From the Rector

Dear Friends,

Because it ties in in significant ways with the theme of this issue, (and because of the lower attendance on the Memorial Day weekend!) I repeat here my sermon from May 29, 2005, the Second Sunday of Pentecost.

- Stephen

BUILDING ON THE ROCK

The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew
and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it
had been founded on the rock.

I can never hear those words of Jesus without thinking back to an unusual time in the life of this parish and of this very church building - the summer of 1991. For 11 weeks, although services continued in the chapel, the main morning service was held at University Presbyterian down the street because it had become necessary to replace the church floor. What an undertaking that was! The pews were all removed and stored, of course, making the church look cavernous, and the wood floor was taken up. While we had intended to reuse the original sub-floor, we discovered on exposing it that it had provided substantial nourishment to generations of termites! So that explained why the floor had felt so springy under our feet! Talk about building on sand....

The question for the vestry at that point was whether to authorize another wooden sub-floor at no small cost or for an additional $5,000 to put down a concrete slab. Mindful of the wisdom of these Gospel verses, they chose the latter. I will never forget the morning the first of many cement trucks arrived. It pulled up to the curb on Franklin Street, and a giant hose-like appendage several feet in diameter and long enough to reach all the way across the yard to the church and inside all the way up to the east wall was attached to its mixer. A disciplined crew of workmen with a foreman barking precisely-timed orders handled this cumbersome dispenser, heavy with yards and yards of wet cement flowing through it. Working carefully and determinedly together, they lugged and aimed this sea serpent-looking device from side to side and ever backward as it spewed out the bulky contents of truck after truck. Any mistake would have had lasting consequences! But they got just the right amount in all the right places, and once the slate was laid down over it, we knew that our church rested on a firm foundation for generations to come.

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock." This simple metaphor of Jesus conveys in story form some basic life truths. The first is that what we do now has significant consequences for later. The choices we make each day, the priorities that we adhere to, the values that we intentionally embody, will have significant effects, not only now, but in the future. Intentionally or not, we are all "building houses," whether those be of our academic formation or our character or our family life or our careers or our friendships or our contribution to the community. As a parish we are forming our children and our youth and ourselves in the faith. We are engaged in the habit of worship. We are starting a new congregation. We are strengthening ministries of hospitality and local and global outreach. We are planning to provide the facilities and staffing needed for the future. All of these individual and communal projects, if you will, are under construction. The efforts and the attention we pay to them now will have not only present but lasting consequences. If we approach them with the selflessness and the zeal and the dedication and the humility and the love of God and of neighbor that Jesus asks of his followers, we will indeed build those houses on the rock, houses that will withstand the storms life inevitably brings.

A personal example comes to mind from my early family life. About five years old, I was shopping with my mother at our corner market, the precursor of today's convenience stores. While my mother was checking out, the bright individually wrapped bubble gum caught my eye, and unbeknownst to her, I innocently helped myself to a piece! As we were driving home, my mother suddenly took notice and asked me, "Where did you get that gum?" "In the store," I replied matter of factly. "No," she said, "We don't take what we don't pay for." She turned the car around (no power-steering in those days!), drove back to the store, gave me a penny, and instructed me to give it to the grocer. It was a lesson that obviously made a big impression on me and was a major part of my moral foundation. Whether for ourselves or others, the choices we make now have significant future consequences.

A second major life truth conveyed by Jesus in this story is that storms and floods are part of everyone's lives. They are certainly not a sign of God's disfavor but an inevitable element of living a finite, temporal existence. Notice that both the wise man who built on rock and the foolish man who built on sand endured the same hardships. In both cases, Jesus says, "The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house." Following Jesus and patterning our lives after his teaching and his example does not protect us from storms coming our way. Our lived out faith helps us within the storms and sustains us against their force and their terror. But it does not exempt us, in the Prayer's Book's words, from "the changes and the chances of this life." In fact, following Jesus may bring more storms our way than we would have encountered otherwise. If we do persevere in resisting evil and proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ and strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, opposition and conflict will surely come our way, as our brothers and sisters at St. Luke's in Durham have rediscovered this month.

But if we have built on a firm foundation, if we have made Jesus the center of our lives and not ourselves, if our houses have been constructed out of integrity and love and dedication on the rock of Jesus, they will not fall. The rain and the floods and the winds will not destroy them, but God's grace will sustain them.

We do not manage that alone, of course.Like those who stood on the earthen floor below this church 14 years ago and with great effort and dedicated cooperation worked together to accomplish lasting good, so we as fellow Christians must support one another and move together in cooperative unity to achieve those tasks and construct those buildings that will stand the test of time. As we do so, God himself will be with us, and we will have built on a firm foundation for generations to come.

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© 2005 The Chapel of the Cross