Speaker: Caleb Schrock-Hurst
Bible Passages: 1 Peter 2:4-12
Summary: The bible — and world — present us with various examples of what faith in God can look like. Surprisingly, God’s people were exiled from their homeland many times throughout the biblical narrative — we can view these exiles totally negatively, or we can understand that God often sides with the oppressed and exiled, rather than with the empire.
This morning I want to open with an idea that’s always stuck with me about what we worship: what we actually worship is the last thing we think about when we go to sleep, and the first thing we think about when we wake up. Too often for me, it’s my friends as mediated by social media, since I too often check my phone just before falling asleep and right after I wake up. For others it’s family, it’s money, or power, or their country; the list goes on.
Part of the Christian life is learning how we can center God, and God’s shalom, as the first thing we think of in the morning, and the last thing we think of before we go to sleep — and we need to do this, because we’ve professed together that Jesus is the center of our lives: our cornerstone, our living stone that provides security and meaning.
Today, we’ll be working with this interesting little passage from First Peter; this passage has been on my mind the last few months because it was our Virginia Conference theme scripture for the assembly that we held two weekends ago. This scripture, and really this whole book, is a good one to read while thinking about our life together as Christians in changing and challenging times, because it’s trying to answer the following question: what are we being called to do as followers of Jesus? how do we relate to those outside the Christian world? how do we relate to the Old covenant in light of Jesus? and how should we live within an empire and so many systems that seem far beyond our control?
The main thing I want to get across today is that centering our identity in Christ — rather than in our worldly identities, like loyalty to our nation or ethnic group — makes us into living stones: places of security and strength; but — this same identity will also make us exiles from the world. On one hand, yes, we become living stones: places of strength and security and life — but on the other hand, living stones will keep growing and changing and will never quite fit anywhere on earth; we must become, if you will, rolling stones, living differently than our neighbors and friends; at home everywhere, and nowhere.
One of the most important questions we need to answer as Christians is if we are willing to accept this call to be exiled in the world, rejecting the world, and particularly the nation-state’s desire to control and co-opt Christianity for its own purposes; if not, do we become imperial Christians — Christians allied with an empire, with a nation-state, or some combination of the two. Will we be exiles — made strange by our faiths, and surviving by the grace of God and the mercy of our neighbors — or will we become imperial, embracing the forces of wealth, power, and violence that the world tells us it takes to survive in the world?
Anyhow — we’ll come to more thoughts on exile and citizenship later on, but let’s first turn to text from First Peter text.
General thoughts on 1 Peter
Recently, the first place I go for my bible commentary when beginning a sermon is the Jewish Annotated New Testament, a really excellent work that opens cultural doors of interpretation provided by modern Jewish scholars. I’ve come to love this resource because I’m convinced that ignoring the Christian faith’s rootedness in the Jewish tradition is one of the biggest mistakes we can make as Christians.
I also bring this up because this passage is one that, when removed from the rich Jewish context of the first century, is one that has contributed to one of the deepest mistakes of Christian history — oppression of Jews by Christians. The theological underpinning for this oppression is — seminary word alert — supersessionism. Say it with me: supersessionism. Supersessionism is the idea that Christians have replaced Jews as the true Israel, or superseded them — which on the face of it may sound innocuous enough, but when paired with a willingness to ignore Jesus’s teachings in the Sermon on the mount, have far too often led to every form of violence imaginable against Jewish communities by “Christian” communities.
Anyhow — how do we square the circle in this passage — wanting to embrace Peter’s message that we, Gentile believers in Christ, are now the called-out ones, a new people in the image of God, without becoming guilty of excluding and combating other people who aren’t living with this mission?
We have to start by asking: what is the mission of the people of God in the Old Testament? What is the mission that Jesus came ‘not to abolish, but to fulfill?’
Peter clearly had this same question on his mind when writing this letter. Peter is writing near the end of his life and ministry, and he is writing from Rome — though Peter was the leader of the first Chirstian community in Jerusalem, and often took the more Jewish side of arguments against Paul throughout the book of Acts, Peter too was eventually called to bring the message of Jesus to Gentile communities. At the beginning of First Peter we hear he is writing to communities of Gentile believers in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey — and much of the letter centers on how these Gentile believers have become children of Abraham’s mission, too, joining the mission of blessing all peoples — not claiming a monopoly on God’s blessing. Throughout the book Peter is using Jewish language and symbols to demonstrate how the church has been chosen to join the Jewish people in their exile, becoming a new priestly nation to accomplish the Abrahamic covenant: that all nations will be blessed through them.
Ok — let’s turn again to the passage itself.
Verses 4 and 5: 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’m reading from the NRSV here, but ‘spiritual house,’ in many translations, is actually translated as spiritual temple. If we run with this translation in its Jewish context, the idea that Christians are being built into a spiritual temple and to be a holy priesthood, we see some of the core functions and roles of Jewish worship adapted into a post-Jesus world — no longer do we need to offer physical sacrifices to God, but we do need to offer our lives as living stones. No longer does God dwell in a physical temple, but in our very lives, and our lives are transformed into the stones of this new, spiritual temple.
And when Peter uses the language of stones — imbued with stability and strength — it connected directly to his experience of Jesus. When he met Jesus he was just Simon, a fisherman — but Jesus named him ‘the rock:’ Petros in latin, clearly related to the Spanish word for rock, Piedra. Peter is passing this identity of strength on to the church.
And yes, while we’re being transformed into spiritual stones, in reality we can only do this with the support and guidance of Jesus, the cornerstone.
We’re all familiar with the ministry of Mother Theresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity and served the poor and dying in Calcutta. When we think of Mother Theresa, we may not think about her being a ‘living stone,’ but I think we should — and we should be intrigued: what allowed her, for decade after decade, to live with and minister to the dying? What enabled her to, year after year, live in obedience to her vow to provide “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor?” Many people in her situation would have faced burnout, broken hearts, and found the work hopeless. What kept Mother Teresa going, and what keeps others from her order going today? One thing the sisters of charity are known for, in addition to their work among the poor, is their prioritization of sabbath and prayer. Despite the enormity of their work, they prioritize time with God and time with each other, away from their ministry, so that they can be built up. In the same way, in order for us to be strong, to be living stones to the needy, we also need to come to the living stone, Jesus, on a regular basis, so that we can be filled.
Even in much less extreme circumstances than Mother Theresa, I hope that we prioritize sabbath, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines so that we encounter the giving and loving God who gives us strength, so that we can be rocks of strength for others. Okay, back to first Peter.
Verses 6-8:
“For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner,”
8 and “A stone that makes them stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.”
Here we have several references to the Hebrew scriptures. Like the other New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, the fundamental linkage between the Jewish scriptures and Jesus’s mission is self evident — with the twist that the new nation being built on Jesus the cornerstone is not, like any other nation, an ethnic community, but a believing community, brought together and linked not because of national or tribal identity, but because of a missional identity in Jesus the living stone, who brings the mission of the Old Testament to the vibrant, chaotic, multi-ethnic world of the first century — and also to our own.
Another thought on supersessionism: I think it’s a misreading to think that the builders referenced here were the Jewish authorities or Jewish people; rather, in the context of Roman persecution — and frankly in our context too — it is better to think of the builders of society being societal elites, who think violence and wealth will change the world, rather than love and self-sacrifice. The cross is foolishness to the world, but to us, it is the very ethic of love, defining who we are.
Verses 9-12
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.”
Peter is reminding the believers that now they are a new community together — a holy nation called out from among the nations to share the message of mercy and grace, as the Hebrew people were invited to do.
But Peter immediately reminds listeners that this is no easy task — while we have been called and set apart, we’re going to continue living within the realities, and temptations, of our fallen world — there is no getting away from a world where many do not serve the God of love, but instead serve ethnic identity, money, or power rather than grace and mercy. Here, though, the non-Jewish readers of this book were Gentiles until they heard the message of Jesus — now they know they are part of the mission and family of God. Obviously, a corollary of this is that we need to live honorable lives among our non-Christian friends and neighbors, because this is part of our mission — to, through our lives as living stones, point others toward Jesus. When people see our strength and determination in loving others and seeking justice — when they see us being living stones — this is part of living in the exilic way of Jesus.
Okay — let’s turn now back to our main question for the morning: how can we be both permanent, like a stone, and living and moving, as the spirit compels us to be? How can we be both a set-apart holy nation, and part of the nations we wish to reach with the message of God’s love?
How this relates to us
As I said earlier, I think the core takeaway we should have today is that we as Christians should remember that we are called-out ones — exiled from the ways of the world into a new way of being, called out of the way of empire and into the way of exile; a way highlighted for people of faith from the beginning, even as far back as the call of Abraham.
In Genesis 12, Yahweh calls to Abraham — one of the most important founding stories of faith for Christians, Muslims, and Jews — and his message is this:
“Go our from your country, out from your people and your father’s household;
I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
What is the mission contained within this message? That followers of the God of Abraham are called away from traditional physical and social places of belonging in order to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. In the Old testament we see the people try and accomplish this in a variety of ways — while enslaved in Egypt, as a tribal confederation led by Judges, as a kingdom, as a conquered people exiled in Babylon — and we see some models clearly emerge as more faithful to the way of God than others.
Over and over, when the Hebrew people embrace the idea of an exclusive nation, when they root their identity in the kingdom of David and Solomon, or root their identity in ethnic lineage as in the times of Ezra and Nehimah, God sends the prophets call the people away from this military might and ethnic exclusivity and toward the expansive way of love. We see in the Old testament that empires destroy communities of faith, they do not expand them. The community of faith in Yahweh is at its most faithful when it does not resist its exilic nature, but rather embraces it.
One way I’ve heard this described centers on the idea of how the people of faith understand their chosen-ness — when the people remember that they were chosen for a mission — the mission of blessing the world — they are blessed by God. When they forget this, and think that being chosen means they are God’s favorite — that God loves them more than other people, so they can pretty much do whatever they want — that is when the gravest mistakes in the history of the faith are made. This is what Peter is sharing with these congregations — that they too were chosen for the mission of Abraham, and that no one people group is God’s exclusive favorite; that wherever the spirit leads them, they are to be living stones of blessings for their neighbors, friends and enemies, not to become tools of the politically and socially powerful.
Right now, friends, I think we are facing this choice again — between an imperial Christianity, or an exilic Christianity. Today, the forces within Christianity that forget our mission to bless all people embrace the exclusive ideas of Christian Nationalism — that we must fear non-Christians, and live in an explicitly Christian country in order to be faithful to God, and that somehow we can teach the love of Jesus through violence and the power of the state. This is not being living stones. I’m glad Anabaptism has insisted since our beginning on the separation of church and state, meant to remind all Christians of our exile nature.
We can and should ask this question of ourselves — imperial, or exilic — and also to other Christian groups; at various points most Christian groups have found their way into the halls of power and taken on some form of imperial might, but in other contexts may take on much more of an exilic nature. The clear example here is Catholicism — in previous times in Europe, they were the state-enforced power center, wedded with empire, but today, in countries like our own, they function much the way the Anabaptist church has: as a piece of society, set apart, as fellow exiles in this land.
This same choice, between exile and empire, is also true beyond Christianity: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, can often take on the form of exilic communities and often have here in the west — but the same danger of seeking to become a political power through violence within society also lurks for our siblings in these religions. Much of this discussion outside of Christianity is not ours to meddle in; however, we should at least notice the fruits of imperial forms of faith — which are typically intolerance, fear, hate, and violence — and the fruits of exilic faith — patience, hope, love, and tolerance of others.
But we need to take a step back and ask — how do we approach brothers and sisters, Christian or otherwise, who have forgotten their exilic identity, those who have been caught up in the ways of empire? how can we convince them to lay down their weapons and rely on God?
We approach them as Jesus would — with an invitation, not a condemnation; we seek converts, we don’t hunt heretics. We should rightly be motivated to counteract the forces of Christian nationalism, Hindu nationalism, and other exclusive nationalisms, but condemnation alone will not change the minds of our friends and neighbors, let alone our enemies.
In this era of polarization, we must continually remind ourselves: what actually changes the mind of someone we disagree with? Is it us calling them names on social media? Is it us pointing out their faults in public settings? No — what changes hearts and minds is listening well; its sustained exposure to an alternative way of thinking and living: its relationships. This is what we are called to by our living stone, Jesus, who did all these things — who listened deeply to the disciples, who constantly told the people of Judea that they didn’t need to wait for the establishment of a kingdom of Israel to live rightly with God, but rather that the kingdom was already among them. Jesus taught and modeled a new way of living, oriented towards life and wholeness in the imperfect present, rather than the pursuit of the corrupting goal of an empire.
Now, so far I’ve been talking about exilic identity as if it’s always a positive thing — and obviously, it is not. The history of the Jewish people’s many exiles is fraught to say the least, and the vulnerability of living as exiles is obvious — but vulnerability is also what leads to deep relationships with neighbors and connection to God. The churches Peter was writing to, suffering under Roman persecution, knew that living among non-believers was dangerous — but Peter didn’t tell them to fear those around them, let alone to militarily resist them: instead he told them to submit to them in love in order to seek their conversion to the way of Jesus: and, he reminded them them that when they suffer, they suffer alongside Jesus.
Of course, in the Anabaptist-Mennonite world, we like to think of ourselves as exiles — and I think this is a good goal; however, there are still plenty of pitfalls to keep in mind. Too often Mennonite peoplehood has been ethnically exclusive, a holdover from European identity, determined by having the right last name; this is not what Peter is calling us to — rather we seek a new Christian peoplehood built on our radical commitment to the way of Jesus, our cornerstone. We must be a new community of sojourners and aliens together, having come from all corners of the earth, from all races and tribes, to seek the peace of the city in which we have been exiled. As Anabaptists, we are not God’s favorite because our spiritual ancestors stood up to the powers that were five hundred years ago — rather, we’re only part of God’s chosen people when we continue on in the mission God has prepared for us — to speak peace to those near and those far, or, as our passage put it today, when we “Conduct ourselves honorably among the gentiles.”
To close, I want to think through some things that will happen when we take our identity as a people of exile seriously.
First, we’ll remember that the empire is always competing for our loyalty — the empire wants us to stop worshiping Jesus and to worship it. When we are aware of the subtle, and not-so-subtle, ways that our host nations try to gain our loyalty and worship, we will see them everywhere. For example, here in the United States, though we may no longer call it empire worship, teaching worship of the flag and government is literally taught to children: every day school starts with a pledge of loyalty to the flag and nation — a religious ritual in almost every way.
Second, when we remember that we are living stones in exile, we will be able to keep a balance between seeing and striving to right the wrongs of the world, while also being aware that our efforts alone will not solve any given issue. When we remember we are merely one group among the many that God has created, we will work in collaboration with other peoples and other movements — and this in turn gives us the opportunity to continue becoming the multi-cultural, multi-racial chosen people that Peter envisioned.
Third, remembering our exilic identity will help us remember that we were chosen for a mission; we are not God’s favorite. When we lose sight of our cornerstone and our mission, who has called us to live in perpetual exile from the missions of the world — the missions of wealth, missions of power, missions of security — when forget why we were called by God in the first place, that is when we are most likely to begin serving the empire rather than Jesus, our cornerstone.
Finally, when we remember we are exiles from the world, we become living stones — people of strength and courage, comforting the sorrowful and calling others to the way of God. To do so, we must seek to be permanently rooted in Jesus, our cornerstone, and also in motion, to the places of need in the world, where we can bring healing and hope.
As you go today, remember that you are an exile here, in the United States — don’t worship the government, for the government won’t save you; don’t worship your ethnic community, for God is much bigger than that; rather, look to Jesus, our living stone, who pushes us to love radically, and to live at peace with neighbors near and far. Amen.
