Crushed By God and Remade

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
October 8, 2023
Proper 22, Year A
Philippians 3:4b-14
Psalm 80:7-14
Matthew 21:33-46

Crushed By God and Remade

Happy Sunday everyone! The Astros won, it’s cooler outside, Jesus is talking about crushing people with stones. “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” Hurray! Jesus was saying this about the chief priests and Pharisees, those who were constantly critical of and at odds with Jesus. So, when we who are on team Jesus read Jesus saying that the stone will crush anyone on whom it falls, there’s a tendency to read that as, “someone else.” That feels pretty good. The stone will crush someone else. We’re on team Jesus, so we’re ok.

We’ve got to assume, however, that at least at some point in our lives, we’re going to be the ones on whom the stone falls. We’re going to be the ones crushed by the stone. At some point, we’re going to be tripped up by the stone and broken to pieces.

So, the first question I have is, what is the stone that Jesus is talking about?

Well, according to Isaiah 8:14-15, the stone is God. “[God] will become a sanctuary,” we’re told, “a stone one strikes against…a rock one stumbles over…many…shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken…”

Well, that sounds fun! Yea for God being a stone over which we stumble and get crushed. I realize I’m not really selling the whole, “love God” idea right now. God becomes a stone we strike against, a stone we stumble over, and a stone which breaks and crushes us. Can’t God just let us go our way and not hurt us? That sounds kinda nicer, or can’t we just go back to thinking the whole God Rock Stumble Crush Thing is about someone else?

No. We can’t. Deciding who those others are that God is going to make stumble is a pretty quick way to make sure God is going to trip us up. Do not judge others, Jesus said. Take a look at the log in your own eye, rather than the speck in someone else’s. When we’re focusing on everyone else’s faults and flaws, we’re ignoring our own, pretending that we’re just fine and everyone else is at fault. God loves us enough not to go along with our self-deception, so there will be times when all of us will be crushed and tripped up by the stone that is God.

We don’t want it, but because God loves us, God is going to trip us up and have us be crushed and broken to pieces by the stone that is God. So, why would God do this to us as an act of love?

Because we are so often going a thousand miles an hour completely and obliviously in the wrong direction? At that point, it might be kinda nice to have a stone to trip us up and stop us. 

 A stone of stumbling and crushing, well, yeah, at a thousand miles an hour, we’re going to get crushed by whatever stone we trip over.

That’s an act of love because when we’re going a thousand miles an hour in the wrong direction, we need more than a slow down and some course correction. We need to be remade. God tripping us up when we’re going a thousand miles an hour in the wrong direction crushes us and shatters us so that we can be remade.

 

On a societal level, think of times and ways we have been remade. Think about what it took to end slavery in this country. The Civil War crushed and shattered this country so that it could be remade. We didn’t do a great job of it, and so there was the Civil Rights Movement which shattered the country again so that we could be remade. Striving to end discrimination on the basis of sex has shattered many who believe they are righteous in their discrimination.

 

Stumbling over the rock that is God and being shattered is never pretty, but it is an act of love so that we can be remade, no longer going down a path of destruction. On an individual level, being crushed by the stone of God is often called hitting rock bottom.

 

I think of a man I know, a friend, who was successful and miserable, addicted to alcohol, cheating on his wife with multiple women. He was finally shattered when she left him and took their son with her. He also lost his job. Crushed and shattered. So then, recovery, sobriety, working on his resentments and fears with others’ help, starting to be of service to others rather than just taking from others. After he was crushed and shattered, he was remade. He has a job again. He gets to be with his son again, and his ex-wife trusts him to be with their son. Being shattered wasn’t pretty, but being remade was beautiful. All of it was an act of love by God.

 

St. Francis was another who stumbled and was crushed by the rock that is God. In his case, his family was hugely rich, and yet he couldn’t help be the poverty he saw all around him. After first stealing from his dad to try to help people out (that didn’t work out so well), he decided to give up his wealth and lived a life of love, prayer, and service. He led others in lives of prayer and service, some living a monastic life, supported by the church, others continuing with the jobs and families, while also devoting themselves to prayer and service of others.

 

What St. Francis and those who joined in his way of life found was peace in their lives. Love and service to others grounded in a life of prayer became a sanctuary for them, a life of blessing, having first been tripped up by the rock that is God, then shattered and remade.

In the same passage that calls God a stone to trip us up and shatter us, God is called a sanctuary. When we are stopped from going in the wrong direction, we then get to take refuge and recover in the sanctuary that is God. We can then find our way to be led by God in a direction that is whole and healing for us. That’s the idea behind God being a stumbling block that crushes us. God stops us from the harm we are living, we are crushed and remade, and then God becomes a sanctuary for us as we live a life of love and service, grounded in prayer.

So, when Jesus says, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” I really do say, “Hurray!” Hurray for being remade in the sanctuary that is God. Hurray for the peace that comes with God as our refuge, living lives of prayer and of love and service to others.