Since Easter we’ve been exploring different aspects of God’s character in our morning services. We’ve thought about the God who is there, our holy God, the God of Angel Armies, God as shepherd, ascended one, advocate. God the trinity – three in one and one in three. God our peace, God who knows, God our healer and God our Provider. Today we conclude our exploration by thinking about God our rock. Of all the names and descriptions of God that we’ve looked at this seems to me to be the least personal. Rocks don’t do much, they tend to just sit there being rock like. I did think about bringing a rock in for us to look at as an illustration, but I decided that a rock worth looking at would be too big and heavy to move. I also thought about giving you all a little rock as you came in as an illustration, but to my mind a little rock isn’t a rock. It’s a pebble.
So, I’ve had to go with a picture of some rocks. What words would we use to describe rock? Hard, massive, immovable, big, solid, cold, heavy, craggy. When I am doing pastoral visits I sometimes hear people being described as “my rock”. What do we mean when we describe someone as a rock? Dependable, steady, steadfast, reliable. At other times I might hear somebody described as being like stone. What do usually mean when we describe people using the word stone or stony? Hard, cold hearted, emotionless, unyielding, unhelpful. So, with these images and ideas in our minds, shall we dive into the Bible to see how it describes God as rock, and what that might mean for us.
One of the parts of the Bible that uses the idea of God being our rock a lot is the Psalms. This hymn book of God’s people contains more uses of the word Rock than any other book in the Bible, and most of these are talking about God being our Rock. The psalm that we heard read this morning, Psalm 62 contains a few examples of this, with its repeated refrain, which concludes, “Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I shall never be shaken.”
In this we hear God being described as the one that we can run to for safety, the person we can hide away in, the one who defends us against our enemies. Knowing that God is rock like, is unshakeable and immovable gives us confidence – we aren’t going to be shaken because our source of safety is unshakable.
This all sounds great, but the difficulty is that people only need a fortress when they’re under attack. We only need a place of safety when we don’t feel safe. This one of those examples of the Bible being so real about life. It doesn’t pretend that life is all easy and straight forward. It doesn’t pretend that living God’s way will solve all our problems, or get us out of all our struggles and difficulties. The Bible deals in real lives, lives that are messy and painful, lives in which we often feel weak and under attack.
That’s why the first half of that repeated refrain is so astonishing. “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.” Truly my soul finds rest in God. This is how the writer starts the Psalm. In the rest of the psalm we will hear about all the upset and difficulty and pain, but somehow he starts with the declaration that his soul finds rest in God, and then comes back to this assertion in the middle of the Psalm.
I’m not going to pretend that this is easy. When we’re in the middle of the turmoil and the distress of difficult circumstances it can be difficult to trust God. It can even feel obscene to suggest that we might be able to find rest, it is so far from how we’re feeling. But it remains my experience, and the experience of many Christians in all kinds of different places and circumstances that it is possible, and that God is reliable and trustworthy. God is our rock and fortress, a safe refuge.
When we come to the second of our readings, the one from Mark’s eye witness account of the good news of Jesus, we hear Jesus being described as a different kind of rock, a rock that has been shaped into something. A rock that has been shaped into a cornerstone. Now I’m no kind of builder, so this might not be correct, but according to Wikipedia, “The cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.”
I don’t know if this is how modern construction actually works, but it makes sense to me. If I was going to build a house, I’d measure out where it was going to go, and having created the foundation, I’d lay the first stone at a corner. I’d make sure that it was entirely level and square to where I wanted the walls built up from it to go. Get this stone wrong, and the whole building will be wrong. Get it lined up right and the whole building will be right.
If we want our lives to be lined up right, if we want our families to be lined up right, if we want our church to be lined up right, then they have to be laid on a cornerstone that is lined up right, sure and secure. That cornerstone is Jesus.
On one occasion Jesus described himself as the way, the truth and the life. Now I might be stretching it a bit, but another word that we use for way is direction. And we might describe a level, vertical wall, that lines up properly in the corners, as “true”. Jesus, the cornerstone gives our lives their direction and their truth when we line them up with him.
So far, so encouraging: God is the rock that we can depend on. Jesus is the cornerstone we can build on.
Let’s look at that passage from Mark in a bit more detail. This claim of Jesus that he is the cornerstone that people should build on, comes at the end of parable that he was telling the religious leaders. A parable that included the tenants of a vineyard murdering the son of the owner of the vineyard when he came to claim his father’s share of the harvest. The stone that would become the cornerstone is rejected at first.
And, actually, there’s more to it than this. This episode is also included in both Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus life. They include a bit more detail though. They include something else that Jesus said, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
In his first letter to the Christians living in Corinth, Paul uses similar imagery when he writes, “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,”
This idea of God being a rock that we might trip over, or which might crush us, is far less comfortable, but is one which is here in Scripture, and so it seems to me that it is one that we have to take seriously, and wrestle with.
Sometimes following Jesus is hard. I’ve been reading the sermon on the mount this week, some of Jesus’ teaching from Matthew 5. It’s hard stuff, uncompromising. If I take it seriously it challenges how I treat people, what I do with my money, how I behave as a sexual being, what I prioritise. I’m sure that Jesus exaggerates for effect at times, but that doesn’t mean that I can ignore everything he teaches there and then claim to be a follower of his. As Paul says, the message of the cross- that somehow death defeats death, is foolishness. Jesus’ teaching that to gain my life I have to lay down any claim to it, is a hard teaching. We hear a lot about identity, self-fulfilment, being who we were meant to be in today’s culture. Jesus says that if we are to become who we were truly created to be, then we have to let go of any idea of who we think we are, and submit entirely to his shaping of us. That’s a rock to stumble over for many of us.
Even when Jesus was on earth, there were many who couldn’t accept this. The religious leaders couldn’t accept it. They were too keen on their political power, religious systems, and social standing. Even his disciples found it difficult. There were times when many deserted Jesus because his teaching was too hard.
Here’s the thing. God is our rock. That does not mean that God is impersonal, cold, or unengaged. It does mean that God is entirely dependable, a safe refuge, a reliable foundation. It also means that unless we choose to trust God, to depend on God, to build on that foundation, we are likely to find ourselves stumbling and maybe even crushed. God doesn’t want that, God wants us to be saved, to stand, to overcome, which is why Jesus came to die and be raised to life. He came so that, with the Psalmist we can say, “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I shall never be shaken.”
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