The tripping stone
by Kathy Matuschka
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… See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame (Romans 9:33).
Read Romans 9:19–33
St Paul knows what it is like to stumble: to trip over his best intentions in his pursuit of righteousness before God by following the law. In today’s reading, he continues to process his bewilderment about how God’s plan of salvation has played out, citing Hebrew Scriptures to help him make sense of what he has heard and experienced.
He even goes as far as to wonder if it was all a setup. Maybe God didn’t really love the Hebrew people, but used them to demonstrate how not to become right with God! Was this a case of Paul using irony – or maybe spitballing a little – as he grappled with how to understand and describe the new things God was doing in the world?
Paul knows what it is like to stumble on the rock of Jesus, because he has stumbled himself. He now understands to the depth of his being that his only hope of being right with God is to trust in Jesus’ work, not his own, and he keeps returning to this central theme.
What are some of the ways we as Christians stumble over Jesus today? One stumbling block is pride. We can become so delighted in the ways we can use our God-given gifts in God’s service that pride sneaks in and takes a lead role.
At other times, we trip and stumble because we are too focused on things that are not mission-critical. They might be important and worthwhile things, but they are not central.
Just as St Paul did, we can become our own worst enemies as we serve God. Sometimes we, too, need to be confronted by a ‘stumbling stone’ in a dramatic way before we realise that we have been making it all about us and our perspectives.
Dear Lord Jesus, you have rescued me from places of darkness into your glorious light. In your great mercy, you keep catching and restoring me when I stumble and fall. By your Holy Spirit, fill me with trust in your salvation and the grace to reflect your light into the dark places around me. Amen.
Kathy Matuschka works as a hospital chaplain and worships at Our Saviour Lutheran Church Rochedale in Brisbane. As parents of three adult children, Kathy and her husband Mark have been taking great delight lately in learning how to be grandparents.
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