"Build"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 7:21-27 click here to watch the Sermon“Build"

It’s been fifteen years, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever forget the summer of 2011 in northwest Iowa. Sometime around Memorial Day weekend people noticed the Missouri River had risen. That itself wasn’t too surprising. Rivers rise in the late spring into early summer. Around here it happens when the snowpack melts and makes its way into the Rio Grande. In our corner of the Midwest, it was some of the same along with those heavy spring rains. April showers bring May flowers, and May flowers bring pilgrims. No, just the first part, but I couldn’t resist. The late winter snow and spring rains that feed the Missouri were particularly heavy that year. The snowfall in the upper Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming broke records. Then came the heavier than normal springs rain that contributed to rapid snowmelt. The soil was already saturated and couldn’t absorb that much water that fast and so it all found its way into the Missouri River basin. The flood control reservoir system upriver was controlled by the US Army Corps of Engineers, but those reservoirs had been kept high in anticipation of the summer recreation season, so that people could enjoy all manner of boating and water sports on their summer vacations to the area. So, when so much water hit those reservoirs that fast, the Army Corps had two options. They could release flood stage amounts of water, or risk the dams failing altogether to create an even bigger, catastrophic downriver flood event. They opted for the former. Over the next three months the water released put the river where we lived in a state of perpetual flood. The interstate running south to Omaha was closed due to flooding. But more immediately an entire housing community of 3,000 people along the river in South Dakota had to be evacuated, for three months. That’s 3,000 people who needed to find alternate housing for three months, close to enough to keep working while they wondered what would become of the homes they had to leave. The army corps quickly built makeshift temporary levees, one of which cut across a friend’s swimming pool. But the risk wasn’t just above the ground. The housing development was named Dakota Dunes. The whole thing had been built on naturally occurring sand dunes that had grown over the centuries as year after year of spring flooding overflowed the banks and deposited sand and silt from the river. So, the risk of ground water flooding basements was also very real. The developer of the project was a smooth operator. The house we lived in in a different part of town was across the street from a tributary creek that had never flooded our historic neighborhood in the hundred years of its existence. Nevertheless, in order to secure our mortgage, we had to carry flood insurance that was the equivalent of an extra mortgage payment each year. The folks living in the Dunes, adjacent to the mighty Missouri river had no such requirement. They sure were pretty houses. When you could live in them. 

Jesus concludes his Sermon on the mount with some pointed words about what we say and what we do, and how it builds a life. It’s worth remembering that the whole point of the long discourse that Jesus gives to his disciples on this hillside in Galilee is to describe just what he means when he talks about the realm of God’s power come near, the kingdom or kinship of the heavens that Jesus invites us to enter into. It’s blessing redefined. The goodness found not in our successes, but in the blessing of God’s powerful presence in all of the less than successful places and experiences that we encounter in life: poverty, mourning, hunger for justice, meekness, even persecution. It’s the salty goodness and light we have to offer that reveals the flavor of this world that God so loves. It’s the discovery that perfection is less about following rules to avoid punishment and more about attending to all the ways we are made whole by aligning our hearts to the heart of the one whose love is all encompassing. When our lives are reoriented toward God’s ordering of the world, it disrupts our need to be right, or to be seen as right by anyone other than God, which in turn frees us up to give and pray and forgive as those who recognize the multiple ways God provides for us daily, including our need to be forgiven of all the ways we may miss the mark. Seeing the nearness of God’s power and presence calms our needless worry and points us toward the kind of treasure that we don’t have to hoard or protect for fear it will be destroyed or taken away; the treasure of community, love and connection with one another that is created by God and will always be found when that is what we seek out. To seek out this kingdom is to lead from love instead of judgement or condemnation knowing that there is always far more than our limited ability to see and the same goodness, love and forgiveness that God extends to us is extended just as equally to everyone else. 

But Jesus knows what we know all too well, that it is far easier to follow the crowd, to value what this world values, to lead from protection and retribution and fear that there won’t be enough. We’re far too easily fooled by pretty pictures and promises that sound good but end up bearing bitter and toxic fruit. Promises of prosperity, strength, winning and greatness that fall flat and ultimately fail to deliver. Or deliver all that only to be found lacking and empty. 

Just last month, the Presbyterian Church (USA) convened its 227^th General assembly and one of the actions taken by that assembly was to name the theological error of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism may say, “Lord, Lord.” It may make videos juxtaposing the Lord’s Prayer with the weapons of war, or claim itself to be a righteous crusade for God and country. It traffics in plenty of religious language, some of which is from the bible and some of which is made up of fake bible verses from a popular movie. It may claim to prophesy and cast out demons and be a mighty work of God. But at the end of the day, it does not know Jesus. It cannot know Jesus because if it did it would know better than to presume any nation to be uniquely blessed and chosen by the God who sends the rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike. That’s the kind of thing that is directly contradicted by everything that we have spent the last nine weeks hearing as we sat listening to the words of Jesus pointing us to the kinship and kingdom of heaven that is far greater than any one nation, or any one people. Christian Nationalism is a house of lies built on a foundation of sand and when the winds of change finally blow its only greatness will be its fall. 

To enter into what Jesus would have us see, to enter into the kinship established in him means taking his words to heart and letting them find expression in our lives. In how we see blessing, salt and light, and wholeness as we pray nonetheless for the ones we don’t like who don’t like us. It’s to seek God out, asking no more than what God provides daily: forgiveness, salvation, and deliverance from a world that would rather serve wealth and status, worrying constantly about how much is enough. It is to lead with love instead of judgement, following the golden rule and always seeking God’s kingdom, God’s kinship on earth as it is in heaven, first and foremost. And it means leaving religiosity, and code words, and lingo and churchspeak behind in pursuit of faithfulness to all that Jesus’ words point us toward and encourage us to enter. It’s shifting our attention. As Fr. Greg Boyle puts it, “it’s keeping vigilant hearts, not because death is coming but because life is happening.”  

Building our lives on these words, on this vision of what God intends for us and all of humanity is what allows us to withstand the storms that we will face in life. It’s telling that in either scenario, whether it’s a house built on rock or a house built on sand, the storms come. Faith is not a get out of life free of harm card. It’s a get into life in all its fullness invitation. One that comes with no promises of protection from the storms we will face; just the assurance of God’s full presence that is always drawing near to us that we might draw near to it. When we do and we build our lives on that, there is nothing we cannot withstand.