Living stones

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” Living stones. We read this passage at a recent clergy retreat, and it was the phrase “living stones” that kept coming up in our conversation. What does that phrase mean? Can a stone live?

First Peter is a short book, and a challenging one for modern readers. Scholars think the letter was written to those scattered after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, to Christians living as aliens in foreign lands. It was probably written in homage to Peter, but not by him. Much of the letter urges its readers to keep the peace at almost any cost, to obey civic leaders and to stay quiet. It says that slaves should obey their masters and wives obey their husbands. The letter reflects the fear and uncertainty of the context in which it was written, and to me, those sections contradict the broader sweep of Scripture, which points us toward ever-wider love and freedom.

As I said, it’s a challenging letter. But it also includes much beauty. And today’s reading is an example of that beauty. “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”

This passage made me think of a hymn we sang on Palm Sunday — A Stable Lamp Is Lighted, hymn number 104. You’ll find it in the Christmas section of the hymnal, but its four stanzas walk through Jesus’s whole life. And after every stanza, comes the same refrain: “And every stone shall cry.”

Stones that cry. And living stones. Is either possible?

Stone is a curious spiritual metaphor. When I think of God, I might think of fire. Of wind and smoke. Of bread and wine. Even of the wood of the cross. But stone? It’s not the first image that comes to mind.

If you look closely, though, you’ll find stone everywhere in scripture. God is our strong rock, a castle to keep us safe, our crag and our stronghold. That’s from the psalm we prayed this morning. There are the stones on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. The stone from which water flowed to ease the thirst of those who followed Moses through the desert. The stone David threw to kill Goliath. The stones of an altar, and the stones of the Temple. The stones Satan urged Jesus to turn to bread in the wilderness. There’s the stumbling block, the stone which the builders rejected. There’s the stone pavement, Gabbatha, where Jesus was condemned to die. The stones thrown at Stephen in today’s reading from Acts. And the tomb of stone that held Jesus’s body.

Stones are everywhere in scripture. But 1 Peter adds something new. The author of today’s epistle talks about living stones. He says it about Christ first: the cornerstone, but also the risen one, the foundation of the Church. He is the living stone upon which all else rests. And then he says it about us. “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” Notice what the letter doesn’t say. It doesn’t say: make yourselves into living stones. It says: let yourselves be built. Stone doesn’t place itself. But this stone is living — which means we bring something to the work. And we allow it to be shaped into something larger than ourselves.

Stones are simple. Life is not. And maybe to be a living stone includes the whole scope of life.

I think back to that hymn we sang on Palm Sunday. Every stone shall cry.

The first cry is the cry of joy at the birth of a new baby, laid perhaps in a manger made of stone. “A stable lamp is lighted whose glow shall wake the sky; the stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine; a barn shall harbor heaven, a stall become a shrine.”

The next is the yearning cry of stones lining the road to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, a cry of Hosanna. The stones of which Jesus said, “I tell you, if [the people who cheer today] were silent, the stones would shout out.” “This child through David’s city shall ride in triumph by; the palm shall strew its branches, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry; though heavy, dull, and dumb, and lie within the roadway to pave his kingdom come.”

And then there’s the despairing cry of the cold stones of Good Friday, a cry of tombs and of hearts closed to God’s love. “Yet he shall be forsaken, and yielded up to die; the sky shall groan and darken, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, for stony hearts of men: God’s blood upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.”

But the hymn doesn’t end on Good Friday, any more than Jesus’s story ended there. “But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high; the stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry in praises of the Child by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.”

Every stone shall cry. Not in grief now, but in praise. Because the cornerstone is alive. And so are we. Living stones, allowing ourselves, day by day, to be built into a spiritual house.

Cover image: A portion of "The Paved Way, Ambrussum," a photo by Carole Raddato from Frankfurt, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.