A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A

Easter 5, May 7, 2023  - St. David’s, Friday Harbor


But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  - I Peter 2:9 (NRSV)


The author of this epistle tells a group of early Christian believers set in the midst of the Roman Empire in what is now Turkey, that they’ve been called by God to proclaim “the mighty acts” of God.


I’d like to reflect on this.


Just what, in the mind of the author, do you think, is the nature of “might”?


I had occasion to think about that this week when I saw a video clip from last month’s church-sponsored “The Stronger Men’s Conference.” The organizers of this event explain that it exists to “empower and motivate men to live out God’s view of manhood….” I saw thousands of men seated in a sports arena. Amid the blare of the announcer’s voice, the roar of electric guitars and the glare of fireworks and smoke spouting from the arena floor, a military tank emerged from an entryway; a man seated on top with pistols in both hands firing blanks into the air. The tank moved across the arena, crushing four automobiles underneath its heavy treads before exiting.


The organizers of this conference just told us their view of strength, of might. Might is brute force.


Brute force is just what the Roman Empire used to hold together the diverse populations of its far-flung territories. The recipients of this letter we read from today knew this.


Thus it is astonishing, when you stop to really think about it, that those to whom this letter is addressed have aligned themselves through baptism to a community of believers who find in the presence of one who was crucified by Roman authority the very presence of God among them. The one in whose name they gather is the one who at his Temptation by the devil rejected brute force, rejected domination, rejected the path of coercion of others.


In this letter they are hearing an invitation to come to this crucified and risen one, “rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight.”


The crucified one is here portrayed as the foundation stone of a new structure that God is building.


The Temple in Jerusalem is by this time destroyed, demolished in the sack of Jerusalem by Roman armies. Those addressed in this letter are named as “sojourners”, as “exiles”; those displaced into far countries in what we know as the Diaspora, the Dispersion. It’s reasonable to suppose they knew of the events in Jerusalem.


They would know that the great stones which once upheld the places of God’s habitation now lie scattered on Mount Zion. So imagine what image might be in their minds as they hear these words read to them in their assembly:


Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 


They are hearing that God is building a new structure for God’s habitation.That structure is humanity itself, and Jesus the crucified and risen one is the cornerstone upon which this structure is set.


Here a word from Zechariah the prophet comes to mind for me:


“Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.” (Zechariah 4:1)


If Jesus the crucified and risen one is the living stone, the cornerstone of this new structure, then brute force has no place in this new humanity, this new Temple for God’s dwelling. 


In this new Temple God is building, humanity is called to a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. The sacrifices we are to offer do not involve sacrificing other people or sacrificing the life of Creation. We are not to make others sacrifice their dignity and their lives at the altar of our fear of a loss of power. The mighty acts we are to proclaim are those shown us by the one whose might consisted of the power to love and to serve.


The sacrifices acceptable to God, the mighty acts to be proclaimed we see in the life of  Jesus, the crucified and risen one. The love of God, the love of enemies, the love of neighbor, the lifting up of the lowly and the humbling of the mighty, his “not my will, but thine be done” in the Garden.


Every generation has some way of rejecting Jesus and the subversive nature of the power of Love. We stumble over him. The Church stumbles over him, again and again.


And yet the invitation is there for us to change, to be transformed, to have our notions of power turned upside down, to see that the power of God is the power of God’s love that truly frees us and through us can free humanity. At this Eucharist the invitation is concrete. This Eucharist is for our transformation.


The letter provides the words of invitation:


 “Come to him, that living stone… and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”


“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”


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