Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's April 24, 2005 Sunday Morning worship service.

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This text from I Peter is a famous one. It gives us some of the great descriptions of the church that we have in all of scripture. It is good for us to remember that it is written to a First Century church that is frightened, under threat from the Empire, and bewildered. The early church, in all of its bewilderment, is urged in Peter’s letter to stand up and be counted as God’s people.

In lots of places in the US just now, the church is also frightened and bewildered and feels under great threat. Some of us in the Church wonder if the spread of the American empire is really desirable; we wonder about the ill-effects of globalization on under-developed nations; we are concerned about the environment and fear that we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren life on a planet depleted of its beauty and natural resources; we are cynical about why the great wealth that our nation and other nations hold cannot get funneled into good educational opportunities, adequate health care, and food and shelter for many at home and around the globe who must do without.

Other observers look at the Church and see that for many congregations, numbers are down; church populations are aging; many in society seem apathetic toward any deep or enduring relationship with a religious institution; the old Protestant dominance of public moral discourse is no more; mainline denominations don’t wield social power like they used to; and the list of complaints goes on and on.

It would seem that Peter’s message that “once we were no people, but now we are God’s people; that once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy” is about as timely and relevant as it has ever been.

Peter informs his group of early Christians that their task, their job, their purpose, is to erect faith on the foundation of Christ, the cornerstone, that is, they are “to be built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

What can that kind of advice mean to the bewildered 21^st century American Church, removed as we are some 2000 years from the originating days of Christianity and its development out of first century Judaism? How do we apply words of an ancient text to the faith dilemmas and complexities of life as we must live it in our own day and time?

What might it mean for us to become a spiritual house? We have had our own discussions about the physical house here and the building plans and materials some think are necessary for the facing of a new day by this congregation. But surely we all would agree that the house must have a spiritual dimension; otherwise, it is possible that the house will become just as any other house.

As you know, there are so many ways to talk about spirituality. Sometimes, it gets used as a cliché, that is, “I’m spiritual; I’m not religious,” as if to say that spirituality is something internal to the self, completely separate from religious institutions; others use spirituality as an overarching word to define practices of piety and devotion that are at the heart of living the Christian life. Still others might use the word to speak of those who have received gifts of the spirit, a kind of unique spiritual anointing in the life of faith.

You might choose other words, but I think to become a spiritual house should mean asserting our trust and convictions in the God of liberal values. What do I mean by “liberal” values, not ordinarily a word juxtaposed with the word “spiritual”?

I don’t intend to politicize that word “liberal,” as its usual associations with political parties and political agendas and political labels would imply. Liberal, unfortunately, is a word that has taken quite a hit in recent years, and unjustifiably so, I believe.

When I think of liberal spiritual values, I think of words like toleration, compassion, mutual respect, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, acceptance, the pursuit of justice and equality as spiritual habits and spiritual formation, a commitment to conversation with others of other faith traditions about the dignity of differences. These are values, I hope each could agree, that we should be about in the church. Thre are other values – conservative values – that are certainly important, too, but these liberal values are the ones I want to speak about today.

At a time in our world when misguided religious fervor has led to senseless acts of violence and hatred, when fragmentation all across the religious spectrum has led to division and discord, don’t we need to reclaim the building materials of peace, justice, acceptance, and mercy as the fundamental materials for constructing our own spiritual house?

Unfortunately, the old observation made by Jonathan Swift in the 18^th century is still all-too true: “we have just enough religion to make us hate one another but not enough to make us love one another” (cited in Sacks, 4)

As we hear Christ’s call, through the epistle of Peter, to be formed into a spiritual house, can we make space for difference? Can we hear the voice of God in a language or culture, or even a religion, not our own? Can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger? The openness to dialogue and to learning from others, especially those whose religious preference is different from our own, might well be the single most critical spiritual challenge of our day.

I recommend to you a book recently published by a Jewish rabbi from England, Jonathan Sacks, entitled, The Dignity of Difference. He says, that in order to avoid the continuing clash of civilizations that we now see, the clash between the Christian west and Islamic East, the clash between first world America’s attempts to build empire and the developing world’s desire just simply to survive, we will need to realize the tremendous transnational power and influence of religion.

He describes how the effects of globalization, which have caused such rapid change in our world, have brought about the feeling among many that we have lost control over our lives. “Anxiety creates fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger breeds violence, and violence – when combined with weapons of mass destruction – becomes a deadly reality. The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation – speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities, discovering a genesis of hope.” (Sacks, 2) Who better to lead the way in teaching us how to speak, how to be vulnerable, how to sacrifice for the good of the whole – than the world’s great religions?

Against all expectation of pundits who prognosticated the demise of religion’s public influence just several decades ago, religious communities have emerged as major players in the political arena of our global age. Think about it. There is the resurgence of evangelical and Pentecostal forms of Protestantism in Latin America, in Korea, in China, changing the spiritual landscape of those lands. There is the upsurge of Islamic influence and presence all over the world, from North Africa to the Middle East to South East Asia to Muslim communities everywhere. We do Islam a great disservice if we vilify a whole religion just because of the terrible acts of small groups of terrorists. Recently, with the death of Pope John Paul we got a taste of the enormous global presence and influence of 800 million Catholics worldwide. And surely, we must realize that America itself is now more religiously diverse than ever before, which I would contend is evidence of God fulfilling our own national manifest destiny. Truth is, many of the oldline Protestant denominations like Presbyterians and Episcopalians, for example, powerhouses in the colonial period in the early formative years of the nation, are now far outnumbered by the adherents of other religious groups like American Muslims and American Buddhists.

In this context, our spiritual calling, I believe, is to equip ourselves for dialogue, always ready to affirm the dignity of difference, to trust that the mercy that has come to us in Christ, is the same mercy God extends to other people through their own religious traditions, teachings, holy texts, rituals, spiritual practices.

In our own diverse multi-ethnic and religiously plural context, this might be the great scandal of the Christian gospel, that even the gospel itself cannot finally put limits on the power of God’s mercy to welcome whosoever God chooses to embrace and name the children of God.

Peter’s epistle in this verse 5 also talks of God’s mercy as that which sets followers of Christ apart to be a holy priesthood. We think of priests as those who have been set apart to handle and care for the holy things of God. All religious traditions have such holy people, whether they go by the name priest or rabbi or minister, monk or Iman, or something else.

One of the unique contributions of Protestant Christianity is our belief that all are priests by virtue of baptism; that in baptism, each one has been commissioned to handle God’s holy things.

I think one of the great spiritual challenges before us – Christians as well as people of other religious traditions – is this: how are we going to survive together on a planet whose resources are getting thinner and thinner? How can there one day be a world where the distribution of resources will achieve at least some semblance of equity for the world’s entire population?

Yes, I know, on the one hand, the planet is shrinking and technology is advancing and information is available at the touch of a computer keyboard as never before. We can be linked together in one global village.

Meanwhile, however, our habits of consumption keep growing exponentially, even as a wealthy few seem to be the biggest beneficiaries.

As priests who handle holy things, perhaps we will have to step up and recognize that one of the holiest things of all thatwe handle is nature itself -- this creation given us by the creator. And as a collective “we,” we are not doing a very good job of caring for the planet. Surely we must know that, as people of faith, we should be feel compelled to protest our administration’s record on the environment and an unwillingness to crack down on corporations that are getting away with polluting the very air we breathe even as that same administration encourages the production of gas-guzzling vehicles and seeks permission to exploit Refuge Areas for oil merely, it would seem, to feed an insatiable appetite for cheap forms of energy. There seems to be an indifference bordering on arrogance that too often characterizes our relationship with the natural order.

The Bible says over and over again that we own neither the earth nor its resources – we are merely trustees, caretakers, of what God owns and what God has provided for the enjoyment of future generations. I believe we should treat our relationship with the earth as a holy covenant, a solemn obligation, a pact, made between us and God to respect the earth and to use wisely its resources. We do well, as Jonathan Sacks says, to listen to environmentalists who “insist that what is most precious in our world, and constantly at risk, is diversity itself. We are more aware than any previous generation of how much our existence depends on the presence of other species, which produce the food we eat and the oxygen we breath, absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale, sustain, the fertility of the soil and provide the raw materials we need . . . . We are beginning to understand how complex and interdependent bio-systems are, and how unpredictable the consequences are of the destruction of a species or habitat. [Ecological] diversity needs protection” (p.173)

Priests, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, are the ones who serve as custodians of the covenant, the ones whom God has ordained to renew covenant promises and pledges. Peter tells us that we are to be a holy priesthood, and we do well to remember to perform our part as covenant partners with God in tending well to this earth garden, our home.

We know that we have received mercy, but I wonder, how long will God continue to be patient with our national and global failures to treat the earth with compassion and dignity, wisdom and justice?

Peter urges his audience to come to the living stone, precious in God’s sight, and like this living stone, we are to be built up into a spiritual house where we can offer our spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ. That’s a tall order. We will need many building materials, a deep sense of purpose and conviction, and we will have to be unified and work hard to achieve the kind of structure that the world needs the Church to be just now.

But perhaps the greatest gift we need is mercy, and with mercy, an ever-deepening realization, in the words, of First Peter, that “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.”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.