Living Stones

When we moved to our Lutheridge house near Asheville, I had hopes that we would see family and friends more often, for both big events and casual ones.  We are in the middle of a big event:  my spouse's youngest brother graduates from Southern Seminary (LTSS, the ELCA seminary in Columbia, SC) today.

We came down yesterday for the evening Baccalaureate service, the worship service before the graduation ceremony which happens today.  The Baccalaureate service was held at Ebeneezer Lutheran church, a historic downtown church which was filled to capacity.  

We sang hymns, we had communion, and Dr. Brian Peterson delivered a powerful sermon.  Here's a picture of him delivering that sermon, a picture taken by Bishop Kevin Strickland:

The sermon was based on 1 Peter 2:  2-10, which I thought was an odd choice, but it's from the Revised Common Lectionary.  That Dr. Peterson chose to preach on it was strange, but he talked about the stones that hold up a church like the one we're in.

He talked about 3 stones that are in the chapel at the seminary:  one comes from Jerusalem where Christ had a disastrous clash with empire leading to crucifixion and resurrection, one from a place where Paul had a disastrous encounter (Athens?), and one from Worms, where Luther had a disastrous encounter leading to his going into hiding and translating the Bible into German.  The message was that even encounters that look disastrous can turn out not to be.

Unspoken, but with imagery threaded through the sermon, he made it clear that our society is in a disastrous encounter moment.  I think of it as a hinge moment, where much is being decided that will impact the next 100-500 years in ways we can scarcely comprehend.  Dr. Peterson made me feel like it might all work out.

There were also the messages that you might expect in this kind of sermon that was in a space to celebrate graduates:  the idea that we can be living stones, that we are not living stones all alone, but living stones brought together to create a larger building.  It was a very effective sermon, and I'm very grateful to have heard it.

Now to get ready for today's events.