1 Peter 2:2-10
It is an honor and a privilege to be with you here today. I will admit to some trepidation on my part. As you may have seen in the bulletin, I will graduate from Union Presbyterian Seminary in a few short weeks, and begin the next phase of what promises to be a new and exciting adventure. I thank you for inviting me to stand with you today as we explore God’s word together.
I’d like to take these next few moments that we have together to explore 1 Peter from the NRSV translation.
2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built[a] into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in scripture:
“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him[b] will not be put to shame.”
7 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,”
8 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.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,[c] in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
10 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.
This is the word of the lord – thanks be to God
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,[c] in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people – but now you are God’s people.
Once you were not a people – but now you are God’s people.
but now you are God’s people.
So, when I was in grade school I was a bit of an out cast. I had been really sick, I had glasses and I loved to read. It might be the understatement of the year that I did not play sports well. So glasses, not sports oriented, and a reader? These were not really skills in high demand for afternoon games of dodgeball. Being smaller, and not as strong as the other kids didn’t cause me to get picked first for much of anything. It’s an eye opening experience to be standing there at recess and to be picked last for the game and be targeted first to leave the game. It lets you know your value and place in the community very quickly.
But the good news is that even in those moments you find another soul – a friend that you click with and then another friend and you build your own community, your own way of approaching the world – and well maybe you still get picked last for dodgeball and it’s still pretty apparent where you fit in the larger community of grade school classrooms – but that’s ok because you have found your tribe. Your den – Your people.
As I was reading through the scripture for this week this question became insistent – when you have found your community or your tribe, what does it look like to be God’s own people? In the author of 1 Peter’s world, God’s people were considered to be the least in society. They didn’t worship or sacrifice like members of the imperial cults or other religions. They worshiped mostly at home or in small churches out of sight of the dominant religions. For the most part, they would have kept a low profile in their towns and cities. Some ancient commentators and historians argued that gentile Christians had a “Hatred of humanity” because they had abandoned their ancestral faiths, rituals, and oaths taken to household and cult deities.
So even if they chose it – They were outcasts – yet they had each other.
In the early years of the church, it wasn’t accepted to be a Christian. It was a radical counter cultural move that went against everything that society offered and dictated. Those people and families that identified as Christians were often ostracized and cut off from the larger community.
So when the author writes –
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built[a] into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
This is the author saying to the Christian community – through Jesus, who was himself rejected by the priests and authorities, you have been claimed by God to do God’s work and that work is being made into a holy priesthood – this God is taking the outcasts and putting them in the holy places and making them into a holy community – one that serves God together.
That is good news indeed. But that leads me back to the question What does it look like to be God’s people?
When 1 Peter talks about what it looks like to be God people – the author talks about being living stones built into spiritual houses and becoming those worthy of offering sacrifices to God. The ancient community hears this as a declaration and an affirmation that through Jesus, they are part of something greater – that through Jesus they are being made into something greater, greater than they had imagined, and greater than they had been told they would ever become. They are like living stones – and being built into a holy priesthood.
Once you were not a people – but now you are God’s people.
I think that 1 John chapter 4 can help us understand what it means for us to be God’s people.
Reading from the message translation –
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. And This is how God showed Gods love for us: God sent Gods only Son into the world so we might live through him. 10 This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that God loved us and sent Gods Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. 11 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. 21 The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
1st John tells us: Love is an action, it’s something we do and it’s a response to God’s love in our lives. Love is working for justice. Love is feeding the hungry. Love is caring about our neighbors. Love is an action – It’s where God calls us to be like the cornerstone. It is where God calls us to lift up and support each other.
1st Peter is where we are told that God, as divine builder takes each of us – living stones and fits them together, each one nestled against the other, each of us holding the other – building on each other – until the first support is built, then the next and the next; all of us working together to build God’s community and as we carry each other a framework of fitted stones is built and the master builder, keeps shaping us, fitting us together. God keeps building – not walls to divide us – but bridges to connect us. Bridges of community where we support each other, where we get to carry each other, and live into the work of love that we are called to engage in by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
I think that is where God is calling us as a people – we are being shaped by God to do God’s work. I think we can see the evidence of that in our lives in that as we are being built and shaped by the Lord, we start to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, and we respond to the presence of the Holy Spirit by being open to the work that the Spirit is doing in each one of us and we respond in love.
When we act in Christian community it isn’t just for those of us in the community, but also for all those on the outside. – The ones we pick last for dodgeball or the ones that we pass on the street corner, or drive by at the intersections. Christian community takes our understanding of the people of God and turns the world upside down. As God’s people we belong to God and to each other. All of us.
Because once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people – building bridges, creating community, loving our neighbor, caring for the those viewed as least of us, and welcoming the stranger because In Christ there are no strangers – just neighbors we haven’t met yet.
We are assured that we are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do God’s work and speak out for God, to tell others of the night-and-day difference that God made for each and every one of us
Amen
Matthew Messenger 