Mark 12:1-12
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,” Jesus said to his detractors, quoting Psalm 118. It makes me wonder: what happens when you build a building on a rejected foundation? I think the answer is: you get a weird-looking building.
When I was a pastor in Philadelphia, my text study group was meeting sometime before Christmas or Easter (I forget which it was). As we were talking about how we might preach the festival, a colleague said something like, “People pack the church on our weirdest days: God made flesh and resurrection from the dead. And somehow we treat Christmas and Easter like the most routine things.” In Bible study that day we committed ourselves to preaching the weirdness of Christianity.
Similarly, in church history the big debates of the early centuries also revolved around keeping Christianity weird. It makes sense to say with the Gnostics that Jesus was such a great spiritual teacher that he only appeared to be human. But no, the rest of the early church insisted that this divine teacher and savior was also at the same time fully human. Marcion wanted a Bible made up of only Luke and the letters of Paul. His idea of one story of Jesus and one set of testimonies about Jesus makes sense, but no, the wider church said we really need four different ways and lots of other voices to tell the story of who Jesus is and what he does. It made sense for the priest Arius to say that “there was when he was not” about the Son of God; Arius believed in the full divinity of the Son even before creation, but it was still logical for him that there would have been a time when there was a God the Father without God the Son. But no, Athanasius and company insisted on the full co-eternity of the Son: God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father through whom all things were made.
This insistence on weird theology comes because God’s salvation is truly surprising. Its unexpectedness is exactly what is most worth cherishing. After all, this is the savior who said, “Love your enemies; suffer the little children to come to me and do not hinder them; the first shall be last and the last shall be first; those who lose their lives for my sake will find them, the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Go in peace, your faith has made you well.” Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our faith, complete with his upside-down teachings and cross-shaped salvation.
And yet, how easily we turn these startling teachings of Jesus into a cornerstone of tame Christmases and respectable, responsible Easters. How easily we become those who—like the wicked tenants in the parable—maintain our clever plans and projects by doing violence to the Word of God and to the people God puts in our lives. It's true and there's no getting around it. As the faculty here at Wartburg is thinking about how to keep planning for the future, we recently asked people to reply to the question, “What is church?” Among many thoughtful positive responses also came observations about how dangerous and harmful church and church people can be. That’s a real thing. Disappointed and disillusioned with the Jesus Building Project as they have experienced it, some have left the scene altogether, with good reason.
True as that may be, the rejected cornerstone keeps calling. I remain fascinated by Christ’s ideas and by possibilities like these: “Love your enemies; suffer the little children; go in peace; I am the resurrection and the life.” These words keep calling. I want to be where those words come alive. Even when people in the Jesus Project forget, neglect or reject these words, their power and fascination continue to call. The weird cornerstone that is Jesus Christ endures to the end of time. It challenges our ideas of righteousness and respectability, even as it transforms castaway people into a community of God, goodness, and life.
This community and communion of God really is strange. It’s not always rational or respectable. Even in its weirdness, it isn’t as edgy, cool or relevant as we might want it to be. In our time, as in all others, these things will be rejected by some even as they will always be found active and alive again in unexpected people and places. The cornerstone of this communion of God is solid, it’s strange but it’s solid. It will stand forever. Isn’t that what we’re longing for, to be part of the beautiful and strange communion of God, community of God, creation of God? We pray that we be part of this strange and beautiful communion and share it with others. To that end we say, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Amen
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,” Jesus said to his detractors, quoting Psalm 118. It makes me wonder: what happens when you build a building on a rejected foundation? I think the answer is: you get a weird-looking building.
When I was a pastor in Philadelphia, my text study group was meeting sometime before Christmas or Easter (I forget which it was). As we were talking about how we might preach the festival, a colleague said something like, “People pack the church on our weirdest days: God made flesh and resurrection from the dead. And somehow we treat Christmas and Easter like the most routine things.” In Bible study that day we committed ourselves to preaching the weirdness of Christianity.
Similarly, in church history the big debates of the early centuries also revolved around keeping Christianity weird. It makes sense to say with the Gnostics that Jesus was such a great spiritual teacher that he only appeared to be human. But no, the rest of the early church insisted that this divine teacher and savior was also at the same time fully human. Marcion wanted a Bible made up of only Luke and the letters of Paul. His idea of one story of Jesus and one set of testimonies about Jesus makes sense, but no, the wider church said we really need four different ways and lots of other voices to tell the story of who Jesus is and what he does. It made sense for the priest Arius to say that “there was when he was not” about the Son of God; Arius believed in the full divinity of the Son even before creation, but it was still logical for him that there would have been a time when there was a God the Father without God the Son. But no, Athanasius and company insisted on the full co-eternity of the Son: God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father through whom all things were made.
This insistence on weird theology comes because God’s salvation is truly surprising. Its unexpectedness is exactly what is most worth cherishing. After all, this is the savior who said, “Love your enemies; suffer the little children to come to me and do not hinder them; the first shall be last and the last shall be first; those who lose their lives for my sake will find them, the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Go in peace, your faith has made you well.” Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our faith, complete with his upside-down teachings and cross-shaped salvation.
And yet, how easily we turn these startling teachings of Jesus into a cornerstone of tame Christmases and respectable, responsible Easters. How easily we become those who—like the wicked tenants in the parable—maintain our clever plans and projects by doing violence to the Word of God and to the people God puts in our lives. It's true and there's no getting around it. As the faculty here at Wartburg is thinking about how to keep planning for the future, we recently asked people to reply to the question, “What is church?” Among many thoughtful positive responses also came observations about how dangerous and harmful church and church people can be. That’s a real thing. Disappointed and disillusioned with the Jesus Building Project as they have experienced it, some have left the scene altogether, with good reason.
True as that may be, the rejected cornerstone keeps calling. I remain fascinated by Christ’s ideas and by possibilities like these: “Love your enemies; suffer the little children; go in peace; I am the resurrection and the life.” These words keep calling. I want to be where those words come alive. Even when people in the Jesus Project forget, neglect or reject these words, their power and fascination continue to call. The weird cornerstone that is Jesus Christ endures to the end of time. It challenges our ideas of righteousness and respectability, even as it transforms castaway people into a community of God, goodness, and life.
This community and communion of God really is strange. It’s not always rational or respectable. Even in its weirdness, it isn’t as edgy, cool or relevant as we might want it to be. In our time, as in all others, these things will be rejected by some even as they will always be found active and alive again in unexpected people and places. The cornerstone of this communion of God is solid, it’s strange but it’s solid. It will stand forever. Isn’t that what we’re longing for, to be part of the beautiful and strange communion of God, community of God, creation of God? We pray that we be part of this strange and beautiful communion and share it with others. To that end we say, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Amen