Sermon Preached at Northbrae Community Church, May 29, 2005

By Ron Sebring

Choosing a Solid Foundation

Spring rains in California have made for some interesting film footage.

Attractive have been the flowers that bloomed this year in Death Valley. Some have characterized this as a "once in a lifetime" event. Or the green rolling hills that lead into the central valley.

Of concern are the mud slides, particularly in Southern California. These water-soaked hills are letting go, even as we move toward summer. It’s awesome and tragic to see pictures of one of these fine homes, high on a hill, give way as the ground is saturated with water.

Knowing how much Californians pay for these homes, it is particularly unsettling.

Watching these slides from back east, people will ask, "Why do they build their houses on those hills?" And that’s a good question, until you stand on one of those hills and look out over the ocean. You understand. What a beautiful place to live!

But the rains do come. And the mud does slide.

I remember when Connie and I drove over to Pacifica. A year or so ago, Christy, Connie’s daughter, was looking at an apartment and we drove over there to have a look.

The apartments were beautiful, high on a cliff overlooking the ocean. A gazebo surrounded by ice plants. Sea gulls gliding out over the open water.

A year later, we went back … after the Pacific storms pounded the coastline. That year, they struck Pacifica. The sandstone cliff had been eaten back 20 yards or so.

The wooden stairway down to the beach was partly destroyed and closed off. The gazebo was gone. And the apartments next to these were precariously on the edge.

The scripture lesson for this morning compares the spiritual life to someone whose house, built on sandstone, is precariously close to the edge. Eventually, the foundation will give way and the house will fall. The parable contrasts this with the man who built his house on solid rock. The rains came and the floods arose, and the house stood.

Spiritual foundations, a part in our life that we don’t generally see, are important.

Spiritually speaking, as allegory, the rock is our spiritual discipline and moral foundation.

Integrity and devotion form the foundation for spirituality.

God’s grace loves us anyway, but if we ever hope to get a spiritual sense of being close to God, it takes things like prayer and meditation, things like not lying, not stealing, and doing no harm to others.

Spiritually speaking, the mud and the sand represent our negativity and resentment.

These things are more subtle, and will eventually erode our spiritual foundations.

I saw a cartoon, once. It was something like a political cartoon, only more of a commentary on life. It pictured a little man trying to step off of a dock into a rowboat.

The rowboat was not moored to the dock, and began floating away. The man’s legs split and he fell, grabbing the gunnels of the boat with his hands and setting his toes on the dock. And there he hung, precariously stretched out, inches above the water, as the boat continued to drift away.

The cartoonist labeled the Dock … The "is" And he labeled the boat … The "ought."

This little man hung between the solid "way things are," and the floating "way thing ought to be."

That is precisely what hangs people up. We get caught between our "is" and our "ought."

We get caught between living with things the way they are and trying to force things to be what they are not.

Negativity is a denial of what is … in favor of our imposed "ought." Instead of accepting and flowing with things as they are … we sit around spitting out moral commentary on how situations and other people "should" be. Things are never exactly as we would design them.

This doesn’t mean we can’t strive to make our world better. It means that until we can relax and flow with the way things are, we are not in a position to guide events for the better. It’s hard getting out of that cycle of negativity. It’s a place of being stuck.

This is an extremely important and powerful Biblical principle.

Jesus strolled through the market place and noticed a commotion up front. A circle of men were about to stone a woman to death for committing adultery. Angry shouts. Shaking their fists. Looking for big rocks.

Jesus slipped into the circle. He stood next to that woman. People stood still and watched. What would happen next? Jesus took advantage of that nervous silence by stooping down and doodling in the dust.

Then suddenly, he picked up a rock and shoved it under the nose of each man.

And he said, let the one free from any wrong, cast the first stone.

And no one could. One by one, they turned and left.

For when they looked at themselves, none of them could judge another.

This principle is stated explicitly in Matthew 7:1-5. Powerful! Let me read it: "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get back. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eyes."

This pattern is found throughout the Bible.

King David had so much of the good things in life! But he still was not satisfied. He saw Bathsheba bathing on the balcony. He invited her up to his apartment and turned the stereo down low. Soft music. A little wine. One thing led to another, and Bathsheba became pregnant.

Remember the story? David brought Uriah, her husband, home from battle, but he was too loyal to his troops to engage in the deception. So David sent Uriah to the front of the battle where he was killed, and then he married Bathsheba.

People began counting up on their fingers, and there wasn’t nine months. Everyone whispered, but no one wanted to confront the king. Except Nathan.

Nathan offered David a parable. A poor man had one lamb. A rich man had many. The rich man took the poor man’s one lamb for a feast. What to do? David’s judgment came down hard, and Nathan quietly spoke, "Thou art the man."

David realized that the Judgment that he rendered was the judgment that fell back upon him. Only then was he able to face his life and change it.

This is precisely what Jesus describes in Matthew 7:1-5. And this is precisely how it works with us. When we judge another, we are opening a little window into ourselves.

Paul says it in Romans 2, verse 1. Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.

I don’t know how many of us feel an "OUCH" when we hear these words. I certainly do.

We could go further if we had more time. Romans 14 talks about not judging one another’s beliefs, but rather working out our own and loving each other for the gift that they are.

Nearly every time we go into our kitchen, we have a cat at our feet, begging for food.

When cats beg, they get affectionate. Rubbing your legs and purring and looking innocent.

You almost forget all the chewing and claw marks on furniture and window blinds.

Almost, but not quite! All that loving and purring is designed to make you forget all the times you’ve gotten after them.

But even that much affectionate behavior eventually gets annoying.

Our cat has taken to giving little love bites. Nothing hard, but when you’re standing there in your bare feet, it’s not comfortable. And it demands your attention.

Our cats know how to get in front of you. Cats anticipate where you want to take your next step, and they slide around in front of your foot so you have to pay attention.

The problem is, as your attention becomes divided, the frustration mounts, and you can’t concentrate on what you went into the kitchen for. It’s always a divide between what’s happening and what you intend. When we get stuck in that divide, it’s aggravating.

When we were born, God put an invisible backpack on our shoulders. It has a few rocks in it. Maybe it’s there for our protection. When something doesn’t go like we want it, we can reach in that backpack and throw one of those rocks.

Sometimes it is a small rock, maybe just a hostile glance. Sometimes it is a big rock; when we want someone to notice, to pay attention.

What we don’t realize is that when we throw one rocks, God has appointed an angel to replace it with two more. As we go through life, throwing rocks, our backpack gets heavier and heaver. And we have only two choices. Either we will eventually break down under the load. Or we can simply take off the backpack and lay it aside.

As we said, this doesn’t mean we stop working for a better world. It’s that our ability to work for a better world gets snookered when we entangle ourselves in negativity. First clear the log in our own eye; then see clearly to fix another.