Sermon Tone Analysis

Easter 5, I Peter 2:4-10, April 20, 2008

*Living Stones*

            Introduction: What does it take to build a church?

What is it made up of?

What does it cost?

When it comes to cost, most people would say, well, it would cost about a million dollars or more to build what we have here.

Of course, a church in Thailand only costs 5, 000 dollars.

But what does it take to build a church.

First we have to talk about our definition of the word “church”.

Maybe you’ve never really thought about it, but we use the word “church” in a lot of different ways.

“Church” can be a verb, something we do.

For instance, right now we are “doing church,” as opposed to what we will be doing in an hour, Bible Class.

“Doing church” is when we gather together around the Word and Sacraments in worship and praise to our Lord God.

Usually, “church” is a noun.

We all know that a noun is a person, place or thing.

Right!

This morning you drove your car from your home address to N8092 Cty Hwy AY, Mayville, WI.

Here we have what we call Immanuel Lutheran Church and School.

When we come here we say, “We are going to church.”

Some of you may know that in the New Testament, “church” always has a different meaning.

It never means a building or a piece of property, rather “church” refers to the gathering of believers.

The church isn’t bricks and mortar and classrooms and roofs and parking lots and trees.

The people are the church.

And isn’t that true?

A tornado could level all the buildings on our property, but we would still have a church, since “church” is the people here, not the buildings we meet in.

\\             So now that we’ve reviewed a bit what “church” means, let’s ask ourselves again, how long does it take to build a church from scratch?

How much does it cost?

To answer these questions, let us look at the master builder himself, Jesus Christ.

He was on earth visibly for 40 days between his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven, and do you know what he was doing?

He was building a Church.

You see, the chief purpose of his 3 years of ministry was to be the world’s substitute: to live under all of God’s laws and to obey them perfectly in our place, and to die that awful death on the cross to pay for all the sins that we have broken.

But on Easter Sunday, that was all finished.

He just had one more task to accomplish before he went to heaven; Jesus had to build a Church.

And the fact that we are here in church many hundreds of years later proves that Jesus did a pretty good job building his church.

So let’s look at “The Church Jesus Built.”

Lets see what it is made of, how much it cost, and the identity of it’s members.

\\             The first words of our text read, “As you come to him, the living Stone.”

Doesn’t that title strike you as odd…a “living Stone”?

Have you ever seen a stone that was alive?

Of course not!

By definition, a stone is something that has no life in it.

Years ago there was a fad called “Pet Stones.”

The joke was that it was a very easy pet to take care of.

You didn’t have to feed it, clean up after it, groom it, or bathe it…it was a low-maintenance pet.

But stones do not move.

Stones are about as dead as can be.

If you were doing some gardening, and out of the corner of your eye you saw a stone moving around, I guarantee you that would grab your attention.

POeter calls Jesus a living stone.

He is rock solid, unbreakable, strong, the substance of which to build a foundation with.

With this idea Peter speaks about Jesus as the living stone, the foundation of the church.

As Peter describes Jesus to us he connects us to the Old Testament.

\\             First he quotes, “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

There is a difference between ancient cornerstones and our modern-day ones.

Our cornerstones tend to be mostly commemorative objects, maybe having a year inscribed, but with little or no architectural benefit.

Ancient cornerstones were the first stone laid in the construction of a building.

It had to but cut and placed to absolute perfection, because all the walls of the building would get their angles from that cornerstone.

The stone had to be strong, since a great portion of the building would rest on it.

And doesn’t that describe Jesus well?

He is the foundation of everything.

He is where we start, where it all begins.

Without Jesus, there is no Church.

You might think that’s pretty obvious, but so many people do not place Jesus as the cornerstone.

Some feel that the Church exists to make this world a better place.

To them, the Church is here to wipe out hatred, to build bridges of understanding among the races, to feed the homeless, to build habitat for humanity.

All these things are great and noble ideals, but they are not the chief cornerstone of the Church.

Forgiveness of Sins through Christ is the cornerstone, and if Jesus is removed from that cornerstone position, is there really Church anymore?

\\             Then Peter uses another biblical metaphor for Jesus the living Stone.

He writes, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.”

Now what is a capstone?

Think of a Roman arch.

The two sides of the arch rise and lean toward each other, and right where they meet, a capstone is inserted.

Again, this had to be just the right size and shape.

If the capstone was too large, the two sides of the arch would fall outwards.

If it were too small, the arch would collapse in on itself.

Here is our living Stone, Jesus, who is that precise capstone.

He fits perfectly for what we need.

We needed a Savior to be a human being, just like us, so that he would be subject to all of God’s laws.

But he also needed to remain True God, so that his blood would cover the guilt of all mankind.

Jesus is the perfect capstone.

Of course now we have Jesus as the corner stone, the basis of our faith.

And we also have him as the capstone.

Of the church He is it’s beginning and it end or completion.

\\             There is one other passage that Peter pulls out of the Old Testament.

In it Peter calls Jesus, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”

In the previous quote, we heard that the builders rejected this perfect capstone.

We are reminded of how the prideful Jewish leaders felt about Jesus.

They hated him, because he had dared to tell them that there was something wrong with them spiritually.

Of course this is the attitude that many people today have about Jesus.

They will gladly accept a lovey-dovey Jesus that tells us just to be nice to each other.

But a Jesus that says in our Gospel, “I am the way (only way), the truth (the only truth), and the only way to life,” this turns a lot of people off.

They would be content if Jesus was only “a way to heaven, one of many truths, and one way to life.”

But people in their pride still stumble over the living Stone because they feel his claims are too confining.

“Surely he can’t be the only way to heaven!” they say as the stumble and bumble their way through life.

\\             And don’t we find ourselves so often right there with them, stumbling over Jesus.

Our pride gets in the way.

We want to serve Christ, but we want to make sure that we are honored for our work, instead of being content that Jesus receives all the glory.

We stumble over the rock when we want to hold onto sins, knowing that Jesus has died for them all, so what’s the harm of carrying a few pets sins we really enjoy?

We stumble over the living Stone when we only give Jesus an hour of our time of Sunday morning, maybe pray to him before some meals, but dedicating our lives 100% to Christ?

C’mon, it’s just not possible.

We have real lives too.