A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie

Acts 17:1-15
1 Peter 2:1-10
John 14:1-14
Psalm 66:1-11 or 66:1-8

(Preacher tries unsuccessfully to build something with a pile of stones.)

Stones are hard. In every sense of the word: They are rigid and firm, and they are difficult. There's just no flex to them. I do better with clay or even grout. But we know what happens to that – eventually it crumbles, like the wall did when I was at Good Samaritan in Sauk Centre. Yet it's almost impossible to build something with odd-shaped stones without mortar or something to hold them together.

In today's lessons, it seems that God intends to build something with stones. (Maybe God gave up on the dust and clay idea after creating humans.)

We know about the cornerstone ... the one that was earlier rejected and becomes key. The rejected stone becomes the one that sets the proper alignment for the whole building. If you hang around the church long enough, you'll figure out – or be told – that the rejected cornerstone is Jesus. Stones and rocks appear often in Scripture: God is referred to as a rock. Patriarchs set up stones wherever something important happens. Laws are written on stone tablets. Water flows from rocks. People are punished with stones. A stone is mysteriously rolled away from a tomb. And today we read a letter from Peter, whose name means "Rock."

Seems like God has some kind of building project going on here. The primary building stone here seems to be these "living stones."

"Living stones" -- sounds like a great combination: "Stone" means solid and reliable and durable. "Living" means growing and changing, flexible and adaptable. If I could get a little flex into these stones, even I might be able to build something out of them.

To be a living stone is to be solid and reliable and yet still growing and changing. What better material could there be for building God's church? What better material could there be for building our lives? When we become too rigid, we shatter and break. When we flex and change too much, we weaken and dissolve. But living stones might provide both solid stability and flexible change for growth.

In the Holy Land, there is a small ancient house, almost attached to the third-century synagogue in Capernaum. The house was built of small stones. It appeared that no mortar kept them together. These were called "living stones": They were rubbed together until they fit together perfectly. Perhaps, in the church made of living stones, our all-too-common friction is actually purposeful: As we rub up against one another, we learn what real love, real community, really is. And we are able to grow and change and to fit together in a way that is strong and sturdy.

Peter suggests that we, "like living stones, let [our]selves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood." So we offer ourselves to God as living stones, but just what is this "spiritual house" that's being built?

There's another house mentioned in today's readings: "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places." Now there's a piece of Scripture that almost everyone has heard. It is the Gospel of choice at many funerals. And for obvious reasons: It is so natural to assume that "My Father's house" refers to heaven, and that the "many dwelling places" are the places in heaven that await each of us as we move from this dimension of life into the next. It is a viable and a beautiful interpretation of this passage, and we should go right on letting it penetrate our hearts in those most lonely and troubling moments when we have lost one near and dear to us. But this morning, let's consider some other possibilities for this powerfully penetrating verse.

Jesus in the Bible is rarely concerned about a time other than the present. Jesus is rarely concerned about a place other than this world and the web of life in which we live -- what he calls the kingdom of God. The disciples at the last supper when Jesus spoke of the "many dwelling places" didn't really need to hear about how great life after death was going to be. They needed to hear that it was going to be O.K. right now, that they were going to be able to carry out their mission and ministry even after Jesus ascends to the Father.

And so Jesus says, "Let not your hearts be troubled . . . in my Father's house there are many dwelling places."

Not one place, but many. Christ has gone ahead to prepare many places. Christ builds places in the kingdom for all who believe. Jesus tells us that the kingdom is among us already. Christ is building it out of living stones.

Every baptized Christian becomes a living stone with which Christ prepares a dwelling place for those who need it here and now, for those who need somewhere that they know they are welcome and safe and loved.

As living stones we allow Christ to use us to prepare a place for those who feel estranged and lonely, those who feel different and somehow out of place, those who are hurting and, yes, those who have hurt others.

God knows none of us is a perfect building stone. We have all been broken from our own sin and the sin of others. Still we are the building stones God has. God needs each one of us.

There's a beautiful Presbyterian church in Gates, New York. It was built in the '60's and was intentionally made of "clinker bricks." These are misshapen, distorted bricks that sometimes result from two clay bricks stacked too close together when they are fired in a kiln. Most of the time they are thrown out. But the builders of the church thought they were a fitting symbol of what the body should be. That which is thrown out, rejected, and considered useless comes together and is built into a strong and beautiful structure. Every one of us in some way is a clinker brick, yet together we make up the church.

God knows that we are all broken and misshaped stones. But living stones can grow and change. Let yourself be built into a spiritual house. With living stones, Jesus can prepare many dwelling places to welcome in, as our old Prayer Book used to say so eloquently, "All sorts and conditions of men." We ourselves are among them, looking for that welcoming, safe, and loving dwelling place. There really are all sorts and conditions of people outside the church as well. There were in Jesus' day too, and Jesus went out of his way to prepare a room for all them, especially for those for whom no one else would make room.

Jesus came into the world looking for a room. He knows what it's like. Today let's join this Carpenter from Nazareth in his master building project and help him make even more rooms, in the Father's house -- rooms made of living and growing stones. You are the rock, the living stone, on which God is building the kingdom.

– Thanks to:
Bill Adams BillAdams@priest.com
Howard Chapman HOWARD.CHAPMAN@ecunet.org
Marilyn Engstrom MARILYN.ENGSTROM@ecunet.org