Pentecost 2 2005

The Rev. Larry Crockett, priest-in-charge, St. Mary's

Matthew 7

‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” ‘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. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell--and great was its fall!’

As I said the words, "The Gospel of the Lord," just a moment ago, I must confess to you that I thought, "I wonder if these words sound like good news." One could read them to mean that even people of good conscience who make their best effort might fall short and be summarily rejected by Jesus Christ. "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers" does not sound like good news. But let's take a brief pilgrimmage--for a few moments--away from the perplexing corridors of Matthew to the more familiar roads of Midwestern America on this Memorial Day.

This last week I helped my daughter Carmen move into her summer place, after completing her junior year at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. She has enjoyed her experience at the college and the town over the last three years, so it has been a good choice. And I like to think of myself as a good father who participates in the significant moments of his daughter's life.

Decorah has all the small-town charms one would expect, but I must confess I was a little concerned about the appearance of the place she instruced me to drive to after we picked up the furniture she wanted to transfer. The garage door was crooked and even the address signage was damaged. I said to Carmen, "Honey, the 6 is off kilter."

Without skipping a beat or expressing a worry, she replied with mild annoyance, "Dad, that's a nine." 6 or 9, we moved her furniture into the garage with the bent door. The side door to the garage wouldn't close properly, so it wouldn't lock. As I surveyed the contents of the garage containing Carmen's things and many other items obviously belonging to cash-strapped college students, I concluded there was little danger of theft, so I smiled and shrugged and we left.

With Carmen's move complete, I headed back to the Twin Cities. Just outside of Harmony in southern Minnesota, I saw a sight which captured my interest. I noticed two cars in the right lane ahead of me were at a full stop. So I drove up behind them and stopped as well. A hen (Ithink she must have been a quail or a wild turkey) and her chicks were in the right lane. The mother was indecisive about whether to continue across the road to the other side or to retreat back into the side from which they came.

I could see a large semi was rumbling down the left lane towards us. Since she was looking at the cars, she could not see the semi. But I am sure she could feel its approach. She moved her head forward, as if to cross, then back, as if to retreat, several times. Each time her head moved a little, the tiny chicks scurried forward or back. They understood Mom was their lifeline. Her indecisiveness frustrated both them and the people watching this life-and-death scene. After several false starts, she and her brood retreated to the bushes behind them and the semi passed without incident. They are lucky to be alive.

With regard to teaching of the law, the Old Testament lesson for today instructs, "Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise." The point of such instruction is "so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied." Teaching our children well is a theme known to the children of Israel, to broods of birds in the wild, and indeed even--as unlikely at it might seem--to rock groups of the 60s and 70s:

You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Those of us who know some of the history of rock in general and this band (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) in particular know there wasn't much of a code that they lived by. So we might be surprised by the lyrics of "Teach Your Children." Indeed, the song's suggestion that there is hell stemming from lack of instruction is born of hard human experience--probably their hard experience. In fact, most people understand from hard experience the centrality of training children well. We can understand the Gospel of Matthew to be a kind of training manual for new Christians. Many of us learned the story of the wise man who builds on rock and the foolish man who builds on sand during our Sunday School days. It is memorably instructive.

The Gospel of Matthew may have been written in the ancient city of Antioch. Jesus's story about the wise man and the foolish man would make immediate sense to those who lived in Antioch. Today most of the ancient city is in ruins, owing largely to repeated earthquakes and floods. At first, the Romans who administered the city used conventional baked brick for building, but after a while they used quarried rock and were careful to build public buildings on top of rock rather than sand. They learned the hard lessons that stem from foolish choices. The columns at left were doubtless chiseled stone built atop rock, which accounts for why they are still standing. The sand between the columns contains the remains of buildings foolishly built.

Jesus' words perhaps seem harsh to our ears but Jesus, unlike our mother hen in Harmony, MN, was decisive and emphatic because he knew the stakes are high when it comes to the choices we make. There is "tough love" in the Gospels because much is at stake. If God self discloses in Jesus but does not "teach his children well," then God would be an irresponsible parent. Jesus looks us straight in the eyes this morning and tells us what makes for life and what makes for death.

A recent newspaper article describes how deaths from Hepatitis C are increasing rapidly and often are the result of unwise behavior by people in their younger years. Since David Crosby, in fact, has Hepatitis C, the words of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song haunt us even more than they would otherwise. Each of us wears in our bodies the sum of thousands of choices over many years. Every loving parent, therefore, must instruct a beloved child that choices have consequences.

What would Jesus have us do so that we are more like the wise man and less like the foolish man?

While we are certainly justified by our faith in Christ, as St. Paul teaches us this morning, the commandments are to be our guide in life. The commandments of Moses reflect much wisdom gleaned over long spans of time--they are not simply arbitrary commands, they are wise instruction. We might think of them as constraining us but in fact they free us if we understand them rightly. We are to lead lives of significant prayer so that our hearts become repositories of God's grace. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to carry the Gospel of Christ to all people. We are to build up the church and do good works to make the world a better place. With the Spirit sanctifying our lives, what we want to do increasingly becomes what we should do so that, eventually, all of what we wish to do is also what we ought to do. We then become the freest and therefore the most joyous of all people.

As a result, in this seemingly harsh Gospel--in the clearest way possible--Jesus teaches his children well.