Christian Pathway

When my family lived in Leyton we lived near a bakery that was next door to a biscuit factory.
We had no money for treats, or sweets but the thing this bakery did was sell the broken biscuits from the factory in a medium size cardboard box.  So all the rejected biscuits were mixed up, bourbons, garibaldi’s, lemon puffs, chocolate ones, custard creams, you name it all mixed in.  I never tried but it would have been impossible to find two halves of a garibaldi and see if we could make one perfect biscuit from them. 

They were lovely, and we looked forward as kids on a Friday, to picking up this weeks shoot magazine from our corner-shop and then 3 doors along we would run into the bakery and then the lady would open up the boxes to three boys under 10 while we spent a happy 10 minutes deciding what box looked like it had the most of each of our favourites 😊

I honestly don’t recall the lady behind the counter being anything but happy to see us, and happy to let us argue among ourselves while this important matter was resolved.  So the biscuits rejected, were to us our best treat and today live on as something special.

In today’s story Jesus casts himself as rejected.  In his case a stone the builders rejected that becomes cornerstone that the whole house rests upon.

a cornerstone is essential that stone, the whole house rests upon it, and in the days of when all of the stone a house was built on being carved to shape, every future contour of the house would be shaped by that stone as the builder aligned them one after another.  But all in harmony with the first stone laid. The cornerstone set the path. Thereafter every stone was unique, and therefore exactly where it had to be to make the house.

We here today are all broken ,  but I can tell you from experience that broken biscuits are no less sweet, and in my case loved more than every vacuum-packed expensive packet of perfection sat on the shelves . Here’s the thing about being Jesus broken biscuits. , They were made exactly the way they should be.  he can make all of their uniqueness fit together with love.  He cut them like the builder cuts the stone, so that they fit perfectly into his house.

Another way of looking at it.

Jesus is our Kintsugi, those that have been on Sue’s course will know “Kintsugi’ (金継ぎ) is a Japanese technique for repairing pottery with seams of gold. The word means ‘golden joinery’ in Japanese. This repairs the brokenness in a way that makes the object more beautiful, and even more unique than it was prior to being broken. Instead of hiding the scars it makes a feature of them.

Jesus repairs our brokenness with seams of gold,  flowing from him. He being our cornerstone means we all rest on him, and he is within the very fabric of the building that is his house, his creation. We fit perfectly into the story of the house,being exactly where he designed us to be. The contours of the house stem from the cornerstone And no stone would work anywhere else as the builder made them for that place in the building.

Jesus sees every one of our unique aspects as something essential to the house he is building. The house of God.   The,bible  says he planned us, so we aren’t mistakes, or random outcomes. That makes us part of his plan. In the same way a builder of a stone house makes all the contour’s run true from the cornerstone,  Jesus makes all the things he creates run true from the cornerstone that is him.

We are designed and loved, and no stone in jesus house would fit anywhere else except the place the builder put them. We are just as we are and were made to be.  One day he will make us whole and part of the place where he reigns forever.

Things can come along to make us feel bad about ourselves, or to trouble us and he can heal all things. But at the end of everything we begin a new story perfect, not anodine, or standardised, or normalised, not made like those biscuits on the shelves, our of some factory, of some marketing mans idea of perfection, but made by him just as we are we  It’s why some of the bcp troubles me , we aren’t miserable sinners with no health in us we are loved and designed and meant to be where we are in the shape we are.

Jesus was and is rejected by those that don’t know him, but once you do know him your safe. As shown by our parable today,  One day the owners of the vineyard will come and make everything right again. He will come again, and we wait in the sure and certain hope of that, knowledge in the truest sense, that what the world see;s as broken, is perfect as he is perfect, and the place we are called too perfect, for him and for us.

why
We were made for it

Amen