Rock? What Rock?

Sermon Text:  Matthew 7:24-27

Full Sermon on the Mount:  Matthew 5-7

This is a rough manuscript of the sermon I preached this Sunday.  Audio available here.

I can tell this story about my seminary because it’s not the only time it has happened.  Before constructing the new wing of the library, they did all the measuring, excavating, soil studies, site preparation, plans, and so forth.  They built the library.  It was beautiful.  I worked there.  (The head librarian at the time told me this story.)  Then they filled it with books.  How predictable.  Right?  Except it wasn’t.  It wasn’t predicted… expected… planed for… That’s right.  The planners had failed to account for the weight of all the books in that building.

These architects, engineers, and planners, who were trained, and intelligent, had not the wisdom to account for the weight of thousands of books.  As a result, the foundation was not what it needed to be.  That library is sinking more than inch every year.  The good news is that if my boys decide to go to seminary, they can work in the only underground seminary library.

And just like our story today, the difference between the builders of this (and other sinking libraries) and the builders of libraries that are built upon firm foundations is not the training or intelligence.  It’s the wisdom.  The story in our lesson today, the brief illustration from Jesus gives us very few details.  I think we can safely assume the houses look similar, are built in the same style of the day, outwardly very much the same.  And, there’s no indication of shoddy craftsmanship.  We have plenty of accounts and parables from Jesus about hard workers and lazy workers.  This is NOT such a story.  That’s not the lesson.  And we must be careful to notice this.  Because in this story, both men worked hard, both were very busy.  Both accomplished the task of building a house.  But one withstood the storm.  One didn’t.

So we have to look carefully at the words in these 6 verses.  What’s the difference?  One is built on a foundation of rock and one is a foundation of sand.  And we are told precisely what kind of faith or life is built on a rock and what kind of faith and life is built on sand.  The wise one is like one who HEARS THESE WORDS AND DOES THEM.  The fool is like the one who HEARS THESE WORDS AND DOES NOT DO THEM.

The Greek here for fool is MOROS… it’s where we get the word moron… it means both “foolish” and “godless…” to this culture, those two ideas are the same.  That’s a clue.  The WISE man and the FOOL both HEAR.  Maybe they even both BELIEVE.  But only one DOES what God has told him to do.  Which is what exactly?

Our passage today comes at the end of chapters 5 through 7.  Anyone remember what the rest of chapters 5-7 contain?  You have those Bibles right there.  Take them out.  Look for yourself.  That’s right.  Sermon on the Mount… the beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer (prayer 101), who WE ARE (salt and light), why he came (to fulfill the law – be our example)… he hits anger, lust, divorce, retaliation, loving our enemies, feeding the hungry, fasting, greed (laying up treasures here), worry, judging others, and the Golden Rule…  You CANNOT effectively read the wise man who built his house on the rock without the rest of this sermon.  Gray spent weeks preaching on the beatitudes.  You know them.  These three chapters are the rubric for Christian living, for a faithful life, our response to God’s grace. 

Let me be very clear here.  These are not rules.  These are not a checklist to EARN salvation.  They are not the means TO GET grace.  They are the response TO RECEIVING grace.  They are the rock upon which you build the solid faith that can weather the storm.  They aren’t busy work.  They are God’s work, our work, the Church’s work.

In talking to families and people of all ages… teenagers, college kids, young parents, middle age folk, retirees, when I ask them how they are, how things are going… it doesn’t matter if it’s school, extra curriculars, driving their kids to activities, involvement in all kinds of things, work, vacation… the answer I get more than ANY other is… I’m just so BUSY…  It doesn’t matter if it sounds like, “I’m so busy with school and AP classes and college apps and clubs and sports and band…” or, “I never knew such a young kid would have so many practices…” or, “I thought once they got older and started driving I’d have fewer things to get to!” or, “I always thought I would be LESS busy once I retired!”

But brothers and sisters, busy can be wise and busy can be foolish.  The measure of it is hearing and doing these words, the whole Sermon on the Mount.  I encourage you this week to read the whole thing.  In one sitting.  That’s how it was originally heard.  That’s how most early converts would have heard it read and told, as ONE message.  An explanation of the radical life of faith with this story of the wise man who built his house on the rock as a conclusion, not a stand-alone story.

I spent time in Israel a few years ago.  I stayed at a retreat house on or near where Jesus probably gave this sermon.  I read these chapters each morning when I got up.  It is our best reminder as believers the KIND of busy we should be.  Too many of us who yearn to be good parents, good citizens, good Presbyterians with a strong Protestant work ethic… we have bought into this notion that if we prepare our kids with the best schools, the right challenging course load, GPA, sports, clubs, travel teams, SAT and ACT scores, and land that perfect college, our kids will be set.  They’ll get that job, they’ll get that career and family and be safe, secure, taken care of.  That’s sand, brothers and sisters.  Make no mistake, that’s sand. 

The kids of my generation, those a few years older and younger… We are taking 5 or 6 years to graduate, if we graduate at all.  We are coming out with massive student debt, no jobs in our chosen fields, or adding to that debt with grad school.  We are not employed in our fields, or under employed or unemployed, living home.  Is it any wonder that mental illness, depression, substance abuse, and destructive behaviors are on the rise?  No.  As a community of believers, we have failed to help them build their life on the rock.  And when the rains and winds and floods come, the house falls.

Far fewer of us are building on the rock.  Instead of building a house that looks like a commitment to weekly worship, fellowship with other believers, study of scripture, serving the hungry and sick and in prison, of praying for one another and reading our Bibles at home with our families, of giving of our time and resources, teaching our kids to give a portion of their birthday money and allowances to mission and service to those in need instead of thinking first what they can gain, of showing our kids our budgets and how we prioritize giving to God… 

You see, we used to believe and see the pattern of young people drifting away from the church in their late teen years and college, drifting back when they start families, away when the kids grow up to be teens and stop being involved, and back when they think about end of life.  But we aren’t seeing that any more.  Just as common as the NONES, are the DONES.  Once they leave, they never come back to a community of faith.  So when we give up as parents and a family of faith and say to our high school kids, “we understand how busy your junior and senior year is…”  When we take them on college tours and check out the journalism school and the football stadium and the bookstore and the dining hall and dorms… but somehow the selection of campus ministries and churches doesn’t make the list for the college visit weekend, we tell our kids exactly what we think they should build on… Sand.  When they leave for college and we no longer make the effort to get to church or feed the homeless or visit those in need… we are building on sand.

Brothers and sisters, it looks bad when we build on sand.  It’s devastating. 

We all know at least one, or a handful of stories of those who storms have hit and they’ve been toppled.  Their house have gone kersplat.

But you know what it looks like when we build on the rock?  When we hear these words and do them?  When we make disciples of our young people?  This week, a six year old boy showed us.  He wrote a letter to the president that has gone viral.  This boy, named Alex, saw another 6 year old Syrian boy in the back of an ambulance on a news report… covered in dust and debris and blood… he said, “Dear Mr. President, Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]?  Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won’t bring toys and doesn’t have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it.”  “We will be waiting with balloons and flags,” he says.  Have YOU built your house on this rock?  Have you lived a life…are you living a life… that the six your olds in your life look at you and want to be like Alex?  Are we busy building on the rock or busy building on the sand?

A WISE man once said, get busy living or get busy dying.  We are called by Christ to HEAR and DO the things he tell us in the Sermon on the Mount, to build on a rock, to get busy LIVING.  Read these words again this week.  Read them several times.  Don’t just believe them.  DO them.  Talk about them with your family over dinner THIS week.  Measure your life not by being busy doing what everyone tells you will secure your future from the storms.  Build your house on the rock.  The storms WILL come.  The rains will fall, the winds will blow, the floods will rise.  And your house… will stand strong.  And all God’s people said… AMEN.