Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A, May 18, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our waking up, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning our deacon, Bob Greiner is away on retreat with other deacons, and so he is missing the gruesome account in the Book of Acts about the first deacon, Stephen, becoming the first martyr because an angry mob threw stones at him until he died. I think the deacons may have been reading ahead in the lectionary when he scheduled his time away. And the stone references in our scripture readings today in Acts and in 1 Peter were on my mind this past Friday as I sat in my study trying to think while stone masons sawed boulders making a stone wall surrounding my next door neighbor’s back yard. The sound of cutting stone is a crying out that reminds me of Jesus’ response to people who tell him to silence his followers. Remember? He says that if they were quiet, the stones themselves would cry out. Deadly stones and living stones, stumbling blocks and building blocks, crushing weights, and substantial foundations – hard and heavy either way.

One of the things that I love about stones is the way they testify to time and yet, even the hardness of stones doesn’t have the last word. The earth moves and rocks change. Heat and pressure, seismic shifts in our landscapes, dramatic eruptions, and the sheer force of gravity, all change matter as hard as stone. Softer elements like water and air also change the shape and size of rocks and stones over time. I am able to believe that it’s true even if I can’t see it happening. The force of mason tools or military tools change stones in quicker, more dramatic ways. Ancient and modern ruins testify. The stones in the story from Acts were literal. The stones in 1 Peter are metaphorical. The stones in the Gospel of John are invisible, but they’re there too. The exclusive claims about access to the Holy One only through Jesus are written stones being thrown at non-Jesus followers, and those stones became deadly in our Christian history (and they continue to be deadly today). Those are stones that I reject, and I believe Jesus would reject them as well. Those ideas come from ossified hearts, from hearts of stone.

In the Torah (Deuteronomy 30:6) and in the Prophets, God promises to open up hearts to love so that the people may live more abundantly. In Jeremiah (32:29), God says, “they will be for me a people and I will be for them a God, and I will give them a single heart.” In Ezekiel (11:19ff and 36:26), God says, “I will remove the heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh and a new spirit so they will love me and love one another. Then they will be for me a people and I will be for them a God.” This is the desire of the Holy One most frequently expressed in Holy Scripture; this is the deepest desire of God. And if you find yourself getting tripped up on the word God, remember that Love is a Biblical substitute.

So I want to point out to you that in the beginning of our reading from the Gospel of John, what Jesus says to his followers is “Do not let your heart be troubled.” The word for “heart,” (in Greek, kardia) is not plural, it’s singular. The word for “your” is plural, but heart is singular. Jesus is talking about the heart of a community, not the hearts of individuals. Jesus is saying, “do not let the heart of the community be troubled, especially when the community is harassed and oppressed, discouraged and dispirited, because there is plenty of room for you in the realm of God, which is where loving one another means pooling your resources, giving and forgiving.” Jesus was not talking about individuals who are in or out because of how they think or what their ideas about the Holy One are. Jesus was talking about the heart, the core of the group, the collective identity, the communal character. Jesus was confirming that his little flock belonged to God, and that they knew the way into God because they had seen Jesus teach them about pooling their resources, about giving and forgiving.

Do you know what it means that Jesus brought good news to the poor? Do you know what the good news was? The good news is that people who have more than we need are going to give to people who don’t have what they need. The good news is that people who are alienated are going to be included, not just tolerated but welcomed into the circle of care, into the heart of the community. The good news is that people who are thirsty are going to get water and food from people who have and are using more than our share. The good news is that prisoners are going to be set free and that sick people are going to be made well through the compassion of others who are not incarcerated and who are not sick. The good news is that forgiveness and mercy will restore our common life, and we can all use some forgiveness and mercy, and some of us can use a lot. I probably don’t need to tell you that the proclamation of good news is entirely without value if it doesn’t move us to actions of mutual love. A friend of my father-in-law recently defined mutual love in a helpful way. He said, “when my concern for your satisfaction, security, and spiritual growth is as strong as it is for mine, and when your concern for my satisfaction, security, and spiritual growth is as strong as it is for yours, then the state of mutual love exists.” [1] This is true for communities too. When our concern for their satisfaction, security, and spiritual growth is as strong as it is for our own, and when their concern for our satisfaction, security, and spiritual growth is as strong as it is for their own, then the state of mutual love exists.

Our Eastertide epistle readings this year come from First Peter. It is most likely one of the last pieces of the Second Testament written, either at the very end of the first century or in the first decades of the second century. It’s hard to get a sense of what it’s about when it’s read in portions sandwiched between vivid stories from Acts of the Apostles and familiar teachings from the Gospel of John, so I’m going to take some time today to talk about First Peter, as a whole, and to explore the passage before us this morning.

First Peter was probably written from Rome, between 25 and 50 years after the death of the Apostle Peter in about 64 CE, in the mighty name of Jesus’ close friend, to a group of small Jesus-following communities in western Asia who were on the receiving end of ridicule and harassment because of their counter-cultural socio-religious practice. The advice in the document gives the impression that these communities were made up of more slaves than free people, and more women than men, who were suffering at the hands of pagan slave owners and pagan husbands. The letter alternates between encouragement and comfort, and is chock-full of allusions to the Torah, the prophets, and the Psalms, so we can surmise that these communities, who were addressed as Gentiles, had learned and adopted the scripture of the Jewish people as their own scripture. That means they had learned a body of Holy Scripture that makes it clear that what God wants for God’s people is to be free and to be fed. They are urged to continue to hold mutual love as the highest ideal. Our passage for today could be subtitled, “Being a People of God.” [2]

Unfortunately, our lectionary assignment begins with verse two of chapter two, rather than verse one. Chapter two, verse one says, “Rid yourselves of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.” That seems important to include. Why? Because malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander have no place in an environment of mutual love. They are heavy stones that will trip you up. Malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander weigh down the people of God. They have to be cleared in order that the community can grow in abundant life. Get rid of those things and instead, make room for, cultivate hunger for, long for pure, spiritual milk. Here, spiritual is probably not the best translation of the Greek word, logicon. Logicon has much more to do with reason and rationality than we think of when we hear the word spiritual, which, in our context can sound like the opposite of reasonable and rational. The writer is saying, “Long for the pure, reason or rational starter food,” which is what milk is.

The advice continues, then if you have tasted that God is good, come to God as a living stone, rejected by mortals, yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and let yourselves be built into a spiritual house – here the word really does have to do with the spirit. (And it’s a spiritual house, not a theoretical house.) Know that you don’t worship in the house of God, you are the house of God. [3] The writer is reminding the people that if they know the scripture, they know then that God calls people who are disgraced to be the bearers of grace, to be a holy priesthood. And what does it mean to be a holy priesthood? Well, holy means set apart for a Divine purpose, and priest means one who goes to God on behalf of the people, not because the people cannot go on their own, but because they frequently don’t. Priests bless and pardon for the purpose of nourishment and liberation. Priests proclaim the mighty acts of the One who calls people out of gloomy obscurity into wonderful illumination and understanding; the same One who called a people out of slavery, sustained a people in the wilderness and delivered a people to the land of milk and honey will do it again and again. Priests remind you that you are a people of God, even if, and especially when, you feel disrespected, disintegrated, and disconnected.

The writer of First Peter is calling out assurance to people who are most alienated and most marginalized – slaves and women, “you are the building blocks, you are the priests, you are not an assortment of individuals, you are a people who has received mercy, and so you, as a people, have a job to do, that is, expand the circle of those living in mutual love.” The writer of First Peter is calling out to those who have no material resources, “Expand the capacity of your community to be ‘a place of belonging, mutual acceptance and security…[through] a communal enterprise.’” This holy, royal priesthood is primarily about social and moral development, rather than about ritual or religious practice, [4] although good ritual and religious practice certainly promotes social and moral development. This is what we are to be about at 15 Newbury Street and it is what we plan to create in an Emmanuel House through our work in the Mission Hub. Our Mission Hub director, Isaac Everett, is here today, so if you want to learn more, speak with him after the service.

So Emmanuel Church, I’m here to tell you that it is the deepest desire of God that we continue to become a people, a people of God, with a soft heart. Being softhearted means being kind, vulnerable, gentle and generous, indulgent, merciful and benevolent – in here, certainly, but more importantly out there: at work, in the classroom, in the book club or the gym, on the road, on social media, and at home. We must rid ourselves of malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander because they will keep us from expanding our environment of mutual love. Think of it as Spring cleaning. Listen, when our body is weary, and our strength wanes, and the path becomes too difficult, we are to call on Jesus and ask to be built. We are to let ourselves be built. We are to yield our individualism, our alienation, our isolation to a growing practice of communal care and mutual love and prepare our soul to soar! [5]

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