Delivered on May 7, 2023 by Amy Higgins

Scripture Lesson: 1 Peter 2:2-10

The village of Dezzo di Scalve is in the Lombardia region of Italy. Along each side of the village is a row of houses which, is common in Italy but, the row on the eastern side of Dezzo di Scalve is not typical. This row of houses is built against the side of a mountain. But that’s not unusual in Italy. What does make this row of houses special is the boulder that juts out in the middle of it. The oldest recorded survey of this area was in 1586 and includes a drawing of the area with the boulder in the side of the mountain. It isn’t known how the boulder on the side of the mountain was formed or how long it was there prior to that first recorded survey. But I would be curious to know how the homes on either side of the boulder were built. You see, the houses weren’t just built on either side of the boulder, they were built around the boulder, curved and contoured against it. And one house was built on top of the boulder. 

In the book of Matthew, chapter 16, Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Simon answers that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. And then Jesus says to Simon that could only have been revealed to him by the Father in heaven and Simon is now Peter, from the Greek word petros which, means rock, and on this rock he will build his church. We know Peter is a prominent disciple. He is among those Jesus takes to the mountaintop to witness the transfiguration but, in that moment Peter also wants to enshrine Jesus, Moses, and Elijah on the mountaintop. John’s gospel names Peter as the disciple who cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus, and all four gospels describe Peter denying Jesus three separate times. This is the foundation of the church?

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.” The living stone, “rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him.” We are like the living stone? We are like Jesus? Well, maybe not but, we can become God’s spiritual house through Jesus. And the guy whose faith in Jesus was so strong he cut off an ear defending him, only to deny even knowing him to save his own skin, but then becomes the leader of the apostles and the early church, he ought to know as well as anyone.

We are like stones. We can either be a cornerstone or “a stone that causes people to stumble, a rock that makes them fall.” This passage says, “they stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they are destined for.” Yes, we stumble. We stumble over the rocks put before us but, we also stumble when we are the rock that makes others fall. And we are destined to do this. We don’t want to believe this but, it’s true. Even in the translation of this verse we’ve stumbled. The word that has been translated as “disobey” is apeitho which, can also be translated as “distrust” or “disbelief”. And our translations are not always as the author intended but as we want them to be. 

  We disobey commands. We disbelieve words. Do we disobey because we do not want to believe? Because we believe what we want to believe? And do we even know anymore what it means to truly believe? By definition to believe is to “accept something as true; feel sure of the truth of.” But we have taken the feeling out of it and made it what Dr. Elaine Heath calls “a thinky thought”. Several years ago I was working with a group of children and asked them to create hand motions that would help them learn the Apostles’ Creed. When I asked for a hand motion for the word “believe” every one of them pointed to their heads. At six and seven years old they already defined belief as a thought. But, as Dr. Heath says, to believe is to love and trust. In fact, the definition of belief is “trust, faith, or confidence in something or someone”. It is in the heart but, we have put it in the head.

And why have we done that? Do we interpret the text as disobey because we want rules? And do we want those rules for ourselves or just for others? A few months ago, a bishop in the United Methodist Church touched on the history of the Book of Discipline and how for the first century of the Methodist church, the Book of Discipline was about how we believe we are to treat one another. But in the early 1900s as the world and the church changed, it became a book of rules and punishments for breaking those rules. Peter says it, we stumble because we disbelieve the message. We disbelieve the message because we distrust others to believe as we think they should and so we make rules we are destined to disobey because we have made it about what we think others should do, not how we love one another. We believe words and obey the commands which come from those words therefore, our obedience comes from what we believe.     

The rules allow us to reject and to be rejected by others. It is not a coincidence that the Acts passage about the stoning of Stephen is part of this week’s lectionary. The stoning of Stephen show us how a rigid adherence to religion can make us do horrific things. That fear of challenges to our faith can cause us to mistreat others, to lose sight of their humanness and our own humanity. But, we also see that in dying Stephen is the only one who is living. And those who stoned him, while alive, are the ones who are really dead. They stumble, as do we all. But, we are not condemned to being stones of death. 

In 1923, a dam on the River Dezzo broke and destroyed most of the nearby villages. All the homes in the village of Dezzo di Scalve were destroyed except for those that had been built into and around the boulder, the rock. We are the living stones – rejected and chosen for the construction of a spiritual house, a community of faith, a sanctuary. And sometimes fear may make us think we are the architect and our stones become stumbling blocks rather than building blocks. Or worse, we may even throw our stones. But, as Peter assures us “once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy”, because being a living stone means the building of who we are never ends. And on this rock, He builds the church.