Glories

“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, ⁵ you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷ So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone,”

⁸ and

“A stone of stumbling,
    and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Pet. 2:4-10).

Peter—walking down the Jerusalem streets. The gleaming Temple Mount of Herod’s Temple. Gold. Glory. Gleam. Stature. Height. Impressive. The awe, magnificence, reverence shimmers in the Judean heat, gleaming, glowing. He glances up at the impressive structure.

Then turns down a crooked Jerusalem street. The gold hidden by the mud houses. The sun darkened in the alleyway. Poverty brushes a dark haze. There, a woman baking bread. He stops and chats. The Christ in her heart shines. The bread of the presence—empty yeast filled loaves in the temple. But here, in this dark alleyway, the Carpenter who named himself Bread of the World lives. Bread of the Presence.

Being built like living stones. We are the temple.

Peter—now an old man in Rome. Perhaps brought there to be martyred. Perhaps visiting the house churches when the Roman arrest warrant was sent out. He sees the mighty temples and structures built to the Roman gods, the pillars gleaming white and proud. The priests offer libations, the smell of incense wafts to the streets as Peter walks past, drifts to the aged fisherman’s nose, inviting, a curling embrace around his rugged shoulders.

 

He turns down the streets, down the windy Roman streets, through the sewage, muck, stray dogs. Into a small, dark house, furtively creeping in because his presence could mean death to the others. Another libation going up—“through Jesus let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Heb. 13:15). Another fragrance wafting, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ…. through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to ne a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor. 2:14-16).

We, a royal priesthood. Glory in the gutter.

Peter—walking past the Roman forum, the place of voting, rights, proud republic, the foundation of the Romans. The white stones cast, public decisions, power, might, life and death, clout. Each ring of the white voting stone in the clay pot a declaration of freedom and privilege. Look at the might of the Roman republic! Look at the freedom, privilege, honor! Hold your head up high! The clang of the rock echoes through the forum; the proud step sounds up in magnifying sound.

He travels past, out through the city gates to the Roman melon fields. There, a Christian brother, laboring. Long and hard. Once a merchant, now excluded from his merchant guild for refusing to pay homage to the merchant gods and participate in the idol feasts. Now menial labor. Struggling, tears as their faith has made his wife, his children suffer, a worse pain than the searing sunburn, the bent back, and the melon-vine-pricked hands. Excluded. But included in a people, chosen by God, given bold access to the heavenly throne.

We, included, a people, a race chosen.

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17).

Peter—no longer impressed by the temples with the ornate pillars and carvings. He visits his Christian brother, the mason in the Roman quarry chipping away at a marble column of another pagan temple. This mason, the one who God himself is fashioning into his temple with tender and loving care even in the suffering. There is more glory in this little crooked mason than the towering temples that gleam in white and gold.

We, a living temple of the living God.

“The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name” (Rev. 3:12).

We, the temple. We, the church. It is easy to forget we see the glory of “Rome” around us—the glory of our culture, the promises of pleasure, money, security, houses. It is easy to forget in the ritual of our own church events. But we the people, chosen by God, living temple. It is easy to forget in our pain from the sin of others that have shamed and stripped us. Easy to forget in our own personal sin that clings as much as we hate it, that defiles. But we, chosen, royal priesthood, living stones of the temple.

But this is Jesus. The God of glory who came as a Carpenter and now indwells the housewives baking bread, the slaves, the masons, the grocery store clerks, the teachers, the businessmen, the unemployed, the homeless. Pride in Jesus, bearing the life of Jesus, the presence of Jesus in us that fills us with the fullness of deity in the mundane (Eph. 3:19; 2 Pet. 1:4).

“and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19).

The church, “which is his body, the fullness of him [Jesus] who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23).

“So that through them [God’s promises] you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).