On What Is Your House Built?
Matthew 7:21-29
You always find out more about the house you're living in after you've lived there a while. It turns out that our
house in Plymouth, which was built in 1962, a traditional colonial, was built
on a swamp. That explains why
nothing is level. Why the hard
word flooring we had installed after we moved in ten years ago is crooked. Why the front porch is sinking. It explains why when you want to drive a stake into the ground to tie the dog out in the yard, you often can't get very far before you hit a chunk of concrete. We surmise that scraps from a torn up parking lot were
thrown into the swamp so it could be covered over with dirt and grass and look
like normal land backing up to Burton Creek.
I'm not sure whether it was wise or foolish to fill in that swamp with concrete slabs. I am sure it was profitable. Today we meet Jesus, however, calling for wise builders.
He pretty openly tells us that foolish builders invite destruction. We
meet him today with his disciples at the very end of his delivery of the Sermon
on the Mount. That sermon, which includes the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, Jesus' teaching about salt and light, and more, concludes with this ringing affirmation: it is not being religious that counts. It is
integrity. Not talking the talk,
but walking the walk. It's about practice, not piety. If Jesus were to have such a thing as a "hit list," hypocrites would be at the top of it – especially the religious ones.
Jesus
explains – and even summarizes – with a parable. There were two houses in a storm
– one with solid footings, the other with a flimsy foundation. The house built on rock represents persons who have internalized Jesus' word and base their lives on it. The house built on sand represents
persons who have listened to his teachings, but choose not to live by them.
And so today our Gospel text begs this question: "On what is your 'house' built?" Really? Do you want to wait until destruction
comes, as it surely will, to discover whether the subsoil is rock or sand
– or a swamp, for that matter?
How might we determine the texture of the soil? We're talking, of course, about our core values here. Our center. "Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, our guidance, our wisdom, and our power." So says Stephen Covey in The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Whatever is at the center of
our life will determine our operative core values. Not the values we aspire to. The values we really live by.
A professor of Old Testament
poses these four questions to his students to begin to get underneath the question, "On what is your 'house' built?"
1. What is worth dying for? What would we sacrifice for?
2. What is worth killing for? When is killing another human justified?
3. What is worth working for? What is worth dedicating your life to, in service and in
labor? What kind of goals make the
sacrifices acceptable?
4. What is worth living for? That is, what makes life worth living?
Some of these questions of
course are extremely hard to pin down.
But our answers to these questions might hint at what the subsoil of our
life is – what our center is – what is the source of our security,
our guidance, our wisdom, our power and, I would add, our hope.
Here's another way to discover what your real subsoil is, your "operative" center. During quiet moments of
free time, of whom, or what, do you find yourself thinking? Where does your mind go? When youÕre jogging, or driving, or
waiting in lines, or lying down at night – when your mind has the freedom
to focus on whatever you choose, to whom or what do your thoughts automatically
turn? Wherever or whatever that is, it's probably your subsoil. Your operative center.
In
1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed thousands of homes in South Florida. Yet in an area where the wreckage
looked like a war zone, one house remained standing. It was still firmly anchored to its foundation. A reporter asked the homeowner why his
house had not been blown away. And the homeowner replied, "I built this house myself. I also built it according to the Florida state building
code. When the code called for 2"x6" roof trusses, I used 2"x6" roof trusses. I was told that a house built according to code could withstand a hurricane...and it did!"
We know that building our spiritual houses on solid rock as opposed to sand is no guarantee that the rain won't fall, the floods won't come, and the winds won't blow and beat on the house. No
guarantee at all. Ask the people of China and Myanmar – or New Orleans
for that matter. But we DO have a building code. That code is made up of the spiritual practices we have
discerned together as a congregation to be our core values: worship, learning, praying, caring,
fellowship, giving, serving and sharing.
These are the practices that cultivate in us that identity that tells us we are claimed and met to be God's people, called and sent to do God's work. God gives us grace upon grace upon grace
– but we have to carry that grace in our own buckets. Our spiritual practices are those
buckets. Our spiritual practices
make up the building code that, when we build according to it, makes our house
able to withstand a hurricane.
The
earliest Christians knew this well.
A seminary professor I had studies the artwork, slogans, gravestones,
hymns, personal letters, and church architecture among the earliest
Christians. He does this in order
to glean a picture of what the average believer found to be important. This is what he finds: stories involving safety despite the
waters, such as the story of Jonah and Noah, as well as the baptism of Jesus,
appear an overwhelming number of times. It's no coincidence that these earliest Christians experienced persecution in the Roman Empire, before the faith was legal. In the ancient world, waters
represented chaos, a force more powerful than the gods. For Christians under Roman rule,
stories from the Old Testament showed believers were saved from the chaos of
persecution. What mattered to them was that through the waters of baptism they
would be preserved over the waters of chaos. That's why church architecture so often resembles an upside down ship, and the space in which we worship is called the "nave," related to the word navy.
What
happens when the storms come and we don't stand? Even when we
follow the instructions that make up the building code? That grace upon grace is still there
for us, often in the buckets carried by our brothers and sisters in our
community of faith. In the liturgy and hymns that they sing for us when we can't sing for ourselves. In the prayers they pray when we don't know what to say. Many of us have learned a song called "Awesome God" by the singer/songwriter Rich Mullins. Mullins also wrote a song called "If I Stand." He admits that we can't always stand amid storms, but that the grace of Jesus will be there when we fall, a promise that cradles us all.
"So if I stand," he sings, "let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through. And if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you." Such is the grace we too can experience
from a community of faith where people are inspired and equipped for living
lives centered -- in Christ. AMEN
Pastor Dana Runestad
Third Sunday After Pentecost Lectionary 9 June 1, 2008
Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Livonia MI
Sources:
Stephen Covey, "At the Center" in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, New York: Simon and Schuster (A Fireside Book), 1989, pp. 109-111.
Bill Hybels, "The Object of Our Affections" in Laws of the Heart (A study of the Ten Commandments), Wheaton IL: Victor Books, 1985, pp. 14-15.
Walter W. Harms, "Know on What You Are Building: Assumptions We Make" a sermon preached May 29, 2005, in Austin TX http://www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de/archiv-7/050529-4-3.html.
Rich Mullins Lyrics "If I Stand" http://www.christianlyricsonline.com/artists/rich-mullins/if-i-stand.html
Frank Ramirez, "Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation" http://store.sermonsuite.com/printer.php?i=788028006
Douglas E. Wingeier, ed. "Lections for Sunday Between May 29 and June 40" in Keeping Holy Time: Studying the Revised Comon Lectionary, Year A, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, p. 217.