle of a scorching hot summer, because inside that stone hut was the coolest place in the park.  When you walk through the low doorway, you can’t help but take a deep breath.  You can still smell the basil from the hot garden, but the air inside is cool and moist.  And when no one else s around you hear the gentle breeze whipping through the . 

The whole place was made of stone: stone floors, roof, fireplace, walls.  If you close your eyes, it feels like a cave.  And when you reached out and touch the walls they’re cool; they’re wet.  Run your hands over them, and you feel stone built upon stone, upon stone. Some of the stones have rough spots or corners chipped off.  Other stones have little crevices and cracks for your finger to trace.

If you glance briefly, you’ll see three rooms all of a dirty rock color.  But if you take the time, wipe off the dust, you find they’re all quite different.  Some are brown or gray.  Others have a tint of green to them, a streak of red.  And most of the stones, if you look close enough, have a sparkle, sprawling speckled trails of gold or silver, depending on the light.

Now if I was really a geologist instead of a pastor, I would tell you all about those stones.  But as it is I can only tell you that if you’re wintering in Tucson, take the time to go!  I promise, if you catch it at the right time, with no guided tours or chatting tourists.  If you find that little stone house and walk inside, and if you close your eyes and take a deep cool breath and touch the wet walls, you’ll agree.  The whole stony place feels alive.

Stony People, People of Stone

Stones.  Our text today speaks of stones, as do many passages through the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament.  There’s something about stones that gets our attention. 

Maybe it’s the way stones all look alike if you just glance at them.  They’re just rocks for goodness sake!  But then, if you’re a rock collector like my daughter and you study them up close, well, you see how very different they are.  A crack here, a silvery streak there.  No two are ever identical.  And something about that reminds us…of us.

Because, let’s face it. It’s easy to paint broad brush strokes with people.  Benzie County teenagers are always like that.  Watch out for those summer fudgies on the lake.  Have you heard about those crazy Presbyterians on the hill? 

But then up close--if we ever take the time to look up close--we find each one of us is a story unto ourselves, With our own struggles.  With our own wisdom.  Up close, no two of us are identical.  So maybe that’s why the Bible so often speaks of stones.  Or maybe that’s not it at all. 

Maybe it’s something about the way rocks gets their shape.  Anyone who lives in Michigan has seen stones and pebbles by the lakes, in our streams, seen the waters rolling, tumbling over their smooth surface.  And then we learned at some point, in science class I guess, that it’s the water itself that forms those stones, smoothes out the rough spots, shines up those Petoskey stones like a new penny. 

I remember learning out west, where there are tremendous mountains of exposed rock sitting high in the sky, that it’s the wind itself, whipping around for centuries on end, that shapes those rocks.  It molds them, smoothes them, or it breaks them to pieces over time. And something about that reminds us…of us.

Because, let’s face it, our lives are strung together by day to day experiences.  We do have those extra-special days, like yesterday when Jennifer Kildow and Scott Putnam stood there with me and spoke their marriage vows in the presence of God and their loved ones.  It was an amazing day! 

But most days aren’t like that, are they?  Most days, we get up, go to work or school, we do the usual chores around the house, we talk to friends, try to parent our children, go to sleep and then wake up to do it all over again.  Somehow through those days—those simple nothing special days, like water rushing and wind gushing— we become us.  So maybe that’s why the Bible so often speaks of stones.

Or maybe it’s to do less with the outside of stones and more with the inside.  I will never forget the first time I discovered a geode.  Does everyone here know what a geode is?  It was a gift given to me years ago and on the outside it was the plainest old ugly rock you’d ever seen.  If I saw a bunch of them lying on the beach, I wouldn’t think twice about kicking them in the sand.  But geodes are special.  If we could see on their inside, we’d find they were packed full of gorgeous crystals: bright pinks and purples, blues and greens.  If we could see on the inside, we’d know they were beautiful.  And something about that reminds us… of us. 

So maybe that’s why the authors of the Bible so often speaks of stones.  They’re unique.  Moldable.  They’ve got a certain sparkle about them.  Perhaps explains the connection, at least some of the time.

Stones Built Into a House    

But not all the time.  For there are passages, such as today’s text in 1 Peter which may hint at all of that, but speak something more. Peter speaks about stones, and maybe if he’d had the time he’d have mentioned how unique they are, how moldable, how beautiful.  But he doesn’t.  Peter says this:

Come to Jesus, the 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…

Let yourselves.  Not me, or you, let yourselves be built.  If I was still in Georgia, I’d translate that as “y’all”  for Peter is talking to a whole congregation.  Let yourselves be built, all of you, all of us.

 Peter is talking to the whole church, one a bit like ours I suspect.  With young people and old people, male people and female people, sad people and happy people.  Each one of those people was unlike anyone else in the whole world.  Each one of those people had been molded by decades of common old everyday days.  Each one of those people had some special sparkle within.  So I guess their congregation was a lot like ours.

But for Peter that’s not the most important thing about them.  For Peter the most important thing about them wasn’t any one of them, but rather what God would do with all of them together.  The most important thing was that God would take them, stone by stone, and build them into something new. 

And that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  But if I know churches, I suspect the individual in that church fussed a bit about who would be on the bottom of the wall and who would be on the top on this new thing.  Who could moderate the Board of Trustees and who would teach Sunday School.  I bet they debated what architectural design to use, or what bank loans to accept, what committees to have, what coffee to serve.  The list is endless.

But at the end of the day, none of that really mattered.  What matters is what God did.  And what God did was built them, stone upon stone over time, into God’s own house.

We are God’s Living House

Friends, we are stones, you and I.  We are living stones.  We are unique, unlike anyone else in the whole world.  We are molded by the ordinary days of our lives.  And we are beautiful, each one, sparkling.

But what we are together is so much more!   For we are built, one on the other, parent to child to grandchild, generation to generation into God’s very house.

Now our house may not be the most famous, most glamorous church ever built (though we’re not too shabby).  And I find there’s something about this place in particular that draws people here.  Tourists and locals and snowbirds driving down 31 whose eyes catch hold of St. Andrews and suddenly find themselves making the sharp turn onto that rutted Lincoln Road and coming in for a closer look. 

I know they’re visitors when I see them stretching and staring from the sidewalk outside my office window, or strolling out by the shed.  The smell of fresh lake air hits them like an herb garden, and they feel the breeze in their hair.  I watch them pose for pictures with their children and know that when they come inside mid-summer

they’ll be grateful for cool shelter and a drink of water. 

I love welcoming those people here, for it’s a matter of hospitality.  When they ask for a tour, I lead them through the doors of our sanctuary and they always pause and take a deep breath.  And they stare.  And they try to take it all in, the whole church, this whole holy house.

And they say something like this: Gosh, this is a beautiful place you’ve got here.  Can you tell me a bit about St Andrews?  And they expect me to talk about the windows and the ceilings and the plans for expansion.  And I do, for a minute or so. 

But then I say this:  If you want to know about this church, you need to come back at 10:30 on Sunday and meet the real St. Andrews.  Because the real house of God here is not built of concrete and glass.  The real St. Andrews is built up of people.  Of women and men and children.  Of life long Christians and first time seekers. Of the pious and the questioning… and (dare I say?) the rebellious!  Of the unique, ever changing, the sparkling stones of this congregation. 

When visitors want to know about St. Andrews Church, I tell them about YOU!  Who you are and what you do and how you love this community.  When they want to know about this church merely as some grand edifice, my mind tends travels back to that little stone house at the Arboretum, built simply stacking one stone on top of the top. 

And as we talk, something happens inside them too. They still want to take pictures of the sanctuary and walk around the building, but they start asking different kinds of questions:

Oh, I didn’t know you guys were so active in Habitat for Humanity.  What was your last project? 

Oh, I didn’t know that so and so was a member here.  Did you know he headed up last year’s county

fundraiser? 

Oh, we never dreamed St. Andrews was so committed to international mission. 

Wow.  What a wonderful…..congregation!

Talking about St. Andrews feels like I’m telling them about stones, living stones.  Speaking about you feels like running my hand over a bumpy stone wall, pointing out the cracks and crannies and silvery streaks.  But more importantly how we all fit together, how we are built beside each other stacked on top of one another, from Ms. so and so who was one of the original twelve, to the precious little faces we saw on that rug today.

God promises us that we are unique, yes.  You and I and each one of us is more extraordinary than we’ll guess.  But together, we are more than that!  God takes us and builds us, stone by stone, into something bigger than you or I could ever be alone. 

We are transformed into God’s holy place where children take their first steps of faith.  Where adults remember they’re still just tall kids.  Where life happens, week after week, and year after year. There are mornings even I enter this church and am awe-struck.  There’s something about it, and when you come here and when you touch it you’ll know: this whole place is alive!

“Come to him, a living stone…and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”  And God’s plans for St. Andrews are just now beginning day by day, stone by stone, by each sparkling stone. God bless you.  Amen.

Copyright 2008 Rev. Shelaine Bird

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