Living Stones

A line from Shakespere's play As You Like It reminds us that there are “sermons in stones.”  He may have had in mind the great church buildings of the ages whose magnificent towers and arches have inspired people and pointed the way to God.  The Jerusalem Temple was a sermon in stone.  It was the center of the life of God's people for generations until it was destroyed by the Romans in the year 72 AD.  Early Christians came to think of the Church as the new temple God was building to take its place.

After his confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah, St. Peter was called a rock.  He used this metaphor in his first epistle to explain the relationship between Christ and the believers he was binding together into the Church.  Peter proclaims in this message to the baptized that God is building a new temple.

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 into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. -  I Peter 2:4,5.

In God’s new temple, Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone. Using an image from Psalm 118, Jesus describes himself as the Cornerstone.  In traditional building projects, the cornerstone has to be carefully selected, cut, and set in its position because all the other stones depend upon it.  When the world rejected Jesus, God raised him up and made him the determinative building block upon which his new temple is built.

Those who place their trust in the Cornerstone will be living stones in God’s new temple.  A single brick is more or less useless until it is joined with other bricks and incorporated into a building.  So it is with individual Christians.  To realize my destiny as one of the living stones, I must be joined to the rest of you in the temple God is building.

God’s new temple is more than something to look at – it has a function.  In architecture, there is an important principle that form should follow function.  In designing a building, an architect first determines the function and then let the form emerge to facilitate that function.  Imagine a hospital without operating rooms, a pizza parlor without an oven, or a fire station without a place to park a fire engine.  The function of God’s new temple is to proclaim the mighty works of God and express God’s infinite love to others.   Everything else shapes and fortifies us for the fulfillment of that function.

We do not volunteer to be the living stones in God’s Church, God chooses us.  Peter says it this way, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Peter 2:9).

P.S.  Here's a hymn about the new temple and its cornerstone.