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Bible Readings for Monday, October 3rd, 2011

– The Week of The 16th Sunday After Pentecost *Click on each bible passage to expand the text. Psalm 144 1. [Of David.] Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle;

2. my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues the peoples under me.

3. O LORD, what are human beings that you regard them, or mortals that you think of them?

4. They are like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.

5. Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains so that they smoke.

6. Make the lightning flash and scatter them; send out your arrows and rout them.

7. Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens,

8. whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false.

9. I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,

10. the one who gives victory to kings, who rescues his servant David.

11. Rescue me from the cruel sword, and deliver me from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false.

12. May our sons in their youth be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars, cut for the building of a palace.

13. May our barns be filled, with produce of every kind; may our sheep increase by thousands, by tens of thousands in our fields,

14. and may our cattle be heavy with young. May there be no breach in the walls, no exile, and no cry of distress in our streets.

15. Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the LORD. Ezekiel 19:10-14 10. Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard transplanted by the water, fruitful and full of branches from abundant water.

11. Its strongest stem became a ruler’s scepter; it towered aloft among the thick boughs; it stood out in its height with its mass of branches.

12. But it was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground; the east wind dried it up; its fruit was stripped off, its strong stem was withered; the fire consumed it.

13. Now it is transplanted into the wilderness, into a dry and thirsty land.

14. And fire has gone out from its stem, has consumed its branches and fruit, so that there remains in it no strong stem, no scepter for ruling. This is a lamentation, and it is used as a lamentation. 1 Peter 2:4-10 4. Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and

5. like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

6. For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

7. To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner,”

8. and “A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

10. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

O LORD, what are human beings that you regard them, or mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow. -Psalm 144:3-4

…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 2:5

Like living stones…

1 Peter 2 4. Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and

5. like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

How are stones used in buildings? Rough and rude, and simply mortared into place without consideration of figure or form? Sometimes, but those buildings do not last.

No, the best projects do not use rough stones. The finest structures ever built by human hands which have weathered the test of time have used precisely hewn, chiseled and shaped stones. From the monolithic stones of the Great Pyramid to the mind boggling precision of Incan architecture (all held in place without mortar or cement), it is from this ancient real-world practice, that we can form a spiritual allegory of today’s readings.

If we are “like living stones” rough and rude, in what ways might “the builder” shape us to better fit the builder’s uses? Operative masonry teaches us that this forming and shaping requires blows of a hammer and chisel, which could be misconstrued as a violent act to some.

Many of us, including myself, have a natural revulsion to anything that any semblance to a violent act. However, we forget that some of the most beautiful moments in life are (in a sense) violent and passionate acts – such as the act of making love, or giving birth to a child. But since the results of such struggle and violence can be so positive, we do not view these things as inherently violent, or negative. It is in such a fashion that I recommend we view the blows of the mason’s hammer and chisel to the rough and rude stone being shaped.

These blows are not being done to hurt the stone, to belittle the stone, nor to destroy the stone, but to perfect the stone.

In the same way, I think we would be much benefited to view the trials and struggles of human life in the same light. There are countless tales of rough and broken souls, often times the victims of true violence (such as molestation or abuse), who have become better and stronger people because of their betrayal. However, there are countless more who remain shattered and broken because of the violence and betrayal committed against them. It is in these cases that we must realize our neglected responsibility not only as the living stones of God’s spiritual house, but also as the laborers assembling it.

An efficient workforce of laborers would find a proper use for every stone sent from the quarry, and it would be unthinkable to let a stone lie broken and unused; ignored and neglected by the stone-workers. Rather, it is much more likely that when a stone would be broken and shattered that the overseers of the work would re-purpose and reshape the stone to still serve an equally vital role in the structure. Yet this is not what we do in our modern society with the “broken stones”. Often times we simply let them pile up, and as we step over them on our way to our next building project, we are even known to say to some of those stones, “Get up and put yourself in place worthless stone.”

But how is a broken stone supposed to move itself? This is akin to those that demanded of the Son of Man, “Physician heal thyself!” (lk 4:23)

How absurd.

This is our failed responsibility as Christians. Those of us who are lucky enough to be whole stones need to realize we also bear the responsibility of the laborers (or the “holy priesthood” from 1 Peter 2:5) to whom it now falls to pick up those broken stones and give them purpose in that sacred temple not built with hands.

Acts 7 48“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says:

49“‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be?

50Has not my hand made all these things?’

Acts 17 24. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 27. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

1 Corinthians 3 16. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.

For you see, this is not simply an allegory to illustrate our responsibility to our fellow “stones” but to clarify a once deeply held truth: we are not only stones, we are not only laborers, we are the temple of God itself.

We are the temple, not made of stone or wood.

We are that house of living stone not made with human hands, eternal in the cosmos.

We are all the children of God, beloved and holy, and all are meant to serve as stones in the living house of God.

But in our rough and rude state, this reality is hard to believe for most, impossible for many.

But our very survival as a species depends on it.