Fourth Sunday of Easter

I don’t know how many of you park in the Stewart Street Garage across from Church here on Sundays.  With the voucher you can get from Frances, it’s a great deal. In recent months, I’ve taken to parking on the west side up a few extra loops, because from there I can get a better view of the construction that took away our very convenient surface parking lot, and, sadly, will rob us of some of our glorious morning light here at Christ Our Hope.

For the past several months they have been digging deep and shoring, and in the month since last I came down here, they have rapidly begun the construction of the subterranean foundations of a massive garage and the piers on which the skyscraper atop it  will eventually rise. Big boys still love big toys, so it’s irresistible to watch. Notwithstanding what it will do to our view or our light, we find energy in building. A building, especially a tall one, is a statement of hope, of aspiration, of reaching. 

Down in that deep pit the tower, we hope, will be properly anchored to the earth, so that it can soar. If it is not to totter and crumble on top of us, the tower must be built on a proper, Society of American Engineers-approved foundation. Builders don’t get second chances. We hope they get it right.

Today’s scriptures give us two complimentary images of Christ who is our hope. The gospel describes Jesus in what is perhaps its most touching metaphor: he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. He is the one who gathers the flock, protects it from wolves, who leads the strays back into the fold. I confess that I understand this metaphor better in theory than in practice. I’ve never herded sheep, though being nominally in charge of a cunning and fast-moving community of Jesuits has taught me something about keeping my eyes wide open. I do know this: that in the culture of the time of Jesus, shepherds were considered uncouth, outsiders, people not necessarily to be trusted.

Yet it’s the image of the cornerstone, the stone rejected by the builders that speaks to me today. In the reading we heard from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and John are defending themselves against the authorities for doing an act of mercy, the healing of a lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. When the man begs alms from them, Peter says, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I have, I will give you: in the name of Jesus, get up and walk.” In answer to his accusers who had forbidden even the mention of the name of Jesus, Peter tells them that his power came “in the name of this man, Jesus whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, in his name this man stands before you healed. This Jesus is the stone rejected by the builders, which has become the cornerstone.”

The stone rejected by the builders as unfit becomes the cornerstone.  The humble stone was a stumbling block for those who could not see or refused to see the power of God at work in Jesus.  Not polished marble or granite, but a rough piece of Galilean fieldstone becomes the foundation of a new and yet more beautiful gate, a gateway into a temple made up of living stones—you and me and all of us—who become a dwelling place for the living God, and a welcoming shelter for all in need of refuge and hope. Fitted together by the loving hand of Christ, each of us, with all our bumps and abrasions and depressions, all our imperfections and uncouthness, all our ordinariness become part of something noble and beautiful and strong.

So in this Easter season, let us rejoice in the words of the Psalm from which Peter took his daring affirmation, acknowledging the wonderful works of God with blessing and thanksgiving:

“The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD;
we bless you from the house of the LORD.

We give thanks to you, for you have answered us
and have been our savior.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
for his mercy endures forever.”  (Ps. 118)

Rev. Thomas M. Lucas S.J.