May 22 - Easter 5, Year A (RCL)
We’re here. And that’s not a foregone conclusion. If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ll know that yesterday
the world
was supposed to end.
Or, more accurately, the rapture was supposed to happen,
and all of us left behind
would spend the next five months in tribulation,
many of us dying during that time,
until the final end of the world
in late October of this year.
It’s easy to laugh at the gullibility of people who take such warnings seriously. After all, there were obvious flaws in the predictions: the decision that the flood was exactly 7000 years ago, the identification of the number of days since Jesus died, and so on.
But people have believed it,
and have staked their lives on it.
One family with a small child and another on the way
sold everything they had,
and budgeted so that their money would run out on Saturday.
Another women left her job two years ago
to preach about the coming of Christ;
her kids worry about where the money will come from
for them to attend college.
The military were warned to be prepared for possible violence and looting, in case people think
"Well, there's no point to anything now, it's all ending tomorrow..."
Clergy were put on call in small towns to deal with whatever eventuates.
Thankfully, it seems that the day passed
without any major incidents.
I had to hunt this morning to find a mention in the New York Times.
Life goes on, as usual.
And the reality is, most Episcopalians I know
weren’t too worried.
Perhaps it’s because we believe Jesus’ words
that we won’t know the time and day when he comes.
But I have a suspicion
that the truth is
that most of us don’t really believe
that Jesus is going to come again, that the world will end,
or at least, not in our lifetimes.
But Jesus is clear: no one nows the day or hour, so we are to be ready
because it could be any day, any hour.
It could be two thousand years away; it could be two minutes.
And we are to be prepared.
So how should we prepare? How should we make ourselves
ready?
At least part of the answer
is in our reading from the first letter epistle of Peter.
This letter
is written not to a nice secure established church;
this is written to Christians who have been scattered throughout what is now Turkey,
and who have suffered persecution.
And they are people
who are consciously waiting for,
consciously expecting,
Christ’s return.
Peter is writing to encourage them
to stick with their faith,
even when it’s hard,
even when they are suffering,
even when
they want to give up.
And so we read today,
“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.”
So why would Peter write this?
What have stones got to do with being Christian?
Think about a building made of stone. You don’t see so many of them on Long Island, but head up into New England a bit, and they dominate the landscape.
When you build a building, one of the things you have to do
is make sure the walls stand at right angles to one another.
With a frame,
it’s a matter of measuring the angle, and adjusting the wooden pieces.
But traditionally with stone,
you take a block that is cut square,
and use that
to define the building.
It becomes the cornerstone,
and all the other stones
are placed in relationship to it,
and to each other.
Peter describes the church like that.
Christ is our cornerstone. And we are stones like him, being built into a structure that relies on him.
And we rely on one another. We don’t do it alone. Whether it’s surviving persecution
or working out how to live when the coming of Christ could be any time, we rely on one another.
One of the things, among many, that we talked about yesterday at the vestry retreat
was the way the church at large
has reclaimed
the communal nature of our faith.
When I was growing up, I used to hear people, especially ones that went to the 8am service - which is the service I have the strongest positive memories of - I heard them talk about “making my communion.”
Going to church
was an individual act,
something that was a matter of personal piety.
And there’s some truth in that.
But it’s not the whole truth.
Because being Christian
is not simply an individual at, although each and every one of us
needs to make a decision to follow Christ for ourselves.
Being Christian
is about becoming part of a community,
something bigger than ourselves,
where we care for, and are accountable to
each other.
Part of the danger of things like predictions of the rapture
is that each person becomes concerned primarily
with their own salvation, and that of their loved ones.
And it’s easy to forget
that the heart of the gospel
according to Jesus
is to love God
and love one another.
It’s all outward looking.
Which takes us back to the metaphor of the building,
the one that is built with Christ as the cornerstone,
and us the stones that make up the walls.
I don’t think it’s pushing the metaphor too far
to say that the purpose of this building, this house
is to provide shelter.
Peter says this is a spiritual house, to offer spiritual sacrifices, but never describes what those are.
But later he talks about the Christian calling as being
to proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.
In other words,
to tell other people about the work of God among us,
perhaps even
to provide a place of safety
where they can experience those same mighty acts of God, that same marvelous light.
We as Christians
rely on Christ
for our strength, for our purpose, for our balance.
We rely on Christ
to do the work we have been given,
to be the evidence
of God’s work in the world.
So people look at what we do and what we say, and they say,
“Yes, God is here.”
And that matters
when you live in a world
where some Christians act in ways that are perhaps
not so helpful.
Because there are plenty of people
who heard about the failure of the prophesied rapture,
and say, “look, those Christians are deluded.”
but we know better.
We know the power of God in our lives.
We know that God loves us,
and calls us, and works in and through us.
We have a message
that’s worth hearing,
not about fear of a rapture, but about a God who loves us
and wants to know us,
and demands everything of us, but it is always good.
And we
are the best evidence of that.
We are the best evidence,
not because we’re somehow better than other people,
or deluded about our own perfection, we are the best evidence
because we have received
the mercy of God.
God has worked in our lives;
we have good news to share.
And its good news
that’s needed right now.
there are people laughing about the non-appearance of the rapture,
and people wondering how to take their lives again,
and in between
a lot of people wondering
whether the Christianity they thought they knew
has anything at all to say
in this world of ours,
and at the same time,
who are hungry for God.
We don’t have all the answers.
We don’t know the time that Jesus will return.
It could be tonight.
It could be in a hundred, a thousand
years.
But if we are being true to Christ,
if we are being those living stones built into the house of God,
if we are proclaiming the mighty acts of the God called us out of darkness into his marvelous light,
in our words and in our lives,
then we will be ready,
whenever Jesus comes again.
“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. 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.”
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010