The Stone That Builders Rejected

I know I am a week behind on this and I apologize for that but here is the sermon from last week which comes from Psalm 118:14-29

¹⁴ The Lord is my strength and my defense;
    he has become my salvation.

¹⁵ Shouts of joy and victory
    resound in the tents of the righteous:
“The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!
¹⁶     The Lord’s right hand is lifted high;
    the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”
¹⁷ I will not die but live,
    and will proclaim what the Lord has done.
¹⁸ The Lord has chastened me severely,
    but he has not given me over to death.
¹⁹ Open for me the gates of the righteous;
    I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
²⁰ This is the gate of the Lord
    through which the righteous may enter.
²¹ I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
    you have become my salvation.

²² The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
²³ the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴ The Lord has done it this very day;
    let us rejoice today and be glad.

²⁵ Lord, save us!
    Lord, grant us success!

²⁶ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
    From the house of the Lord we bless you.
²⁷ The Lord is God,
    and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
    up to the horns of the altar.

²⁸ You are my God, and I will praise you;
    you are my God, and I will exalt you.

²⁹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

The summer after I graduated college, several of you probably already know that I worked as a landscaper... This may sound a little prideful and it is but I was pretty good at it.  You know how I knew I was good at?  Because I met the love of my life while I was laying bricks.  Whether she will admit it or not, she was in love when she first saw me, she just didn’t know it right away.  The other reason I knew that I was good at is because my coworker would constantly tell me that I was.  Since Mr. Schippers isn't here to deny it, I can tell you that he complemented me all the time and I believe he tried very hard to emulate my ability to landscape.  While really none of that is true except it is where I first met Cheyanne, I do have a lot of experience when it comes to this morning’s scripture.  We would constantly come across bricks and stones that would be broken or chipped and we would have to discard them and just like this Psalm, we could normally still use the part of them that was still in good condition.  This analogy really got me thinking about things that get rejected.

Firstly, I thought of every awkward freshman boy who had finally worked up the courage to ask the girl of his dreams to dance only to get his heart stomped on when she said no and laughed at him.  Of course, this never happened to me... I know what you are thinking, and it wasn’t because I am really good-looking it was because I never worked up the courage to even ask.  Sometimes the thought of God can be intimidating in much the same manner.  To realize that He cared and loved us so much that He sent His son to bear our sins on the cross can cause us to not have the courage to ask Him for forgiveness.  We may feel that we have messed up too badly, that we have done something that He won’t forgive us for so we hesitate to even ask.  There is one verse in particular that has stuck with me as I kept rereading this Psalm, verse 14 says, “The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.”  There is one word in this verse that sticks out to me and that word is ‘become.’  It sticks out to me because this word means that the salvation of the person writing this Psalm has been a process.  To ‘become’ something means that there has been a process involved.  If I were to become skinny it would mean that I would have to work really, really, really hard which would take quite the process.  Our faith is definitely a process.  It is one thing to be saved but to truly develop your faith takes time, it is a process.  Believe it or not, Cheyanne falling in love with me was a process, me becoming a good landscaper was a process, to get my faith where it is today has been a process.  By no means is the process over with either.  Just as I must keep finding ways for Cheyanne to keep falling in love with me I must keep finding ways to praise, worship and love God.  And the best part of this is that I don’t have to fear rejection either, I can continue to grow in my faith without fearing that God’s love will abandon me.  

Secondly, this scripture got me thinking about the importance of those bricks that we would initially reject while we landscaped.  Oftentimes, we could find uses for those broken bricks by cutting off the part that was messed up.  By the time we were done, you could not tell the difference between those bricks that were perfect and those that were broken because they fit beautifully together to form a whole structure.  How easily does this relate to our own lives?  It is easy to say but much more difficult to do.  If we can just somehow manage to get rid of the aspects of our lives that keep us from playing an important role in this world.  We aren’t perfect, we all know that but we can still fit together to form a structure that is unbreakable and incredibly strong as long as the love of Christ is the glue that holds us together.  There is a use for all of us, while it is true that we may take some molding but nonetheless, God has a use for each of us.  And I don’t just mean each of us here this morning, I mean God’s love is meant for all of us.  

This brings me to my third point, there are people in our lives that we find it difficult to even tolerate some days let alone love.  Whether you will admit it or not, there is at least one person of this type that is in your life and I often wonder why God goes out of His way to make us put up with these people.  I know the answer seems obvious that we supposed to love them but there are people out there that make it extremely difficult for us to do that... Most of the time we think that it is them that need to find God’s love, we may even go out of our way to help them do so.  While it may be true that they are searching for God in their lives I encourage you to take a closer look at yourself as well.  See we weren’t always able to use bricks that had imperfections to make our cuts so everything would work out.  We also had to use bricks with absolutely nothing wrong with them, they had no imperfections yet we still had to cut them to make them fit.  Even those people who walk hand in hand with God and are very secure in their faith still have room for growth and adaptation.  The very one person on this earth who was the ‘perfect brick’ was rejected.  He was tossed aside to die on a cross yet God used him as the cornerstone, the most important piece of the entire structure.  Jesus himself was rejected yet He had the courage to bear your sins and the sins of the person you have difficulty tolerating.  Both of you are equals in the eyes of God which means that both of you have equal opportunity for growth in the eyes of the Lord.

For most of the lectionary texts, the Sunday following Easter is devoted to remembering that the resurrected Jesus as He appeared to the disciples on several occasions and along with that is the story of Thomas.  I struggled to find where this Psalm fits into that mold and then it came to me, this too is the story of the disciples, of Thomas, and all of us this morning.  The stone that was rejected reflects Jesus dying on the cross, the shouts of joy and victory reflect the disciples as they learn they Lord and Savior has not died and instead He is very much alive, we are the ones who God blesses and shines His light on in verses 26 and 27, and verse 28 of this Psalm echoes exactly what Thomas says in John 20 when he realizes that Jesus has risen.  Maybe today is the day that God is calling you to mold a brick that has been chipped or broken and turn into a perfectly fitting piece in the kingdom of God.  The truth is that we all have our imperfections but those are to be seen as blessings and opportunities to let the love of God shine bright in your life.  This morning I encourage you to take a moment, whether coming forward or right there in your seat to ask God to mold you, to make you into something that you never dreamed possible.  Ask God to renew your spirit so you share his love with the world, even with those whom that seems most difficult.  Amen.

Clinton Wallace

Fairview Christian Church