“Solid Rock, or Shifting Sand?”                   Dr. Julie Adkins

                   Text: Matthew 7:21-29

 

SERMON

 

Several years ago, as I was getting ready to move to Dallas,

          I found myself on the receiving end of

                   all kinds of “helpful information”

                   from folks who knew the city better than I did.

Some of it was more helpful than other bits;

          for example, I already knew to ignore those who said,

                   “Oh, you don’t want to live in Oak Cliff!”

But someone else, and I can’t remember who,

          told us much more useful stuff, like,

          well, there are lots of nice neighborhoods in Irving,

                   but you don’t want to live there,

                   because there’s something weird about the soil in that area,

                             and everybody has foundation problems.

Unlike that first comment,

          I found out subsequently that there is some truth to

                   that warning about Irving!

Another bit of useful information I learned quite by accident,

          reading the Dallas Morning News, of all things.

Some columnist or another was joking about

          how he or she had never before lived in a place that was so weird that

                   you had to water your foundation.

That sounded pretty silly to me,

          but I did a little research,

                   and found out, sure enough:

          even if we’re in the midst of an awful drought

                   and the most severe watering restrictions,

          it’s still okay – and necessary –

                   to get a garden hose and water your house’s concrete slab.

Well, we never had to do that in San Antonio!

Besides which, the house I grew up in

          had a pier-and-beam foundation anyway!

Anyway, within the space of just a couple of months,

          I had twice been made to think carefully about

                   something I had never given a lick of attention to before.

 

I suspect that, most days,

          most of us give exactly that little attention to thinking about

                   the foundations upon which our lives are built.

What kind of ground are we planted on, for one thing?

Is it solid rock, or shifting sand?

          Dry land, or swamp?

The textbook-correct answer is, of course,

          that we need to be built on solid ground.

That Jesus is the solid ground on which, on whom, we build.

… If only doing it right were as simple as

          knowing the right answer!

For one thing,

          there are plenty of folks in our world,

                   and some in our churches,

          for whom the notion of “solid ground” on which to build

                   is itself almost inconceivable.

Imagine, perhaps, that you had grown up in a family –

          or maybe you did! –

          where you really couldn’t depend on anyone or anything.

Perhaps the family has had to move often …

          even skipping out in the dead of night

                   to avoid a confrontation over unpaid rent.

Perhaps you have had no place to live at all,

          no place to put down roots,

                   just various temporary shelters.

Or perhaps you couldn’t trust the people you lived with.

Sometimes mama was there, sometimes she wasn’t.

Sometimes daddy loved on you, sometimes he beat on you,

          for no reason you could ever figure out.

Sometimes there was enough money for somebody’s cigarettes,

          but not for your food.

Some of your neighbors were nice people who tried to help,

          and others of them were really scary.

And of course, Sunday morning was for sleeping off Saturday night’s party,

          not ever for church.

Now, there are pieces of that picture

          which may ring true for some of us …

                   we may have had to move a lot and always felt uprooted,

          we may have had a parent who was abusive,

          we may have had no childhood experience of a church community …

But can we even begin to imagine

          what it must be like for someone who must survive all of that …

          as is true for far too many in our world,

                   in our nation, in our immediate community.

People whose only experience of “solid ground”

          is getting knocked to the ground, time and again,

                   by forces stronger than they are,

                   over which they have no control.

 

For most of us in the Presbyterian church,

          not just here, but everywhere, in this country anyway,

                   that’s not our experience.

Even if we didn’t grow up in the church,

          most of us grew up with at least some stability.

People we could count on.

Lives that had a certain measure of predictability.

Enough for the necessities, at least most of the time.

There may be some areas of our lives, past and present,

          where the shifting sands have endangered us.

But for the most part,

          we understand and have access to solid rock.

We know what it’s like.

 

And that’s mostly a good thing.

The danger of it, if we can call it that,

          is that we can sometimes mistake our solid human support

                   for the real support of Jesus Christ.

When we’ve had it fairly good, relatively speaking,

          it can be easy to confuse human goodness with God’s goodness.

And we may then start to build our personal foundation, our house,

          on something that looks and feels solid, but isn’t.

Kind of like those houses in Irving that I was warned about,

          where for ten or twelve years everything is just hunky-dory,

                   then you discover that the walls are starting to crack.

The ground is not solid; the foundation is shifting,

          and we may be in trouble.

The best and most solid human work, human effort, human love,

          isn’t strong enough to support even our own lives,

                   much less anyone else’s.

We have to build our foundations on something stronger.

But at least we have a head start;

          we know what that should feel like.

 

Another possible danger:

It’s possible to find solid rock,

          and to have a firm foundation,

                   and still to build an ugly house upon it!

We all know people like this:

They are the ones who truly do believe in God and in Jesus,

          but seem to take no joy in it.

I suppose you could argue that a joyless Christian is no Christian at all,

          but I think I want to take seriously these folks’ assertions

                   about their beliefs.

They’ve got solid rock under them;

          they know God has rescued them

                   and that without God they would be without hope.

They’ve built stable foundations on that rock –

          as stable as any human being can build, anyway –

                   yet what they have built is unattractive.

Uninviting to others.

I think this is the sort of person

          that the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay had in mind

                   when she wrote this two-line poem:

                             Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;

                             Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

As if to suggest,

          it’s better to be a pagan

                   than to be a Christian and ugly about it!

 

Well, you can decide whether you agree with that or not!

I do want to suggest, though,

          that we really are faced with two problems.

The first is,

          on what kind of ground are we built, and building?

The second is,

          what are we building on that ground?

What kind of foundation do we lay,

          and what gets built on top of it?

 

For the most part,

          those who have chosen to build shining palaces on the shifting sands,

                   aren’t in church this morning,

                             so I’m not addressing them for the moment.

We do have to reach out to them,

          but it has to happen at other times and in other settings.

11:00 a.m. Sunday morning, they aren’t here.

So I’m going to assume that those of us who are here,

          have built, or at least are trying our level best to build,

                   on the solid rock of God and Jesus Christ.

Our challenge is something like this:

          We always have some sand mixed in with our solid rock.

That’s not to say that Christ is somehow mixed up,

          but that we have divided loyalties and priorities.

So when we start to build our house of faith,

          part of it is on solid ground,

                   and part of it is not!

We build on Jesus Christ for some pieces of our lives,

          but for other pieces, we feel more confident building on …

                   our own talents and abilities,

                   or on what has always worked in the past,

                   or on a sense of financial need and security,

                   or sometimes on a sense of entitlement

                             (you know, “I’ve worked hard so I deserve this”).

And what happens over time?

The unstable ground shifts;

          the foundation shifts along with it,

                   and suddenly cracks start to appear in our lives.

Things that worked before suddenly don’t seem to work quite right,

          like doors that don’t hang right any more.

Things don’t look as good as they did at first,

          sort of like cracks in the sheetrock.

And we may be able to paper over or plaster over things for a while,

          but sooner or later, it becomes unavoidable:

                   We need foundation work.

Now obviously, if it’s your house that you’re dealing with,

          you have to work only with the foundation and what supports it;

                   you can’t dig out all the soil and replace it with something better.

But with our spiritual house,

          the first place to start working is with the ground beneath the foundation.

What pieces of our lives have been built on shifting sands?

Can those be rebuilt on solid rock,

          or is it something we have to tear down,

                   and rebuild somewhere else?

Or even worse, is it something we should never have built at all?

What is there in our lives that is solid,

          that we can build onto?

Where are we strongly connected to Christ,

          and what can we build on that?

Can we replace some of the sand with rock,

          or do we just have to avoid it from now on?

What kind of dwelling-place for God

          are we building ourselves into?

 

Interestingly, it has occurred to me that

          if we try to visualize and analyze our lives in this way,

                   it starts to make some sense of the old argument about “faith and works”

          that Paul is dealing with in Romans,

                   and that Jesus alludes to as well.

Paul says unequivocally that

          “a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law”.

But Jesus is reported as saying that not everyone

          who says he is Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven,

                   but only those who do the will of God.

That seems a pretty stark contradiction.

But think about it like this for a minute:

If we talk about God and Jesus as being the ground on which we build,

          on which everyone has the opportunity to build,

then think, first, about faith as being the foundation of the house we are building.

It is theoretically possible to build a house without a foundation,

          but it’s pretty shaky.

We’ll come back to that briefly in just a minute.

If faith is the foundation, then,

          our works are the structure that is built on top of the foundation.

Without the structure, the foundation is incomplete.

Without works – not works of the law,

          but works of love, works of righteousness –

                   our house of faith is incomplete.

Unless we build on our faith and have something to show for it,

          we aren’t done yet!

Can you have works without faith?

Or, can you have a structure without a foundation?

I think you can, but it’s not easy.

          And it’s unusual.

It is, I believe, possible for people to build on the solid rock of God

          without the foundation of faith in Christ …

                   and to build a structure of impressive proportions

                   and good works that are wide-ranging and meaningful.

But I think it’s difficult.

Because Jesus teaches us so much,

          and shows us so much about what God is like,

                   and gives his very life for us! …

That pushes us into doing good works

          in a way that not much else can.

So it’s possible to have works without faith,

          but they are at risk, like a building without a foundation;

and it’s possible to have faith without works,

          but it isn’t enough, like a foundation without a building.

 

And none of it at all is possible until we build on rock.

Here’s a parable to leave you with – a true one at that:

          In 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck the state of Florida,

                   leaving incredible destruction in its wake.

          Thousands of homes were damaged; hundreds were destroyed.

          Thousands of people were left homeless,

                   at least temporarily.

          But in Miami, in a combination of different neighborhoods,

                   there were 27 homes that withstood the wind, the rain, the floods.

          All 27 had been built by Habitat for Humanity.

          In fact, no Habitat house in Miami was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew,

                   even when every other house in the immediate area was a total loss.

          The Miami Herald headline announced:

                   “Tally:  Habitat 27, Andrew 0”

Do I think that God somehow miraculously sheltered those 27 houses,

          and let mother nature have the rest?

                   I do not.

Do I think those 27 were probably better-built,

          because the people building them actually cared?

                   I do.

But what does it tell us about building on solid rock?

About the “good work” of building nice houses

          for God’s children who happen to be poor?

Friends:  if we have built our faith and our works

          on the solid rock of God in Jesus Christ …

if we have laid our foundations and structured our lives

          on solid ground …

the rain and the floods and the winds may beat on us,

          but they will not prevail.

We have God’s word on it.

Amen.

 

© 2002 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)