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.

At our Vacation Bible School meeting the other night we spent time tossing ideas on to the table and making connections. At one point the conversation turned to rocks and stones and we quickly reeled off a half dozen moments from Scripture where rocks and stones played a significant part:

Jacob resting his head on a rock for a pillow – scarcely comfortable, I would think - before receiving his great dream and vision, and I wonder if our greatest dreams and visions don’t come in our times of discomfort.

Moses holding the stone tablets of the law, and those 10 laws continue to provide permanent directions for a healthy life, and they will last long after the paperback wisdom of the latest self-help plans are recycled.

David carefully selecting 5 stones from the creek, the wadi, while the rest of the world worshiped and feared strength and size – for it is in the small, careful routines of our lives that value and success are achieved.

Jesus inviting those who were sinless to cast the first stone in order to execute the adulterous woman, and one by one stones were dropped from angry hands as people considered their own realities.

Simon the fisherman being renamed “Peter” the Rock, the real Rocky I, the rock who would crumble and deny Christ and yet it was Peter to whom the women would be sent on Easter morning with good news.

And the stones alongside of the road that Jesus claimed would sing his praises if somehow the disciples and the crowds were silenced on that first Sunday of the Palms – singing stones, which got us off on a Mick Jagger conversation, but it was that kind of meeting.

Some serious theologians will speak of Jesus on Palm Sunday as a master of the world before him, carefully setting up all of the pieces and all of the people before the end-game that we know as Holy Week, Machiavellian in the ways that he used the Romans, the Jews, the disciples themselves.

Others theologians picture him as detached and serene, gliding along, going along with the crowds whoever they were and whatever they wanted, a victim more than an instigator.

But for me it has always been a picture of pleasure, an involvement with all that was happening, to the point that he had pre-arranged a donkey to ride upon, and the increase of the crowd’s enthusiasm and affections was a reflection of his own enthusiasm and affection.

I see him smiling at the children, waving to the crowds, reaching out to those who gathered, shaking his head at the religious leaders who told him that trouble could only come from the cries of Hosanna, confident that the very foundations of creation would proclaim God’s truth and that no one and nothing could silence that truth.

There he was, surrounded by the good and the bad of life, surrounded by the government officials of Rome – perhaps the greatest political organization that the world would know for about another 1743 years; surrounded by the representatives of Judaism the foundational theological system for all three of our major religions; surrounded by people who were seeking personal miracles; surrounded by people who had given up so very much in life for his sake over the prior three years; surrounded by love and by betrayal; surrounded by joy and life and on the brink of great pain and death – with all that was on his plate that day, I don’t see a manipulator of people, I don’t see a passive victim of circumstances. I see the presence of God. knowing that there are serious and sorrowful moments in life. but knowing also that there are also joyous and celebrative moments in life and that we are to meet the first with our honest tears and the second with our honest laughter.

“You think that quieting these people down will change God’s truth?” that’s what Jesus was saying. “You’ve got to be kidding! The stones themselves would sing.”

And that’s where we come in.

That’s where we come into the Palm Sunday story.

Not as the Romans or the Jews, the disciples or the crowds or the children.

No, we are the stones.

We are the rocks.

We are the ones whom Jesus knew would sing out when all the voices of that day were silent.

Peter capture that in his letter: 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.

Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house

That’s us, the Church, zoom it right down to this room, this day, that’s us, Clover Hill 2007, the living stones.

We are the ones who are called to be the voices and hands and eyes and feet and heart of God in the world.

We are the ones who need to let ourselves be built.

That means surrendering our own selfish sense of what we think we should be doing or what we think we would like to do because it would benefit us or our children, and allowing God to place us, side-by-side, in the position that provides the best possible result of this spiritual house.

And it means allowing, encouraging, others to be used in their best possible way, as well.

Do you sing well? Why aren’t you in the choir?

Do you have skills with tools and building? Why aren’t you signing up for the work day on April 21?

Are you good with little kids? Are you good with big kids? The Church School, the nursery and the youth group are always looking to add more stones to their piece of the building.

Can you clean? There’s a place for you to offer yourself on the signups sheets.

Can you smile and say “hello”? Which week are you signed up to be a greeter?

It goes on and on and you get the idea, whatever you are doing for the Church you are doing for God.

Do you really need to be begged or coerced into loving God? I don’t think so, I think we just separate the two – Church and God – a lot more than God does.

Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood,

You know what priests did in Jesus’ day?

The same thing they do today, they present people to God, they pray for people.

And the concept that Jesus brought was one that the Church lost for 1500 years until Martin Luther rediscovered the concept of the “the priesthood of all believers”, the notion that every single one of you has as much access to and clout with God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth as I do, as the Pope does, as any TV preacher does.

I am delighted each day to offer my prayers for so many of you and the others who have asked me to pray for them, but your prayer are just as valuable and valid and holy and essential as mine.

More than 60 of us receive our weekly emailed prayer list and, far faster than has ever been possible before, a block of us are able to instantly be united as we hold others before God, as we do our priestly work.

We’ve come a long way in our prayer life as a congregation, I’ve come a long way in my prayer life and I still don’t understand the mechanics of prayer, it will always be a mystery in this life. But I do know that prayer works, sometimes in quick, obvious and direct ways, sometimes in slow, subtle and rippling ways that that are only seen years and decades later. And I do know that the way in which we have utilized technology, in order to keep ourselves spiritually aware and connected, is responsible for the nothing less than miraculous work that God has done with, through and in us.

Pray, you Clover Hill priests of God, pray often and pray for each other, it is the work of the stones.

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.

And finally there is the need for sacrifice.

Now don’t go hiding your wallets, I’m not going in that direction – although quite frankly we could use a far greater sense that we are giving sacrificially, giving until it hurts, rather than leaving all the hurt to the members of Consistory who are continually forced to decide what we can can’t do because of our ongoing hard times.

But, no I’m talking about real sacrifice here, painful sacrifice here.

Because that’s what Peter was talking about, not just sacrifice, but “spiritual sacrifice”.

Are you willing to sacrifice the precious things of your soul?

Are you ready for that?

Are you ready to forgive? Are you ready to let go of all of the old hurts, all of the pain – large or small – that others have given to you?

Are you ready to seek forgiveness? Are you ready to admit that you have – intentionally or unintentionally – broken the hearts of others who trusted you with their hearts?

Are you ready to let others follow the call that God has placed upon them to live and act and speak and love differently than the call that God has placed upon you or me?

Are you ready to seek the best for others and trust God to provide the best for you?

Are you willing to sacrifice the arguments over who said this and who did that and simply love each other as befits those of us who know that we ourselves are flawed and wonderful and sinful and loved children of God?

We are the stones of life, we are the Church, we need to let God build us, we need to pray for each other and for others and we need to be sacrificial in those things that mean the most to us, those spiritual things that define us.

When we do that we find our place in the parade of palms, until we do that it is just a story of an ancient event that means little or nothing in our lives.

This week we can choose what it will be for us this year.

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.