Bricks

During the month before classes began I chipped away at the work study hours for my first year. Before classes began I had over 100 hours! Praise the Lord! A majority of work was pressure washing, cleaning bricks, and painting (a shed, windows, whiteboards, and parking lot stripes). This type of work was really enjoyable for me. Yes, you heard me right. I enjoyed the physical labor. I think part of it was the fact that for the past five years I’ve spent most of my days sitting in front of a computer or at best crouched over a circuit board with a soldering iron. The work that I’ve been able to do reminded me that God gave me a body - a body that is strong and capable. There’s more though. I think the best thing about painting (or pressure washing, etc.) is the time it affords the mind to think. Let me share with you my thoughts:

Bricks are used to build buildings and walls. They are held together by mortar. Together, they distribute weight, support one another, and form an even and stable barrier to wind, rain, sun, bugs and persons. Bricks together are a unit. You don’t usually look at the side of a brick house and say, “Look at those bricks”. You might say, “Look at that wall” or “look at that building”. They form a whole. That is the good side of bricks and mortar. During my work with bricks last month, however, I saw another side. There was once a shed at the opening of the entry to the Seminary Parking Lot. It was here when I visited a year ago. It was not here when my wife and I moved in. Instead, there was a large pile of bricks elsewhere on the grounds. My work was to “clean” a portion of these bricks. This meant firing a 3600 PSI pressure washer at the bricks until the old mortar came off. As the dirt and old bits of sand removed from the bricks they flew everywhere, even sometimes sticking to me. The work was a little bit like Christ’s work. Let me explain. These old bricks were useless. They were “rubble”. They weren’t fit for new construction. Why? They still had the old mortar stuck to them. That which originally held them to one another and made them a cohesive whole was now keeping them from being clean - from being useful in a new wall. All that changed when they were washed. This mortar and sand and dirt was removed - through a pressure intensive process - and ended up off the bricks - and on me! Once cleaned the bricks were as good as new and were stacked neatly and will soon be put to use in repairing an old wall. The analogy is like this: we are dirty bricks. Not just dirty... but useless rubble. We have sins which cause us to cling to the world and to other sinful persons. Christ breaks up the sin. He works powerfully by the Holy Spirit to remove the power of sin over our hearts. He even took our sins upon Himself and died for them... for us. By His work we are renewed. We are then united in a new building project. Christ builds us into His Church.

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. - 1 Peter 2:4-5

Maybe its a bit of a stretch. Maybe I had too much time to think. Even so, I marvel that Jesus Christ has chosen to use a stone (or even a pebble) like me in His Building. To Him be the glory!

Have you never read?

In my reading for my upcoming gospels class I came across the parable of the tenants. This parable of Jesus is recorded in parallel accounts in Matthew 21:33-46, Mark 12:1-12, and Luke 20:9-18. In the story a king is away and leaves his vineyard to tenants. He sends servants to gather the harvest from the tenants but they are beaten, dishonored, or killed. The landowner then sends his son whom the tenants kill. The part of these passages that struck me, though, was the passage Jesus ends with. He quotes from Psalm 118.

22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

It is obvious that the Pharisees and the chief priests were among those that heard these parables because they knew that it was them that Jesus was speaking against. These were the people who took pride in their study of the scriptures. Surely they had read this Psalm. Doubtless they had chanted or sung this Psalm as it is the last of the Psalms sung during Passover, the great Hallel. Notice how Jesus introduces it, "Have you never read...?" Notice the irony. Of course they've read it! They've sung it. They should know it. And yet what Jesus is pointing out is that they missed the point of it.

The point of Psalm 118:22 is that Jesus is the cornerstone, or the head of the corner. He defines where the boundary of the walls will be. He was rejected, though, by the Jewish leaders of his day and sent to death by them.

There were two things that struck me as I was reading this parable of Christ. First, this Psalm is about Him. It had always been about Him. It was about Him for the many years that the Psalm was sang during Passover. It is about Him as Christians sing it today. Second, we need to remind one another that this Psalm is about Him. Just as the Pharisees and chief priests may have read the words but failed to see the Christ standing before them, we can have hearts that are hardened to the true Christ who is revealed in the Psalms. But for those all who have hearts that have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, we can sing in this Psalm of Christ, the cornerstone, but also the rejected one; the sufferer.

For further study, see how the Apostlic writers continued to preach and write about Psalm 118:22. Acts 4:11, Ephesians 2:20, 1 Peter 2:7.