Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

April 15, 2007 - Second Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Harriette H. Sturges

Today is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.  It is the Easter season and while I find it difficult to sustain the pitch of Alleluia, I don't want to miss out on the celebration and wonder of this season of resurrection. I want to be like Peter in our reading from Acts, discovering and experiencing the joy of obeying God instead of authorities trying to quench the Spirit of God. I want to be like John writing in his revelation about the Alpha and the Omega, who is, who was, and who is to come. I don't want to be locked in an upper room worrying or doubting and being fearful when God has something wonderful and surprising, and challenging up God's sleeve for us as disciples.

What is it that God has up God's sleeve for us?  What delights!  What surprises! What challenges?  I'm sure our search committee feels like they have a clue about the challenges and are looking forward to the delights.  For our wonderful parishioner and intern Betty Morton, today is the day of her first formal sermon at 8 and 11. God will take her carefully chosen and crafted words and set them on fire.  For George Broughton, it will be the celebration of his Rite 13 at our 11 o'clock service where he will again formally claim the power of God to move from childhood into manhood, into adulthood and to ask this community to support him. I understand for the next several weeks we'll have one Rite 13 after another as many of our youth become of age. Next week I know there will be the Liturgy of the Light for our atrium-age parishioners, where we will celebrate the power and majesty of the Light of Christ.  Furthermore, there is an upcoming special retreat for our 2^nd- and 3^rd-graders focusing on the power of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist.

But what about today?  What's in store for us today as our psalm says: On this is the day that the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Another translation expresses it as, “This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Our psalmist has so much emphasis on the Lord as strength, and song, and salvation and the sound of exultation and victory that we almost, almost, glide over verse 22: The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. What a strange verse to insert here? How are we to build this day, plan our week, live our lives based on this same stone which the builders rejected which has become the chief cornerstone? Indeed, this concept is so important that it is repeated for emphasis at least twice in the Epistles.  In Ephesians chapter 2, we read:

You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built with all the others in a spiritual dwelling for God.

In the First Letter of Peter, also chapter 2, it is written:

You also, as living stones, must be built up onto a spiritual temple, and form a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  For you will find in scripture: “I am laying in Zion a chosen cornerstone of great worth. Whoever has faith in it will not be put to shame.  So for you who have faith it has great worth; but for those who have no faith  the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and also “ a stone to trip over, a rock to stumble against.”

Now my building expertise and knowledge is limited to building houses out of cards, houses and doll villages and towers with children's blocks. However, I am aware through trial, error, and observation that cornerstones are essential, especially in their form and placement.  If they are out-of-line or out-of-shape, whatever is built on them will be also.  But how can something rejected, become the chief cornerstone? The writers of the New Testament looked back and saw Jesus as the cornerstone of their faith but rejected by many.  I had always assumed the “many” referred to those who were not Christians, who reject Jesus as God; but more and more I think it applies to me, to us as well.

We are building, really being built into, the Kingdom of God in our individual lives and our life together as a parish, a diocese, a convocation, a national church, and a communion. In this building we are transformed, as Peter puts it, into living stones.  If Jesus is our chief cornerstone, how or what is making us stumble?

Jesus is a man of peace commanding us to love our enemies but we fight and go to war anyway.  Are we rejecting this part of Jesus?  Our creation was made for us by God to care for and use but we insist on using more than our share, depriving others and destroying the creation. Are we rejecting God as the Lord of Creation?  How can what we have rejected be transformed into the chief cornerstone.  How can we rebuild?

We see that corporations who long rejected the pleas of environmental prophets and scientists and refused to see the causes of pollution are now using environmental standards and calling themselves green. The cynical, skeptical side of me says its economic green but they are putting actions behind their words. We see our State standing up to the Navy to preserve wildlife. Politicians who rejected this idea as impractical or as jeopardizing our naval strength are now jumping on the bandwagon to let the swans live.  Devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, was rejected by Protestants as were candles on the altar.  Now it is hard to imagine a service without candles burning, and rosaries and icons of Mary are found in many Protestant denominations as an aid and focus for prayer.

I thought about cornerstones in listening to the news this past week.  Imus, unknown to me, publicly stumbled and fell on one of the cornerstones of his upbringing.  The racist and sexist statements he made revealed a part of his heritage and culture that he wished he had kept secret.  I deplore what he said especially as I believe it did reflect his heart, perhaps his true belief.  However, in the light of public scrutiny and condemnation, will this stumbling block, can this previous rejection of seeing these women as human beings created in the image of God, now become a means of redemption for him?  I understand the women athletes at Rutgers who were the target of his remarks asked for and had a meeting with him.  I can only hope that it was a time of repentance and reconciliation for them, thereby becoming an example for the rest of us. Indeed, he could become a witness for us.

Thomas was going to reject what he could not see and could not touch.  The risen Christ of his friends was a cornerstone he rejected.  Yet, resurrection did become a chief cornerstone for him. John is careful to remind us that we are blessed if we don’t see but believe.  We don’t see the literal hands and feet of Jesus but there are many whom we know who witness to his life and resurrection. This witness is attested to time and again across the centuries through apostles, prophets, and passersby with such power that we too have come to believe.  As Peter told the Council, the power of this witness was so strong that it led them to disobey the authorities and obey God in the strength of the Holy Spirit.

I believe our Easter work is to sing and shout Alleluia, to rejoice and be glad in the day that God has acted.  But it is also a time, a season for us to act, to notice our rejected cornerstones, our stumbling blocks, the thoughts and attitudes we hide from others and hope don't slip out, and to become witnesses to the power and love of God through Jesus Christ. It is a time for us to challenge the prisons of hate, fear, prejudice, and indifference and stand on the cornerstone of Christ and witness in whatever way we can to the love, joy, and power of transformation of Jesus.

What is it that you, that we are, fearing or doubting about ourselves or our parish or our Jesus that we are stumbling over instead of building on?

To him who loves us and has set us free from our sins with his blood, who has made of us a royal house to serve as the priest of his God and Father – to him be glory and dominion for ever! Amen.

Believe and live.

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