On the way home from church one Sunday, not too long before I became your pastor, we decided to take a drive by the old house we had when we first got married.  Nancy was particularly curious to see what the new owners had done with the back yard but, as we drove down the alley, Nancy abruptly asked me to stop the car, jumped out, ran over to a pile of garbage and started rummaging through it.  I'll have to admit that I was a little embarrassed.  Here she was in her Sunday best rummaging in the trash in an alley and so I looked around to see if anyone was watching - as though people sit in alleyways looking for people in their Sunday best to drive by and snoop in their garbage. 

Soon enough Nancy started back to the car with what had caught her eye in the first place.  It was a mirror, about eight by twelve in size with a gold frame, and, though a little dirty from its time in a trash heap, in perfect condition.  Whoever had thrown it away obviously didn't need it any longer and Nancy had been looking for just such a mirror to go on a particular wall in our home.  When we got home, Nancy cleaned and polished it and then hung it in its very special place.  Unless someone pointed it out, you'd never know it's the mirror that, having once been someone else's trash, became my wife's treasure.

In the strange chemistry that makes a marriage work, have you ever noticed that it's not wise to react too strongly to the little things your mate does that irritate you?  More likely than not, those same little things that irritate you, once attracted you, indeed bonded you, to each other.  Specifically, I've thought more than once that, if Nancy didn't have an eye for what had been sentenced to the trash heap and redeeming it to treasure it anew, I'd not be married to her.  And, I've thought the same of this great church, too, for sure.  For certain, as we worship with our Dallas Baptist University friends here today, we do so in large part because her president and other visionary leaders once saw in that now burgeoning institution a treasure that others were willing to scrap as hopeless.

So, before we leave Easter too far behind, let's be sure not to miss this trash-to-treasure connection.  Whatever else the resurrection of Jesus was, it was God's way of announcing that what man and sin trashes, he treasures.  "This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone."  In the chemistry of redemption that no human mind will ever be able to decipher, at the very same moment man was trashing God's greatest gift, even as Jesus' life was bleeding out of him, God was at work redeeming him into treasure of immeasurable value.  From rejected stone to cornerstone.  From the humiliation of death on a cross to "the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should (bow) and tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."  (Philippians 2:9-11)  Do you see what God is up to?

The apostle Peter has chosen a marvelous architectural metaphor.   He is in fact quoting Psalms 118 when he refers to the risen Christ as "the cornerstone."  That one essential block of stone upon which a whole superstructure is built and without which the whole system collapses.  Peter uses this same metaphor again when he writes the first letter named after him in which he invites all who will to build their lives on faith in Christ, the "cornerstone, chosen and precious . . .." and by so doing becoming "living stones . . . built into a spiritual house . . . through Jesus Christ."   (1 Peter 2:4-6)

Tying all these together what we have is evidence, from Old Testament to New, from the resurrection through the birth of the Church that, what God did in Christ in redeeming trash to treasure, he intends to do throughout history.  Without question, the one thing that keeps this earth on its axis and all of history moving toward a God-given purpose is God's work of redemption through Christ.   God, is, as it were, building a spiritual house that will last for eternity.  His children, each of them precious jewels, are the bricks full of his life that make up each of the walls.  But, it's all built on that one essential block, the cornerstone, the resurrected Christ.

If you've ever played Jenga you know the importance of a cornerstone. Jenga is a simple table game where dozens of little wooden blocks are stacked on top of each other into a tower.  The object of the game is to try to remove the blocks one at a time without causing the tower to collapse.  The challenge is to figure out which blocks you can afford to throw away and which is the one block without which the tower cannot stand.  If you remove that one essential block from the tower it collapses and you lose the game.  There is a very specific sense in which the scripture is saying the same thing.

Build your life any way you want, but, if it is not built on the cornerstone of Christ, it will not stand.  The Bible is saying that Jesus is the one essential, not just of God's purposes, but also of our only hope for a life that will stand the test of time.  Jesus is that one block upon which everything else rests and without which nothing else will stand.  He said that of himself when, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he warned that those who choose to build elsewhere will find all their construction efforts ultimately to be in vain.  "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand."  (Matthew 7:26)  Now, echoing the Lord's own witness, Peter says, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."  The single greatest choice we will ever make is when we choose the foundation upon which everything else we do with our lives will be built.  What we can live without and that without which none of life makes any sense.

Peter has drawn this grand picture of God's eternal purposes.  The universal concept.  Jesus is the one who personalizes it.   That's, in part, one reason he appeared to the disciples after his resurrection.  Salvation is not just something God is doing universally in history for all men.  It's personal.  It has names on it.  Like Peter's, John's, Thomas', yours and mine.

The other day I got a letter from a friend.  I mean, a real letter.  It had my name written on it, in long hand, in ink, and a stamp on the outside.  I had to look around for something with which to open it because I couldn't just double-click it.  I couldn't believe how good it felt to actually hold a physical piece of mail that someone else I cared about and who cared about me had taken the time to write, address, stamp and mail.  It occurred to me that this is why the Internet will never permanently replace those folks who walk door to door with a bag slung over their shoulders.   It does seem sometimes, does it not, that we will all just be sucked into some cyber black hole and eaten alive there by a giant virus never to be heard from again.  You know, we accidentally hit the delete button one day and vaporize ourselves.

But, there are some things that you just can't do at a distance.   Some things never become personal until they become physical.   Which is why God, in Jesus, "the Word" that "became flesh," (John 1:14) fed hungry people real food, walked on real water, touched the oozing sores of lepers, washed dirty feet and why he stood there that day in the presence of those disciples and ate a piece of fish.  "Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."   (Luke 24:39)  All of this is God's way of saying to those disciples, and to us, that salvation is not something God does at an eternal cyber-distance.  Jesus didn't just delete our sin.   He died for it.  And, Jesus wasn't just restored.  He was resurrected from the dead.  Physically.  Salvation, like sin, is up close and personal.  Salvation has your name and my name on it.  Jesus is the "cornerstone."  But, each of us God intends to be "living stones" in the building of his eternal purpose.

On the way home from the cemetery this past week I was somewhat amazed at how peaceful I was about my grandmother's death.  I had anticipated this moment being much more difficult than it was.  But, at ninety-four, my grandmother's mind had begun to diminish and she hardly knew much of anything that once made her life meaningful.   In so very many ways, last Sunday was a very good day for my grandmother when she went home to be with Jesus.  But, as I was driving away from the cemetery, I couldn't help but think that I've now gone to the last funeral I'll ever find that easy.  From here on out, it's going to be tough.  There is simply no one left in my family I can imagine this world without.

Maybe that's why we have this story in scripture, too.  Jesus, on his way home from the cemetery, has stopped by to personalize what he just did for these people with real faces and names.  And, why he then called the disciples to, in turn, proclaim "repentance and forgiveness . . . in his name to all nations."  "Go personalize this," Jesus is saying, "for everyone who draws a breath of life.  Tell them, for me, that my Father is building a whole new world.  I am the cornerstone.  But, in his master design, there is a place for everyone. Tell them that God is building a brand new world, a world without end. A world he cannot imagine without you."

This is the most marvelous witness, to me, of the love of God.   Not that I am less overwhelmed by the scene in the manger we celebrate at Christmas and all the other wonderful witnesses of God's love.  But, look at what's happening here as Jesus comes back to the disciples.  Do you see it?  God loved us enough to send his son.  He loved us enough to let his son die for us.  But, do you see what his resurrection is telling us?  In his trash to treasure love and power, God has taken the worst thing man ever did and transformed, redeemed it, into the most marvelous thing he ever did.  Which all goes to say, when you think about it, that you can say no to God's love, you can reject it, you can scourge it, nail it to a cross and kill it.  But, you can't make it go away.  It will just keep coming back to life to love you one more time.

How can anyone say no forever to a love like that?  I don't know.  How can they?  You'll know though, that you've finally begun to say yes to God when you come to that moment in time when you decide you can't take even one more step or live one more day without the God who has proven, through the birth, death and resurrection of his only son, that he cannot imagine a world without you.

What will you do about that?