Bed Rock

When I was on a college study trip in Israel I actually saw a first century manger. You may well wonder how a feed box could survive for 2000 years. Wouldn't it rot? Not if it was made of stone. This was a slab of stone that had a depression carved into it. You'd put the animal's feed in that. And, if necessary, using a lot of hay I hope, you might turn it into a less than perfectly comfortable cradle if you're born in a barn.

A lot of the buildings of Jesus' day survive because they were made of stone. In fact, we saw a stone doorway with a lentil carved to look like wood grain. The Palestinians had a legend that at the beginning of time a great pelican flew over the earth carrying 3 huge bags of rocks. He lost 2 of them over the Holy Land. Stone was plentiful in Israel; wood not so much. So wood was expensive and just as we do with plastic, craftsmen sometimes made stone look like wood. This kind of thing has made some Bible scholars think that Jesus may not have been a carpenter. Arguing that the Greek word tekton means builder, they say Jesus may have been a stone mason. European scholars only translated the word as "carpenter" because they built houses out of wood. In Galilee and Judea most homes were made from stone.

If Jesus was a builder in stone, it ties a lot of scriptures together. For one thing, it is interesting that in several passages in the Old Testament a stone is used as a symbol of the Messiah. The most famous is Psalm 118:22 which says "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone." Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount by saying that those who hear his words and put them into practice are like a person who builds his house on bedrock. He nicknames Cephas Peter, the equivalent of our "Rocky," and says that on his confession of faith he will build his church. After Jesus incurred the wrath of the Temple officials by driving out the corrupt moneychangers, the disciples try to distract their angry rabbi by pointing out the magnificent stones of the Temple. They might have thought this would engage his professional interest. Instead he says that no two stones of the temple would be left on top of one another. He said this temple, indicating himself, he would raise up in 3 days. He talked like a builder.

If Jesus were a builder in stone it might explain Joseph's absence during Jesus' adulthood. Then as now construction is a very dangerous profession. During Jesus' early years Herod Antipas was rebuilding the capital of Galilee, Sepphoris, just 4 miles from Nazareth, and Joseph might have gone there for work, taking Jesus as his apprentice. There may a been a day when Joseph didn't come home, having been killed in a fall from a great height or crushed by a mammoth stone. And had Jesus been part of the rebuilding of Sepphoris he would have heard tales of the rebellion that caused the Romans to destroy that city. He would have heard how they crucified all the men of Sepphoris and lined the roads to the place with the crosses of dying rebels. Jesus would have known from a very early age the cost of trying to set up an alternate kingdom to that of the so-called divine Roman Emperor.

If Jesus was a builder, he would also be following the profession of his heavenly Father. One of the frequent metaphors for God in the Old Testament is that of the builder. In Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and the Psalms God is pictured as the one who lays the foundation of the earth, who sinks the cornerstone and uses calipers, tape measures, and plumb-lines to make things straight and upright. God's Wisdom is personified as a master craftsman who works alongside God in building the world. Later Christians would see this personified Wisdom as a foreshadowing of Christ, through whom all things were made.

God is spoken of as the one who builds Jerusalem and who gives detailed instructions on the plan of the new Temple to Ezekiel. He builds up the community of his people from the ruins of their defeat and exile. In the New Testament, Christians are spoken of by both Peter and Paul as living stones who are built up into the house of God. We are both individually and corporately the temple of God, in whom he dwells. And to that end Paul often talks of how Christians should use their words and gifts and ministries to edify or build each other up.

The Book of Hebrews says "the builder of all things is God." And indeed one can look at salvation as God's great building project. The culmination of the saga of Scripture is after all the new Jerusalem, "descending out of heaven from God." This super-symmetrical city is described in loving detail as being made of pure gold decorated with every precious stone imaginable. And yet, lest we take this literally, the city is called "the bride of the Lamb." We are back to the idea of the church being an edifice of believers.

When I started looking into this I was fascinated by how often the Bible speaks of God building, whereas a lot of people think of God primarily as a destroyer. It's interesting that the Hebrew word for destroy first appears in Genesis chapter 6, before the story of the flood, where God regrets making humanity because "The earth was ruined in the sight of God; the earth was filled with violence." This is paralleled in Revelation 11:18 where it says, "The time has come to destroy those who are destroying the earth." Think of this from God's viewpoint. He creates the earth as a paradise for us. We ruin it. We destroy it with violence against each other, though we are all made in his image. God decides to remove those who are destroying his paradise so he can restore it. This is like a builder who pulls down unsafe structures and hazardous ruins not fit to live in so he can build something better and lasting for others.

God does not delight in destruction. Ezekiel 33 tells us "As I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but prefer that the wicked change his behavior and live." Nor can we look at every act of destruction and see it as God's judgment. Jesus addressed this when asked about some Galileans whom Pilate killed as they made sacrifices at the Temple. "Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you." Jesus similarly dismisses the idea that 18 people killed when a tower collapsed were judged. And those who say that natural disasters and mass murder are sent by God as judgment are not speaking with the Spirit of Christ. They'd better check their Bibles. There are penalties for misrepresenting God when claiming to speak for him.

The Hebrew word for "build" is also the word for "repair." God builds up and repairs. And we see this in Jesus. He repaired broken people--people who were blind, lame, mute, deaf, bleeding, deformed and leprous. He repaired people whose brains did not work right. He repaired relationships, restoring outcasts to the people of God. He reconciled Peter to him after his resurrection, asking him 3 times if he loved him, letting him declare his love for Jesus thrice, the same number of times Peter denied him at Christ's trial. Jesus does all of these things today. He builds up and repairs people and broken relationships. And if we are to be God's people, that's our mission as well.

God gives us the privilege of working with him in building his kingdom. We build up and repair people using our gifts, our skills and knowledge. We do it with our time and money. We do it with the help of science. Some people erect an artificial barrier between science and faith. They are not in conflict any more than architecture is in conflict with cathedrals, or my laptop in in conflict with the sermons I write on it or the internet is in conflict with my blog. Science is about how; faith is about why. Faith tells us what is of ultimate value, like loving God and loving other people as Jesus loves us; science can help us with concrete ways of doing so, like education, medicine, water purification, and other methods of helping others. People can misuse religion and science as they can misuse anything. That's the nature of evil: the misuse of God's good gifts. But provided scientists and theologians know what their individual functions are and aren't, they need not be at each other's throats. Faith points out that we must help all those created in the image of God and science can work out how to do just that.

If we are followers of Jesus the builder, we need to inventory our own gifts, skills and assets. We need to look at what we have as the tools our construction supervisor has given us and figure out how best to use them. We need to look at anything we encounter not as a headache or an excuse for heartache but as an opportunity to build or repair. A recent Pew Research Center report says that 16% of the world's population doesn't have a religious affiliation, the third largest group after Christians and Muslims. Some see this as a cause for alarm. Why not see it as an opportunity?

We have some real repairs to make in the church. Some people think they should pass judgment on others, on whether they are worth saving or even eliminating. That's not our job. Jesus explicitly tells us not to issue verdicts on others, or we will be judged by the same standards. We've seen a lot of powerful people throw stones at others only to have their lives and careers and self-righteousness shredded as their glass houses shattered and rained down on them. The selection of materials is the boss' job. Michelangelo made his masterpiece of David out of a flawed stone no other sculptor would use. And God uses only imperfect people to build with. Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul and all the rest were sinners, as is everyone in this church and the guy behind the pulpit. Remember people rejected the cornerstone as well. Leave judgment to Jesus. He's the one who has the final say on hiring, firing and what to material he will work with.

Ironically, the one thing that is all wrong as a material to work with is a heart of stone. A hard heart lacks the flexibility and sensitivity to respond to God's instructions. But as God says in Ezekiel 36, "I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you…" Again God does the hard part. He changes us. We just have to let him work in us. Then and only then can we work with him. 

What was set in place on that bed of stone in a cave in Bethlehem was the next phase in God's plan to rebuild and restore the world he created and pronounced good as well as the people he made in his image to inhabit it. He has graciously recruited us to be a part of this great enterprise. Jesus is the rock, the foundation we build on. And he is the chief cornerstone and the chief builder. We are not the boss. We are his apprentices, his crew. We learn from him. We take orders from him. We build up and repair. And we should never lose sight of the ultimate goal of this project: a gleaming city on hill, a light to the world, where the Lord lives with his people, where reigns the Prince of Peace in the city of peace, whose architect and builder is God.