"Stones" (sermon, May 22, 2011)

Scriptures from the Revised Common Lectionary for Year A, Easter 5, May 22, 2011:
Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

Our scriptures today come from the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year rotation of readings offered by an interchurch body once called the Consultation on Church Union (now called, Churches Uniting in Christ).  The purpose of the unified sequence of readings is to give us mainline Christians something like one voice, making us seem like one people on the one day of the week when we are both the most united and the most segregated, by culture, tradition, format, and style.

So, blame the composers of the Revised Common Lectionary for coming up with this at first apparently misbegotten set of rocky references.  Maybe they meant to create this stony blend in order to demonstrate the plethora of purposes to which stones may be used.  And, what is more, the precise purposes for which we – individually and as a church – have been designed.  But it also puts me in mind of how much throughout history, even up to the present, we have used our religion as a cruelly-aimed stone against people we dislike or who dislike us.

We should be stones...

In Psalm 31, God is lauded as our Rock and our Refuge; in Acts 7, we see the stoning of Stephen; then also John 14, in which Jesus figures himself as a masterbuilder; and finally my own subject matter for now, First Peter 2, encouraging us to think of ourselves as building materials for a new and spiritual temple dedicated to God.

I want to concentrate on our reading from First Peter and to suggest the possibility that we may be at one with God by understanding and cultivating a character for ourselves like that which Christ revealed – accepting and affirming others regardless of differences – living lives that emulate his.

Strangely enough, the author of First Peter encourages us to pursue this, emphasizing how we are like "living stones." 

You would think that the impermeability and hardness of stones would make for us a metaphor for being isolated and closed off, but that is not the case! We are to be living stones, hewn and polished and fitted together into a great and brilliant temple for our God.

Sadly for the Church, this is usually an ought-to-be statement rather than a statement of reality.  Throughout our history, and especially since Christianity became a major Western religion, it has been less common for us to behave as if we are stones being built into a temple, and more as if we are using our religion as a stone to smite perceived foes and competitors.

Our religion is part of ourselves, but historically Christians have used bits of our religion, to abuse others.
The Church has been notorious throughout history, even up to the present, for having exercised a cruel measure of power against others who resisted the good news we were professing because they thought that the good news wasn’t all that great.

Lately and historically, we have also seen people who are either innocent or naive who suffer because they have believed in the missiles church leaders were throwing. Whether they were misguided folk throwing themselves to the lions in ancient Rome, or Rapture-believers giving over everything they own and survive on, these unhappy few suffered because of the stupidity of others. Both of these examples were simply trying their best to do what they had heard God would have them do in order to demonstrate their faithfulness. More's the pity.

Mind you, using their religion as a weapon (and losing innocents who got caught in the crossfire) is probably grounded in the persecution Christians received at the hands of others for the first three centuries of our existence: They once stoned Stephen? Well, then, we’ll just stone them back!  But, based on the knowledge of grace and peace taught to us by our Redeemer, it is indefensible, nowadays and ever since the Fourth Century when we became a world power, revenge is out of the question. 

In other words, we have been justifying our bad behavior of unjustifiably stoning others, using rather selectively the language or meanings we have found in the Bible.

Take as one example our historical responses to Jesus’ words to Philip in the fourteenth chapter of the gospel according to John: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These words have been used and, let’s be blunt, abused by Christians for centuries.  They have served as words of comfort in nearly every funeral service I have ever performed, but outside of funerals, the saying has been anything but comforting. Instead, we have tended to use them to create an elitist, exclusionary attitude among Christians, against people of other religions or of no religion at all. We living stones have had a common tendency to hurl this saying like a weapon, when we should not.

Some, like the scholars in the Jesus Seminar, have counter-argued that Jesus never actually said these words.  In fact, according to a majority of the Jesus Seminar, Jesus himself never said anything that has been recorded in the gospel according to John.  Rather, John is a voice of Christian tradition as it would have been heard in the late First and early Second Centuries.  The voice of Christ here, they say, is actually the voice of the early Church.

I can neither confirm nor deny this claim, and (frankly) neither can the Jesus Seminar.  It’s just their best guess.  Mind you, it’s a pretty good guess, I’m sure.  But I suspect that the reason for them arguing against these words coming out of Jesus’ mouth is that they want to discredit the abuses for which they’ve been used.

Unfortunately, by claiming that Jesus never said what he says in John, the Jesus Seminar pretty effectively challenges the authority of John’s gospel when, in fact, what it would be far better to do – for the sake of Christian history and tradition – would be, to make an alternative interpretation of the gospel as accurate as possible.  Because even the strictest readers of the gospel have to admit, the saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me,” can have numerous meanings. 

The first meaning you might find, is the most traditionally recognized: Jesus is the only way to heaven.  I’ll admit right now, this might be what it means.  It might have been what Jesus meant.  Given what else we know about Jesus, however, if most of the rest of the sayings attributed to him are true, then to affirm in these words some sort of exclusive right to heaven for his followers is ridiculous.  And, further, to use these words to marginalize and exclude, or even villify, others is sinful.

You see, in John and all the other gospels, Jesus has numerous encounters with non-believers, or – at least – people who do not believe in God the way that he does, and in two cases (that of the Canaanite or Syrophoenician woman whose daughter is demon-possessed, and that of the Roman centurion who appeals to Jesus on behalf of his dying slave) Jesus actually praises them for their faith... a faith or a religion which is not the same as his. 

Furthermore, no Gentile whom Jesus helps is ever reported to change stripes.  But all are deemed worthy at least of recognition and honor by God’s very own Son.  This appears to me to indicate that the idea of faith or belief in Jesus as the only way to heaven is at least somewhat questionable.

Jesus lived in a pluralistic society much like ours.  And nowhere other than here in John, chapter 14, in this moment at the table of the last supper, has it been alleged that Jesus himself claimed for his followers exclusive access to God.  Heaven would appear, instead, to be attainable by people who – perhaps unbeknownst to themselves or even despite themselves, or (even more!) despite the efforts of Christian believers – happen to act as if they trusted in God.  As if is close enough, it is clear: so stop worrying about what other people think or believe, and work on yourself!

One more way of interpreting the saying,“I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” is to hear in those words first of all the words “I am.”  For Jesus, a Jew, to be speaking these words is in a very important sense for him to be acknowledging and revering the Holy Name, "I AM THAT I AM" –  אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה – pronounced Ehyeh asher ehyeh. (Exodus 3:14)

Thus, “I AM: the Way and the Truth and the Life” (or “Yahweh [is] the Way and the Truth and the Life”) could be viewed as a statement of reverence for the Creator – Jesus’ own personal creed, you might say.  (see The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, p. 568: note for John 4:26)

With these words in John 14, Jesus might not be referring to himself (or, at least, not himself alone), and neither would he be doing so in the five other “I am” statements and discourses in John (“I AM” – the Bread of Life; the Light of the World; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the True Vine). 

Throughout John, Jesus by these statements affirms and extols the presence, the power, and the faithfulness of God.

Read in this way, for him to say “No one comes to the Father except through me” is his faith-filled exclamation.  The Messiah here proclaims his cosmic role for the persecuted and long-suffering people of God. 

Maybe it’s time-bound affirmation of protection as salvation, a word for a particular empire.  Maybe it was as much as for him to say to Rome, “If you want to claim the lordship of the earth for yourselves, to usurp the one true God, you’ll have me to deal with me.”

But maybe it’s less time-bound, and as I consider many of us to believe.  Maybe anyone who wants to get to heaven will eventually have to go walk in the ways and teachings of the Christ.  “No one gets to the Father except through me,” could be the crowning affirmation that there is something timeless, something religiously boundless, something that everyone in the end must face.  The only way to know God is to practice compassion.  The only sure measure of whether you save yourself and others will be in whether your life unfolded as Jesus’ did: Did you live and love and show compassion and die to yourself and find new life?

Not everyone can handle that rock of a religion.

The stone that the builders rejected is the chief cornerstone, and how shall we – living stones with our Messiah – not be joined together into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God – honoring our God, defending God’s people!

Jesus is our builder and our cornerstone, our keystone: our way, our truth, our life!  We have come to this moment, this place, through the one who is our rock, our refuge, our first and only and insurmountable line of defense against Rome – the evil and the cruelty of this world – and who is shaping us living stones to be for the world as Christ is for us. 

So, we must not, we may not, we shall not use Christ’s words as projectiles and blunt instruments – slinging religious stones to exclude or isolate those others who are just as beloved of our God as we are, whether they are faithful to related traditions, to other traditions or to no tradition.  Goodness is goodness, in God’s eyes, and should be so in ours as well; righteousness is righteousness; and in a world so bent with misery, shame, and cruelty, in a world so broken and torn by sin, we – like Jesus – shall recognize and receive righteousness where it resides...

But we must, we may, we shall continue to express the invitation as well!  God is our way, our truth, and our life, and anyone who would practice as we practice and live as we live, with the assurance of salvation (of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our trials and rejoicing), must eventually and ultimately go through Christ.  The realm of heaven is at hand for everyone, everyone, and Jesus presents us an acceptable – albeit also challenging – way, truth, life.  The compassionate among us invite others to travel along with us, so that we may all anticipate and endure whatever joy or hardship may come.

We are stones hewn for building a temple not made with hands, a realm not seen with the eyes... for salvation, and neither we nor the religion we profess ought to be used for the destruction of others.  We are living stones fitted together for the protection of the vulnerable and the similarly compassionate, not for their abuse.

May God bless us, to not only possess Christlike faith but to express it and live it, as well.  Amen.