Read 1 Peter 2:1-6, Isaiah 26:1-9 here
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I had a classmate in seminary who told
us that he was determined that seminary would not change him. He ended up flunking out. To keep from changing he had to shut out
everything that was being said, which kept him from learning and being able to
know what to write in the required papers or how to answer the questions on
tests.
He reminded
me of Peter Pan who took Wendy and her brothers to Neverland so they wouldn’t
have to grow up.
He reminded me of me. Not that I was like that in seminary, but
years before seminary, I was working hard to shut things out. I was proud of the fact that I could go see a
movie that made most people cry and I would not cry. I was proud of being strong and tough.
To maintain my tough veneer, I avoided
certain things. I didn’t read the Bible
except when I was the liturgist in worship.
I didn’t engage with people except in business or business-like
conversations. I didn’t pray on my
own. In those days, I rode the bus to work,
and I always made sure I had a book to read so that I didn’t have to talk to
anyone.
I was involved in church, but I wasn’t
really personally involved with God. I
was living life inside my carefully constructed boundaries. I was trying to be solid rock instead of a
living stone.
What I didn’t know was that I was
fighting a losing battle. No Christian can stay the way they are.
(William Barclay)[1] The Holy Spirit keeps working in us to help
us grow as Jesus’ disciples, to help us become more and more a reflection of
our Creator.[2]
And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the
Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Cor 3:18
Writer Phyllis Trible says “the Bible
is a mirror reflecting the whole panorama of life in both holiness and
horror…you look in the mirror in the morning, and it shows you something you
don’t particularly like, and it gives you a choice to do something about it.”[3]
I used to
describe my change from solid rock to living stone as my encounter with the
wrecking ball that demolished those walls I had put up around myself. Now I think it was probably more like the
story in the classic book Hans Brinker or
the Silver Skates[4] in which a little Dutch boy sees a leak
in a dike and tries to stop it from growing by using his finger to stop up the
leak. The Holy Spirit was poking holes
in my walls and eventually there were so many holes that it all collapsed.
We are made in God’s image. God is
a community. God is three persons, the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. We as reflections of God are
also drawn to community. After my walls came down, I found this to be true.
Instead of avoiding people, I was drawn to people. And I wanted to know God
more, so I started reading the Bible on my own, and I talked some people into
getting together once a week to talk about our pastor’s sermons and the Bible
and what God was doing in our lives.
One of the things I learned very
quickly is that we don’t all understand the Bible the same way, and we don’t
all experience God the same way, but we also found encouragement in discovering
that sometimes we DO experience God the same way. Hearing someone else’s perspective helps us
grow.
I continue to be surprised about that
in new ways. When we get together to
talk about the Bible, sometimes we will read a passage of scripture together
and then ask, ”what jumped out at you in what we just read?” Sometimes, even though it’s a passage I have
read many times, still somebody will have been impacted by a part of it that I
barely even noticed. It’s amazing to me
how much we will each hear differently.
It’s a great opportunity to learn from one another.
We need to grow as individual disciples and an
important part of that is small groups.
How does Peter say that in our
scripture reading? Get rid of childish
stuff and crave spiritual growth – crave God, crave the Holy Spirit working in
you. Do it together as living stones.
Ezekiel
36:26 puts it like this:
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I
will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
God makes us grow by changing our
hearts.
The message version of 1 Peter says we
need to clean house. Peter says we need
to “Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve
had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure
kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.”
Get rid of the
bad stuff to make room for the good stuff, the Holy Spirit stuff.
My dad used to say, “You’re growing
too fast, we’re going to have to stop feeding you.” Or “We’re going to have to
put rocks on your head.” He was just
kidding, but also he was having to keep buying us bigger clothes and bigger
shoes, and we were eating more.
Sometimes, in growth spurts, it was hard to feed us enough.
We measured our growth by making marks
on the wall. I remember our kids would
be excited to see that they had grown.
It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?
They didn’t actually do anything to make that growth happen. It just happens. But there was still a sense of
accomplishment, and an excitement in seeing that things were happening.
There is excitement in seeing our
spiritual growth, too. We don’t measure
it with marks on the wall, though. We
measure it by the signs that the Holy Spirit is changing us from solid rock to
living stone, giving us hearts of flesh.
We know these signs from what the
Bible tells us about the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us in Galatians 5:22-23 about the fruits, the results, of the Holy
Spirit’s work: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There are nine. I memorized them. I have them hanging on my wall. I ask God to help me work on these. I have been able to see that although there
was a time when none of these words were likely to be used to describe me, now
some of them actually apply.
Notice that all of them are words that
describe how we are in our relationships with people. If there is no contact with people, none of
those things matter. If our contact with
people is always brief or business-like, it’s pretty easy to show these
traits. But when we spend more time with
one another, and especially when we spend time talking about things that really
matter to us, then we have the opportunity to really see our growth in these
areas.
But it’s not just about us. It’s about being there for one another to “encourage one another and build each
other up” (1 Thess 5:11). Life can
be hard, and life can be lonely. We talk
often about how we are never truly alone because God is always with us, but
sometimes we need people to remind us that we aren’t alone. One of my favorite examples of this in the
Bible is the story of Elijah. He’s
probably most remembered for having a showdown with the prophets of Baal and
calling down fire from heaven to burn up his offering on the altar at the top
of Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20ff). It
was a dramatic moment. Elijah asked God
to show himself in a dramatic way, and God did.
But then Elijah’s opponents got angry and chased Elijah out into the
wilderness. Elijah was worn out and
depressed, and he said to God, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take
away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (I Kings 19:4)
God didn’t take his life. Instead
he provided water and food and rest, and Elijah continued his journey to Mount
Horeb, the mountain where Moses met with God.
There God asked Elijah, “What are you doing here,
Elijah?” 14 Elijah
said, “I have been very jealous for
the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of
Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed
your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my
life, to take it away.” (1
Kings 19:14)
I, even I only, am left. In other words, “Woe is me, I’m all
alone. I’m the only one left who trusts
in God.” But God told him that he wasn’t alone. Actually there were still 7000
men who hadn’t stopped worshipping God (1 Kings 19:18). Elijah was strengthened in knowing he wasn’t
alone, and God sent Elijah out from the mountain with a new mission, to anoint
a couple of those 7000 men into God’s service.
One of those anointed men was Elisha, who became Elijah’s apprentice and
went on to be a great prophet himself.
We are not alone. We come together to encourage one another,
and to help each other hear what God is saying to us.
We don’t grow as well all by
ourselves. We get stuck. We get off track. We stop growing
We do need time on our own to pray and
process the information, to read the Bible for ourselves, but we also need time
to discuss. A great place to do that is in a small group.
God speaks to us through the Bible and
prayer, through circumstances, and through the church.
“God speaks through the members of the
body to help others know and understand God’s assignment for their lives.”[5]
Several places in the Bible the church
is called the body of Christ. We are all
parts of that body.
“Suppose
the eye could say to the body, “Let us walk down the train tracks. The way is clear. Not a train is in sight.” So the body starts
down the tracks.
Then
the ear says, “I hear a whistle coming from the other direction.”
The
eye argues, “But nothing is on the track as far as I can see. Let’s keep on walking.” The body listens only to the eye and keeps on
walking.
Soon
the ear says, “That whistle is getting louder and closer!” Then the feet say, “I feel the rumbling
motion of a train coming. We better get
our body off these tracks!” If this were
your body, what would you do?
· Would you try to ignore the conflict and hope
it passed away?
· Would you take a vote of all your body members
and let the majority rule?
· Would you trust your eye and keep on walking
since your eyes have never let you down before?
[My
guess is], you would get off the train tracks as soon as possible.”[6]
Those may seem like silly questions to
ask. God gave our bodies many different
senses and parts. When each part does
its job, the whole body works the way it should….Because a church is the body
of Christ, it functions best when all members are able to share what they
sense.
Talking together about what we are
each hearing from God is a vital part of our growth spiritually and as a
community of faith. It has become an
important part of my own spiritual growth, and I feel like I’m missing part of
God’s message when I don’t have opportunities to talk with people about the
Bible and about God.
Peter tells us that we are stones
being built upon the living stone, the cornerstone, Jesus Christ.
You are
coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. . . And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual
temple. (1 Peter 2:4-5)
It’s challenging, and difficult. It’s hard to be vulnerable, and real. I know it’s
hard.
It was hard for me, too.
But with God all things are
possible. The love and grace and mercy
of Jesus Christ at the core of our faith is what makes it work, and makes us
grow, makes us able to show the love and grace we find in Jesus to one another.
Trust in
the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
Isaiah
26:4
“An organization can only change when the
people in it change.”
Spencer Johnson, MD in “Who Moved My Cheese?”[7]
[1] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Letters of James
and Peter (Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), page 224.
[2] And we all, who with unveiled faces
contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his
image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the
Spirit. 2 Cor 3:18
[3] As
quoted by Frances Taylor Gench in Faithful
Disagreement…page 3.
[5]
Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King, Experiencing
God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God (Broadman & Hollman, 1994) page
204.
[6]
Blackaby & King in Experiencing God. Quoted text begins with the parable of the
train tracks.
[7]
Spencer Johnson, MD, Who Moved My Cheese
(G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1998), page 94.
