“Saying something is like a dog,” warns G. K. Chesterton, “is another way of saying it is not a dog.” And yet sometimes revelation beggars logic and forces the theologian to fall back on poetry.
In this passage Peter runs his metaphors through a mix-master until they don’t know if they’re coming or going. He shuffles his similes and deals from the bottom of the deck like a carny sideshow sharper. The believer is a baby, then a building, and then an ethnicity, a clergy, a country and a kinship in such rapid-fire succession that it dizzies the imagination. What does it mean to follow Christ? Pick a card, any card!
But two themes thread these diverse descriptions into a single fabric: unity and welcome. The notion of unity unifies this farrago. Newborn believer babies suckle at the single breast of God’s one life-giving word. The Master Mason mortars believer-bricks into the single solid wall that shoots its angles from a common Corner Stone. The remaining imagery seeks the sameness among otherwise diverse individuals: common genes, common liturgy, common law, common customs. The Christ who calls individuals never calls them to individuality. Community marks the Christian confession.
But even to an outcast clan, Peter emphasizes the mandate to include. Beverly Gaventa rightly reminds us that “the intractable human temptation to convert a gift into a possession” leads us to read this text as if it offered us a boundary to defend instead of an escape hatch to proclaim. Peter’s kaleidoscope image of the church is more Underground Railroad than Maginot Line, more Schindler’s List than Checkpoint Charlie. We form a family so we can midwife newborns. We erect a temple so we can welcome worshipers. It is true that some will stumble on a stone that lies athwart the wide way to Hell, but even the Christ-crushed we now invite to limp their way into life.
In the Kingdom of Heaven everyone is so much the same that no single simile can capture their diversity. In the Kingdom of Heaven the boundaries serve, not to keep people out, but to make it clear how to get in. And the Church is a shape-shifting stability that flashes Christ from every facet. How’s that for a royal flush?
Ante Up!
Doug
Collect
Great God, you nurse us like a loving mother and join us like a master builder. Grant now that we who are many may become truly one, not by the conquering conformity of outward habits that blurs Your individual creations, but by the inward life of our risen Lord who makes us truly one by making us truly ourselves. This we pray in the name of the One who by being Three is truly One, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and Forever, Amen.
Blessing
May we who are many drink one Word,
That we may grow into one family.
May we who are many build one wall,
That the world may see one Savior.
May we who are many offer one worship,
That all the nobodies may join in one body.
In the name of the One who is
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Now and Forever,
Amen.
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