How Firm a Foundation

Matthew 7:21-29; Psalm 46

Psalm 46

{1} God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. {2} Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; {3} though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

{4} There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. {5} God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. {6} The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. {7} The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

{8} Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. {9} He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. {10} “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” {11} The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Matthew 7:21-29

{21} “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. {22} On that day 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?’ {23} Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’

{24} “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. {25} The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. {26} And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. {27} The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” {28} Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, {29} for he taught them as one having authority.

The Sermon

“That church isn’t there anymore.” Those words always take me back for a second, especially when they come out of my own mouth.

When I was in my second year of seminary, I served a small church in a suburb of Chicago—I had to drive at least 45 minutes to get there, depending on the outbound Chicago traffic.

Coming from Hyde Park in Chicago—equal parts University of Chicago academia and the noisy, beleaguered South Side—I always found that suburb in the daytime to be almost preternaturally quiet, pleasant in the way that, say, a Twilight Zone episode usually starts off.

The neighborhood was all residential, meaning you would go down several rows of houses that were well-kept, modest and sturdy—a description that would also suit the people inside, at least the ones I knew. My respect for them knew no bounds.

Some years after I left Chicago, that church and another small church voted to merge with a third church in the area, the most stable of the three; only they did it in what I thought—I am such a genius—what I thought was the wrong way: they simply moved everybody into the central church, which kept its name.

So now, to look up anything about my old church, you’d have to know to look for the new one with a different name. It isn’t even in the same suburb. For all practical purposes, and other than some old statistical reports buried away in a forgotten file cabinet somewhere, that church isn’t there anymore.

Several years ago, one of my older brothers found himself looking for something that had been missing in his life: namely, church. But he was kind of starting over, and it was like knowing which neighborhood you’re looking for but not having the exact address. We had all grown up as members of Second Presbyterian in Bloomington, Illinois, so he started with a Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. There was a middle aged guy named Dean who ran a great little Sunday School class for adults. There were church women whose devotion over the course of their lifetimes was obvious. There was a fine preacher who was about the age of our grandfather.

Time ebbed and flowed, and eventually, through marriage, my brother found that the Catholic Church was exactly the house he had been looking for. Despite the obvious fact that God is Scottish Presbyterian…well, maybe it was predestined that my brother was supposed to be Catholic; that’s a fairly Calvinist way to look at it.

Anyway, a couple years later, he was driving in the area where that small Presbyterian church was, and as he went past the lot, he saw a deserted building with grass growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. I called the presbytery office and left a message asking about what ever happened to that church. The voice mail I got back was pretty simple: that church isn’t there anymore.

Usually when a message from a governing body comes across that cryptically, it means, “Don’t bother asking for clarification.” Maybe they had a split; maybe they left the denomination; maybe they lost their pastor and decided not to try to find a new one. Or, maybe they just lost their sense of their mission, threw up their hands, and said, “Whoever’s last out of the building, be sure to shut off the lights.”

One way or another, there’s one thing we can say for sure: that church isn’t there anymore.

After years of faithful attendance, a young woman in one of my first churches finally decided she was ready to join. In our new member class, as we talked about baptism, I mentioned that it is an ecclesiastical crime for me or any Presbyterian minister to perform a ceremony of re-baptism:

I would lose my ordination if I did something like that. The reason is: it’s blasphemy. To re-baptize someone would be to say, “Although you were baptized with water, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and although it is God the Holy Spirit who makes baptism effective, it must not have taken the first time. We’ll do it again and maybe God can do a little better job this time around.”

It’s hard to think of a more blasphemous thing to say. Once you are grafted to the body of Christ, there is no un-grafting.

Well, that brought up a catch: she wanted very much to be baptized. But, she said, it was possible that she already had been. She could vaguely remember that when she was a very young girl, the whole church—and this was a back-country, old time, no-denomination church, "out in the boondocks" as she called it—all 20 of them went down to the river. She was quite sure that her older sister had been baptized. But she genuinely did not know if she herself had been.

The problem was no one else would know either. There was no way for her to know who any of the other people would have been, who the pastor was. She had not spoken with her sister in some time.

But the main reason you couldn’t just go look up the records was: that little country church wasn’t there anymore—hadn’t been for years.

Sure enough, it was not long until one of the sisters called the other, and in the course of their conversation, the older sister said she remembered quite clearly that the younger sister had gone down to the river intending to be baptized, but had started to scream and cry and throw a fit, so they decided to wait. And they never did get around to baptizing her. So I did.

But other than in a couple of sisters’ fading memories, that little country church isn’t there anymore.

In 1881, J.B. Lightfoot, one of the great Biblical scholars of all time, wrote of the church of the Philippians, which appears to have been the Apostle Paul’s favorite of all the churches he established or visited:

“Of the church which stood foremost among all the apostolic communities in faith and love, it may literally be said that not one stone stands upon another. Its whole career is a signal monument to the inscrutable counsels of God. Born into the world with the brightest promise, the Church of Philippi has lived without a history and perished without a memorial.” (St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians. London: MacMillan & Co., 1881; p. 65).

All of these churches had, at one time, dedicated members who worshipped God faithfully. They had programs to educate their members and visitors, adults and children, so that all would continue in a lifelong process of knowing God and knowing more about God, day by day.

They reached into their communities and shared the good news tangibly, feeding hungry people and caring for all those whom society had forgotten.

And they all had people in them who understood one thing very well: that all of this—the education programs, the family night suppers, the worship services, the youth groups, the children’s nursery, the circles and the men’s groups—all of it belongs to God.

It is not ours to do with as we please; it belongs to God. Not one element of church life is not absolutely bound to the leadership of the Head of the Church, who is Jesus Christ. Not one part of the church functions as it should without the infusion and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In God’s time, we have our church. We do the best we can to be faithful to God through worship and service. We work at being true disciples. We strive to do the things that Jesus clearly taught us to do, and to live the way he clearly taught us to live. And we ask forgiveness for our wretched and miserable failures, many of them quite deliberate, to come anywhere near being the people that God created us to be.

But what if we no longer had the particular churches where we have felt the most comfortable?

Some of us have moved away from the churches where we grew up or had some of our most meaningful experiences. Some of us have grown up in churches that later burned down, or collapsed, or were demolished to make way for newer buildings. Some of us have sacred memories of sacred services in a building which now has a giant lobster painted on the roof and serves liquor at the bar which used to be…what part of the church did that used to be?

Outside the walls of our most familiar and comfortable church buildings—when you’re outside the bricks and mortar—how firm is your foundation?

Hey, anybody can toss around the name of the Lord. But, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of God in heaven.

“On that day 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?’ And I will have to say to them, ‘I don’t know you.’

“So everyone who hears my words and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can be said than to you God hath said,
To you, who, for refuge, to Jesus have fled?

“Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, I will still give thee aid;
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
“The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake!”

Sometimes, the rain will fall. Sometimes, the floods will come, and the winds will howl and pound on our houses. And sometimes, our houses will just crumble in the sunlight.

Anna Carter Florence has said, “The good news, at least for me, is not that I have a choice about building on rock or on sand. The good news is that Jesus is the rock [regardless of] my choice” (“Preaching the Lesson - Matthew 7:21-29” 06.01.2008, Lectionary Homiletics).

We celebrate the church God has given us and the blessings that God is showering on our church as it grows, and lives, and serves, and welcomes, and teaches, and worships.

And even more, we celebrate the firm foundation that undergirds everything that we are. God is our refuge and strength, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

Hear the words of Jesus, and act on them; and you will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

June 1, 2008