"Faith Takes Practice"

First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
June 1, 2008
Matthew 7:21-29

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

In his book, A World Waiting to Be Born, the late author and psychotherapist Scott Peck shares a personal episode from his life, a time when he learned something important about failure.

Peck writes, "Fourteen years ago my marriage with (my wife) Lily hit bottom, not quite the rocks, but bottom. At the time I was leading an overnight retreat for ten participants at a small convent. Sister Lucia, who was the guest mistress of the tiny retreat house where we were staying, was eighty-seven if she was a day. That night, after dinner and after I had been lecturing all day, several of the retreatants pulled out bottles of whiskey. Because I'd had a couple of drinks under my belt, because I was in a good deal of emotional pain at the time, and because she had such a kindly old face, I found myself sitting at Sister Lucia's feet telling her that I was feeling badly since I had failed at my marriage.

Sister Lucia beamed. 'Oh, that's just wonderful,' she exclaimed.

'Lord, Scotty,' I thought, 'get a couple of drinks in you and you go shooting your mouth off simply because this nun's got a kindly old face when the reason it's so kindly is probably because she's got no brain left behind it.' I spoke to her again, more loudly now, the way one does to the senile. 'No, no, you didn't understand me. I was telling you I've failed at my marriage.'

Again Sister Lucia beamed, 'Oh, I'm so glad for you,' she answered.

By this time I was becoming seriously annoyed. I practically shouted at her, 'No, no you haven't heard what I've been saying. Probably you've got a hearing problem. You're quite entitled to have a hearing problem at your age, my dear. But, anyway, you haven't understood anything I've said, so let's just drop the subject.' 'I've heard and understood you perfectly, young man,' Sister Lucia responded, looking at me keenly. 'You've been telling me you have failed at your marriage, and I'm so glad for you. Do you know how terrible it would be never to fail? Oh, that would be dreadful!'"

Peck goes on. "I recollected certain people I'd known who felt they had never failed and thought of just how insufferable they were, and I began to think that maybe she did have some gray matter left behind those intelligent eyes. It also occurred to me it was perhaps no accident that both Sister Lucia and I were attempting to follow a Lord of Failure, a man executed at an early age in the standard manner of the day as a petty provincial political criminal, spat upon by his enemies and betrayed by his friends.

It is also, I think, no accident that my marriage with Lily began to considerably improve along about that time. For what happened after I'd concluded I'd failed at my marriage was that, on a certain level, I gave up trying to make it work. And that meant I gave up trying to change Lily. And it was also around that time that Lily decided that she too had failed at the marriage, and also stopped trying to make it work and trying to change me. Furthermore, I suspect it is no accident that since that time, both she and I seem to have done a good deal of changing" (Quoted in Pulpit Resource, April/May/June 2008, pp. 39-40).

We think of times when we ourselves have done a good deal of changing, maybe a good deal of improving. Perhaps for you too it has come as a result of hard times, even failure.

Though how we hated the thought of failure! How we tried to avoid it, to work our way out of it, to bull our way through it, to save ourselves from it, only to realize that, as Sister Lucia said, not ever failing would be dreadful.

An odd lesson to be sure. Yet how else do we learn what it means to be human, what it means to be wrong, what it means to be needy, what it means to try, what it means to fall on our face, what it means to meet Jesus, in whom we know the mercy of God and the love of God, for it is in Christ's weakness that we are strong, and it is by his cross that we are saved.

So we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus' ethical teachings, with a very different attitude, even a transformed attitude. Because it is tempting to hear Jesus demanding success from us. It is tempting to hear Jesus insisting that we not ever fail. It is tempting to hear Jesus wrong -- that we had better get everything he says right or we are going to fall like a house built on sand.

After all, who in his/her right mind would build a house on sand? How foolish!
We can visualize the scene, the contractor shaking his head, saying to himself I can't believe this guy wants to build here! He could have had the next lot over with a solid foundation, but he has to have the better view of the ocean. He'll get his ocean view all right -- up close and personal!

Yet even life-long Christians can get it wrong, that Jesus must be some kind of harsh task-master who accepts only perfect scores from his students.
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. We want to be that person, that wise man or woman! We want to get this Christian life right! We'll please Jesus, you just wait and see! We can do this!

We want to do this. We know how important it is to put faith into practice. What is it if faith is not lived, if it's not genuine -- if Christianity is words only and not actions? We don't want that. We want to be the wise ones, the ones who hear Jesus' words and act on them. We want our house, our life, our work, our family, our community, our church, our ministry, our witness, to be built on solid rock. Not on sand.

We want it so bad we become afraid to fail. When we become afraid to fail we no longer hear the words of Jesus. When we no longer hear the words of Jesus, we are building our hopes, our prayers, and our faith on sand.

Yet when what we commit ourselves to is trying -- not necessarily succeeding, but earnestly trying -- then by the grace of God the pillars of faith go deep. To trust Jesus, to take him at his word, is to build on rock.

One of the great joys of being in the church is to know people whose lives are built on rock. They look like everyone else -- you look like everyone else -- no different. Just like the two houses Jesus describes: above ground they are exactly the same, indistinguishable, you cannot tell them apart. The difference is what's under the ground; the difference is the foundation.

Do we build on rock or sand? Really it's a choice we make every day. We need to! After all, as Jesus clearly says, no house escapes storms. Sand or stone, no one is spared life's storms. It's not a matter of fairness, it's a matter of foundations! It's not a matter of God protecting us from life's trials, it's about God protecting us in life's trials. So the rain, the floods, the high winds beat and blow against everyone's walls, windows, and doors. Will the house be able to stand against the elements?

Have you been in such a storm? They can go on for quite awhile. When we're in them we don't know when they'll end. We wonder sometimes if we'll make it through. But it's especially in these stormy times that followers of Jesus -- life-long believers and first-day followers -- hear his promise, his foundation-language: Everyone then who hears these words of mine 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.

Everyone who hears Jesus' words and acts on them. First we hear his words.
We focus on them, we sit with them, we recognize how incredibly challenging they are, how much we need the Lord's help and each other's support.

We hear his words: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
You have heard it said… 'You shall not murder,' …But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven..

…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air… Consider the lilies of the field..

And so we try. Our commitment is not to succeeding but to trying. We listen to Jesus and try as best we can to forgive the one person on our mind we know he wants us to forgive. We listen to Jesus and try as best we can not to cling so tightly to our anger and our need to be angry. We listen to Jesus and try as best we can to be gentle with those we meet. We listen to Jesus and decide that to the best of our ability we will be generous with others. We listen to Jesus and to the extent we are able believe that as God cares about our most basic needs, we will trust him with our deepest prayers.

We hear Jesus' words and choose to act in some way, some unspectacular but faithful way, to show that we too hunger and thirst for righteousness. We will love those whom Jesus loved, even the least of these. We will fall far short of perfect, yet we will not be afraid to fail.

We will show by our actions what it is we mean when we pray: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.