Rocks

May 10, 2020 Fifth Sunday of Easter 1 Peter 2:2-10 Rocks Year A Children’s Sermon And like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Object: Some stones and water paints. Lesson: Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to build something that is really important. I brought some stones with me that I found around my yard, and we are going to build a house. This is going to be a special house, one that is different from any other house that you have ever seen. It is going to be called a spiritual house, and you are going to help build it. How many of you have always wanted to build a house? (Let them answer.) All of you. That's wonderful, because we are going to do it in a special way. Not only are you going to be the builders, but you are also going to be part of the spiritual house. First of all, we must take the stones that I brought with me and do something special with them. We are going to paint your names on the stones and then begin to stack them up as the wall to our spiritual house. (Begin by painting the names of the children on the stones and having them stack them one on top of the other.) That's very good. Our house is being built by you, and it includes you. I can see that we are going to need a lot more stones to finish our spiritual house, but that means that we are also going to need a lot more children's names. This is a house that is made for God. That's why we called it a spiritual house. Our house is going to be made by people who are willing to share their lives with God. People like you and me. God needs people, lots of people, who are willing to share themselves not only with one another but with him, so that the whole world will know about his love. Let's pretend that we had enough people to build a house. with each person's name on a stone. Then we must also suppose that everyone of these people will tell their friends about Jesus. This will mean that we will be building more houses, spiritual houses. But it also means that we will be doing the spiritual things Jesus taught us to do. When you live in a spiritual house, you worship God in faith and trust. You forgive the people who have hurt you. You take care of the sick and the people who cannot take care of themselves. You visit people who cannot leave their homes or who are in prisons. You share your food with the hungry and your clothing with those who do not have clothes to keep them warm. You do all of those things and more when you live in a spiritual house. We can't finish our house this morning, but we have made a good start. Maybe you will want to start another spiritual house at home. If you do, then put the names of your family and friends on a stone when they tell you that they will follow Jesus and do the things that Jesus asks you to do. C.S.S. Publishing Co., GOD'S STEPLADDER, by Wesley T. Runk Prelude Call to worship Alternative Call to Worship for Mother’s Day (from Isaiah 66:12-14) As a mother carries her child, and lets the child play on her knees, God carries us, and teaches us to stand. As a mother comforts her child, Our God comforts us. We shall behold and rejoice, flourishing like the green grass; Because God is with us, and we are with God. Come, worship God, who loves us as a good parent; Worship God: Mother, Father, Creator of us all. People: We light the candle of memory. (White-Lit from the Christ Candle or altar candles) People: We light the candle of honor. (Pink-lit from the Christ Candle or altar candles) People: We light the candle of peace. (Blue-lit from Christ Candle or Altar Candles) People: We light the candle of hope. (Green-litfrom the Christ Candle or altar candles) All: God, teach us to recognize Your light in all of its many forms as we remember, honor and reflect on especially the gift of Motherhood this day. Fill us with your hope that we might shine your light to the generations after us. Amen. Stewardship Moment Mother’s Day gifts Mother's Day/Father's Day Offering Prayer God of Great gifts, we give you these gifts today knowing that you are the Father of gifts. You mother us constantly providing for us, caring for us. As we have been abundantly provided for, so we give abundantly to the work that you give us to do, the work of the church, the care for those who are poor. Accept these gifts in Jesus’ name. Amen. Scripture 1 Peter 2:2-10 Common English Bible (CEB) 2 Instead, like a newborn baby, desire the pure milk of the word. Nourished by it, you will grow into salvation, 3 since you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 Now you are coming to him as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable. 5 You yourselves are being built like living stones into a spiritual temple. You are being made into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 Thus it is written in scripture, Look! I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, chosen, valuable. The person who believes in him will never be shamed.[a] 7 So God honors you who believe. For those who refuse to believe, though, the stone the builders tossed aside has become the capstone. 8 This is a stone that makes people stumble and a rock that makes them fall. Because they refuse to believe in the word, they stumble. Indeed, this is the end to which they were appointed. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. You have become this people so that you may speak of the wonderful acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his amazing light. 10 Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you hadn’t received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Footnotes: a. 1 Peter 2:6 Isa 28:16 Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible Sermon A seminar leader was speaking to a group of business students. To drive home a point, he used an illustration. He said, “Okay, time for a quiz." Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed mason jar and set it on a table in front of him. He produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?" Everyone in the class said, “Yes." Then he said, “Really?" He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?" By this time the class was onto him. “Probably not," one of them answered. “Good!" he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in, and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is this jar full?" “No!" the class shouted. Once again he said, “Good!" Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?" One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things into it!" “No," the speaker replied, “that's not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is this: If you don't put the big rocks in first, you'll never get them in at all." (1) The expert was giving the class a lesson in time management. Put in the big rocks first. Make sure you have your priorities straight. Take care of the essentials before you get bogged down in the extraneous. That is a good lesson in managing time. It is also a good lesson in managing life. Put first things first. Make sure your life is built on a strong foundation. I used this lesson when writing a youth study on time management. Today I tell that story because it demonstrates to us that there are all kinds of rocks in our lives. Rocks are different sizes, different textures, and used for many different things. Rocks are not only a huge part of our lives, rocks are also metaphors to the use to talk about life. For instance we can hit rock bottom, turn over the rock to discover something new, we have touchstones, capstones, cornerstones. Rocks are also an important part of our faith. A woman fought a long battle with cancer. Her brother, Dr. Earl Wolf, made the trip from Missouri to Pennsylvania to attend her funeral. While he was there, he spent some time leafing through his sister's Bible. He found this handwritten poem tucked in its pages: Often on the Rock I tremble, Faint of heart and weak of knee; But the steadfast Rock of Ages Never trembles under me.' (4) When you are battling life's fiercest foes, you want more than a dead hero or even a live but inadequate friend. You want the Rock of Ages. You want the precious Cornerstone on your side. You want a mentor who is present and who is powerful. From the Hebrew tradition of Isaiah (28:16), God is identified as a foundation stone. God is an immovable rock, the primordial solid stone. Peter himself had been identified as “petros,” the movable stone as opposed to petra, the immovable bedrock. Peter knew his own weaknesses all too well and chose to write about a new kind of “rock.” The image Peter offers is even weirder than the identity Jesus had given him as a “stone,” as a petros (me stone), and upon this petra (we bedrock) Jesus promised to build his church. The Me is built upon the We. In Christ Peter’s insecurities will be made solid, as will ours… Rocks are mentioned many times in both the new and old testament. Jesus Christ calls himself the cornerstone that was rejected, but became the most important cornerstone. Today is Mother’s Day. That usually presents a challenge for me- what do I preach about. And usually the scriptures for that day have nothing to do with mothers’ But 1 Peter is perfect – because it speaks of building a spiritual house. Whenever you build you always need a foundation and a stone that holds everything together and keeps all the other stones in place. For many of our households that person is mother. That is the whole lesson of 1 Peter. When I looked at that scripture last week I was not sure of how I was going to do this. But as I studied this scripture all week, it started to grow on me. Not only is does it work for Mother’s Day – it has a very rich lesson that I am just going to touch on. The lesson does not just speak to mothers – is a lesson about who we all are as the church. The last verse says – the church is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. Once you were nobody, today you are important. God is traditionally the foundation, the touchstone. The church is the house that God built. God is the head of the church. The house of God has certain boundaries to live by according to 1 Peter – the house code is to have hope, to be holy, to love one another, to long for spiritual nourishment and to be willing to be built into a spiritual house. The whole passage is about what it means to be a rock. Jody Felton remembers the day that her father passed in 2000 like it was yesterday. She says that a very great passed man on that day. Her father had alzheimer’s disease, so she says that she lost her father years before he actually died. When he was diagnosed, he spent a lot of time explaining the illness to his family. Things were difficult, when he could not remember things. There were times when he could remember what happened on a particular day 30 years ago, but he could not remember what happened ten minutes ago. He started to lose things, then he lost track of time, but the hardest part was when he lost track of people. She remembers the time when her brother John visited. He knew that it was his wife Wilma’s son that visited, but he made no connection that he was his son. He loved when his grandchildren visited, but he never made the connection that they were his grandchildren. He recognized his wife, he would smile every time he saw her. He asked her to marry him every day. One day Jody was visiting her dad in the nursing home, and as she was leaving he told her he wanted to give her something. He reached in his pocket and gave her a rock. He said that whenever he got confused, or anxious he would reach into his pocket and touch this rock. Now he wanted her to have it. She was touched, she felt that was her dad’s way of telling her he loved her, by giving her something that meant a lot to him. He was giving him a part of himself. Jesus is that rock that we keep in our pocket. This mother’s day that story really touched me because my mother died of early onset alzheimers. I too felt that I lost her long before she died. I too watched as she lost track of time and then people. I felt comforted that as she seemed to lose track of life, that she always knew me and who I was. Two days before she died, she called me maam – I knew then that I had lost her. She never gave me a stone to remember her by…….. But the good news for today is that in 1 Peter, we are called to be living stones. Not a stone in the pocket, but a stone in the heart. Christ is the Rock of ages, but we are the building built by Christ. Built by love. (i) The Christian is likened to a living stone and the Church to a living edifice into which he is built (verse 5). Clearly that means that Christianity is community; the individual Christian finds his true place only when he is built into that edifice. “Solitary religion” is ruled out as an impossibility. C. E. B. Cranfield writes: “The free-lance Christian, who would be a Christian but is too superior to belong to the visible Church upon earth in one of its forms, is simply a contradiction in terms.” There is a famous story from Sparta. A Spartan king boasted to a visiting monarch about the walls of Sparta. The visiting monarch looked around and could see no walls. He said to the Spartan king, “Where are these walls about which you boast so much?” His host pointed at his bodyguard of magnificent troops. “These,” he said, “are the walls of Sparta, every man a brick.” The point is clear. So long as a brick lies by itself it is useless; it becomes of use only when it is incorporated into a building. So it is with the individual Christian. To realize his destiny he must not remain alone, but must be built into the fabric of the Church. Suppose that in time of war a man says, “I wish to serve my country and to defend her from her enemies.” If he tries to carry out that resolution alone, he can accomplish nothing. He can be effective in that purpose only by standing shoulder to shoulder with others of like mind. It is so with the Church. Individualistic Christianity is an absurdity; Christianity is community within the fellowship of the Church. (ii) Christians are a holy priesthood (verse 5). There are two great characteristics of the priest. (a) He is the man who himself has access to God and whose task it is to bring others to him. In the ancient world this access to God was the privilege of the professional priests, and in particular of the High Priest who alone could enter into the Holy of Holies. Through Jesus Christ, the new and living way, access to God becomes the privilege of every Christian, however simple he may be. Further, the Latin word for priest is pontifex, which means bridge-builder; the priest is the man who builds a bridge for others to come to God; and the Christian has the duty and the privilege of bringing others to that Saviour whom he himself has found and loves. New Command on Mother's Day On this day when we’re trying to show our loving appreciation for all that love we’ve received from the special person called “Mom,” it is so fitting that we hear Jesus say what he said here in our text: “A new command I give you: Love one another.” Actually, Jesus’ command to love one another is appropriate for any day of the year, but it does take on special meaning on a day like today since included in that command to love, are those special ladies who brought us into this world and loved us in a way that only a mother can. Staff, www.eSermons.com. Unconventional Mother’s Day Gifts This Mother’s Day take a moment to think of all the mothers in the world who are in need. There are millions of women in the world living on less than a dollar a day. There are women in this country who are wondering how they are going to feed or diaper their children from day to day. There are children who need medical attention that their parents may not be able to afford. Anyone who has ever had to worry about such things can deeply sympathize. For those of us who have escaped such worries, we can only imagine the level of instinctive stress that uncertainty can provoke. There are many ways to celebrate Mother’s Day, but here are a few unconventional suggestions that will prove to your own mother that she did a good job raising you. How about dropping off a box of diapers and/or a case of formula to a local food bank or women’s shelter? If you have some baby furniture or clothing that your own children have outgrown, how about donating that stuff to a local charity? Does our local hospital have a fund for children who need care? Are there doctors in our community or city who volunteer in clinics overseas who might need supplies? There are countless ways to help support Moms locally and globally. Let your own Mom know that you were thinking about her and all of the many things she provided for you along the way…and that you did a good deed in honor of her. It will make her proud. Happy Mother’s Day. I posted a short film earlier this morning about how we celebrate Mother’s Day in America. I would encourage you to watch it as a part of this worship experience. It has a summarizes the point of my sermon perfectly. When I went to jewel, this year in the corona virus age, they put flowers and other presents in packages so that you could just leave them on the front step. And since there are no sit down restaurants open this year, everyone is having lobster tails, this is the first year that they were sold out everywhere. But the video encourages us to give to our mothers, but to also return to the original roots of the day – a day of service to others, and opportunity to make life better for all. Let our celebration of mothers not be an end within itself, but a beginning, a beginning of a life of service – building the house of love. Let us pray…….. Prayer Pandemic Mother’s Day Prayer: Another Kind of Mother’s Day Another Kind of Mother’s Day Dear God we pray for all the mother’s today. For this is a mother’s day just like every other, yet more pronounced. For every single one that can’t safely see their children. For the essential working mom, who is trying to do everything, we pray that they are able to receive some care themselves. For the mother’s who are ill, we pray for peace. For the mother’s who are given the duties of motherhood–the stepmothers, Godmothers, grandmother’s, adopted mother’s, aunties, mentor-mothers and the single fathers in the world, we pray that all of their work shines in their beloved children. For the lonely mother’s, we pray that they can receive moments of connection. For the mother’s who are stuck with their children at home, when it seems they should be launched into the world, we pray that you are able to be not just “mom” but your full differentiated self. For the estranged families on this day, we pray that they can maintain safe boundaries and celebrate with their found families. For the mother’s who are pregnant–probably equal parts mixed excited and scared to be bringing a baby into the world–we pray they feel strong roots beneath them to carry on. For the mother’s who are caretaking–similar to how they always do, yet having to absorb all of the changes and be a buffer for their charges–we pray that your work is appreciated. REPORT THIS AD For the single mother’s who are doing more by themselves than ever, we pray that you can receive support. For all the mother’s who feel overwhelmed, inadequate or stressed, we pray that you receive love. On this just another mother’s day where everything is the same, but different, we pray for all the mothers, sons and daughters, for all the families Close together or far apart, let us hold each and every kind of mother in prayer today. Reminding each of member of the family that we are each a child of God, and that God longs to hug us under her wings–caring for us, feeding us and sheltering us like a Mother Hen cares for her brood. We pray for this God to shelter us in her loving arms this particular Mother’s Day through the power of the Holy Spirit we pray. Amen. Feel free to use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta Reflection Moment Announcements: We are still here in internet land. I am working on so me improvements to the ways we can connect. I am hoping to make those changes this week, but in Corona virus time things are a little slower, supplies are not readily available. Debbie has been calling and sending messages on congregational care. She will continue. I need to contact our church leaders this week, so that we can move forward with church business. Still waiting on the bishop and the governor for direction to when we will be back in the sanctuary -even then we will continue to meet on the internet. Continue to pray for our families during this difficult time. Next week’s scripture will be John 14:15-21 continue our discussion on what it means to be a part of God’s family Happy Mother’s Day – interesting conversation about this being a very confining day, not all women are mother’s. not all mothers are women. Interesting, but true – go out and show love to all of those who have shown compassion. Even our enemies and those who make us feel uncomfortable have taught us a beautiful lesson. Show love and say thank you to all! Peace out! Benediction Additional Illustrations In the fall of the year, Linda, a young woman, was traveling alone up the rutted and rugged highway from Alberta, Canada to the Yukon. Linda didn't know you don't travel to Whitehorse alone in a rundown Honda Civic, so she set off where only four-wheel drives normally venture. The first evening she found a room in the mountains near a summit and asked for a 5 A.M. wake-up call so she could get an early start. She couldn't understand why the clerk looked surprised at that request, but as she awoke to early-morning fog shrouding the mountain tops, she understood. Not wanting to look foolish, she got up and went to breakfast. Two truckers invited Linda to join them, and since the place was so small, she felt obliged. “Where are you headed?" one of the truckers asked. “Whitehorse." “In that little Civic?" one of them said. “No way! This pass is DANGEROUS in weather like this." “Well, I'm determined to try," was Linda's gutsy, if not very informed, response. “Then I guess we're just going to have to hug you," the trucker suggested. Linda drew back. “There's no way I'm going to let you touch me!" she said angrily. “Not like THAT!" the truckers chuckled. “We'll put one truck in front of you and one in the rear. In that way, we'll get you through the mountains." All that foggy morning Linda followed the two red dots in front and had the reassurance of a big escort behind as they made their way safely through the mountains. Caught in the fog in our dangerous passage through life, we need to be “hugged," says Chuck Swindoll. With fellow Christians who know the way and can lead safely ahead of us, and with others behind, gently encouraging us along, we, too, can pass safely. (5) How do you build a successful life? You build it on the rock. You build it beginning with a sure Cornerstone. You build it on Christ who is our model and our mentor and the mortar that joins us as believers together as a family--as living stones in his holy temple. n a park on the beautiful island of Bermuda there is a rock hanging on a rope with a large sign beside it. The sign reads: “Weather Station . . . Check the Rock . . . If it's wet, it's raining . . . If it's moving, it's windy . . . If you can't see it, it's foggy . . . If the rock is gone, it's a hurricane." Today we check the Rock . . . or better yet, to use the language of our text from I Peter, the Stone--the Cornerstone on which our lives are built.