1 Peter 2:1-12 The Mission of God - Building the Church Sermon preached April 14, 2013 Opening Ive

been doing some thinking and dreaming. And I have an announcement to make. I havent shared this with the Session or staff or anyone, this is coming just from me. And you may think Im crazy, once you hear this announcement, you may think that we went and got us a new pastor and after only four months hes lost his mind already. But I am compelled to do this by the word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And my announcement is, that we are starting a new building campaign. And the results will be a will be a church that changes this community. Because of this building campaign, well see: People lost in the valley of despair find hope in Jesus Christ and getting baptized at Central; Teenagers rescued from promiscuity and drugs and gathering in a youth group so full of energy the walls of the church will bow out; Children smiling and laughing as they learn Jesus loves them; dozens and dozens gathering up front here for Sandys childrens sermon; Husbands and wives in fractured marriages finding new beginnings; Hungry families sitting down to a table with good food that this church has helped to provide them; And well see a packed church...that sends people out into the world on mission. And for this to happen, we need a building campaign. But - Im not talking about bricks and mortar here - Im talking about a building campaign thats about people - where you and I are the bricks and stones that make up the kind of church that Peter describes in our scripture reading. Introduction to scripture What kind of church is this? Well, Peter says we are to be a church that is a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods own special people selected by him to change the world through the gospel of Jesus Christ. He says God is building us - you and me - into a temple of the Holy Spirit where God himself lives and moves and works. 1

Thats pretty amazing. God has hand-selected us - right here this morning - on the square in Chambersburg - to be his representatives on earth to show the world what a great and loving and wonderful God he is, to lead people to faith, to help the hurting. And were not on our own here - the scripture says that God is going to live right here among us and give us all the stuff we need to become who were supposed to be. What the church seems to be And this is what all churches are supposed to be. But if you look around, there seems to be an enormous gap between what the church is, and what its supposed to be. I visited Jerusalem about 15 years ago. A mandatory stop on anybodys visit is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is an ancient church, built on one of the supposed sites of Jesus tomb. You would think, this would be an awesome church, its right on or near the spot where Jesus rose from the dead and conquered sin and death! Instead, it is utterly appalling. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is ugly - architecturally. But it has a worse kind of ugliness. Six main Christian denominations fight over control of the church, with each denomination staking a claim to part of the church and defending their turf with fists if necessary. The conflict is so ugly that a Muslim family has kept the key to the church for generations, to keep the peace among the Christians. I read a story that there is a ladder in the church resting on a ledge - story goes that in 1860 one of the factions claiming rights to the church noticed a broken window, and put up the ladder to fix it, but before they could do so members of another faction pointed out that the window was in their zone of the church. So since the broken window and the ladder belonged to two different sects, the ladder was left leading against the wall under the window. Since 1860! Pretty tragic - on the spot where there should be the power and presence of Christ - there is instead ugliness, conflict, pettiness, division. The church I started in South Carolina was kind of a refuge for people whod been burned by church. And I heard story after story of the wounds people suffered because of church fights or spiritually abusive pastors, of churches where the people were more concerned about the color of the carpet than caring for lost and suffering people. Stories of churches that were hateful to people of the wrong skin color. And on and on. We could go on for days with stories and anecdotes about churches gone wrong. But its easy to complain about the church, tear down the church. The challenge is, to become what we already are. To become, the people God says we already are. 2

Living into our identity The churchs challenge, our challenge, is to close the gap between who we think we are, and who God says we are. We look around on Sunday morning and see a collection of ordinary people, but the Lord says were anything but ordinary - we are his chosen people - we are his temple, in whom the presence of God lives. Lets run with the temple idea for a minute. Vs. 5 is translated spiritual house, but its better translated as temple of the Holy Spirit. We are being built into a temple of the Holy Spirit, is what the Word is saying. A temple in the ancient world was a place where you went to encounter the divinity. And if you travel to just about anywhere in Asia or the Mediterranean world, you will end up touring ruins of ancient temples. Back in that time, the idea was that there is a big gap between human beings and the gods, and you needed a special place where you could go encounter the gods after you did the right religious rituals. And the world was full of temples and sacred places, to all kinds of different gods, and you would go to the temple to worship and to make offerings in order to win the gods favor, so your child would be healed of sickness, or youd harvest a big crop or your business venture would succeed. And when you have a temple, you always have a priestly caste of men and women who run the place and who are intermediaries between you and the gods. To get to the gods, you have to go through them. A temple was a specific building in a specific place run by the priests. But Christianity was revolutionary. God came to us in Jesus Christ who made the final, one-for-all sacrifice, and then Jesus Christ made us the temple of Gods presence - you and I, alone or together, are the main way God chooses to encounter people seeking his presence, love and mercy. You and I, are the temple of the Almighty, dispersed throughout the whole planet. This was so revolutionary that the Romans thought Christians were atheists - they had no temples, no priestly caste, no sacrifices, they met in homes - this isnt a religion but some kind of subversive secret society - but Christians said, Jesus Christ has bridged the gap between God and humans, he was our great high priest and made the ultimate sacrifice, and that every single Christian, was a priest - as we help people encounter the living God. The early church didnt convert Roman world thru great preachers preaching at stadiums like Billy Graham - they converted the world by Christians believing who they already were - they were living stones of Gods temple - and so they went out and lived with courage and decency and love in a brutal, cold, suffering world.

Christ the Cornerstone So how do we become what Peter describes? There is an old story about a family from out in the boondocks that was making their first visit to a big city. They checked into a hotel and stood in amazement at the beautiful lobby. As they left the reception desk, they came to the elevators. Theyd never seen an elevator before, and just stared at it, unable to figure out what it was for. An old lady hobbled towards the elevator, pressed the button and went inside. The door closed. About a minute later, the door opened and out came a stunningly good-looking woman. Dad couldnt stop staring. Without turning his head he patted his sons arm and said, Go get your mother, son. Well, its not quite that quick for the church - but the most basic and most important thing in building a church is to start with the right cornerstone. In this case, Jesus Christ. Everything depends on this. Everything. Today cornerstones are almost always ceremonial. But in times past, when you built something, the cornerstone had to be just right. And you started your building with the cornerstone, and made sure the angles were a perfect 90 degrees and it was placed properly on the building site. And then you built the whole building around it, and if the cornerstone was right, your walls would be plumb, your corners are good. The rest of the building is aligned around the cornerstone. What does it mean to have Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of the church? It means everything is aligned around him. Christ the cornerstone means that the center of who we are, is found in Jesus Christ, not a generic hazy God out there, but the God whose Son came to us, born a little Jewish boy 2,000 years ago and revealed God to us, and died for our sins, and rose from the dead so by trusting him we can live forever in Gods new kingdom. Christ the cornerstone means that for everything we do here, the question is, WWJHUD? What would Jesus have us do? Not, what is my agenda for the church. Rather, what is Christs agenda for the church? Christ the cornerstone means that what were about here, bottom-line, is to help people know and love and follow Jesus Christ, to know him personally as a living 4

reality Christ the cornerstone means the most precious thing about this church is Jesus Christ and his mission for us. Not these beautiful windows, not that amazing steeple up there or the great organ in the sanctuary. For Christ to be the cornerstone for the church, he has to be precious to me and to you. Is he that to you? When I went to college, I brought with me a portable Smith-Corona typewriter. Those of you around my age and older, you probably typed on a typewriter like that too. You have a term paper to write, youd roll a piece of paper in there and very carefully begin typing away. You make a mistake, out comes the bottle of white-out, you dab it on there with that teeny brush and blow on it and wait for it to dry and then you type over the mistake. Then I graduated from college and went to work and we soon got the first personal computers. Starting typing work stuff on those using early word processing software. You could backspace right over mistakes. You could cut and paste whole paragraphs. You could change the font style and size. Pretty soon there was spell-check. It was amazing. So when I left my job and went to seminary, I had to have a computer, couldnt go back to a typewriter, using a typewriter to type a paper felt like using a hammer and chisel to hammer words into a slab of granite. The experience of coming to know Jesus Christ is something like that. All the other stuff in your life that you thought was so important - making money, getting ahead, having a hot car, finding the perfect person to marry- becomes secondary to the beauty and preciousness of Jesus Christ to you. Has that happened for you? If not, there is a deeper faith, a better life of incredible joy waiting for you. What are you doing to build up the church? That leads to the next point. We put the right cornerstone of Jesus Christ in place, we value him alone as having unmatched beauty and value - and then you start building. When we built the church I started in South Carolina, went up there just about every day to watch the progress. They poured the slab and then brought in a big crane to set up the steel trusses and then added the interior walls, ran the plumbing and electric, put down the flooring, the trim work and we landscaped the property and paved a parking lot, furnished the building and finally opened us up a church building. Was frustrating and slow at times, especially dealing with county 5

inspections but it was fun too. That church was built of steel and wallboard and tile, mostly - but Peter is talking a different kind of building material - what he calls living stones - and those living stones, are us. People alive in Jesus Christ. I mean, this is an old truism - the church is not a building - the church is us, and other communities of people who have aligned themselves around Jesus Christ. And that means each and every one of us is important; each and every one of us has a role to play in helping this church be what God wishes for us. Ill repeat what I said last week - no selling yourself short on this. No poor-mouthing so you can wriggle out of your calling. Look at it yourself this way - the cellist Pablo Casals once said, What do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each one of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel! You are unique...there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You maybe become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything....yes, you are a marvel. And you are. Not just Pablo Casals says that, so does the Bible - you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are loved - loved by Jesus Christ that he died for you. And you are chosen - part of a chosen race - and this isnt about pride, its about security knowing that our salvation rests in Gods faithful love and not our flickering faith. And chosen for a great purpose - being part of the church, building up the church. Faith is believing what God already thinks of you and living into that, means believing what God has already done for you, and living into that. So - with all God has done for you, with all that God has given you - what are you doing to build Christs church? Everyone here who trusts Christ is a living stone, and all of us have something to do, something to contribute. What are you doing, how are you serving, to build up this church so it can change the world for Jesus Christ? We are mobilizing for ministry here. Couple of months ago the Session put together a great Finance Team to oversee the giving and spending of the church so we are using our resources wisely, as Christ intends. Right now putting together an Evangelism and Outreach Team to help us become first-class at inviting and welcoming new friends into 6

the community of this church. There are all kinds of great ministry to do here - mentoring youth, teaching children and adults, running sound and video equipment, helping in the kitchen, going on mission trips, gathering for prayer on Monday mornings, encouraging others by being part of a Sunday School class or home group, visiting sick and shut-in people, playing an instrument, singing and dancing - there is something for everyone to do here. And maybe God is giving you dreams of what this church can be and youre wondering where to start - well, you can start by coming to talk to me and well dream together. Closing There is a great story about Kirk Douglas who in one of his books tells of his lifelong resolve to pick up hitchhikers whenever feasible. One afternoon he picked up a sailor on leave. After throwing his rucksack into the back seat and jumping into the car, the sailor did a double-take, then a triple-take and blurted out to Douglas, "Hey man, do you know who you are?" Do you know who you are? You are precious and beloved to God - and God has chosen you and me to build up his church, so together we can change the world for Jesus Christ. Amen.