Sermon: Stone on stone.
A few weeks ago, Mads and I were driving out in the blue. We drove to Palos Verdes, where we followed the beautiful coast, admired the beautiful houses, and we walked down steep trails by the Lunada Bay Trail, where we hiked through these beautiful rocks at the water's edge.
1. Slide Lunada Trail Palos Verdes.
You always want to collect stones when you're at the beach. Beautiful rounded stones that have rolled in the surf for thousands of years and have become beautiful, polished, and quite special to the touch.
You might want to drop rocks, too. To throw stones into the water and make them jump, across the surface until they sink to the bottom like rocks.
You might want to stack stones. And build cairns.
That day in Palos Verdes we saw some others make attempts to stack stones. And Mads and I reminded of last summer, - which in many ways seems to be so long ago, - when we were in Denmark and as always visited The Cliff of Dovns on Langeland, where the shores are marked by the thousands of rolling stones. There we gathered some stones and tried to build our own small cairn.
2. Slide: Dovns Klint
This small tower of stones was built with pain and difficulty last summer on a windy summer day on Langeland. Around the world on other beautiful coasts, we find these stacked stones. These cairns, which over time have been used for many different purposes. But the same for all cairns is that they consist of a human-created stack of stones. In Scandinavia, cairns are mainly associated with marking of transport routes by land or at sea or as border markers. Today we mostly meet them as tourist monuments or markers – where they are stacked beautifully and ingeniously on the coast.
3. slide Stone Stack
That day on Langeland we built this beautiful cairn, not very tall and yet it took time and ingenuity to balance the different stones, their different surfaces on top of each other. It's hard to balance these stones, since none of them are the same. None of these stones are perfectly flat or milled. So, stacking stones and building a cairn requires ingenuity and patience. Stone by stone.
Try to imagine a sunny day at Lake Gennesaret, where Jesus walked on the beautiful shore. He picked up stones that were washed up on the shore and started stacking and building. Stone by Stone. Patiently, he kept building even though some fell back down, and he had to start over. Again, and again, Jesus tried to feel the stone, see the stone, and balance the stone with the other stones.
I believe that Jesus' deep patience, his great attention and respect for creation various wonders, and not least his gracious ingenuity, made him keep stacking and building. And just then Jesus turnshis attention to his disciples and jokes: "Who do people say I am? Who do you think I am?"
Can the disciples truly answer ? Can they start to know who he really is? Are the stones of his work, the foundation stones of his preaching, are they beginning to form a pattern and a cairn that can mark what they believe in and where they are going?
And then Simon, or Simon Peter as he was named,the one who dares to step forward and say out loud"Yes, I think you are the Messiah, the living son of God!" Simon is then called Peter which means rock or stone in Hebrew. "You are the rock on which the church shall be built!"
Jesus was a carpenter, so he knew something about building a building. As he gave his beautiful sermon on the mountain, Jesus said that we must build on a solid rocky ground and not on sand.
Now Peter was a human being like you and I, and not a rock-solid monument. A few weeks ago, we heard about how Simon Peter in great faith went out on the water to Jesus and then in great doubt began to sink. Like a stone that slips easily over the surface, but eventually sinks to the bottom. He was more like the stones by the beach—a little too lumpy, a little too rough, to balance anything without the whole stack tumbling over.
Yet Jesus had no smoother stone to start his stack than Peter, and he has nothing to build with now except rough stones like you and me. Centuries have proven just how unwieldy the living stones of the church can be. We’re pointy in all the wrong places. We wobble and shake. We can barely hold on to one another. In any other hands, we would topple all together.
But Jesus didn't have a smooth sanded stone to build his church on, or lego bricks that fit into each other.
Jesus did not have smooth one's milled stones to build his church on, but raw rough stones like you and me and Peter.
For centuries, church history has told and proved that such living rough stones can be difficult to build and stack. We become insecure and are shaken to our foundations. We will have disagreements. We can be led to trust our own abilities and think we can build ourselves.
Therefore, it is good to know that Jesus' hands were rehearsed, patient, and tender. With grace, he found and he finds the balance point. With his special abilities, he builds beautiful towers and communities where we reach out towards each other and new heights together. Thankfully, Jesus’ hands are practiced and patient. With grace, he finds our balance points. With skill, he raises us from our feeble flatness to new height we can reach only when in community with one another. And with power, he calls us to say aloud, with Peter, that he is the Saving One, a confession strong enough to hold us.
Building community together is a task that requires something from us, but which requires, above all, faith from us: that we do not build alone.
What are we building our lives on? What is our foundation?
The Danish hymn-writer Grundtvig has so beautifully described this in "Built on the Rock":
Built on the rock the Church does stand,
even when steeples are falling…..
We are God’s House of living stones,
built for His own habitation.
We are God’s house of living stones now , that unite us through faith and our hope.
We are God’s house of living stones now, still calling for old and young, to find solace and rest.
We are God’s house of living stones now, although it can be difficult to balance and build community in these times.
We are God’s house of living stones now, although we do not meet physically in church, but virtual on Facebook.
We are living stones, each with our edges, holes, grindings, and calcifications: and it can be difficult to build together when there is so much that separates us, challenges us and divides us in this turbulent time.
Then it is good to know and believe that we're not building alone. That the hand of God and the spirit of God are building with us. That God's hand shields against the wind and raises and catches us when we fall.
There is an old Danish word proverb: "Do not throw stones when you live in a glass house yourself." Firstly, we should never throw stones at all, and Jesus did remind us that only the one without any sins could throw the first stone in judgement.
Being a church and building a church of living stones requires care, patience, ingenuity, insight, and strength. And not least faith.
Stone by stone.
On a late summer Sunday in a California heatwave, at a time when a virus reigns and prevents us from meeting and greeting, at a time when we are discussing race, equality and justice, - in this time we are encouraged to try to help build and unite, not to tear down or divide.
As Paul wrote to the congregation in Rome and to us today, August 23, 2020:
"Do not have higher thoughts about yourselves than you should have, but use your wits wisely, each according to the measure of faith that God has given him.
For just as we have one body, but many limbs, all with different tasks, thus we are all one body in Christ, and each each other's limbs.
We have various gifts of grace, depending on the grace we have received: He who has prophetic gift shall use it according to faith; he who has a service must be in the service; he who teaches his teaching; the one who admonishes, his admonition; the one who gives must give generously. He who is the superintendent must be with zeal, and he who exerts mercy must make it happy and happy.
Love must be sincere. Abhor evil, stick to the good.”
Amen.