Living stones..what??

  

1 Peter 2:2-10,  John 14:1-14

 

“Come to him, a living stone,, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”.

 

I’ve spent quite a lot of this week wondering about what a  ‘living stone’ really is.

 

What it is not

You might have come across a house plant called ‘living stone’ or lithops: it looks like a couple of smooth, greenish pebbles nestled together and just sits there for the most part, but if you’re lucky it will suddenly produce a flower, like a yellow or white daisy, from between the stone-like plant parts.

Is that what the writer of the letter is imagining? If we are living stones,  are we meant to be people of long periods of inactivity followed by a short burst of life? I don’t think so. I think Peter’s letter is written to help us to think about a life of faith, a life of following Jesus, that is both sure and firm but also involving growth and change.

 

Letter to whom?

The first letter of Peter was written to early Christians who were experiencing persecution.

 

About 40 years after Jesus’ death & resurrection the Roman army had finally destroyed the Jewish temple, and both the Jewish authorities and the Roman rulers had started to try to stamp out the followers of Jesus. It was a hard time to be a follower of Jesus, and this letter is written to try to encourage them. At this point in the history of the church there are no buildings, no real order or structure, nothing we might recognise as a church really, just groups of people who have heard one of the disciples talk about Jesus and all that he did and said and was. These people are trying to follow Jesus, and to help them they have this letter written by someone calling himself Peter.

 

When the letter talks about “the church” we have to imagine the people, and not any kind of building.

 

Christ the living stone

First of all, the letter says, be built on Jesus Christ, and recognize that he is not like a dead piece of stone – firm and solid but unchanging and inactive.

Jesus is the living stone – he has been raised from death and through the Holy Spirit he is with us always.

 

‘Building a church” – being followers of Jesus together – begins with faith in the living Lord Jesus – he is the living stone our Christian faith is based on & built on.

 

You might remember the slogan WWJD – what would Jesus do – you might have seen it on T shirts or on wrist-bands. Just the initials WWJD. It was there to remind the person who wore it to think, in a difficult situation ‘what would Jesus do?’. This is part of what building our lives on Jesus is about – following him, following his teaching.

 

But as we have so recently celebrated Easter Sunday, we know that building our lives on Jesus also means remembering our Easter faith.

Christ is risen, death could not hold him. He was raised from death by God the Father to show that love always wins, that hatred could not defeat him, that he was and is the living one who shows us God in a human life.

This is the foundation of our faith – this is why Jesus is the living stone on which we build our church.

 

We are to be like living stones, too

The letter then invites those who seek to follow Christ to be built up, like living stones themselves; to proclaim the mighty acts of God; and to answer the call out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.

This is an ongoing life of following and continue to follow Jesus, our saviour, which lasts our whole life long.

 

As we are built up into the church, we build all that we do on Jesus Christ, who will hold us firm and sure.

 

But being firm isn’t the same as refusing to change.

Being living stones means recognising the changing, growing nature of our faith.

Living stones grow and change

We often hear Jesus’ promises in John’s gospel in a funeral service, and we might be really fond of the phrase “In my father’s house are many dwelling places”, or in some versions there’s an even grander promise “many mansions”.

 

God is with us to bring life to us.

But this is not only a promise about eternal life, it is also a promise about the life we lead here and now.

The word that Jesus actually uses for what we are promised is not the word for a grand mansion or for what they call on the property programmes on TV a “forever home”.

‘Dwelling place’ is a better translation – Jesus uses the word for a resting place – a stopping off point – a layby, if you like.

Jesus promises that God the father has prepared many places for you to rest and stay awhile, and he promises God’s presence with us wherever we rest and stay.

 

Jesus is hinting at the fact that our journey is not yet over – each step is only a stopping off point. And then to make it even clearer, he says to his followers “I am the way”. Not the destination or the end-point or the goal… the way.

 

People following Jesus are people on the way; moving, changing and growing into the people God made them to be – closer followers of Jesus. Jesus’ disciples are always ‘being built up as living stones’.

 

How does it help us to think of ourselves as living stones?

We are not living in times of danger and persecution as Peter’s first audience were.

 

But that doesn’t mean life is always easy.

Personally, we might be facing health issues, financial worries, family or relationship tensions.

As a church, as the whole Christian church in the UK and as a local church, we may feel we are dwindling, struggling. Sometimes we might feel mocked or misunderstood.

So what does it mean for us to hear these readings speak of people on the way, moving and growing and following Jesus -  yet stable and sure: “living stones”?

 

First of all, our need to be rooted in and built on Jesus is the same.

 

Jesus is risen. Whatever we face, our Father God shows us that the power of his love is greater than anything – it has brought Jesus through death.

Even the things in life that look final and life-crushing can be transformed by God’s grace. We are made for life eternal, and that’s what God promises us in Jesus – life in all its fullness.

 

And, secondly, we are made to be God’s own people: as we gather around God’s word today we are reminded of what God’s kingdom of love and grace, peace and justice looks like and we hear God calling us to part of what God is doing in the world.

 

We need to be rooted in Christ, and built up to God’s glory – this is what it means to be living stones, growing in God’s grace and following Jesus more and more closely.

May we know both the life and the stability of the presence of Christ in our lives, so that we can be built together by God, through the power of the Spirit, into something holy and good.

 

To the praise and glory of God – Father, Son & Holy Spirit.  Amen.