When I was out three years ago trying to raise eleven million dollars for building expansion and renovations, a member of this congregation gave me a brick. She didn't throw it at me even though she might have felt like it. She discreetly handed it to me after a meeting saying, "As we forge into the future let us not forget the past." You see, the brick came out of our old building on Church Street and she had kept it all of these years. I don't plan to keep it. I plan to put it in the archives being established in the new building.

Today's scripture is all about stones - cornerstones, stumbling stones, living stones, precious stones. Peter, whom Jesus nicknamed Rocky, was comfortable describing Christ as a cornerstone, and a community of faith as living stones. From that analogy I want t…