Scripture: Isaiah 28:16-17; Mark 12: 1-12

“Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘He who believes will not be in haste (or will not panic).’”

-- Isaiah 28:16 (RSV)

The stone symbolizes the small community that will survive the great Assyrian invasion and become the nucleus of a renewed people of God. Isaiah calls this little group the Remnant. Last week we noted the other striking symbol of the Remnant, the little green shoot from the blasted stump of a fallen tree. This week we are talking about the same thing, but with a slightly different focus, so let me remind you of the full context of this imagery, which we examined last week. It is the divine judgment, God’s “No!” to the religious folk who trusted not in God but in worldly power, and then called that power God, No! to the idolaters of power. Listen to the words immediately preceding our text for today: “Therefore hear the word of God you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem! Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we have an agreement; when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us; for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter,’ therefore thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation, a stone…(28:14-16).‘” So this oracle about the stone is both a threat and a promise: because the rulers have made an agreement with death and hell, and taken lies as a refuge and falsehood as a shelter, all that will be left of the people is a single stone, or a small shoot; on the other hand, because of God’s faithful love that remnant will again become a great nation. A threat and a promise, a No and a Yes!

This image of the Remnant as a stone is immensely important for the interpretation of the person and work of Jesus in the NT. We shall return to that soon but right now let us look at the relevant texts in Isaiah. At God’s command Isaiah named one of his sons Shearjashub and on the occasion in question took him to meet King Ahaz  “…at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the way to the Fuller’s field (7:3).” Why is this important? Because Shearjashub means ”a remnant will return.” Once again, this could be a threat, “Only a remnant will return,” or a promise, “Don’t worry, a remnant will return and eventually things will be back to normal.” “Return to what?” we ask. “Return from battle?” No, most interpreters take it to mean the return to patient trust in God from trust in treaties with death and hell (read Assyria). Do you think Ahaz “got it” when Isaiah introduced his son? It does not seem so.

The Remnant is the small group that trusts God absolutely and does not play politics, excepting the politics of faith in the kingdom of God, of trust in God to save them. That remnant will be the cornerstone of the renewed Jerusalem, which shall be called the “…city of righteousness and the city of trust… (1:26).” Indeed, the motto “He who trusts will not panic” in 28:16 is to be carved on the cornerstone of the New Jerusalem. In the city of righteousness, God’s peace (shalom) rather than the peace of military security prevails, God’s faithfulness enables patience and calm. Politically speaking, this is a neutralist position - Isaiah wanted Judah to be the Switzerland of the Ancient Near East - but there is a level much deeper than international relations on which he points to the primacy of our relationship with God and to the essence of that relationship as faith or trust. “If you do not trust God,” he says, “you will always be in haste, that is, in a more or less severe panic.” So the New Jerusalem has inscribed on its cornerstone, “He who trusts will not panic!” Kings Ahaz and Hezekiah rejected this politics, the former preferring Assyria to God, and the latter Egypt, and the result was destruction for the majority and survival for only the Remnant.

The image of the rejected stone was taken up in Psalm 118: “I thank thee that thou hast answered me and hast become my salvation. The stone, which the builders rejected, has become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day, which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it (118:21-24).” The image of the stone that the builders rejected referred primarily to the attitude of trust like the one Isaiah advocated and the small group that lived out that attitude. Subsequently it was transferred to the crucified and resurrected Christ and so became a central image of Christ in the NT, and thus pivotal to our Christian understanding of faith. Christ was the only one who lived out perfect faith and thus became the real Remnant. Thus the  image becomes the way along which Isaiah’s understanding of faith flows to delimit and define our Christian faith as fundamentally trust in Christ to save us. In as much as we persist in trusting Christ despite all, despite even the crucifixion we are the faithful Remnant. The majority rejects him and suffers spiritual desolation, the Remnant receives him and becomes the foundation of a New Jerusalem.

Our Gospel reading from Mark 12 shows the interpretive role of the rejected stone. The son whom the wicked tenants killed and cast out is the rejected stone that became the head of the corner, the crucified Christ who was raised to become the one whom we trust and the goal of our faith! There are many other NT passages featuring the stone (cf. Matt 21:42; Luke 20:17-18; Acts 4:11; Peter 2:4-8; Romans 9:32-33). Here let us choose only one other: in Matthew 16:18 Jesus calls Peter the rock on which he will found his church, meaning that Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah is the first and paradigmatic act of the faith that founds the church. The rock is the Remnant that trusts, that has faith in Christ, just as the Remnant in Isaiah’s Jerusalem was the minority that trusted God rather than the Kings of Assyria or Egypt. This trusting Remnant, this minority of the faithful, is the rock and foundation of the church. The cornerstone of the New Jerusalem shall now read, “He who trusts Jesus Christ will never panic.” 

Because the Jews by and large rejected Jesus as Messiah, the NT focused on the element of rejection and returned to Isaiah for further elucidation. We found it in 8:11-15: “For the Lord spoke thus to me with His strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: ‘Do not call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary, and a stone of offense, a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon; they shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” In Romans 9:32-33, the Apostle Paul combines this text with 28:16: Listen: “What shall we say, then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is righteousness through faith; but that Israel who pursued the righteousness that is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling the law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall: and he who believes in him will not be panicked into shame (In these last words Paul quotes the Greek OT, which has “shame,” while the Hebrew has “haste,” in the sense of panic. I have combined the two in this modification of the RSV).” For us Christians the cornerstone of faith is trust in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. This absolute specificity – Jesus Christ specifically, not God in general - is chiefly what makes people stumble. They may agree that there is a God, in the general sense of the dimension of depth and mystery, the source of the sense of wonder. They will hardly follow us to the point of pacifism and neutralism, not defending oneself but relying on God to defend us. How much less then will they follow us to Jesus, to the conviction that the source of the sense of wonder, the creator of the world and my creator, the one who gave me life and all the world along with it, is named Jesus and once lived the life of a wandering preacher in Galilee and Judea on the Eastern marches of the Roman empire? That is the solid center of the stone of stumbling! And it is  the heart and soul of our faith.

It is not easy to overcome this obstacle. Soren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite commentators on the Bible, said that the purpose of the Gospel is not to make faith easier but more difficult. We have somehow to overcome our unwillingness to allow that any one human being can be God to us. Until we do overcome that we are not yet Christian, nor yet able to enjoy the full benefit and grace of the Christian faith. We are not yet crucified with Christ and ready to rise with him to eternal life.

So we leave Isaiah where we are happy and willing always to leave the OT, at the point where having shown the way it pushes us out to Jesus. Jesus Christ is himself the faithful Remnant, and all of us who identify with him by faith are part of him. His perfect trust in God, his impeccable faith, returned to the creator the necessary perfect response of the creation and thus reconnected the circuit of recreation. Through him flows the power of the New Jerusalem. He is the Remnant and he is the Foundation Stone of the New Jerusalem, and we are the living stones who make up the fabric of the City of God. It is amazing to remember that once this faithful Remnant, this point of connection between the saving power of God and the huge need of the creation, was down to one person, and that person was dead. It is even more amazing to recall that at that moment the faithfulness of God flashed forth and raised Jesus from the dead to make the rejected stone the cornerstone of a new community of faith and the beginning of a new creation, the Remnant for all time and for our time.

Since we cannot improve on the NT itself, let me read you this summation from the one whom Jesus himself called the rock: “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and he who believes in him will not be put to shame (LXX) (Hebrew: “will not panic”).’ To you therefore who believe, he is precious, but for those who do not believe, ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,’ and ‘A stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall (1 Peter 2:4-8).”