The Chief Corner stone (Luke 20:17)

According to writings I have read and sermons I have heard, the chief cornerstone is a largely important part of a structure. It was almost like a blue-print stone that was the determining factor in the shape, size, dimensions and ratios of the structure which it supported. It was the most expensive and most valuable stone in the whole house, temple or other building. It was crafted specifically for these purposes.

Jesus is our Chief Cornerstone in the Church, by which we all measure ourselves in spiritual growth a placement. With the chief cornerstone, the walls and entire building were structured in relationship to this precious stone. It was the largest stone, baring the greatest burden of all the stones in the structure. There would be other stones that were cornerstones, but only one chief cornerstone, by which even the other cornerstones were oriented. If a piano shop were to have 500 pianos, all out of tune with each other, the fastest way to get them all in tune is not to tune one to another. If you were to do that, you would take days cross-checking each piano with the other 499. If each piano is tuned to one note, then all 500 are in tune with each other. This makes the process take only as long as it takes to tune 500 pianos rather than tuning each one individually and tweaking each as one as you go along. In the same way, when we tune to Him, we will be in unity.

There are two ways that a believer can evaluate their spiritual maturity: by the Chief Cornerstone or by other stones around them. The point of the chief cornerstone is to have a standard, the other cornerstones are to be lined up with the chief and then every other stone in the entire house is laid after that based on those alignments. Now you can compare yourself to other stones and hope that you are in the right position and baring the right burden, or you can be sure that you are aligned with the Chief Cornerstone and be sure of your election and calling. Paul was a cornerstone in his day. He knew that he was aligned with Jesus, so he told his churches to align to him. This was not arrogance, it was divine wisdom. His confidence was in Christ’s ability to lead, not his to follow.

Cross-tuning the 500 pianos is a lot like our comparison with each other. We check the size, shape and weight of everyone else’s cross, tuning our lives, our devotional times and our public righteousness to their notes. The problem is that we will always find someone that we are not in-tuned with and will overcompensate in tuning, thus throwing ourselves out of tune and not into unity. Unity comes from the tree of Life, the Cross, not from the tree of knowledge of good and evil whose fruit contains comparison.

If someone ran into the room right now and yelled at you, “GO!” What would your first question be? Even if you believed that they had good intentions, you would still need to know where to go. In the same way, when God spoke the Law to Moses, He said “Be holy.” The context suggests that He was showing them how to be holy, by fulfilling the Law, but that is not what He said. In the immediate context, God says “Be holy as I am holy.” The answer to the question is a Who, not a how. We are constantly being formed into the image of Christ and therefore we know where we are going, or rather who we are becoming. It has been said that want-tos belong to us, but ought-tos belong to others. My Great Aunt June used to say not to let others “should” you to death. Living for man strips us of our desires, diluting our life and enslaving us to shame for what we “should do”. God gives us the desires of our hearts, the Scripture does not say that He gives us what our people require of us. Our orientation in all things must be in relation to Him, His character and His plans, mapped out by the very Person that He is.

*Christ, we align ourselves to You, we tune our hearts to become like You alone. Amen*

The Stone which the builders rejected (Luke 20:17)

For one month, two teams of eight students went from the US to Kehancha, Kenya bringing the Good News of the Kingdom and showing love in practical and sometimes impractical ways. One task that the teams went to complete was the task of protecting natural springs by building walls around the spring to form a tank to contain the water for the villages to drink from – a much more sanitary option than scooping the muddy water from the trickles that animals walked through. I was one of the team members on the second team on this particular deployment to Kenya.

I learned a few things about wall building while I worked next to James, a hard-working and hysterical Kenyan pastor who was the lead constructor. One thing I learned was that the value of a stone is a matter of timing and opinion. In my American hubris I thought I knew how to build a stone wall, I found that it is far more of an ordeal than I had anticipated. We use bricks in the west, for good reason, it is easier. Building with raw stones that God made, it takes vision and foresight. Though our team was from an American organization, the team was quite international. A Russian, a Canadian, a Brazilian and a white South African. We had been through a lot together.

During our two week outpost of the deployment, my South African teammate and I had many deep discussions while digging holes, moving rocks and other laborious tasks. One thing that he said was that the stones that we gathered from the surrounding areas would likely be in the place that we put them until the Lord comes back. Whether that Day is decades or centuries from now, hopefully we made those walls strong enough that he was right. But what struck me was that the Lord had placed those stones where we gathered them from centuries before hand. The Stone which the builders rejected had chosen these stones to be part of this project, positioning them and burying them for us.

We would search for the “perfect stone” for the part of the wall that we were working on. Sometimes a rock would be too big, too long, too round and, many times, too heavy. At the end of the day, especially the end of the last day of each of the five springs we protected, it didn’t matter much which stones were used. The point was that the spring was protected, the walls were built. At times it seemed like we used every rock, stone, pebble and boulder within eye-sight. We worked with three pastor-builders, or maybe they were “master builders”. James may have rejected one stone, but Daniel could use it, but only if Francis didn’t get to it first. In any case, the Lord had prepared the stones for us to use for each project. He had placed everything perfectly.

It doesn’t take the gift of prophecy to determine that the majority of any set of readers or a congregation have experienced some sort of rejection. Sometimes, for example, Francis would not need the stone I brought to him, so I would just throw it back over with the other stones. That stone would break a little and would break another stone a little. Then the formerly rejected stone is now two perfectly usable and acceptable stones. Just because man has rejected us for one thing or another, doesn’t mean that we are useless, in fact, that process makes us more usable for the future. It is the heart and character of the Lord to redeem all things, using them for His own glory. Don’t waste your trials, learn from them, grow in them and share your wisdom resulting from them.

*Jesus, I know they rejected You and You said they will reject us; help us not to be offended by their rejection but teach us to rejoice in our acceptance in You. Amen*