The Stone the Builders Rejected Will Become Head of the Corner
The Stone the Builders Rejected Will Become Head of the Corner
Palm Sunday, 24 March 2024
Robbie Tulip
Kippax Uniting Church
The stone the builders refused will become the head of the corner. This line from verse 22 of Psalm 118 is celebrated in Christianity as a foundation for systematic theology. I will reflect today on how this great Biblical teaching can continue to serve in witness to Christian faith.
The paradox of the stone the builders refused describes a key ethical problem explained by Jesus in the Gospels, that some things we reject can turn out to be most important, and things that seem the most important to worldly values are often of least importance for God. In the Psalm, accepting the rejected stone leads to the teaching that will later be repeated on Palm Sunday, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. The cornerstone was lost and has been found in the person of Christ.
Saint Mark tells us Christ enters Jerusalem on a colt that has never been ridden, as his disciples proclaim the words of the psalm, Hosanna in the Highest, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. In Luke’s version, Christ goes on to say to the pharisees, if these ones were silent the stones of the fields would cry out, invoking the image of rejected stone in the psalm. By coming to Earth in the name of God, Jesus is the stone the builders reject, a reflection on both the power of God and also the great power of sin to influence our values and ethics.
In this metaphor, let us first look at the stones the builders accept. In stonemasonry, the builders will use even square cut stones for a bridge or arch, setting aside the remaining uneven broken pieces to choose a final cornerstone to hold the whole in place. You might recall our former Minister Rev Gordon Ramsay taught us about this usage. More broadly, the builders are us, whenever we reject Christ as our cornerstone. The stones accepted by the builders symbolise everything that worldly human values can fit within our regular cultural and legal priorities. Our laws and social values seem to build our world, often without reference to God. In our construction we choose to accept some things while rejecting others, but the Bible teaches that much that we reject has enduring and eternal value.
The Indigenous Voice Referendum was rejected, seemingly because the demand for immediate Constitutional change was too sudden for success at this time. An underlying message of the referendum is that the rejected status of Indigenous people is changing, and they will become a cornerstone of Australian identity.
The stone the builders reject symbolises those things that our society ignores as not worth our interest, but which actually have great enduring value. This is particularly central to the Christian faith that Saint Paul expresses in his Letter to the Philippians. Paul tells us the seemingly worthless slave is actually the King of Glory, that Christ emptied himself of all but love to represent God on Earth. Jesus was a pariah messiah.
This union of opposites in Christ the glorious slave provides a rational underpinning for Christian ethics. The slave as king reveals the eternal within time, inverting social values. Paul tells us to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited or grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
In taking the form of a slave, Christ lived under the eye of eternity. He found security in spiritual vision of God. Here we can see a difference between accepting and rejecting Christ as our cornerstone. Material things provide the physical security needed to focus on higher goals. Problems arise when we imagine that ownership of more things is an end in itself, rather than a means to a higher spiritual goal. We forget the stone the builders refused. This forgetfulness generates a traumatic failure to engage the eternal. It means many people have lost the ability to comprehend eternal values – the good, the beautiful and the true; salvation, grace and justice; faith, hope and love.
Our inability to live under the eye of eternity leads to a Christian critique of human nature and the world, that people care about things that are meaningless and ignore things that are crucial. The cross of Christ stands as a symbol for everything crucial that we ignore. One of the most interesting reflections on this loss of eternal values is from the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who held that life is widely infected by a decadence that refuses to take anything seriously. Overcoming this decadent unserious infection of life requires that eternal values should be the cornerstone of our ethics.
We often cannot see the eternal, and as a result we pretend that our temporal values, often selfish and short-sighted, are enough. Jesus calls us to go beyond our limited perspective, and instead see that a new Earth and new Heaven are possible. A starting point, expressing the same theology as the transformative centrality of the stone the builders refused, is his teaching in the Beatitudes at Matthew 5 that the meek will inherit the Earth. This teaching is clearly true in the context of climate change, where failure to show some meekness before the power of natural planetary systems is not sustainable. A change to a meeker attitude will be needed to find the rejected climate strategies that will become the cornerstone.
The arrogance that ignores the many rejected stones of our world cannot endure. Christ expressed his rejected stone theology in the Last Judgement at Matthew 25:31, teaching that salvation is through the dignity of the rejected, through mercy to the poor, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, estranged and sick, treating the least of the world as first in the kingdom of God, seeing these rejected stones of society as crucial cornerstones of our salvation.
In the prophecy of Isaiah 53:3, the messiah is despised and rejected. Here we see how the most important thing for our salvation, the presence of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, is invisible to many people. And so it was that after entry in triumph on Palm Sunday, Jesus was executed on a Roman cross on Good Friday, only to show he is our true cornerstone in his resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. Isaiah asks us to reflect on what we reject, to revise our views on things we despise. For if Christ is among the despised and rejected, many values of our world need to be turned upside down. It is not about suddenly opening the prison gates to release criminals, but about thinking about human dignity and the consequences of our decisions, about how we can build a better world where the blessings of God extend to all.
Palm Sunday is timed for when the Sun moves from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere. This is the move from winter into spring in the north and from summer into autumn here in the south. This shift of seasons at the equinox marks a natural change of planetary energy in the annual cycle of warm and cool weather. In Israel, the Passover change is from cooler to warmer months. So at Easter we in Australia now enter our cooler months.
By entering Jerusalem in the holy week before Passover, Jesus represented the despised and rejected of the world. That is not to say we should somehow accept everything, but rather that much in our world fails to take the long-term view, ignoring the perspectives of those at the margins, despising and rejecting those who have no voice. Christ is the voice of the voiceless. When Karl Marx said religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions, he in some way saw that a world with heart and soul is needed to liberate the oppressed. The vision of Christ that the stone the builders reject will be head of the corner offers the heart and soul of liberation, grounded within the eternal grace of God. Amen
Prayers for Others
Let us pray. Eternal God of all holiness and love, you are our salvation, our connection.
Be in our hearts and minds today and every day. Help us to pray for ourselves, for our families, for our church, for our communities, for our country and for our world.
We grieve for our world of confusion and trauma and violence. We pray for an end to conflicts, for your just peace to become the focus and goal for all. We pray for a focus on what is important and good.
As we reflect on your teaching that the stone the builders refuses will be head of the corner, we pray that you may help us to think about the occasions when we have ignored something or someone that later proved to be important, or when we ourselves have been ignored by others when we had something important to say.
Is it a family member or friend who was asking us to be more patient and caring?
Is it a problem in our community or our nation, where people just won’t listen to evidence and reason?
The psychology of arrogance and delusion creates formidable barriers to dialogue.
Help us Lord to find patience and calm and moments of stillness in our lives, to always hear your forgiving word of grace.
Through your presence in our lives, may your healing energy extend into our community.
Through our prayers, may we focus our attention on what is good.
In times of contemplation, may we take time to think and to hear our inner voice of conscience. Do we need to find a bigger view, or change our view, or examine our motives and priorities? Are we building a bridge that will crumble for lack of a fitting cornerstone at the head of the arch?
On Palm Sunday we reflect on the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and the trail of tears that led him to the cross and resurrection. We pray for those who rally today for refugees and for peace, that they may be able to open up wider dialogues about our social priorities. We pray for all people who are at the margins of society, for Indigenous Australians, for the mentally ill, for people suffering bombardment in Ukraine and Gaza, for prisoners, for refugees, for those coping with trauma, neglect and abuse.
May we hear the word of hope and faith from Christ for all who suffer and are lost, the stone the builders refused will be head of the corner.
We now take a few moments of silence to pray in our hearts about our own greatest concerns.
May Christ hear our prayers.
Amen
Kippax Uniting Church
Order of Service
Palm Sunday, 24 March 2024
Welcome and Announcements
Call to Worship
Indigenous Acknowledgement
Hymn: Ride On Ride On In Majesty
Responsive Reading: Psalm 118
Hymn: A Touching Place
Readings: Mark 11:1-11
Philippians 2:5-11
Song: On Palm Sunday
Sermon
Offering Hymn: Hail To the Lord’s Anointed
Dedication of the Offering
Prayers for Others
Hymn: Take on the Mind of Christ (tune: O Waly)
Benediction
