THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT
March 7, 2004
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. M. Anthony Seel , Jr.
1 Peter 2:4-9
“Planned for God’s Pleasure”
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we bow in your presence. May your Word be our rule, Your Spirit our teacher, and your greater glory our supreme concern, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Carl Hurly, a professional humorist from Kentucky, tells a story about an elderly deacon at a Baptist church who wore the same suit to church week in and week out, year after year. When the suit became so threadbare as to be almost unwearable, some of the church’s wealthier members took up a collection to buy him a new suit.
The deacon took the money quietly and humbly. Being from a small town, they soon learned that he had gone to the best men’s store in town and purchased a fine suit with new shoes, a new shirt and a new tie.
The Baptists were waiting for him on Sunday, but the deacon never arrived. Afraid that they had offended him, some of the other deacons visited him to see if he was all right.
When they asked him about his new suit, he admitted he had bought one. He also admitted it looked good on him. In fact, he confessed that as he was dressing one Sunday morning, he looked at himself in his new clothes in the mirror. He said, "I just looked at myself and that new suit -- and it was so fashionable and good-looking -- that I just decided to go to the Episcopal church instead."
That’s the kind of story that people like to tell about us. We’re supposedly the church for the upwardly mobile and those who have long ago arrived, and if money bought happiness, then Episcopalians would be the happiest people on earth. Some how, I don’t think that this is how it really is.
In 1995, the Roper polling organization asked Americans how much money thought that they would need to fulfill their dreams. The medium sum mentioned was $102,000 a year. But the number responding $1 million or more a year doubled from the previous year. In 2002, Roper asked “How would you rate your own financial situation? 55% said fair or poor. That includes 26% of those who earn $75,000 or more a year. The majority of Americans are not a contented lot.
Christian psychologist David G. Meyers studied this issue and come to this conclusion: The things which enable you to be happy are not how much money you make, or how many possessions you own, or whether you are highly educated, or whether you are old or young. Meyers has discovered that while per capita income in America more than doubled in real terms between 1957 and 1990, the number of Americans who reported being “very happy” remained the same – at one third.
The American Dream, defined in terms of material things, has become the American Nightmare, or at least a bad dream. Meyers concludes,
Never have we been so self-reliant, or so lonely.
Never have we been so free, and our prisons so overstuffed.
Never have we had so much education, or such high rates of
teen delinquency, despair and suicide.
Never have we been so sophisticated about pleasure, or so
likely to suffer broken or miserable marriages. [p. 178]
Maybe we are ready for another approach. In our second lesson, we find the apostle Peter writing to a Christian community that was struggling with its sense of identity in a largely pagan, alien culture. First Peter is addressed to God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia" (1:1). These are places in modern Turkey, and speaking to the church there that included many new Christians, Peter says
v. 4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,
In the Old Testament, stone was a metaphor for Israel, but here we find Peter using it for Jesus. Writing to young Christians, Peter concentrates his thoughts on Jesus, “a living stone rejected by men.” While Jesus was rejected by men, He was also chosen by God and precious to God. Furthermore,
v. 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Despite the newness of their faith, Peter declares that these Christians are “living stones;” they are rock solid in the spiritual house that God is building. All Christ’s followers are living stones that are being joined with Christ in a spiritual house. Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), and in today’s second lesson, we see how Jesus is building his church, living stone by living stone.
In his book, A Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren tells the story of building a log cabin in the mountains near Yosemite National Park. Warren says
Even with the help of my father and some friends it took
two years to complete, since I couldn’t work on it full-
time. When I began building, it took me an entire summer
just to lay the foundation. First I had to clear a pad in the
forest by cutting down and uprooting thirty-seven towering
pine trees. Then I had to dig over sixty feet of five foot deep
French drains and fill them with gravel because the ground
was wet from a nearby underground spring.
After ten exhausting weeks, all I had to show for my effort
was a leveled and square concrete foundation, I was very
discouraged. But my father, who has built over 110
church buildings in his lifetime, said, “Cheer up, son! When
you’ve finished laying the foundation, the most critical work
is behind you.” [p. 85]
Rick Warren comments,
The foundation determines both the size and strength of a building.
You can never build larger than the foundation can handle. The
same is true for churches. A church built on an inadequate of
faulty foundation will never reach the height that God intends for
it to reach. It will topple over once is outgrows its base. [p. 86]
In Peter’s inspired vision, the church is a spiritual house. This spiritual house built from living stones can be understood in two ways. First, as a dwelling place for a household or family. With God as the Master of the house, we all belong to God’s family through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Second, this spiritual house can be a temple. A temple is a place of God’s presence where the people of God worship.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are that temple. We are that spiritual house. We are the living stones that God intends to build into a glorious structure that brings glory to His Son. We are also the priesthood that serves in God’s house .
A priesthood exists to serve God at the temple, offering sacrifices. In this case, the priesthood is all Christians, and the sacrifices offered are spiritual ones. We make no offerings for sins, since that offering has been made once for all by our great high priest, Jesus Christ. The spiritual sacrifices that we offer to God are our lives. We can encapsulate what offering our lives to God as spiritual sacrifices means in one word. That word is worship.
In The Purpose Driven Life, the book that is behind our Lenten program this year, Rick Warren says
Worship is not part of your life; it is your life. Worship is
not just church services…. Every activity can be transformed
into an act of worship when you do it for the praise, glory
and pleasure of God. [pp. 66, 67]
Warren calls this a lifestyle of worship. This fits in with Purpose #1 of our 40 Days of Purpose. Purpose #1 is “You were planned for God’s pleasure.” As Warren says on Day 13,
God wants all of you. God doesn’t want a part of your life.
He asks for all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and
all your strength. God is not interested in halfhearted
commitment, partial obedience, and the leftovers of your
time and money. He desires your full devotion, not little
bits of your life. [p. 100]
Around St. Andrew’s over the last five-plus years, I have called this being a fully devoted follower of Christ. The lifestyle of worship that is the basis of Purpose #1 of our 40 Days of Purpose begins with Jesus Christ. He is the cornerstone of the spiritual house that God is building, as we see in verse 6, where Peter writes
v. 6 For it stands in Scripture: "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."
Mark Twain once encountered a businessman from Boston who said to him, “Before I die, I will go to the Holy Land and when I get there I’m going to climb Mt. Sinai. And from the top I will shout each of the Ten Commandments at the top of my voice.” Unimpressed, Twain responded, “I’ve got a better idea. STAY in Boston, and OBEY the Ten Commandments!” Mark Twain got it right. Genuine faith results in obedience to God. As English Bishop J.C. Ryle once said, “The best public worship is that which produces the best private Christianity.” When we fully trust God with our lives, God’s grace permeates every fiber of our being so that God is pleased with our lives.
Quoting Isaiah 28:16, the Apostle Peter speaks of a new building being fashioned by God. The first stone, the cornerstone, is our Lord Jesus Christ. As in verse 4, we are told that this stone has been chosen by God and is precious to Him. Moreover, we are also told that "whoever believes in him,” that is, the cornerstone chosen by God, "will not be put to shame." The idea here is that when testing of the judgement of God comes, those who put their full trust in Jesus Christ will be found worthy.
Peter continues
vv. 7-8 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and "A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense."
Those who believe in Jesus Christ will share the honor that God has for His Son. For those who will not believe, they will see the crucified Christ that they rejected, who seemed to be abandoned by God and powerless on the cross has in fact been given by God the most prominent place in God’s household. The stone that the builders rejected has been accepted by the architect and used as the cornerstone for the entire edifice. In addition to this, Christ is a stone over which people stumble and He is a rock of offense.
Hasn’t it been amazing how much controversy has been stirred upon over Mel Gibson’s Passion movie? The same people who decry the violence of The Passion of the Christ, are silent about the violence in Kill Bill, Saving Private Ryan, Pulp Fiction, or Schindler’s List. What is it about the violence perpetrated on the Son of God that gets them so incensed? The problem is that Jesus Christ is a "rock of offense," as the apostle Peter says. The critics are stumbling over Jesus Christ.
Peter changes subjects in verse 9; he shifts from speaking about Christ to speaking about Christ’s followers, saying
v. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
To the Christians of his day, and to us, Peter says, you are a "chosen race." Just as Jesus Christ is described as the chosen cornerstone, we are described as a chosen race. All who belong to God by faith in Jesus Christ are a special people, chosen by God to constitute a new people. God is making a people gathered around His Son into a New Israel.
You are a royal priesthood. A priest is someone who serves God, and a royal priesthood is a group of priests who belong to a king. In the Old Testament, the priesthood was restricted to only one of the twelve tribes of Israel. In the New Israel all the members of the church are priests to God who is our king.
You are a holy people. Because we belong to God we are obligated to be holy. We are holy because we have been set apart for God’s service. To be holy is to be morally blameless, and since none of us sinners can be morally blameless, we must rely on God’s mercy. This leads us to Peter’s next description.
You are a people of God’s own possession. We are God’s special property and as such we are recipients of God’s special care. It is only through God’s gift of grace given to us through Jesus Christ that we are made worthy to belong to God.
Friends, you were planned for God’s pleasure. You are not an accident. You were made to last forever, and your life here on earth is a preparation for a lifetime that will never end lived in the nearer presence of God. Your greatest happiness and fulfillment on earth is found in living for God’s pleasure. This is one of the many paradoxes of the Christian faith, and this one, like the others, has the power to transform our lives.
Let us pray.
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
