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The Catholic Telegraph
April 26, 2002This Sunday’s passage from First Peter jumps us back to the initial section of the letter in which the author was talking about the implications of faith and baptism. Our reading comes at the end of that section and deals with Christian identity. Who and what are we who have been led to faith and baptism?
The passage is in three parts, two of which use the image of stones to describe Christ and His Church, the third of which speaks more directly of the believers as God’s people.
Christ is a living stone, our text says, and we are living stones, too. We are called to join ourselves to Christ in order to form with Him "a spiritual house," a kind of temple that somehow images the old temple in Jerusalem. This spiritual house is a living community which engages itself in "spiritual sacrifices," that is, in prayers and action that proclaim the glory of God. This new edifice, built up through Christ, had already been alluded to by the prophet Isaiah when he was talking about a bright future for the dynasty of King David (cf. Is. 28.16).
Next we see the negative side of Jesus as cornerstone. Those who reject faith in Christ will discover that He is an obstacle in their path, a hindrance that will cause them to stumble. Here the author cites Psalm 118.22 (where the psalmist is talking about Israel’s rejection by more important political powers) and Isaiah 8.14 (where the prophet is dealing with the corrective measures that God would take against the wickedness of His people). The implication here is that rejecting an association with Christ, refusing to be part of His spiritual temple, brings with it spiritual destruction.
Last of all in our passage, the author describes the people of faith, those called out from darkness, in more direct terms. He uses terminology from the Old Testament that had been used to describe God’s relationship with the Israelites, thus suggesting that Christ’s faithful are God’s new chosen people. They are chosen by God (cf. Is. 43.20-21) to offer priestly service and worship to God in Christ (cf. Ex. 19.6). They are "a holy nation," i.e., set apart for God (cf, Ex. 19.6), God’s very own people (cf. Malachi 3.17).
There are several important teachings for us in this passage. First of all is the centrality of Christ. Our worth consists in our association with Him. On our own, of ourselves we are nothing. Christ is the central reality to which we must relate. Association with Him or detachment from Him are the criteria by which the ultimate significance of a human life is judged. Unless we are built into Christ, we are nothing.
This passage also makes clear that our relationship with Christ is not to be a merely private affair. It is true that each individual human being is precious to God. Yet we relate to God in faith in the context of everybody else who has accepted God’s gifts. Faith and baptism and Christian identity are essentially communitarian. We are all in Christ together. As a single community of faith we all form together a single temple that is based on the one Christ. A spirituality of individualism is simply not authentically Christian.
Just as participation in Christ’s "spiritual house" cannot be individualistic so also it cannot be passive. No member of the community of faith is called merely to receive. We all have the responsibility to carry on the mission of Christ, to offer praise and service to the Father through Him. That’s why the text calls us all "a royal priesthood." It’s not that there is no need for a ministry of ordained priests among God’s people, but that we all share in the priestly work of Christ through the communion with Christ that comes to us with baptism.
Finally, because there is only one Christ and only one "spiritual house" founded on Him, so also there is only one full and complete expression of that house. There is only one community of faith that is the true Church. Our faith teaches us that that community "subsists in the Catholic Church" (cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 8). The Council goes on to say that many elements of sanctification and truth can be found outside the visible structure of the Catholic Church. These elements, however, are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ and so possess an inner dynamism directed toward Christ’s one Church (Lumen Gentium, ibid.).
It is a very rich reading that the Church gives us here. Each part of it calls for further reflection and exploration. Yet it is an answer to a simple question: who are we?
The cornerstone of our life of faith is that we are sharers in the life of Christ. This sharing we hold in common with all other followers of Christ. We form one people with them. Our membership in this holy people demands our participation in the priestly mission of Christ as well as the expression of our faith by membership in Christ’s Church. It is to all that that God calls us.
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Conversation Questions.
How do I see myself as a component of God’s edifice?
In what ways do I experience the Church as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation?"
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