Over the past few months, in quieter moments in the building, I have returned to a great experience memorialized in the breezeway entrance to the sanctuary. You probably remember the energy of November 19, 2017, as Yates reentered the renovated sanctuary to resume worship there. As we dedicated the building to the service of God, we also rededicated ourselves for that purpose by placing stones around a Christ candle. We could see an image of our individual lives and missions gathered up under Jesus’ leadership in the light of his love.
That day, I anchored my reflections in the words of Joshua 4:4-7, when God’s people piled up rocks on the riverbank after crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you,” Joshua told them (3:5) — and God did! The rocks were a memorial to all God had done and all God would do in and for God’s people. On November 19, we recalled that we are stones, too, gathered up as a memorial to God’s work among us every time we’re together. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 3:16. Like all memorials, our gatherings not only look back, but also point us forward, because the Holy Spirit inhabits our gathering.
For now, we remain confronted by the reality that gathering in the ways most comfortable and familiar is not going to suppress the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Can the scriptures help us imagine what life as the church is like when the stones are scattered instead of gathered?
Writing after the time of the Apostle Paul, Peter addresses his first letter to Christians in exile “scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” (1 Peter 1:1) If you look at a map of the ancient world, you can see this stretches far across the Mediterranean and Middle East. Peter writes to encourage scattered Christians who are physically distant from one another and feeling the ever-increasing burden of continued isolation. I think of our congregation scattered across Durham, Apex, Hillsborough, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, and I think Peter has something to say to us today!
Whether gathered or scattered, he reminds them that Christians are always called to hope (1:13), to be holy (1:15), to be circumspect in their living (1:17), and to love one another deeply (1:22). And then, he uses the familiar image of the stones to affirm that, scattered as they are, God is at work in and through them: “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.” (2:5) Every disciple of Jesus is being made into the image of Christ. All the Jesus followers together are being built into God’s temple to offer up “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.” True worship doesn’t depend on the space. Acceptable worship arises household to household, in small communities of Jesus followers scattered about. These individual stones proclaim their love and loyalty to Jesus, and collectively become the materials that build the true temple in this world.
I hold tightly to this assurance these days as we continue to maintain more distance in the midst of contentious and difficult decisions in our community and nation. I hear God speaking loudly and clearly through it all: “Do not lose heart. Do not give in. With patient faith, continue to be part of that scattered community gathered in Spirit for the purposes of worshiping God.” You remain a growing community alive with Christ, energized to share God’s transforming love.
With Joshua’s faith, will we look to the weeks to come and declare: “The Lord will do amazing things among you!”? That is my prayer for us. Let it be so for all the scattered, living stones.
Grace and Peace,