1 Peter 2:2-10
This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on May 14, 2017.
It was an ordinary day. I was talking with my four-year-old daughter who was riding in the back of my car. Even at her young age, she was spiritually sensitive, so we were talking about God. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she began to cry almost uncontrollably. She cried, “Daddy I can’t see God anymore.” I had no idea what she meant. Reasoning that humans cannot see God, I wondered if she had mistaken God for an object in nature like a cloud or something else. As much as I tried, I could not make sense of what she was seeing and feeling. As I looked at her tear stained cheeks, I did my best to explain that God was everywhere and that while we cannot see God, God is with us. I found my attempt to comfort her feeble. Although she was only 4, my daughter had expressed a common human ailment. She had lost sight of God. In a culture where the number of persons opting out of faith is growing, and others are desperate for the presence of God, helping people who have lost sight of God is an important part of the task of the Church.
So what does one do when one loses sight of God? Where can God be found? 1 Peter 2:2-10 serves as an answer to these and similar questions, although not in an obvious way. Verse 4 reads, “Come to Him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house….” (NRSV). The word “house” was frequently used for the temple in the Old Testament; so the text is claiming that believers are the new temple of God.