We are ... like, you know ... like newborn infants, and like, ... you know ... like stones!

The writer of 1 Peter in the New Testament is also fond of the word, "like," but as far as I know he was not a Valley Girl. He understood similes. For example, he writes, early on in his first letter: "Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance." (1 Peter 1:14) A few verses later: "You know that you were ransomed..., not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish." (1:1:18-19) Peter also notes that "all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flowers of the field...." (1:1:24, RSV/NIV)

That's only the first chapter! Peter goes on: "For you were going astray like sheep...." (1 Peter 2:25) "Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received." (1:4:10) "Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour." (1:5:8) In his second letter, Peter talks about some people who "are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct...." (2 Peter 2:12) Peter tells those to whom he is writing that "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day." (2:3:8) He also warns them that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief...." (2:3:10)

Like obedient children, like silver or gold, like a lamb, like grass, like the flowers of the field, like sheep, like good stewards, like a roaring lion, like irrational animals, like a thousand years, like one day, like a thief. Peter liked to use similes! And in our reading from 1 Peter he uses two more: Like newborn infants," he writes, "long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation" (1 Peter 2:2), and a few verses later, "like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house...." (1:2:5) The Apostle Peter is addressing believers, whom he compares to both newborn infants – and – living stones! Talk about a mangled mix of metaphors! It reminds me of Sam Goldwyn (1882-1974), a Hollywood producer who complained about movie directors, saying: "The trouble with directors is that they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg." It also reminds me of a Canadian politician who said, "They've buttered their bread and now they can lie in it," and yet another one who said, "You can lead a dead horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

Newborn infants and living stones! Babies and masonry! I don't always put that pair of things together. Tom Yoder Neufeld, a New Testament scholar, speaks of Paul's mixed use of metaphors as a "suggestive and evocative jumble of architectural and organic imagery...." ("Built to Last: Jesus Christ as Ground and Goal," 2007) I imagine that if the Apostle Paul could switch metaphors in mid-stream, there's no reason the Apostle Peter couldn't slice and dice his similes as needed.

The first simile used by Peter describes Christians as newborn infants (1 Peter 2:2), "newborn babies" (NIV), or "infants at the breast" (MSG), as another translation freely phrases it. In some churches the Sunday on which this passage from 1 Peter is read is known as Quasimodogeniti Sunday, from the Latin word meaning "like newborn infants". If the word, "Quasimodogeniti," sounds somewhat familiar, it's because "Quasimodo" the "hunchback of Notre Dame," was a newborn infant left on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral on the Easter Sunday that the 1 Peter passage was read, and he was so christened by the Cathedral's archdeacon who adopted him. (Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831)

The Apostle Peter was writing to Christians in the northern part of Asia Minor. He called them newborn infants, suggesting that developmentally – in the spiritual sense – they were but babes-in-arms. Not even toddlers! Two weeks ago we welcomed Bree to our community, but Bree won't be playing tennis this summer! Bree isn't walking yet – that comes later. Bree isn't talking yet – that comes even later. At this point Bree depends upon her parents for everything; they have to feed her, change her, and carry her everywhere she goes. The only thing we expect of Bree right now is that she smile on occasion and let us know that she's content.

I don't know what Peter was thinking in referring to his readers as newborn infants, It struck me that it could be insulting to them. Was he suggesting that they weren't mature enough to become Christians? I don't think so. The Christians to whom he was writing were living under severe persecution; their decision to become believers was no child's play. Their life as congregations was no idle pastime.

"Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk," wrote Peter. It may be that Peter was alluding to an Early Church practice of feeding the newly baptized a meal of milk and honey immediately following baptism. It may be that one of the ways in which Peter's simile applies is that they were new believers. They required some basic instruction and basic spiritual sustenance. They didn't have generations of family history in the faith. Their congregations were also new. We have centuries of Church tradition behind us – for better or for worse – but these new churches were making it up as they went along. There was no blueprint, no manual to consult. There was but a handful of apostles to guide them along the way – when those apostles weren't doing prison time – so at that time in the Church's history the pillars holding up the Church were a bit wobbly.

Perhaps another way in which Peter's readers could be compared to infants is that they were vulnerable. The attitude toward Christians in the early centuries was harsh. You can tell from some of the writers of the period. For example, Pliny the Younger (~62-113), a first-century Roman orator and statesman, wrote, "The contagion of this perverse and extravagant superstition has penetrated not the cities only, but the villages of the country." Tacitus (55-117), a first-century Roman historian, described Christians as "...a group hated for their abominations...." Suetonius (69-140), a second-century Roman biographer of heads of state, wrote that "Christians are a class of men given to a new and wicked superstition." Lucian (125-~180), a second-century Greek prose writer, was no less disparaging. He wrote of Christians: "The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, by worshipping that crucified sophist.... Therefore they despise the things of this world, and consider them common property. ... So if any charlatan or trickster comes among them, he quickly acquires wealth by imposing upon these simple folk."

Peter felt tenderness toward these believers, and perhaps he used the tender image of a nursing mother to highlight not only their vulnerable and dependent state, but also to convey the assurance that as a mother tenderly nourishes and protects her young, so God will care for them.

Like Living Stones

Then, abruptly, Peter switches similes! The newborn infants are now living stones! Living stones – a strange notion in itself. We have stepping-stones, and rolling stones, and touchstones, cap-stones, and tombstones, but living stones? It's a strange image, and yet it works. Just like many, many stones make up a building – one building – so many, many people make up the one Church. The Church is us – as Jane's use of the mirror showed the children that they are the Church. The Church is comprised of living beings – human beings – and the image of a stone building is a vivid image of the Christian community, of our corporate identity.

I just read of a church in Denmark which is made up of six million yellow bricks. Sometimes called the Yellow Brick Church, its real name is the Grundtvig National Church in Copenhagen, begun in 1921 and completed in 1940. The church was named after the Danish pastor, poet, and philosopher, Nikolai Grundtvig (1783-1872), also remembered by most Danes for his resounding hymns. Though comprised of bricks, the exterior of the Grundtvig Church resembles a gargantuan church organ, in the upper reaches the bricks fitted together so as to form a rippling effect.

There's probably a sermonic metaphor there, that a bunch of rectangular, chunky bricks with sharp edges, in the hands of a master architect and builder, can be transformed into a fluid, smooth, rippling whole that is, visually, much, much more than the sum of those six million bricks. However, I read that the masonry on the Grundtvig Church was done by seven handpicked masons, who rejected all bricks that were not perfect. There goes my sermon illustration, because one has only to read the first verse of 1 Peter, chapter 2, to realize that the stones used to build the Living Stone Cathedral were flawed. Some of the stones had impurities, like malice and guile. Others had strata of insincerity. Some had veins of envy and slander running through them. Some of the stones were not what they appeared to be. Some had fractures, others deposits of hypocrisy and jealousy. (1 Peter 2:1)

The Asia Minor churches, much like our own, were comprised of human beings, many of whom might be rejected by a master mason. However, the cornerstone of the Living Stone Cathedral was himself rejected (1 Peter 2:4), but "the stone the builders did not accept has become the most important stone of all" (1 Peter 2:7, citing Psalm 118:22, NIRV), wrote Peter.

Turns out we're the Church of Holy Discards! But that's okay; we are precious in God's sight. Perhaps there's a circuitous link to the image of God as a mother who nurses her newborn infant, for flawed though we be – children that only a mother could love – God wants to include us in the Church. When the archdeacon of Notre Dame christened the foundling, Quasimodo, Victor Hugo suggests that he may have done it "to express the incomplete and scarcely finished state of the poor little creature. In truth," Hugo writes, "Quasimodo, with one eye, hunchback, and crooked legs, was but an apology for a human being." (Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831, page 131) Similarly, Jesus is remembered, in the words of Isaiah, as one who had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2) Many "were astonished at him – so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals.... He was despised and rejected by others; ...as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account." (52:14 and 53:3)

Peter and the Early Church, however, believed that this very stone was "chosen and precious in God's sight" (1 Peter 2:4; compare 2:6), the very cornerstone (1:2:6 and 7) of the Church. And then Peter drops the similes altogether and gives to the Church – the community of faith – a number of lofty names: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people...." (1:2:9) Wow! These flawed stones can be transformed into a chosen race! That was an Old Testament term, reserved for the people of Israel, and yet Peter applies it to a largely Gentile Christian community!

Peter's names for the Church are lofty descriptions of the Church – and they are descriptions; they are not appeals to try and be these things; "You are a chosen race," writes Peter. You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are God's people. One might be tempted to think that they are too lofty, but this isn't so much an appeal to become smug as it is to encourage the Church in very tough times. You have a very high calling, suggests Peter; you incarnate these lofty designations "in order" – writes Peter – "in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." (1 Peter 2:9) In other words, Peter is encouraging them not so much to strut their stuff as to do their stuff! This community of faith – this cathedral of flawed but living stones – was chosen not for privilege, but for an eternal purpose.

One of the things an edifice of stones suggests is a building that will last longer than a generation. The hymnal we used before the one we use now had an endearing hymn about the enduring Church, with the words:

O where are kings and empires now
Of old that went and came?
But, Lord, Thy church is praying yet,
A thousand years the same.
...
Unshaken as eternal hills,
Immovable she stands ...
A house not made by hands.

(Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 1839, The Mennonite Hymnal, #378)