“The Cornerstone of Your Life”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Text: Matthew 21:33-46
It was a telephone call that came right out of the blue! It was from one of the people who works in our church. He said, “Dr. Stirling, on a scale of 1 to 10, how badly would you feel if we removed the cornerstone of the church and the whole edifice fell down?”
I replied, “On a scale of 1 to 10, that would be a 10, I think!”
He said, “Well, I am just preparing you.”
And I thought, “Oh Lord, what is coming next.”
He said, “You see, we have just had a look at the cornerstone and we want to take it out so we can get to the time capsule inside, the time capsule that was placed there a hundred years ago, but right now we are not yet sure precisely what damage removing the cornerstone would do to the church.”
After about three sleepless nights, I waited for the answer. I was informed that the trustees had good news! The good news was that the cornerstone could be removed, that the engineers had given the okay, and that the time capsule was located within it.
The cornerstone was removed. Everything was fine and you will be able to see the contents of the time capsule on Sunday, April 18. You have just got to be here for that! I also wanted to make sure however, that after they had removed the cornerstone, they could put it back in again afterwards and I was assured that was possible too. I have slept like a baby ever since! All I wanted on my resume was: “Dr. Stirling, Senior Minister of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, responsible for its complete destruction.”
We now wait! I realized in all of this, after having done a bit of research, that cornerstones are actually very important. In traditional masonry, they constitute the most important part of a building, because as anyone knows in the old way of making buildings, the cornerstone did two things.
First of all, it became the reference point for everything else that would be built, from the cornerstone two other walls would emerge, and these walls would constitute the domain and the range of the building. If the cornerstone wasn't laid correctly then the whole building would be off line or off centre. If the cornerstone was right everything else would flow from that one central geometric point.
There is another factor. In classic ancient masonry, the cornerstone was the source for the foundation. Not only did it delineate the lines of the walls, it became part of the foundation itself. If the cornerstone was in the right place, the foundation was in the right place; if the cornerstone was made of the right materials, the building would be built on firm and right materials. On what the cornerstone sits, so the land underneath would support the foundation.
Cornerstones are important. Whether you go back to the time of the Egyptians (that pre-dated Jesus by hundreds and thousands of years) or whether you are looking at many of the great temples in antiquity, all of them had cornerstones. However, cornerstones over the years have taken on a ceremonial role. They have become of spiritual significance as well. When you laid a cornerstone, it was to tell you three things. First of all, it was to tell you the date and the time the building was erected. And so oftentimes on a cornerstone you will find a date engraved that will tell you precisely when the building was begun.
To lay a cornerstone was also the symbol of commitment of the people who were to build it. You couldn't just lay a cornerstone and then walk away. If you laid the cornerstone, you were making a commitment to finish the building. It was a commitment to people.
Finally, the purpose of the building is established by the cornerstone. Depending on the type of cornerstone, the size of the cornerstone, the nature of the engraving on the cornerstone, it would determine the type of building. Whether it was a mausoleum or whether it was a magnificent sanctuary, whether it was a place of social importance or for the worship of God, the cornerstone was absolutely vital. I think it is fitting that when we come to our text from Mathew's Gospel, Jesus refers to a cornerstone.
He does so by referring back to a text that most scholars believe was the first time a cornerstone was mentioned in the Bible. There were other texts that came, but they were later. This was an early text from Psalm 118. These are the words that Jesus himself spoke: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes! This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Psalm 118, verse 22.
Now we all know the latter part of that, don't we? “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!” But, it is the sentence before that Jesus captures. He captures it at a time in his ministry that was of the most crucial importance. He says this: “This cornerstone, this capstone which has been built, was rejected by others, but it was established by God.”
He said this at the end of a parable and you have to understand the context and the power of the moment to see the importance of the phrase. Matthew locates Jesus talking about this cornerstone after he had arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, which we celebrate today. Psalm 118 was one of the great Passover texts of the Jewish people. Jesus was referring to a passage that was well-known and would be repeated even during Passover season but he was repeating it at a moment when he had just entered Jerusalem in the last week of his life.
We read that the religious leaders and the political leaders were very annoyed with Jesus. They were annoyed that he had come into Jerusalem and had been crowned a king with “Hosannas.” They were upset with him that he had overturned the tables in the Temple. They were upset with him that he was healing people and telling stories. And now, they were really upset with him because as the tension mounted between the religious leaders in Jerusalem and Jesus, between his followers and those who were in power. This started to reach a crescendo and Jesus spoke of the cornerstone.
You are thinking, “The cornerstone of what?” The cornerstone of the Temple! All of a sudden, this incredible conflict started to rise because Jesus tells the crowd and the religious leaders, probably somewhere in the presence of the Temple in Jerusalem, that the cornerstone of the Temple is going to crumble, that the very foundation of this great second Temple is going to erode, and many of those who were there believed that Jesus was the one who was going to do it.
Jesus symbolizes that this Temple is going to come to an end and he does it by quoting from the most magnificent prophet, Isaiah for Isaiah talks about a time when the Temple will crumble, that the cornerstone will come, that the Messiah will pass judgement, and that in fact if the people of God do not practice justice and righteousness, if they do not follow in the footsteps of the Lord their God, then all the things that they have built up will come crashing down.
They hear these words of Jesus, those who loved the Temple, those who worshipped in this glorious and magnificent place, the symbol of Jewish pride and authority, the symbol of God's people amongst the terrible people, the Romans, and it is Jesus, supposedly the Messiah, the One who is speaking with authority, who says that this cornerstone will crumble. Even though he is quoting from Isaiah, they are deeply troubled. They are also deeply troubled because Jesus' language suggests that they are coming to break down idols as well.
In this passage there is a very clever play on words. You might miss it if you do not look at the original language but you have to look at the following. Jesus uses the term “the stone” and “The stone will break down the cornerstone.” The “stone” in Aramaic is “eben”, but in Hebrew, the word for “son” is “ben”, not “eben” but “ben”. What he is doing in this passage, and Matthew is capturing it, is conveying that the Son becomes the stone that breaks down the cornerstone of the Temple.
If you were a religious leader and you were hearing this, you would be as nervous as I was when they were talking about taking out the cornerstone of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. But if I was hearing that it was deliberately being brought down in order that the edifice would someday come crumbling down, I would become angry. The religious leaders were angry, and the conflict between them and Jesus reached such proportions that they went away not knowing after he had said all this that a cataclysm was coming, that this Jesus, this upstart Messiah, was troubled.
They heard in his words the words of Daniel the great prophet, who in Chapter 2, verse 44, of his prophesy says, “There will be a stone that will bring down the idol of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian who had made an idol in his image.” It is the same stone that they are talking about. In Daniel, it would be the Messiah who would bring down that idol. Jesus is associating himself with the stone in Daniel as bringing down the Temple's stone. He is saying that idolatry, the worship of a place, is come to an end, and that he, the Messiah, will become the new cornerstone, the new foundation.
Why? It is because idols are things that are established by human hands, but the Messiah has come at the hand of God. The capstone that had been rejected, the cornerstone that had been rejected according to the Psalms was the cornerstone that God was establishing. Jesus rode into Jerusalem to say, “The new cornerstone has arrived.” This was dramatic stuff!
There have been some that said this passage was written after the death of Jesus by Christians in an anti-Semitic way to put down the Jews. I find absolutely no evidence for that! It appears to me that everything he talked about was taken from the Word of God. So, it seems to me, there is nothing anti-Semitic in this passage. It is Jesus, the Messiah simply letting everyone know that he has come and that the real Temple is to be built.
What does that mean for us? What does that say to you and me, who are sitting in a glorious building 2,000 years later? It tells us that Jesus Christ is still the main reference point for our lives. As the cornerstone is the foundation, the point of reference for all that is to follow, so too Jesus Christ becomes the cornerstone and the foundation of our lives. If we are building our lives on something solid, if we are building our lives on something meaningful, we build it on Christ.
As all of us know, there are many things in this world that are shaky on which to stand. There are many things that come along on that we place our trust to find no fulfilment and no hope. Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives and when we build on him everything else in our lives goes in the right direction - everything else emanates from it.
I know that there are some today who would like to build a religious superstructure apart from Jesus Christ. They would like to have lovely liturgy and music and art and buildings and outward forms of religion that constitute the foundation of life. But I can tell you that if you build on anything other than the cornerstone, as Peter wrote in his magnificent First Epistle is the foundation of everything, we build on something that will crumble. Build on the true cornerstone and you build on a life and you build on a power that is lasting.
There is also a sense here that this puts an end to all idols and all idolatry. As Jesus was saying to the religious people of his day, if they worship the Temple at the expense of justice, if they worship the place as opposed to the person of God, if they put the traditions of what is going on religiously above the needs of the poor and of the sick, if they drive out sinners rather than welcome sinners, then it has become an idol.
I thought about that this past week, how seductive idols can become! I got up early one morning and opened the window of our kitchen to let in some cool morning air. I undid the blind and there, sitting on the rooftop of the garage right outside the window, was the biggest racoon you have ever seen in your life. He looked so old he could have been related to Methuselah I thought. He was scarred, and he had been around the block a bit, literally! He was staring at me with those big black eyes. I thought, “How can I get rid of him?” I just want to be kind to animals.
I made a lot of noise and slammed tins and cans. He just sat there and stared me down. I got a bottle of water and squirted it on his nose. He licked his nose and stayed right there. I started to preach a sermon to him and even that didn't drive him away! I took a long time over it. He did fall asleep. I couldn't get rid of the little beast but I was worried because I have two small Cocker Spaniels and I thought if they go out into the garden and they meet this old bruiser of a guy, it is not going to be pretty! I worried about it.
I thought about this and decided to do some research into racoons. I learned something that I didn't know before: That you could in fact have a baby racoon and keep it as a pet. But, the problem is that when it becomes two years old it goes through a complete hormonal transformation. It becomes another creature altogether and the creature you adored in the first two years can become very dangerous.
The warning of the zoos is never keep a racoon as a pet, because you are never sure when you wake up in the morning which racoon you are going to get. Even a thirty pound racoon has the equivalent power of a 100 pound dog - not to be messed with!
I thought about this, you know, that is just like idolatry. Idolatry seems nice, it seems wonderful and they seem friendly on the surface: nice, good, even religious things. We worship them, we give them our praise, and they seem innocuous, but they can turn on you, and they can destroy you. Marva Dawn suggests in a wonderful work on idolatry that there are five idols we need to look out for in our day.
The first is the idol of efficiency: when we want to get everything done with pace and with power now. We want everything to be successful and in line now. She said, “This God of efficiency means that we often then don't have the time for the people in our lives who need our love. We don't have time to worship God.” How many times do I hear people telling me, “I have so many other things to do, Reverend, I don't have time to worship God.” Hello! You have got an idol!
Money is an idol: the love of money, the desire for money and the great things that money gives. Sure, it is wonderful to have, but money can become a God and can control us. The desire for it can become the motivation of our lives. Money becomes very seductive. Ask anybody on their deathbed if money is a God in which they will place their trust and you will soon find out it is an idol.
Tradition can become an idol. The way things have always been done. How things have to be carried out formally: traditions in business, traditions in academia, traditions in the church. Often these things can stand in the way of responsiveness to the will and the word and the justice of God. Just ask those who loved the Temple and crucified Jesus!
Fame can become an idol. The desire for power, to be known, to lift oneself up, to be important, so much so that you are willing to sell your soul or your friends or your family in so doing. You don't have to be a movie star to make fame an idol. In your own little world, it can grab you and you lose a sense of who is around you.
Power can become an idol: it is addictive. Not just politicians, not just people in lofty places, power over others, power to determine other's existences, power over your family, and power in the church can destroy the method and power of the service of God. True Power is in the form of humility. Power is in the form of the Cross.
Oh, the Romans had their idols, they had their military power, and they had their empire - Pax Romana! They had the idol power. Jesus on the Cross however, had the power of God. Which one are we celebrating today? The idols, my friends, will come and go. The cornerstones that are based on something created by human hands will disappear but the cornerstone of the Messiah lasts forever. And, next Sunday, come back here and you will see why! Amen.