Earlier this week I joined the leadership of the landscaping and grounds committee to do a walk around of the Youth House exterior to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by recent tree loss. I have to tell you, neither my seminary training nor any search committee I’ve ever interacted with prepared me for how often in ministry I find myself walking around with a small group, looking at something. That’s not a complaint. There is something very holy about joining with others to see what can be seen with human eyes and dream what can’t be seen yet.
As the walk returned to the Ridgewood side and the circular driveway, a splash of red poked up among the fading brown of fallen leaves. There just in front of my feet, half buried and lying in wait for who knows how long, the broken halves of a brick. Seemingly the same brick from which the Youth House had been built. I don’t know if it was lost and buried in the building process, or whether it was dropped by a worker, rendering it useless. Or if it had come from the supplier broken. I don’t know its history but I know it didn’t get to join its fellow bricks in the house turned parsonage turned ministry home at the corner of Ridgewood and Eastover. It is unfit to ever do so. Folks, this is Jackson–we don’t need to do anything to invite structural instability. The workings of ancient seas and volcanoes guaranteed our foundation issues long ago. But I think the original communities around today’s epistle text from 1 Peter would have paused and smiled had they seen our wayward broken brick.
One of the things we do as a youth ministry after reading Scripture but before teaching is we share any questions or observations we can make. We call it interrogating the text because we believe Scripture can hold up to our tough questions. Asking about the scriptural and cultural context of a passage are great examples of this questioning. 1 Peter 1:1 tells us this text was originally propagated as a circuit letter to several churches scattered throughout what was then known as Asia Minor, modern Türkiye. Many of these were diverse population centers, with pockets of ethnically Jewish inhabitants surrounded by a kaleidoscope of cultures and faiths all falling under the umbrella of Gentile. From this diversity the Spirit had assembled some of the earliest churches. The believers of these churches would have walked the streets of cities like Ankara, overshadowed by various temples. Many temples ranked among the most impressive buildings of their respective cities, and most would have played host to a temple association. These bodies conferred prestige and privilege, hosting banquets and providing impressive funerals for members. Some of these believers likely had once reached for the divine in these same temples or perhaps had belonged to such associations prior to their conversion. If you’re struggling to sense the life upending alienation of such a change, imagine having built your life around Christianity in a Southern city and filling your social schedule with various Bible studies, garden clubs, and mardi gras krewes full of your fellow congregants only to leave it behind and no longer feel welcome, all while continuing to make trips to the grocery store past the soaring edifices of the First This and Saint That buildings on every street.
These converts would have left behind the temples to sing to Jesus in private homes and courtyards. How many times did they see their old friends and old spaces and wonder what they gave up? How many times did they see a baby or even a domesticated animal making some manner of a mess off to the side of their worship space and think, did I mess up? Why would the Creator of the universe hang out here, with us?
These are the people told to choose the spiritual home built on discarded stone and become part of the edifice of God’s worship. They see attached to these words the name of a man called Rock who had done his best to discard himself on the night his master was broken. Whether these believers were overshadowed by religious clubs they couldn’t join or clubs they had once been in, they were now to be a royal priesthood. They could look around the room and see that everyone outside would see them as an incoherent rabble of mixed background, but they were to be a singular, chosen people of God. Which inherently meant that this God had no dependence on the geographic and ethnic tethers assumed in period faiths.
When I was a year older than our seniors, I worked a summer job with a friend from my own youth ministry. I, a student of the University of Alabama and he, enrolled at that other school over there near Georgia, differed on collegiate battle lines but were in agreement that much of this job was nonsense and found plenty of nonsense to entertain us as the days went by. One such day we hatched a never serious plan to eliminate our need for student housing. He had possible access to a small travel trailer, and as we reckoned it the cost of pulling it around, occasional hookups, utilities, and even sundry parking tickets could still remain below a rent check or campus payment. Neither one of us were capable of capitulating to the rival school, so a mutual transfer to neutral territory was brought up; perhaps Troy or UAB would do. The lynchpin of this running joke was imagining the interactions with new friends invited over. “Where do you live,” they would ask. And we would say, “Wherever you are.”
Northminster, we are blessed with a beautiful campus to call home. We are so blessed that we get to bless others with it throughout the week. Have you ever thought about everything that happens here for others, or starts here and expands to our community? Hosting Beth Israel. Our cancer support group. The missions committee, Wider Net and boarding homes project. Simply having enough fridge space for all the food it takes for our youth to cook lunch at Stewpot. For 59 years now that has been the legacy of this body. But if you think this is something, look beyond what regular eyes can see and see the beauty of the spiritual house which Christ is building here and elsewhere. Built with rejected stones and all the broken bricks, by skillful hands that don’t fear shifting clay, intruding water, or the persistent creep of plantlife. If the rejected stone is the foundation, then we don’t get to reject ourselves or anyone else as inadequate or useless. If the home of God’s worship is unbound from our limits, then we can present our lives and join the construction right here at this very altar, or at home knelt beside our bed, or wherever the wind rustles the trees with a holy whisper, “I am here, join what I’m up to.”
And seniors, the winds are indeed about to scatter you. You will notice cracks and blemishes and points in your life that can’t bear load while feeling like you’re on a delivery truck full of the finest marble and granite ever quarried. I’ll do what I can to head that off and let you in on the dirty little secret. We don’t know what we’re doing, and the people who will meet don’t either. We’re all chipped, compromised, broken, hoping against hope that the Great Builder will find some use for a castoff. Lucky for you and me and the rest of us, that’s Jesus’ favorite kind of building material. Some of you may travel far geographically, and all of you will take enormous steps beyond the life you’ve been living. It may take time to find yourself and find your people locally, but your identity in the people and priesthood of God is set. Maybe your next church will be a lot like Northminster. Maybe you’ll meet in someone’s home like our spiritual ancestors, perhaps with a loyal family dog and fresh coffee from the kitchen as an upgrade to what Peter probably knew. Maybe the next place you’ll gather will be space rented from a movie theater on Sundays or converted from a closed grocery store. From experience, those converted grocery stores could be where you meet someone irreplaceable to you.
But most importantly, no matter where you find yourself, the door to Christ’s spiritual home is wide open. And if you can’t find the way, just ask Jesus where He lives. He’ll say, “Wherever you are.”