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I Peter 2.1-12 (CEV)
1Stop being hateful! Quit trying to fool people, and start being sincere. Don't be jealous or say cruel things about others. 2Be like newborn babies who are thirsty for the pure spiritual milk that will help you grow and be saved. 3You have already found out how good the Lord really is.
4Come to Jesus Christ. He is the living stone that people have rejected, but which God has chosen and highly honored. 5And now you are living stones that are being used to build a spiritual house. You are also a group of holy priests, and with the help of Jesus Christ you will offer sacrifices that please God. 6It is just as God says in the Scriptures,
"Look! I am placing in Zion
a choice and precious
cornerstone.
No one who has faith
in that one
will be disappointed."
7You are followers of the Lord, and that stone is precious to you. But it isn't precious to those who refuse to follow him. They are the builders who tossed aside the stone that turned out to be the most important one of all. 8They disobeyed the message and stumbled and fell over that stone, because they were doomed.
9But you are God's chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation. God has brought you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now you must tell all the wonderful things that he has done. The Scriptures say,
10"Once you were nobody.
Now you are God's people.
At one time no one
had pity on you.
Now God has treated you
with kindness.
Live as God's Servants Should
11Dear friends, you are foreigners and strangers on this earth. So I beg you not to surrender to those desires that fight against you. 12Always let others see you behaving properly, even though they may still accuse you of doing wrong. Then on the day of judgment, they will honor God by telling the good things they saw you do.
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In a Charles Shultz cartoon, Lucy comes storming into a room and demands that Linus change television channels. She threatens him with her fist if he doe not. Linus says, “What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” “These five fingers,” remarks Lucy. “Individually they are nothing, but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.” “Which channel do you want?” asks Linus. After a moment, he turns away, looks at his own fingers and says, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?”
Says United Methodist Church clergyperson Maxie Dunham, in his sermon on I Peter 2.4-12 and called "Equipping the Whole People of God: Penultimate Questions": "How do we withstand the tyranny of the urgent, not allowing the immediate claims on our energy to distort our priorities and sidetrack us from our mission?" He continues:
* * *
To be sure, most of our churches and ministries are organized, but too many are organized for the sake of organization – not for ministry’s sake. Maintenance gets far more attention than mission.
And when we consider a notion such as ... “Equipping the Whole People of God” ... we may move too quickly to more practical questions – questions of organization and structure, how to mobilize our members or ministry partners. We give an intellectual nod to the dictum “form follows function,” but immediately disregard it, immersing ourselves in the urgent ministry needs at hand.
* * *
This means that function determines form. Form does not decide function. Yet, over-attention to form is what holds back many Christians and churches from the function of its mission and the spiritual growth essential to mission.
I Peter 2.4-12 offers us some essential questions pertaining to being spiritual persons in spiritual community. And, recall, to be a spiritual person is to be in community with others who are seeking to live the Life of Spiritual Charity. I will, first, present the essential questions. Then, I will deal with each one, the first today and the others on subsequent days.
1. Who are we?
2. What is our function?
3. Where is our power?
Regarding "Who are we?, we can speak of an identity crisis within many Christian sects. We cannot separate the collective identity issue from the crisis of Christian identity within changes of the larger environment and, also, the relationship of the collective to the individual Christian. Identity is an intricate complex, a matrix, evolving out of a unity with the total environment.
Dunham, like I, serves in The United Methodist Church. Dunham speaks of the identity crisis of this one church within that of other mainline sects (these Protestant groups are from moderate to liberal and include such groups as United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, American Baptist Churches in the USA, Moravian Church, Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) ...):
* * *
There is not a mainline church in America that is not experiencing what we might call an identity crisis. I know my denomination, the United Methodist Church, is experiencing the crisis of identity in a huge and almost overwhelming way. We simply do not know who we are. We have strayed from our roots. We’re confused in our mission. We’re fearful about the future. We lack the boldness that is always necessary for a church to be what God calls her to be. So, who are we?
* * *
Now, let us turn to I Peter 2. This early Church writing says who the true Christian church and, therefore, true Christian is - again, recall, each defines the other -:
5And now you are living stones that are being used to build a spiritual house. You are also a group of holy priests, and with the help of Jesus Christ you will offer sacrifices that please God.
7You are followers of the Lord, and that stone is precious to you.
9abBut you are God's chosen and special people. You are a group of royal priests and a holy nation.
Who is a true Christian? A living stone. A holy, royal priest. A follower of the Lord. God's chosen and special one. A holy citizen.
Now, these are metaphors of who a true Christian and true Church is, so they can communicate in varied ways. And the meanings applicable to the metaphors make sense more as we look at the next two questions in the following days. But, for today, you can asks what these mean to you. What does it mean that you are a living stone, for example, or a holy, royal priest?
My conviction is that renewal of both Christians and Christian churches is linked to renewal of the meaning and application of biblical images showing who a true Christian is and what a true Church is. This does not mean that only biblical images are apt for defining Christian and Church, but they are the essential beginning point.
A true Christian is embedded within a specific Communal Being, in interdependence spiritually with a spiritual Community. As we see in the above metaphors, there is no isolated Christian, indeed, a Christian apart from a Communion that defines the true Christian is impossible, for such is antithetical to the Christian.
This affirms, in terms preparatory for tomorrow, that we cannot ecclesiologically (i.e., regarding Church) separate agency and communion. Agency is the action of the Christian, for the Christian is process, as made possible, even made Christian, by relationship with the communion that itself makes possible the Christian, even as the Christian, along with all other Christians, makes possible the communion.
We are left with the practical problem of churches without a true Christian identity. Then, we are left with the major challenge of how practically to organize so as to promote aptly the function of the Christian-and-Church being what it is.
Regarding contemplation and contemplatives, or mystical Christian faith - the contemplative offers the most profound sensation of being-in-communion, even being-as-communion. Why? Truth as living fact and sensation is itself most experienced and known within the Innermost Heart. This is so for the Heart of Hearts, which is the oneness of human and God, is awakened by Grace in Loving Union with the Center of Love, and this Center is Christ, and the agent of Grace is the Holy Spirit. Love is the matrix of being-in-communion, Potency from which all the potential of being-in-communion arises, eternally. The Father is the Fount, the Son is the Expression, the Holy Spirit is the agent.
Being is God-within-God, in en-stasis; Communion is God extending GodSelf in connecting, in ec-stasy. The connecting is the Act of Loving. Therefore, both Christian and Church will be defined by both an inhering within and an extension without. This process will co-inhere in a non-dual Movement that is Love, is Loving, and holds in perfect harmony stillness and action, quiet and speech, withholding and giving, self and other, he and she, some and all, ....
* * *
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, and their fish, Hope, in Florida. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. He advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and the renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons and empathic relating with diverse spiritual traditions, East and West.
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