Living Stone

Sermon 2023.05.07

One of the things we do as followers of Jesus is talk to people about their health and illnesses. We do this because we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves. We also do this because Jesus spent a lot of time healing people. We listen to each other about aches and pains; diseases and illnesses so that we can pray for each other and invite God’s Spirit to heal. 

As I listen to people about their health I have noticed that there are a couple of hurdles or roadblocks that get in the way of the path toward healing. The first is diagnosing the problem and prescribing a cure. This takes well trained and talented medical professionals. The second hurtle or challenge, however, is different and perhaps not what you might expect. It is gaining access to the medicine and treatments that would help. This seems to me to be getting worse and not better. 

People will often tell me that their doctor was very helpful in diagnosing their problem, and recommending treatment and medicine to help, but then they have to wait for long periods of time for approval for treatment, maybe their treatment is denied, or maybe the treatment is so astronomically expensive they cannot afford it. This is a great injustice. 

At the same time that more and more people are denied access to life saving medicine there is renewed interest in traditional medicines from plants and herbs. It is becoming more recognized that indigenous peoples here in the americas or what used to be called, “Turtle Island” have profound knowledge about the healing properties of naturally growing plants and herbs. One great advantage of these traditional medicines is that they are not exorbitantly expensive. However, the knowledge about these plants that is very local to each environment is vulnerable. That is, as tribal elders grow old and die, this very important knowledge can be lost.

Disgracefully one of the themes of our history of the past 500 years has been the planned elimination of traditional indigenous culture and people. We have become aware of the shameful history of Indian Boarding Schools which were an unholy partnership between government and Christian missionaries to eliminate the language and customs from young people. We have been made aware that these same schools often went far beyond eliminating language; and actually eliminated children. 

Thankfully the Holy Spirit is constantly at work preserving life and promoting peace. While too many people have died and too much wisdom has been lost; there is still hope. Faithful remnants of people have survived and many have sought to remember and reclaim traditional wisdom.

The author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Botanist and a Native American woman a member of the Citizen Potowatomi Nation. She integrates hard science with ancient wisdom. It’s a good book! One of the things that she writes about is learning the language of her people, but she does not have the opportunity to do so until later in life. She writes about how hard it is. One of the things that trips her up is the preponderance of verbs. There are so many verbs that at first don’t make any sense. Examples include: To Saturday, To Hill, and To Bay. She talks about almost giving up, when all of a sudden she has a breakthrough. The way her ancestors thought was entirely different than how we think. They saw creation as alive. The verb “to bay” means that water doesn’t just sit in a bay, water like a body almost chooses to be a bay, to reside within shores rather than flow like a river. This applies to many things, like land that “hills” itself, and gets to the heart of a worldview that considers our relationship with nature as more mutual. It sees nature as a subject rather than an object, as persons instead of things. So what does this have to do with the Bible?

Today we read in 1 Peter 2:2-10 that Jesus is a living stone. A living stone! It says that Jesus for some is the head cornerstone, but to others he was rejected and has become a kind of stumbling block. What does this mean? It means that in a world that only sees nature as a thing and an object, Jesus causes a big problem and gets in the way. However, if we can appreciate and relate to creation as a mutual partner then Jesus is more than a stumbling block, but a living stone and the head cornerstone from which we can build our lives. 

One example of this is the stoning of Stephen. What did he say that so infuriated the official religious leaders to want to kill him? He said that many religious leaders had manipulated religion into something to control the people, rather than something to liberate the people. They ignored the ethical demands of the law; and instead set up empty rituals for political power. They took great offense at this; and the fact that Stephen was seen as an outsider with a different language did not help his case or give him any extra protection. Stephen’s words, spoken as a statement of faith, were heard as a stumbling block, not as a cornerstone. 

Stephen was a committed follower of Jesus and it was by no accident that he had this view of finding liberation and freedom in the way of justice and peace. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms. If this wasn’t so I wouldn’t have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you. So that where I am there you may also be.” 

Some people have taken these words to be a stumbling block. They criticize the notion that a false promise and hope is given to create a safe and secure paradise only after we die. This would be a problem in that it deludes people from bettering their present situation by encouraging them to passively accept it in order to have a room in the kingdom of heaven after death. However, Jesus’ words need not be taken to mean that he prepares a room for us only after death. It could also mean the present moment.

Last week at Sunday School, Diane Abrams shared about how her parents relied on this passage of scripture to give them hope and strength when they faced segregation and discrimination. The idea that God would make a way out of no way, and prepare a place of safety and possibility was helpful not to resign oneself, but to stay strong and forge ahead with the full expectation that in this present world, that on this beautiful earth, that on this land there would be good places for all people. 

It is written in 1 Peter, to “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” In other words the many rooms that Jesus envisioned are not separated one from the other, but connected into a spiritual community. This is what is meant when we say that Jesus is a living stone. It means that the earth is not an object to be owned, but a partner to live with. It means that we are not objects either. Our value and worth as people cannot be judged and ranked over and against one another. Each of us is of great worth, and together we are priceless. Amen.