Who am I? If I was to bottle me, what would the essence of me be? What is my identity? What is it about me that defines me, that makes me what I am?
Our world has lots of answers to that question. We love to label people, to slap labels onto people, that pigeon holes them. And so does Western Society. For all it’s claim to avoid pigeon holing people, that’s exactly what it does. Our media has certain stereotypes, certain tropes, certain type casts, that it loves to use to portray people.
So what are the labels we put on ourselves and each other? There are the labels of wife and mother, of father and husband. Of son and daughter, brother and sister. Of grandma and grandpa. These are good labels. I am a friend, I’m his best friend, I’m his uncle, I’m her cousin, I’m her godmother. They describe us in terms of family relationships or friendships, which are important.
But husband and wife is only momentary, I’m afraid. Till death do us part is the reality of marriage in a fallen world. And that’s not even factoring in divorce. And not everybody is married. And if people are married, not everybody has children. Some people can’t have children. Or worse, some people have lost their children. They’ve buried their children. Or they are orphans, or the relationship with their parents has gone bad. There’s the divorced, or the widowed, or separated. The grieving, the only child, the lonely, those still looking. So defining yourself in terms of your relationships is a hazardous business.
So then we define ourselves in terms of the job we do for our community. And doing a job for our community is a good thing. I’m a teacher, a nurse, I run the local shop, I’m a cook, a doctor, a police officer, a lawyer, a pharmacist, a child care worker. I’m white collar or blue collar. I wear a tie, I wear hi viz. I’m techy, I’m a chippy, a sparky, a polly, a journo, a muso, an ambo, a copper, a posty, a firey, a bean counter. And I’m sorry if I missed your vocation.
These aren’t bad ways to categorise ourselves. After all, the bible tells us, ‘if a man shall not work, neither shall he eat’. We want to contribute to the good of society, to help people with their real temporal needs.
But there is a danger, of course, with this. Because all of us have a use-by date in the job we are in. Our days at work are limited. One day we will make our last widget or do our last thingamabob. And we’ll either die in the saddle or we will be put out to pasture. Our skills won’t be required, our experience won’t matter. We will become obsolete. Or if our job is still there, we won’t all be there anymore. Our bodies will give up. Our minds will go. And then what? Will we then think of ourselves as useless, a waste of space, idle eaters, a drain on society and a burden on those we love? I hope we don’t. That is atheism. That is materialism. That is not Christianity.
Can we do better than this? Have we got an identity that will outlive our relationships or our work? Yes.
Here in 1 Peter, we are given our identity as Christians. Peter writes to Christians. And Christians are misfits in their world. Strangers and aliens who will never feel at home where they find themselves.
Some aspects of our world brands us various things. Fundamentalists, Judgmental, Bigotted, Narrowminded. But that’s not everyone, just some, with a big microphone and bad attitude.
But there are many other people out there who want what we have. They just don’t know it yet. They need to know Jesus Christ. And that's why we need to get the message out.
Peter has a different description of the Christians. And they are corporate descriptions. It is not individualistic, me and my salvation, thank you very much. Now I’m right with God, I’ll just pursue my own worship of God, on my own terms and my way. That is a complete misunderstanding. Yes, salvation is individual. But it is not individualistic.
Salvation must be individual. Only individuals can repent and believe. Only individuals will be judged. To each according to what they have done. So salvation is of individuals. There is no church without individuals. But salvation is of individuals for a corporate ends. Chapter 2 verse 5:
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood … (NIV)
The image is that of living stones built into a house. It is a living building. Like a coral reef. Like a human pyramid. You see the individual aspect. Each of you is a living stone. And the corporate aspect is that those stones are being built into a spiritual house.
Every brick or stone church building is an illustration of the church. Our wonderful building in which we meet week after week is not the church. It is a rain shelter, a windbreak, and a sunscreen. It might be an old one, a pretty one, or a falling down one. A weatherboard one that needs a move, a fibro one that needs a paint, a riverstone one that needs some ties, and a sandstone one that needs some heritage work. And to them we are hoping to add to it a new brick one that needs ... well, everything done to it. At the moment it is some drawings on big bits of paper, some money in the bank, and the 20 year dream of a small, semi-rural parish on the edge of Sydney. But whether the bricks are going up or coming down, or just on paper, it is the living stones that matter. And that’s you lot. And if we had zero church buildings instead of 4 and one on the way, you know what, ‘we’d still have the church’. We’d meet in homes or halls or schools or barns. We’d meet under trees or in fields, as our brothers and sisters all around the world do, when they must.
Now, we are not just a holy huddle, or comfortable club. God has called us individuals together for more than that. We not just are, we also do. We not just be, we also act. We have a task, and a mission. Chapter 2 verse 5, the second half:
…offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (NIV)
You are a kingdom of priests. I am not your priest, not in this sense, anyway. We all together are priests, offering sacrifices. Our sacrifices are ourselves, our bodies. And now you and I please God. We are ‘acceptable’ sacrifices. Because of Jesus Christ, and through him, every small act and intention of trust and obedience puts a smile on God’s face. Just as Noah offered a burnt offering and the aroma went up, and entered God’s metaphorical nostrils, and God smelt the burnt offering and said, ‘Never again will I destroy the world’, so now, because of Jesus’ offering of himself, our offering of ourselves is acceptable to God.
There is a further description of our mission in chapter 2 verse 9: Chapter 2 verse 9, the second part.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
How do we offer our sacrifices to God? It is with your lives, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. But it is with your lips also. That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. The church, the people of God, both individually and corporately, are about declaring, about announcing, about praising, about thanking God.
Sometimes we do it to a tune. Get used to singing. Do you know what most of the activity described of the redeemed in Revelation is? It is singing God’s praises. Two songs. First, God, you made us. Second, Jesus, you died for us. These are the two songs we’ll be singing into all eternity. God made us to praise and thank him.
We humans love singing. It is not just young people, who follow their strange music. Turn off that racket. Your parents said all the same things to you, as they played the Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby 78s, and you watched bandstand and played all your 45s and 33s of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Col Joy and Johnny O’Keefe. And I did it with my late 80s Australian rock that you all hate, and my kids now think is so dated and funny.
You know most of it was a waste of breathe, don’t you? My Midnight Oil and Bruce Springsteen and Paul Kelly, as much as your Big Boppa and Rock Around the Clock. I guess music can express lots of things in the human condition. But lets face it, the cutting edge is mostly it is used to praise sin, not to praise God, Simon and Garfunkle as much as Ed Shearen.
Fundamentally, the gift of music was given us to praise God. And just like in everything, humans more often than not, with great skill and talent, have taken God’s good gift of music, and use it to worship and serve themselves and created things. Just as in our day, most songs are about sex, and alcohol. Its just that euphemism has become more explicit. Let’s rock around all night long and afternoon delight and I want to hold your hand has become I kissed a girl and I liked it and baby you were born that way. And rock concerts ape and parody the worship of Jesus Christ in heaven, as do our great modern sporting events in cathedrals built to seat a hundred thousands. As Katy Perry’s father said at one of her concerts. ‘[T]here were 20,000 and […] [t]hey're loving and worshipping the wrong thing’. It’s only what my mother’s generation did for the Beatles and my father’s for Chuck Berry and I did for the Oils and U2, and my kids do for Katy Perry and Ed Shearen.
And now our job now is to declare God’s praises. Within these four walls, it’s called praise and praying. Outside these walls, in our streets, in our homes, it is called teaching and evangelism. It’s called announcing and speaking about God and his Son, Jesus Christ.
We are talking about the one who who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. By nature we were darkness. I’m sorry to have to be the one to remind you of this. Well, not really. Being of a somewhat morose disposition, I like to highlight our blackness. You and I were no better than the darkness that we see around us in our society. You know all that stuff we see around us, the stupidity and idiocy of our society that tortures us, that seems to close in around us, so that we worry for our kids and grandkids? All that stuff. Well, according to the bible, we weren’t really that much better. And we may have been a fair bit worse.
But then the glory of Christ Jesus shone in our hearts. Jesus made the difference. And we saw the light. I see the light … [say it like James Brown in Blues Brothers]
Yes, the religious stereotype, that they mock us for, is true of us. We saw that Jesus was the Christ, the King, God, the Son of God, our Lord and redeemer, and it changed us. At some point, whether you grew up with it shoved down your throat, or whether you stumbled over the message by accident, we saw that Jesus Christ was different, that He is the Light of the world, and that all who follow him will no longer live in darkness, but live in the light of life, and it changed our perspective and gave us a new purpose. Now we are on a mission from God. We walk in the light and live as children of the light of Jesus Christ. Which exposes our own persistent sinfulness, yes. But the light also gives us sure places to stand, and to place our steps as we walk with God. Chapter 2 verse 10:
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (NIV)
It’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the stone the builders rejected, but has become the head of the corner.
I’m no builder. My wife owns our power tools, as many of you know. But I’ve seen those crazy walls, like the ones going up to Fern Hill, made of stones, where the builders have to set them like puzzles. They were dotted through Malta. I’m sure the builders had to do it with this building, finding just the right block of sandstone to set in just the right place, so that the building is square and the walls are straight.
Well, Jesus is likened to one of those stones. A reject. That odd shaped, strange, difficult to place piece. 'Who cut that? Funny joke! What am I meant to do with that?', says the builder. 'We’re building a rectangle here.' And he throws tosses it away. And the stone lies on the works site until someone trips over it. 'Oh, who put this rubbish here!' And discards it out on the scrap heap.
Until the building is almost completed. Months, perhaps years later, the builder comes to the top of the building. And there is the most important stone at the top of the building, obvious to all. This will be the most visible, the most important piece, the piece that holds the building together. We might think of it as the keystone in the archway that will take the weight of both sides of the building, and obvious to everyone who walks in. And it takes a very usually shaped stone. Nothing can be found from all the best stones received. Nothing is lying around. So in desperation, the apprentice is sent off to the scrap heap. And there lies the unusual, sharp, forgotten stone, Jesus Christ. Christ is ‘the head of the corner’. The most prominent and important stone in the building, rejected because of it’s unusual shape, but turns out to be the most important and honoured stone.
That is Jesus Christ. Verse 4. Jesus Christ is precious to God. He is the only Son of the Father, God from God light from light, true God from true God. Verse 7, Jesus Christ is precious to you believers. Perhaps Jesus was not always so. But now he is.
And this is why we set Jesus Christ apart in our hearts. Come with me forward to 1 Peter 3:15.
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect… (NIV)
Jesus is the precious cornerstone. Set him apart in your hearts as Lord, the most important.
And always be prepared to give an answer for your hope. Be ready to tell people why your trust in Jesus Christ. Know and tell the gospel. Because God has saved you to declare his praises in the world.
Your identity is not your work, whether in the world or the home. That will pass away, even thought it is good for a time. Your identity is not your existing relationships. Those relationships are bound to change, though they are a blessing for now.
Your identity is found in Christ. You are a living stone in the building of God. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. You are precious. Your worship of God is acceptable to him. Your lips and your lives please God now, because of Jesus Christ. What you do to serve God puts a smile on his face. He is not angry with you. Your many sins are forgotten, and you are part of his precious people, cemented into the building where Christ is the head of the corner. And you’ve got a job to do. Declare his praises. Inside church, that’s praise. Outside, that’s evangelism. And everywhere, whether inside and outside, it is acceptable worship.
Let’s pray.