Christianity in Vietnam has its origins in Jesuit missionaries, some of them actually helped develop an alphabet for the Vietnamese language that is still used to today in Vietnam. But Christianity in Vietnam has struggled with oppressive governments seeking to repress it in favour of Confucianism among other things. Through the 18th and 19th Centuries Christians suffered greatly under repressive rulers. Many were martyred, others had to flee their homes, even flee their country.
Some fled into the mountains and there the Christians stumbled upon cave systems hidden deep in the forests. Their decided to make their home there and a place of worship. Over time the cave church grew in size and popularity. Can you imagine gathering beneath the stalactites and sitting among the stalagmites? Have any of you been down to Hastings Caves and seen the glorious structures down there, God’s own cathedral really hey? So you can picture these Vietnamese sitting there by lamp light or holding candles as they sang hymns together, prayed and heard God’s word. United by their plight but brought together by their common faith. Worshiping the Creator while being safely held in His magnificently sculptured rock walls.
This early church built alters, set up images of saints and held regular services. Although some of it was nearly destroyed by the Vietnam War. Today you can go to these caves as a tourist attraction. Even while there is still some persecution of Christians in Vietnam, as there is still a Communist Government in place. But Christians still gather where-ever they can in order to worship together as a community of believers.
This passage in Peter talks about rock, about stone and about Christians gathering together. While I feel sadness for our Brothers and Sisters fleeing persecution for their faith, I am encouraged by their commitment and their persistence to meet together and experience the God that enters into our lives. An incarnational God.
Lets Pray….
This passage is dense with imagery, there really is a lot that we could talk about. Here are just some of the main ones:
- Babies craving spiritual milk (v2)
- Living Stone (v4, v5 v6 and v7)
- Built into a Spiritual House (v5)
- Holy Priesthood (v5 & v9)
- A Rejected Cornerstone (v7)
- From Darkness and into Light (v9)
There is a lot here to take in and process, and I have had the time to read over the passage a few times, study it, reflect on it and I still find more in it. But this morning I really want to find a few key take outs for you all and focus on those in particular. Things that will hopefully encourage you and help you feel valued as a member of this church and valued as a member of God’s whole church.
As I shared last time I spoke here, I’m visual learner and I’m an artist. So you’ll see some visuals from me and another sculpture (here under this blanket, I’ll reveal that later). I like to teach in the way I would want to learn, so I am hoping that will be helpful for you all.
Last week you heard from Emily about being homesick for heaven and about the steps Jesus has taken to restore us to Him. The passage prior this one is about us and what God has done for you and me. Today we look at us, the body of believers, and the work of God in making us a Spiritual House and what that means.
But first let’s briefly look at those first three verses. Like I said, there is a lot in here, but the metaphors here are helpful and many connect to the artwork I want to show later.
‘Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.’ (vs1-3)
I see three components here, but the central idea is the newborn baby, fresh into the world and uncorrupted. The baby doesn’t have malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy or slander. We talk about the innocence of babies right? So in a sense Peter is saying to his audience, be like babies again, be reborn into your faith, cast off the trappings and burdens of our corrupted lives, crave the purity of what God has to offer! Yearn to be better, ‘crave’ or ‘thirst’ for what He has for us! That’s where the nourishment is!
Jesus asked of us only a few things and established only a few traditions. And one of those is communion. When we break bread and drink wine together, we are to remember Him. We do this most weeks in church with the little wafer and sip of juice or wine. We say certain things, we reflect, we humble ourselves and we try to get a sense of the magnitude of his sacrifice, and hopefully its fresh and helpful for us every time we do communion. Now we’re not really eating Jesus’s body, this is symbolic of course. But for me verse 3 has a communion vibe, this sense of partaking in the spiritual meal, receiving the Spiritual nourishment that comes from Him. And while at Communion we remember His broken body and His shed blood. We also remember what He has given us, what He offers us. We have tasted and know ‘that the Lord is good’!
This middle section is really where I want to bring together the imagery of Living Stone, Spiritual House, Holy Priesthood, Rejected Cornerstone and the Darkness and Light bit. Because I think this all actually fit together into a cohesive idea. There’s a lot there, but I am hoping you’ll experience the encouragement that I had as I was preparing for this sermon.
In 2019, the year my son died, a dear friend sent me off on the John Dickson History of Jesus Tour of Israel. It was not only incredibly helpful my mental health in processing my grief, but it was profoundly educational for my Spiritual health and gave me great depth of understanding for the context of Jesus.
I had so many great experiences and many stories to tell. But one of the locations we visited was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Our learned guide John told us the story of this place and how it came to be. He also told us that this is indeed the location of Jesus’s tomb! (and scholars seem to back this) and not the ‘garden tomb’ that most Christian tourists seek out. Now with time, and multiple drastic events, including carving away the landscape around the tomb and an Islamic demolition, has meant that all that is left of that tomb is a slab of stone. But it’s surrounded by so many ornate decorations and trappings and the queues of people (even early in the morning) wind out the door! The building itself is huge and is in fact a few churches joined together with a number of different denominations taking charge of overlapping areas. We came early to avoid the crowds, but it was still packed. For many Christians this is significant and auspicious location. People come here seeking a spiritual connection to God, like a pilgrimage, there’s a sense that for them this place is somehow more special than others.
We also visited the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock and the Walling Wall, places that hold great significance for other faiths (show slides). And again, many people gathered at those places to pray, with this belief that those locations in themselves hold a certain power or spiritual resonance. But those rocks, those stones, even the massive house sized stones I saw at the base of the temple mount, or the crumbling stones of the Walling Wall that I touched as I wedged a prayer into the crack, those stones are just stones too! Sure, they hold incredibly great historical value, but they are just stones. Even the church of the Holy Sepulchre is just building, a magnificent one yes, but it’s just really old stones, carved and shaped into grandeur.
Let’s put this idea to one side for a moment and jump back to Peter and revisit the stones that he talks about there:
“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (vs 4,5)
The imagery of the discarded stone is repeated again, and there is a quote here from Psalm that alludes to this as well. A couple of concepts here, let’s unpack this a bit as we close in on the real core bit of this passage, well it certainly was for me. First concept is this cornerstone idea that is also a rejected stone. This is essentially talking about the rejection Jesus experienced here on earth, humankind turning their back on Him and putting Him on the cross. But instead, God made Him the cornerstone, the foundation piece that we all connect to. All of us, Christians gathered together with each other, the followers of Jesus are His church! We are becoming the walls of His spiritual house. We don’t need a big fancy building, WE are the dwelling place of God. He dwells in us, His glory, the glory that we read about on Mt Sinai, or the Burning bush, that’s the glory that fills us. This is a special and unique thing that we would not experience otherwise, outside of our faith. This gathering together as believers, being built together into a Spiritual House, that’s where that in-dwelling happens’, as we pray together, worship together, hear from His word together. These are all the parts of that building, and we all can benefit from that communion together. Coming to understand this was exciting for me. Not because I hadn’t understood that value of community before, but rather coming to this idea of ‘Church’ as believers to really be a special thing and God invests in, that He Dwells in!
Think back to those Vietnamese Christians in the caves they didn’t need a big fancy place to worship, God was there with them in the cave, He found His dwelling with them there in that place, just as we can find His dwelling in this place when we are gathered here. That’s incarnational hey? Jesus came to dwell as a man on earth and now He dwells with us in this Spiritual house of the Church; the body of believers.
I want to briefly talk about the Priesthood bit that Peter mentions and then I want to circle back to my sculpture so that I can leave you with one final visual to take home in your minds to reflect on.
So, we have this Spiritual Dwelling. Then we arrive at the Priesthood bit:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 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.”
In ancient cultures they believed there was a gap between the gods and the people, and the way to bridge that gap was through ‘Spiritual Elites’, a group of priests in a temple making the connections between the masses and their gods. They’d do the special prayers, rituals, sacrifices etc. But Jesus has become the Temple, He literally tore down those barriers (you remember reading about that enormous curtain being torn in two?). He became the High Priest and the Sacrifice!
Peter is reminding us that we are now chosen as the priesthood of believers, we are the co-labours, working together with a unity of purpose! A community of believers!
All Christians are now built into that spiritual Temple, we are made priests serving in that place and now all of us can declare His praises and declare that He calls us out of Darkness and into His wonderous light!
So, what do we now do in our role as a ‘Royal Priesthood’. In preparing for this sermon, I listened to one by Tim Keller. He spoke about our spiritual gifts, the way in which we can use what God has given us to help build up His dwelling place. He described these roles or gifts (that we can read about in Paul’s letters) as fitting into three categories: Kings, Prophets, and Priests. He spoke about having Prophets, those that can speak out Gospel wisdom and insights and then we have Priests with a servant heart, compassion and empathy; who can love that Gospel in. And we have ‘Kings’ those that can organise, lead, guide, see the bigger picture and know how to get all of this done. There is no spiritual elite anymore, we’re all Prophets, Priests or Kings in our gifts, all serving His purpose. God runs the church through the gifts He has given the people in it! It’s a dynamic movement!
But there’s a problem, the church today can look at times more like an institution then a movement. But it doesn’t need to. We can have a place that is characterised by wonder, where Grace breaks through and re-ignites our passion. Three things about the Grace of God: 1) How Free it is, 2) How loved you are and 3) How expensive it was.
I want to conclude with showing you a sculpture I made about 10 years ago (reveal sculpture). This sandstone baby was actually my first carving in sandstone but it’s still one of my favourites. The piece is called ‘The Arrival’. Because over 2000 years ago He arrived. The incarnation, the powerful moment where God came into our world. But this work also speaks to His death and resurrection. The baby is carved in stone, stone of the tomb, but the stone that was rolled away. In the one piece we have incarnation (the baby) and the death and resurrection, all represented in the shape and material of this work.
But today we can add another element to this work. We can think of this as the stone that was rejected, the stone that has become the cornerstone of His church, that’s us!
This is stone the ‘builders’ rejected, the vulnerable baby entering our world to save it. The incarnation, God become man, coming to dwell with us!
Lots to think on and reflect on. But hopefully some images to hold those thoughts in your mind as you think about how can we respond? How can we declare those praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light? How can we embrace our role as a royal priesthood?
Amen