Sermons

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Wise and Foolish
July 16, 2000
First in a series on the parables of Jesus
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Matthew 7:24-27

This morning we are going to read a very short passage from the end of Jesus’  Sermon on the Mount.  The Sermon is, of course, the largest straight block of Jesus’ teaching that we have in scripture.  Think about what you may know of that teaching for a second. 

Jesus used it to teach those who would be his disciples.  In the Sermon are the Beatitudes… “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  There is also Jesus’ commentary on the Ten Commandments, but each one with a twist that moves beyond legalism to matters of the heart: 

You have heard that it was said “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  But I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. 

The Sermon also contains admonitions to pay special attention to the poor and needy, to pray with sincerity, to not store up material possessions, to seek first the kingdom, and to do to others what you would have them do to you.  A hundred things to live by.  The Sermon takes up Matthew chapter 5, 6 and 7.  And then at the very end of chapter 7, Jesus ends with one final story, what we call a parable.

Matthew 7:24-27:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

What we just read is one of Jesus’ parables.  The next three weeks we’ll be looking at parables.  A great percentage of Jesus’ teaching lies in these stories.  Jesus used them extensively to talk about the Kingdom of God, and about being a disciple, a follower.  There is a fourfold pattern to these stories: 

• A fictional story (but with an easy to recognize setting from peoples’ everyday lives) 
• The need for the listener to interpret what the story  might mean
• There is usually one point:  Frederick Buechner says, “A parable is a small story with a large point.”  
• And most often, the parable is left open-ended, with a question hanging in the air for the listener.

Jesus’ disciples once asked him: “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

And in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, part of Jesus’ answer is, “I tell stories…to create readiness, to nudge people toward receptive insight.”   Stories have the ability to break through our hard shells…shells we develop when we think we have the answers, or when  we have gone numb and quit listening.          

This story is simple enough.  Two parts.  First, the wise builder.  A sensible, thoughtful, prudent man who builds a house.  He digs down until he finds rock, a solid place to lay the foundation, and then begins to build.  It undoubtedly took some extra time to find that firm footing…but it was well worth the extra work.   When rain, water and wind came against the house, it stood up against the pressure. 

The second builder was mwro in the Greek…silly, careless, foolish.  The word we get “moron” from.   This builder just started in, with full energy and knocked out the project in an incredibly efficient manner, breaking all expectations for the completion deadline.  He didn’t have time to dig around much looking for the bedrock, but the house looked great when he was done. But what happens to the foolish man’s house?  Rain, stream and wind come up…and the sand footing is too weak to resist.  It falls with a great crash, utter collapse.

I couldn’t help but think of our family’s times at Whidbey Island as I read this parable.  Anne’s family has had a beach cabin there since the '60s, and we have spent time there each summer, even when we lived in other parts of the country.  And most years, the kids and I have engaged in a little summer ritual. 

At some point, we pack an old shovel, a hammer, and a can full of rusty nails down to the beach. We choose a spot high up on the beach beyond where the tide usually comes in.   And we scout around the beach for driftwood logs that would be good to build with, and we go to work building a fort.  We find four good-sized logs for corner posts, and dig a foot or two down into the sand, drop the logs in, and then begin to nail or lean other driftwood onto those four posts.  Usually in about an hour or two, we end up with a pretty cool-looking fort, and the kids use it to play in for the whole summer, or eat lunch in, or whatever.  When we lock up the cabin in September, we always take a last look at the beach, and at our proud little fort.   And when we come back in May to open up the cabin, we always walk down to the beach.  We look up and down the shoreline, and see the smooth new sand that the winter has brought in.  But we NEVER see our fort.  They never last.  The winter storms come, the tide pushes up, the south wind whistles across the island, and the posts put in sand are NEVER enough to withstand it. 

Now…how do we interpret?  What does this story mean?  And who is it for?  Isn’t it just the easiest thing to read the scripture, and wonder how it might apply to someone else’s life?  The philosopher Kierkegaard once said, “When you read God’s word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” 

Jesus tells this story to a group of people who are believers.  This is not a description of Christian and non-Christian, of believers and pagans,  but a word to the church, to the believers…or at the very least, to those who have heard Jesus’ words.   Both builders described are people who have heard the word of Jesus.  The first thing that has to happen is to hear Jesus…that needs to happen before any doing is done.

And so I ask myself…and I ask you.  Are you hearing Jesus?  There are different ways of doing that.  The most basic way is to read Jesus’ words.  It’s why this parable is at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s why we have the scriptures.  And as silly or fundamental as it may seem… are we encountering Jesus through the scriptures?   Are we listening to Jesus?  

When it comes to sorting out life, we seem willing to listen to just about everybody.  Call-in talk shows have never been more popular.  Internet chat rooms are jammed.  The book stores are jammed with books dissecting our culture and defining our times and our problems and our spirituality.  Or, perhaps more credibly, we eagerly tune into NPR interviews, or pick up the Wall Street Journal’s analysis. 

But how often do we stop and ask:  What does Jesus say about this?  Do the words of Jesus apply?  I think particularly with people who have been in the church for a long time, it’s easy to drift away from the scripture, “I’ve already read that, I’ve already studied that.”  And we begin to depend on what other people say about what Jesus said, or to read certain theologians or mystics or poets for our strengthening…all of which are great!  But not replacements for listening to Jesus, for allowing God to encounter us through the Bible. 

The WWJD bracelets and T-shirts are still going strong. “What would Jesus do?”  That’s great.  But maybe we ought to back up one step:  “What does Jesus say?”  There is no replacement for being in the scriptures.  It’s why we read together each week, it’s why Elder Mike Purdy is charting out a whole fall slate of classes for Bethany that will engage scripture.  The first question is, are we hearing Jesus’ words?

The miracle of being in relationship with a living God is that we also hear God within that relationship.   But listening is difficult.  There are so many voices available, and clamoring for attention. 

I had an interesting week last week.  I was gone from Thursday through Sunday at a class over at Whitworth College in Spokane.  It’s part of a Spiritual Formation program I am in.  And I chose this particular class because of the two people who were supposed to teach it.  One of them, Terry McGonigal, the Dean of the Chapel at Whitworth, was diagnosed two weeks ago with lymphoma and began chemo treatments…I knew he wouldn’t be at the class.  The second teacher was Ben Campbell Johnson, a professor at Columbia Seminary and fairly well-known author.  The morning he was to fly out of Atlanta, his blood pressure soared so high his doctor wouldn’t let him fly.  And so I arrived in Spokane to find out that NEITHER of the people I had wanted to be with would be there. 

The organizers scrambled to come up with local people to fill in, which was fine…but not what I was looking for.  Thursday night, and all day on Friday, I thought about just bagging it and coming home.  I even started packing a bag.  But somehow, in the quiet of a run, God said,  “You’re here to listen to me anyway…not them.”  I argued.  But it seemed to stick, and so I stayed.  Now, this is not a “and it all ended happily ever after story.”  I continued to have some very frustrating moments.  But I did have some very significant blocks of praying and journaling, and came home feeling very in touch with God.  I felt like I was hearing God’s voice. 

That lasted until I had been back in the office for about two hours.  And then I heard all these other voices…for me, they sound like this right now: 

“We’re in the middle of a youth house remodel…will the money come in?” 

“We’re losing our music director, and we’ve lost our organist…where will new people come from?” 

“You need to spend more time with your staff, you need to come up with more vision, you need to put some fires out, you need to you need to you need to.” 

Just a little panic, a little hysteria and a little sense of inadequacy set in.  And it wasn’t until Thursday, when I had my time of quiet study at the library, and opened up the scripture for today, and began to read the words of Jesus from the Sermon that all those other voices quieted down, and once again I felt I was hearing.

I was reminded that hearing Jesus does not happen by magic, or by itself.  It requires us to be intentional.  To seek Christ, to read the scriptures, to memorize, to study, to wrestle, to pray.  If we aren’t intentional in honing our listening skills, it doesn’t happen.

So there are two groups of hearers.   The first group that hears, Jesus compliments.  When the rain, water and wind come up…and notice that the exact same things happen to each of the two houses.  Crummy things happen, tragedy happens, emergencies come up…there is absolutely no guarantee to a Christian that we somehow escape hard things, though I think that we often think that, or are told it, or perpetuate it inside of ourselves.  It’s easy to get into a mentality that “I know Jesus, I’ll pray, and all of the things in my life will work out beautifully, and it will be smooth sailing.”  It’s not true.  The rain, the streams, the wind slaps against every house. 

The question is, when the storm is over, will the house still be there?  When the difficult moments of life hit…are we anchored to something that can empower, encourage, surround, support…are we anchored to God, and to God’s people?  Does life fall apart, or with God’s help, will we make it through?  Dale Bruner writes:  “Obedience to Jesus’ words, then, is not so much a protection from troubles as it is a protection in them.”

The second group that hears, Jesus calls foolish.  When the house went up it looked good.  Really good.  Maybe as good as the other house, maybe even better.  But when the storm is over, the house is gone, the beach is smooth. 

What’s the point in the parable?  The difference between the two builders is just one thing.  Both hear, both build, both have the storms hit.  The words in the two scenarios are exactly the same except for one thing:  the foundation.  One hears Jesus’ words and puts them into practice.  And one hears Jesus’ words and does not put them into practice.  That is the difference.  

I tried to imagine the setting where Jesus was speaking to the crowd.  It wasn’t THAT different from where we are right now … people gathered together, listening and thinking.  And I imagined Jesus standing before us, teaching and seeing two groups of people among us.  I wondered if he would say to himself as he talked: “It SEEMS like they are hearing, all right, but all of their hearing doesn’t result action.  Where is the love for those they don’t like, where is the concern for the poor and needy, where are the prayers of the heart, where is the rejection of materialism, where are the people who will treat others the way they themselves want to be treated?  So I guess they’re not really hearing after all.  I guess they don’t take me seriously enough to act on what I tell them.”

We need to hear, we need to meet the Living Word of God, Jesus the Christ, to hear Him, to listen to Him in the scripture.  The journey starts there…but it doesn’t end there.   We are not called ONLY to hear, not called ONLY to sit and read the Bible, not called ONLY to study or meditate or draw close to God.   But the hearing of Jesus also brings action.

What Jesus is really after in this parable is our hearts.  He doesn’t tell us this story of the wise and foolish man to give us information…he wants the response of our hearts.   When our hearts hear, it will result in action.  It’s why the Sermon on the Mount starts with the words of grace, the Beatitudes…before any of Jesus’ teaching on how to live, comes the Blessed Are You’s.  The Sermon on the Mount CANNOT be lived apart from knowing Jesus.  It’s when the living Christ lives in us, when we know his words, when we know HIM…that our hearts drive our whole lives.  

Now.  I said at the beginning that one of the marks of Jesus’ parables is that as they do their work on us, we are often left with a question.   I want to read you this parable once more and encourage you to prayerfully listen and ask: “What question is Jesus asking ME through this story?”

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.   

Amen.