PUTTING OUR MONEY WHERE OUR MOUTH IS

(Preached on Sunday, May 22, 2005)

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.                                      -Matthew 7:24

 

Mess up the foundation of a building, lay it poorly, and you have a real problem.

Look at the leaning tower of Pisa!

Even before that beautiful, but awkwardly leaning bell tower was finished, the builders could tell that it was beginning to lean to one side.

The soft, sandy earth around Pisa was unstable.

The foundation was too shallow for the height of the tower.

They even tried to correct it, placing their stones a bit to the other side as each course of stone was laid.  It didn’t work.  The tower continued to lean.

One day, if not corrected, the leaning tower of Pisa will be a pile of rubble, for it will fall.  Fortunately, a team of engineers has been working for the last couple of years to pump concrete into the earth in order to get the tower stabilized for the future.  It would have been wiser to have built the foundation the tower needed at the beginning.

 

Jesus tells this story about two builders at the end of his lengthy set of teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount.

But Jesus is not offering instructions on house building.

Rather, he is using well-known information from their life-experience in Palestine to help them understand the life of faith, lived trusting God.

Jesus is making clear for them the importance of the choices we make in life.

 

Palestine is not a friendly place for construction.

The landscape is uneven with rocks and boulders.

It takes a lot of effort to lay a straight foundation on the sloping and convoluted surfaces, where no spade will dig.

There are, of course, the low spots in the wadis between the hills.

Here the sands have trickled to form a flat and even bed.

It is easy to begin construction, and the walls of the rock wadis seem to stand as security all around.

To the human eye, the builder who struggles to erect a house on the rocky slopes seems foolish — his efforts exceed the return.

Meanwhile, the builder on the sands of the wadis seems to have chosen wisely.

Construction speeds ahead, and he is living in his mansion before the other house even has a roof.

 

But then the spring rains fall in the mountains and suddenly the dry wadis become filled with a torrent of water and erase all memory of human construction on the sands.  While the house on the rocks above becomes a safe haven from the roaring waters below.

 

The construction Jesus is actually speaking of is the building of our lives.

Each of us is doing that every day.

And just as in any construction, we have hundreds of big and small decisions to make: wallpaper, shingles, and the carpet.

Some of the decisions are rather frightening because you know that you must live with them for years to come.

But the key decision, upon which all the rest of the decisions in the building of our lives depend, is the decision about the foundation for our lives.

And Jesus tells us right up front, at the beginning of the story, what that foundation is: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”

 

In other words, the foundation for our lives which will enable us to stand strong against the storms of life is our trusting Jesus’ teachings about God and about life.

Do we trust Jesus that God is love; that God loves us; that God forgives us and accepts us?

Do we trust Jesus that life is found not by grasping for everything we can and clutching it tightly to our selves, but rather life is found by giving our lives for the sake of bettering the lives of others?

 

The way we know we are trusting those teachings is by looking at our lives to see if we are actually putting those teachings into practice.

Are we loving freely and openly with acceptance and not conditions?

Are we forgiving those who hurt us and slight us, rather than holding grudges or seeking revenge?

Are we showing compassion and mercy to all we meet, but especially the weak and poor, those much older and those much younger?

Are we giving a 10% tithe of all we receive back to God for the sake of ministry in the world, and truly trusting God to take care of us with the remaining 90%?

 

Right before this story Jesus reminds us that truly being a part of God’s movement in the world, is not demonstrated by our claims that we believe in Jesus and God.

It is not just those who call Jesus “Lord” and who “claim” to trust God who are really doing it.

But it is those who are really trusting God by the way they are living their lives who are building their lives on the strong foundation that will remain standing when the floods rise.

 

The only way any of us can accept and participate in the 1% Challenge is by trusting God with our money and our lives.

It is God’s faithfulness, not our own, that is the rock on which we build our lives.

It is God’s faithfulness that gives us the power for living the life Jesus calls us to live — a life which trusts in the power, the goodness, the love and acceptance of God.

A life which demonstrates that trust by stepping out and taking the risk that Jesus’ teaching about God is true.

 

Linda Down discovered real power in life.

She had dealt with the limitations of cerebral palsy all her life.  One day, she got this crazy idea of running the New York Marathon.

But Linda walked with difficulty, so running seemed out of the question.  She used Canadian canes with arm clamps to steady her arms.

On top of this she was 25 pounds overweight and jobless.

In a state of depression, she began reading in the scriptures about the power of God at work in people’s lives.

She read Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

While training, she listened for God.

She thought as she was running in the dark at night: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction about things not seen.”  She thought about her limited dreams, her inability to see beyond the obstacles of life.

Faith, she said to herself, was running in spite of the insurmountable obstacles.

 

As the New York Marathon began that cold morning, some ten years ago now, she wore gloves on her hands to soften the impact of the crutches.

It was windy on the bridge and uphill.

She had not expected the beginning to be so difficult.

As she finished the mile-long Verrazano Narrows bridge, there were no runners in sight ahead of her.  Spectators were gone for the most part.

But one little girl ran out into the street and cheered her on, “You can do it!”

Others on the curb later applauded and cheered and shouted.

They brought tears to Linda’s eyes and helped her keep going.

 

Ten hours later Linda was still running in the dark through dangerous neighborhoods.  Some admiring spectators walked with her for safety.

Then an ABC-TV camera crew showed up and followed the story of her courage.