Year A (Proper 4)

Readings: Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19 & Matthew 7:21-29

Jesus tells a familiar story in today's Gospel. A wise man builds his house on a rock while a foolish man builds on the sand. When the rainy season comes the water rises. The wise man's house built on the solid foundation weathers the storm. The wise man prepares for what is to come. The foolish man on the other hand takes the easy way out. His house is destroyed.

The story follows the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is speaking to a large crowd including the disciples. He is warning them about those who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. "There are people," he says, "seemingly good people, faithful people, even people who perform miracles, but they do what they do without any compassion. Such people," Jesus says, "can expect to be held accountable for their actions."

We all know people like that. There’s an acquaintance of mine, we’ll call him John. In many ways he is a faithful Christian. He is a lay reader and has served as a warden in his church. He is active in the community. One thing bothers me about him. It may seem a little thing, but I find it troublesome. His language is, to put it mildly, colourful. I asked him how he could confess his faith in Christ and use that same name so freely to make his point. "That’s the way everyone talks," he said to me. "I’m just being one of the gang." I think he has missed the point of what it means to be a Christian. I’m offended by his lack of integrity.

Going back to the parable, the message is quite pointed. It imagines a scene where self-confessed Christians call to Jesus as their Lord and point to their prophesying and miracle working only to be told they are not part of the kingdom. They are being told that they have missed the whole point about what Jesus is about.

We don't expect to hear that about our life of faith. We think it is enough to say that we are Christians. We think that it is enough to turn up in church every once in a while. We think it is enough to give our time, talents and treasures. We may even have experiences that we hold onto as proof that we are on the right track in terms of our faith. And here is Jesus saying that we may be building on sand.

The story of Noah has a similar theme. God promises never again to curse the earth. We might think it is because the hearts of humanity have been changed, that people have turned back to God and that creation has been redeemed. Read the story again. That isn't what is behind God’s promise. God says, "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth." Drowning hasn't done any good. The people who survived didn’t take long to go right back to their old ways. Sin survived. God accepts it as part of human nature. Not that God is giving up on humanity! Far from it! God is faithful to creation. And so God establishes a covenant with all living things, the earth and its people. God looks for another way to transform creation.

Christians are capable of getting it wrong. We are capable of building churches on the wrong foundations. If our churches are not grounded in the compassion of Christ then we are not fulfilling our call to be Church. In our own denomination right now we face litigation because of our failure to act with compassion. I am speaking of the litigation involving Residential Schools and our Aboriginal people. True, it is much easier to see the error of our ways from our present day perspective. But we mistreated people in the name of religion. We treated our Aboriginal people as if they were less than human. Hopefully we will find a way to redress the sins of the past in such a way that justice is brought to served.

We are also capable of building our lives on the wrong foundations. We can profess Christian faith all our lives, but until we understand the implications of God's grace it isn't making any difference in our lives. Our Christian faith needs to transform us. We are deluding ourselves about our commitment to the faith if we worship God on Sunday and then live quite another way for the rest of the week.

That all needs some unpacking. Jesus is not suggesting that our salvation is dependent on good works. Doing good things doesn't make us right with God; but if we're right with God we will naturally do such works. What really needs to happen is that we need to be transformed by God's grace. We need a change in our life that embraces our Lord's will as well as his life and salvation. We need experiences that change our relationship to the world, to our possessions, to the poor and dispossessed, to violence in our society, and to the idols of our society.

Working miracles isn't going to get us into the kingdom of Heaven. Preaching great sermons is not going to get us into the kingdom of Heaven. Charismatic activity is not going to get us into the kingdom of Heaven. Studying theology isn't going to get us into the kingdom of Heaven. Writing good intentions on pieces of paper is not going to get us into the kingdom of Heaven.

The foundation of our faith is the life of Christ. He is the rock on which we need to build. If we do not intend to live that kind of life we are deluding ourselves to say we are his. It is easy to talk about what should be done for the poor, the homeless, the drug users. It is comforting to be counselled about our problems. But somewhere along the line we have to stop talking about our faith and start living it.

Last week I was watching Oprah one day when Dr. Phil was on. He was asking people to look at the ten defining moments in their lives. Most people found embarrassing or abusive moments in their childhood and used them to say, "That is why I can’t move ahead. It is why I am stuck in a bad job." One of Oprah’s defining moments could have been negative, but it wasn’t. It helped her to see herself differently, to appreciate her strengths.

We need to look for those kinds of moments in our Christian life. They are times of conversion when we experience God for the first time or in some new way. They are times when we know God to be close to us. They are times when we feel lifted into God’s presence. They are times when we feel graced by God. They are times of insight and inspiration. They are above all times when some change takes place in our heart. I like to call them "Aha" moments.

Such times may bring about a deep sorrow in our lives as we are convicted of the wrong that we see in our own lives or the lives of those around us. They may bring about a great joy as we realize the great compassion of God. They may bring about an overflowing of emotion as we respond to God reaching out to us. What they never fail to do is to transform us.

One such defining moment for me was my trip to Africa. I was invited to speak at the World Council of Church’s Women’s Festival that ended the Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women. The experience of sharing my story with twelve hundred women from around the world; the experience of hearing other women share the deep sorrows and joys of their lives; the experience of immersing myself in another culture and seeing first hand what grief our greed as a First World nation has caused; the experience of studying the Scripture, of worshipping, of sharing faith with women of diverse cultures and backgrounds; all of that was life changing.

Not long after I got home someone in my parish got angry about and lashed out at me, "Africa changed you," she kind of snarled at me.

"It certainly did," I responded to her. "It was a life-changing experience. The bigger wonder would have been had it not changed me."

The experiences that God leads us into need to be moments of transformation in our lives. They help us live more intentionally, more authentically as Christians. They immerse us in Christ. Even tragic events, which leave us reeling as we deal with loss and destruction, or questioning God's existence, can be defining moments in our lives, moments of transformation. The challenge is to keep on believing that God is present in every incident in our lives, and to trust in God ‘s compassionate love. If we are building on the right foundations then we will remain firm in God’s love. We will know God’s presence in our lives. We will continue to be transformed into Christ’s likeness. And we will in turn be agents of transformation in a needy world.