A House on a Solid Rock Foundation (Matthew 7:21-29)

“A House on a Solid Rock Foundation”
(a sermon based on Matthew 7:21-29, page 883 in the NRSV pew Bible)

by

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California  90815

August 22, 2010

     Today’s text is the conclusion of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”  It might seem a little presumptuous for me to start a sermon where Jesus ended his... especially since I do not intend to recap all the things that Jesus said in his “Sermon on the Mount” (which is the name given to the preceding three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel).  I’m not going to re-cap them because I suspect that you know most of them already... Things like the list of Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn... blessed are the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers.”  You know all that stuff (from Pastor Terry or Pastor Stephen, or any of your ministers & Sunday School teachers from your past)! You’ve heard it all before!

    I’m also not going to take the time this morning to cover the various issues Jesus addressed in his “Sermon on the Mount” -- namely, his low opinion of anger, of adultery, of divorce, of oath-taking; his refusal to allow retaliation against one’s enemies -- except to say that it was in this sermon that Jesus said we should love our enemies... and that we should stop judging our neighbors.  But, as I said, you know all that already! You’ve read it lots’a times.

    I’m not going to set the stage for today’s sermon by rehashing Jesus’ teachings about alms-giving, and about fasting, and about prayer -- even though it was in this “Sermon on the Mount” that we find the original source for our “Lord’s Prayer” (which we pray every time we gather for worship or Bible study).  Jesus’ words are rich with multiple layers of meaning, and at Family Camp in October, we’ll talk about the various elements of that famous prayer.  But not today. 
    No, tempting though it is to preach his whole Sermon on the Mount, I’m going to keep my remarks brief, and focus only upon his dramatic conclusion...  I won’t even get into Jesus’ famous “Golden Rule” about doing to others what you would have them do to you.  No, I’m just going to skip all that and start my sermon this morning with the very last thing Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount... Hear again his stirring conclusion, his ultimate punchline, the last words that hung in the air on those hills in Galilee...

    “The rain fell and the floods came, and the winds
    blew and beat against that house, and it fell -- and
    great was its fall!”  (Matthew 7:27)

    Uh-oh!  It fell?  The house collapsed?  Is that any way to end a sermon??  What a downer! A bummer!  I’m not sure he’d have gotten a passing grade in any of my seminary preaching classes with an ending like that!  “…it fell!...”

    Jesus concluded his sermon not on a high point of faith, but with the tragic picture of a Hurricane!  It’s an image of rain falling on the mountains and rushing down swollen rivers of mud to meet the rising flood-waters blowing in from the coast. This is not at all a happy picture!     “The rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell -- ... great was its fall!” 

    Back at my last church, I went twice to Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch with a team of 10 UCC & DOC church folks and we built a half-dozen houses in a banana plantation for families who had lost everything in that Hurricane. 

    The ten of us (and our Honduran work partners) who built those houses, did not do it on the ground, nor on a slab; unlike the workers in Jesus’ parable, we built neither upon sand nor upon rock. We built them on stilts!  Nine cement pilings... 
    We hope that the houses built on stilts will be above the waterline when the river floods again.  It is our hope that each one-room second-floor house is so well-balanced on those nine cement columns so that it will not blow over in a storm, nor collapse into a raging flood.  That is our hope...  The fact is, we won’t really know how well our efforts will stand up to the brunt of another hurricane until the next one hits Honduras.  Life itself has a way of revealing the strengths and flaws of what we do. 

    When the storms hit, we will discover together whether or not our preparations and diligent efforts were enough.  Before those two amateur efforts at house-building, I had never really noticed the inherent anxiety produced by Jesus’ concluding words: “The rain fell and the floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell -- (oh no!) -- and great was its fall!” 

    Now, when Jesus had finished saying these     things, the crowds were astounded! (Matt. 7:28)

    Maybe they expected something more “inspiring” from Jesus as a concluding statement to his sermon!  Maybe they expected a punch-line more in keeping with what the scribes (& teachers of Torah) would have done.  You know:
“Hey, everything’s gonna be alright! 
Don’t worry, be happy!  God is in control. 
Good folks won’t have bad things happen 
to them... You’ll’ be safe from the storms
 if you only believe.”

    But Jesus doesn’t cooperate with the sermonic norm... He tells it like it is -- chaos and all!  Real storms & floods, happen!  Tragedy strikes... yes, even to those people who are listening to Jesus.   In the real world (Jesus reminds us) even those things we build in utmost good faith -- with good intentions and to the best of our ability -- may falter & fail & fall in the end! 
    With those words said, Jesus turned and headed back down the mountain.  That’s no way to end a sermon, Jesus!  Where’s the “blessed assurance”? How can he leave it like that -- leave it up to us to decide how to interpret his words?  But that’s how Jesus is!  He leaves it to his listeners to act on his words, or not.

    The crowd that day had listened, I’m sure. I think they listened well.  We still have (after 2,000 years!) a relatively good sense of what Jesus taught...  I believe the people did hear him say the radical kinds of things that Matthew records.  But I wonder how many people in that crowd actually believed what Jesus was saying to them?  They heard him, but did they HEAR him?

    If you are like me, we often fool ourselves into thinking that if we hear something, we know it.  And we further think that if we know something -- that is, we believe it for real -- it will somehow become true.  We think: if we hear something, & believe it, & know it, somehow that will affect our actions in some way.

    But the fact is, that we often fail to do anything about what we say we believe!  We may know something to be true, but it doesn’t motivate us to action.  The UCC slogan on our bumper-sticker (that I shared with the kids last Sunday) reminds us that “To believe is to care; to care is to do.”  Saying we believe, is good, but it’s not enough. Even caring deeply about something is not enough.  We have to move our faith from our mouth to our muscles!  From knowing with our brains to “doing” with our behavior!

    “Believing” itself does not always come easily.  How often I have found myself refusing to believe what my eyes and ears were telling me.  As Mr. Spock used to say on Star Trek: “This does not compute.” 
If what we have come across does not fit our expected pattern, we tend to dismiss it.  If something strikes us as odd, unusual, a novelty, a new thing utterly unexpected & unbelievable, we don’t “take it in” very well.

    Much of what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount went against the Bible scribe’s traditional interpretation of the Law.  Jesus’ ideas ran “counter” to the cultural norms and standards of his day. ! ! Let’s face it -- most of the things Jesus said still goes against our common sense!  We hear you, Jesus, but we’re just not buying it!  Love your enemies..? C’mon!

    Do you see why I say there is quite a difference between hearing something, and believing it? 

    Just because we are told something -- and even when we admit that “we know it” -- that fact does not mean that we will necessarily act on it. And, friends, it is precisely this failing to take action which constitutes a weak foundation, says Jesus in today’s parable.  Our “structure of reality” won’t survive the storm if we take no action consequent to what we say we believe.

    One of the great joys of these housebuilding mission trips is that each time ten people from So. Calif. -- ordinary church folks like any of us -- not only heard about, and knew about the need in Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, and the devastation in El Salvador from the earth-quakes, but that they actually cared... and then not only donated generously to the recovery effort, but also put their bodies into action... 
   
    I applaud every one of you whose efforts (whose generous giving and active participation) makes our mission happen.  I am humbled to see so many good saints gathered here week-after-week in our little Los Altos Church! 
I thank you.  I trust that our words and our actions are acceptable to God.

    But then, what do I  know?

    I suspect there were plenty of good church-folk among the scribes and Pharisees, who were diligent about keeping God’s Law, who were seeking after righteousness and religious truth.  Many were in the audience that day.  Palestine (in Jesus’ day) was a hot- bed of religious activity, and every Jewish Zealot & Zionist was convinced that what they were doing for God and their country was precisely what God wanted! 

    Judea was full of priests and teachers of the Law, who monitored society and made sure that every “jot & tittle” (every “iota” of the Law) was being performed!  Jesus ran into those religious activists in Jerusalem -- and it landed him in hot water, for HE did not keep the Law according to their traditional interpretation!!  In fact, that’s what the bulk of this sermon in Matthew was about: “You’ve heard it said thus-&-so, by these guys in charge of our church and society, but I tell you something else entirely!”  Jesus did not agree with the dominant religious ethic of his day; instead, he taught something new.  He was a novelty.  He was an oddity.

    The Jerusalem crowd could dismiss Rabbi Jesus as just another radical activist from Galilee.  After all, in his day, Galilee was rich with Zealots, prophesyers, founders of charismatic movements, performers of miracles, divine healers, demon exorcists... Jesus appears to be just another Spirit-filled activist from Galilee. 

    Except that he says, in his conclusion to this sermon: “Many will say to me: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name...?’
“Then I will say to them: ‘I never knew you. 
Go away from me, you workers of evil.’ ” (Matt. 7:22-23)
   
    Whoah!  Hold on a minute there!  Just when I thought I had my spiritual house well-built on the solid foundation of my good religious activity, Jesus knocks the pillars out from under me. “I never knew you!” Me?

    You see, the group he is critiquing -- dismissing, in fact, as workers of evil -- are people like me (and you!).  Active insiders, faithful followers, people who use Jesus’ name freely, and who engage in works that imitate their Master.  He isn’t complaining about outsiders or hypocrites, about lazy loafers or mean-spirited megalomaniacs...  He’s talking about us -- religious activists who claim to be doing things “in Jesus name!”  “Lord, Lord!  Look what we’re doing in your name!”

    What’s wrong with that?  I would expect Jesus to commend these folks for their faithful service, for their piety, for their devotion to duty, for their extraordinary accomplishments... We built three houses in four days, the first time, for goodness sake; six in nine days the next time!  C’mon, Jesus, can I hear a little applause here? 

    No, friends.  It’s not about applause.  It’s not about being noticed as religious, or being held up as a role model of Christian ministry.  You see, the ones Jesus rejects at the end of his sermon are people just like us, who confess the highest Christology, saying “Lord, Lord” before everything they do.  They pronounce prophecies and they even work miracles...!  It shocks me to hear Jesus dismiss them.  What’s up with that?

    So far as I can tell, these folks Jesus is talking about (in the final sentences of his Sermon on the Mount) really do extraordinary deeds, and they really do preach powerful sermons, and they really do all their deeds in Jesus’ name! 
    And so it is unsettling to think that Jesus dismisses them -- saying, “Sorry... Only the one who does the will of God in heaven is an ambassador of God’s realm.”  And since I don’t know what you are trying to do, I don’t know why you’re doing it... but I know it’s certainly not anything you have been asked to do in my name.... Sorry, Charlie.

    It disturbs me to think that the people Jesus has described are not only in the church, they are most likely church leaders!  They are involved in the congregation, these are people who others look up to.  It’s the Pastor-teacher; it’s the Council member!  Others stand in awe of them for their faith and their words and their public pronouncements.  They are the ones on the pedestals.  They have made a name for themselves. 

    Brought closer to home, it is as though someone were to say: “That ‘Rev. Dr. Lance,’ now don’t HE be somebody!”  (I know you wouldn’t say that about me, but you know what I mean.) In looking up to someone as really closer to God than you, might just make yourself feel small, unable, dis-empowered.  From what I know of the Church, miracles do not a minister make!

    If “religiously active” people can be so decisively renounced by Jesus, I must face the fact that my own progressive assumption that what you and I are doing in God’s name (obviously) must be what God wants us to do -- just look how we are thriving! -- might also be dismissed by Jesus in the end as my own self-serving agenda and just something that makes me proud.  

It may be that my years of efforts at mission & ministry will be building my own little empire here at Los Altos UCC instead of listening for God’s will and building the “heavenly city” which God has in mind for us all.


    The reality is -- both for those of us who go on mission trips, and march against the War, who raise funds for hunger, and teach Sunday School, as well as for those who don’t do any such things in the church -- that the life of faith is not measured by our level of religious activity (no matter how well intended), but simply in terms of how much we trust God and walk our journey in faithfulness to the ways of Jesus. 

    Jesus describes the solid foundation of the wise builder as “one who hears and does these words of mine.”  That’s the solid foundation upon which we can build God’s heaven on earth.  Not just by our doing church stuff, but by doing the things that God values, such as the attitudes described by Jesus in his sermon. 

    Another way to say it is that Jesus’ words are not really heard until they begin to transform the listener.  We can’t say that we really believe Jesus unless we allow his vision to begin to direct our behavior.  “Not my will, God, but Thine be done.”

    To listen to Jesus’ words -- as we do in worship, and in private devotions at home -- is a positive first step in building a life that will last on a foundation of real meaning, but it is not enough.  To believe Jesus is a second step... and there are some Christians who stop at this point.  They call themselves Bible believers; or fundamental believers; or true believers.  But believing is not enough. 

    To really hear Jesus is to be grasped and shaped by his perspective so as to take a third step: becoming activated to do something about it.  Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount shook the religious foundations like a hurricane!  But when the storm settled, there were plenty of houses still standing... precisely those places where just deeds had followed the path set by his words.  May our houses be found standing among them on that day.