1 Peter 2: 2-10 - Living Stones
The easy access that Sixties pioneers of cinéma vérité had to rock performers enabled
them to make documentaries like Don't Look Back, DA Pennebaker's account of Bob Dylan's
1965 tour of Britain, and Gimme Shelter, the Mayles brothers' film on the 1969 Altamont
concert at which Hell's Angels stabbed a man to death while the Rolling Stones were
performing 'Sympathy for the Devil'. But very soon, with rock music a big industry,
the concert film, that offshoot of the documentary, came to be controlled by the
performers, who hired top directors to do their bidding the way Renaissance princes
and popes engaged the old masters to paint portraits.
The Stones, the subject of numerous concert pictures, engaged one of the greatest
living directors, Martin Scorsese (who 35 years ago featured their music in Mean
Streets) to direct Shine a Light and he has made a fine, if orthodox, job of it.
The film is punctuated with clips from interviews going back to the mid-Sixties,
including a few moments from the 1967 Granada TV programme when Jagger was released
from jail after a drugs bust and whisked by helicopter to a country house to discuss
youth, anarchy and social change with a newly sympathetic editor of the Times, a
former attorney general, a leading Jesuit and Bishop John Robinson, author of Honest
to God. How distant and how pompous those wild days now seem.
The concert is introduced by Bill Clinton (accompanied to the show by Hillary and
Chelsea), who before going on stage remarks that the Stones in their quiet way are
as concerned with the environment as U2's Bono. Clinton's Foundation is a beneficiary
of the concert, but his presence is another indication, if we still need it after
Jagger sent his son to Eton and accepted a knighthood, that the Stones are now part
of a new establishment.... the establishment - that which underpins our society?
Let me come back to that.....
Clearly a 'stones' theme in the readings today - Ps, be a rock of refuge, my rock
and my fortress - Acts reading we haven't had is the stoning of Stephen - I Pet 2,
come to him, a living stone, & like living stones be built into a spiritual house
- and Jesus talking about his Father's house and preparing a place, and, perhaps
tangentally stoney, 'I am the way' - a solid road to travel on.
1 Peter 2 - an important text for those of us who would be the community of Christ
- a NT rarity - a clear statement of how the community of Christ should be - and
comes in the form of a flow of images in response, it seems, to the question - 'how
then shall we live?'
An elder in Rome wrote this pastoral exhortation to those in charge of churches in
Asia Minor. The opening greeting claims that Peter is the author, but today most
scholars agree that it was written in his name, to give it authority (a common practice
at that time.) The addressees appear to be Gentiles, rural folk, both resident aliens
and household slaves, in Asia Minor.
In this passage the writer's thought flows from one image straight into another,
and the reader follows a set of associations rather than an analytical argument.
The believers are children needing milk (a positive use of that image) and then like
parts of a building - living stones. The building is clearly associated (by v. 5)
with the Temple and thus the train of thought leads, through clear Jewish association,
to the priesthood of the Christian community (as a whole), before returning to the
one stone in the building which is overwhelmingly important, representing Christ.
For me, the stone/foundation metaphors are considerable and important. The first
idea (vs2), I like well enough because it starts out defining faith as a dynamic....
'long for the pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow into salvation' - not
so that you may be saved - but enter into a dynamic journey - be people of The Way
- the Way that Jesus offered in our gospel reading. We don't become Christian people
and that's it - rather our whole lives become an intentional process - and we most
probably and rightly will think differently about our faith as time goes on.
But the helpful stoney metaphors are: 1) foundations 2) living stones
1) foundations - Christ the cornerstone. It would be interesting to get the views
of sociologists about whether the 'establishment' of the Rolling Stones had made
them some sort of cultural foundation.....
Matthew 21:42 42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The
stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this
is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
Think of the foundations holding this building...... holding that Victorian pile
next door..... imagine how substantial they must be - and how effective.
A cornerstone will sometimes be referred to as a "foundation-stone", and is symbolic
of Christ, whom the Apostle Paul referred to as the "head of the corner" and is the
"Chief Cornerstone of the Church" (Ephesians 2:20). Many of the more ancient churches
will place relics of the saints, especially martyrs, in the foundation stone.
According to the pre-Vatican II rite of the Roman Catholic Church: Before the construction
of a new church begins, the foundations of the building are clearly marked out and
a wooden cross is set up to indicate where the altar will stand. Once preparations
have been made, the bishop—or a priest delegated by him for that purpose—will bless
holy water and with it sprinkle first the cross that was erected and then the foundation
stone itself. Upon the stone he is directed to engrave crosses on each side with
a knife, and then pronounce the following prayer: "Bless, O Lord, this creature of
stone (creaturam istam lapidis) and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name that
all who with a pure mind shall lend aid to the building of this church may obtain
soundness of body and the healing of their souls. Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.”
We may ask ourselves from time to time - and others may ask us - what does your Christian
faith mean to you? What does it amount to? What do you get out of it? I was asked
this on two separate occasions this week. Perhaps one of our answers is about foundations......
Whatever happens, wherever the road takes us, we have a foundation holding us up.
Listen to 1 Cor 3 : 10-16 - talking to the new Christian community about the journey
ahead....
10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid
a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care
how to build on it. "For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has
been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on the foundation
with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13the work of each builder
will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with
fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14If what has been
built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward.
Being part of this worshipping community, is in part about the dynamic, the process
of walking on, and building our lives upon the foundation of Christ.
2) living stones - I did infact know a Christian rock band, back in the 70s, called
The Living Stones .... only to be expected.... and why not. I they didn't sing 'Jesus
is the rock that never rolls....' then they really should have done.
What does this metaphor mean? Isn't the whole point about stones that they don't
roll - that they're not alive, and that they are therefore solid & unchanging - holding
up the vast tonnage that is this building and this roof?
vs 4/5 - Christ is a living stone... - and like living stones, let yourselves be
built be built into a spiritual house. The building is clearly associated (by v.
5) with the Temple and thus the train of thought leads, through clear Jewish association,
to the priesthood of the Christian community (as a whole). Now if you've heard me
talking here over the last few years this will sound like a familiar theme. We live
in a Christian civilisation that has historically found it hard to resist building
monuments to God, in the belief that the Christian God can be made present in sacred
buildings. If we were to stop a 1000 people in Princes St this afternoon and ask
them what the word church means to them, perhaps 990 of them would think of a building.....
dead stones. It's all been a terrible mistake.
During the early church's formation, while the practical advantages of travelling
light as far as sacred buildings were concerned were increasingly apparent, the Christian
body was developing the theological system to sustain this instinctive approach.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, provides a comprehensive re-statement
of such concepts as 'temple', 'sanctuary', 'sacrifice' and 'priesthood' radically
redefined in terms of Jesus' own ministry and sacrificial death. In other words,
in the new Christian dispensation, there is no longer any need for sanctuary, altar,
sacrifice or human priesthood, nor for a temple to house them. All these have been
rendered obsolete by the role of Jesus, the Exalted One, and the concept of temple
transposed from dead to living stones. Our home is 'the greater and more perfect
tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)' Hebrews 9.11.
Here is the revelatory insight that it is the people of God themselves, assembled
for prayer, who together form the primary icon of Christ among us. We no longer gather
merely to gaze at Christ the image of God; in the renewed liturgical assembly we
enter into the mystery of becoming Christ.
All the faithful should be led to that full conscious and active participation in
liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and
to which the Christian people, 'a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
a redeemed people' (1 Peter 2.9) have a right and obligation by reason of their baptism'.
Here, we recapture the New Testament vision of the entire Christian assembly as the
holy, priestly community called to offer worship. There are to be no more spectators,
for in the eucharistic action all the faithful are ministers and celebrants of God's
inexpressible gift.
As the Ohio-based liturgist, Gerard Pottebaum, beautifully describes it, 'We come
to realise an even greater discovery that is the joy of our lives: that we ourselves
are a tangible expression of the Holy Spirit. That is something to parade through
town about. . . and sometimes to enjoy with quiet restraint in a simpler style by
touching drinks with a few close friends and offering a toast, together, to life.'
