Foundations and Cornerstone

Rev. Ron Campbell
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 6, 2008

Text: Luke 6:46-49; I Peter 2:4-7

Two Scriptures/Two Words/Two Interlocking Messages
In my message today I will touch base with Ann Beaty’s scripture and theme on the first Sunday in June, “Foundations,” in which she enjoined us to lay the foundation of our lives on all the words of Jesus. Then I will move to a related theme, “Cornerstone,” Jesus is the living cornerstone, with whom we must line up all the aspects of our lives. I will take one at a time and then apply to our personal, church and national lives.

1st Word: Foundations
The 1st Scripture from Luke is a story told by Jesus of two men and two foundations. One man dug down and built his house on solid rock. The other man built his house without a foundation, on sand. When the storms came the second man’s house was washed away. The man whose house was built on rock withstood the storm and remained standing.

In Israel theOld Roman Road winds down from Jerusalem through the rough, rugged, barren desert hills to Jericho on the Jordan River. There’s an overlook at the entrance to the old road from the superhighway that goes from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. In November of 2006 I sat, with 12 persons on an interfaith mission to Jordan and Israel, on top of a mountainous gorge overlooking this winding road circling down to a dry river bed way down below. This dry river bed is called a Wadi. This one is called the Wadi Quelt. It’s this kind of setting which must have inspired Jesus to tell the story of the foolish man who built his house on sand instead of rock. When a heavy rain comes to the Judean hill country, the water rapidly drains through the Wadi Quelt & others like it. The wise person builds his house on solid rock in this terrain, so when the rains come the foundation will hold.

Point: Build our lives on all of the words of Jesus.

The point is not about houses, but about our lives. Build the house of your life on a solid foundation, all the words of Jesus, and when the storms of life batter us, our lives will withstand and survive to live again.

A red letter Bible is a good start to get to know the words of Jesus. Even though we cannot be sure that every word was literally spoken by Jesus, we still have a good start by reading the red letter edition. We can also look at the teachings of Jesus, the Beatitudes, and the parables of Jesus in the NT. Perhaps the best place to start is with Jesus’ summary of the law: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

2nd Word: Cornerstone
The 2nd Scripture is from I Peter. In its immediate context Peter uses the metaphor of a cornerstone to convey Christ’s relationship to the church (the new community formed by the living Lord). Underneath this reference, Peter draws upon OT images of the Lord as a precious living stone, and upon the incident at the temple in Jesus’ final week, when Jesus referred to himself as the living cornerstone. Jesus had provoked the encounter with the religious leaders during Holy Week. At its climax he cleansed the temple of the money changers, accused the scribes and pharases of profaning the temple, and failing to recognize the living Lord in their midst. This was a vivid memory which Peter experienced with Jesus and the other disciples in the final days of Jesus’ passion, suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus was confronted by the temple priests in the courtyard where he had overturned the money tables and challenged the priests for profaning the sacred place of worship. In the final blow Jesus struck in this public scene, he referred to himself as the precious, living cornerstone referenced by the prophets, and added that the stone temple in which they worshiped would crumble when the justice of God came in the end times.

The living spirit of God was in their midst, and not only did they not recognize him, they rejected his words and who he claimed to be. Jesus was the living cornerstone of God, and they completely missed the point.  At the intersection of the Western Wall and the Southern Wall of the temple, the corner stone had two large holes. This was the stone Jesus referred to as the cornerstone. Every stone in the walls of a building must line up with each other. What happens if this is not done perfectly? The walls lean, then fall outward or inward, and then collapse.

Point: Jesus himself is the living cornerstone of lives with which all of our living must be aligned. The house of our lives we build not only must be built on a solid foundation, all of the words of Jesus, but these words must be lined up with the living spirit of Christ. Our faith in Jesus and attempt to live into his words must permeate every aspect of our living: work, family, marriage, pastimes, hobbies, friendships, social live and community relationships, and our place in the world. It’s not enough just to live the words of Jesus, for it’s the spirit of the living Lord that infuses our living with the life-giving spirit of grace and joy. Otherwise we’re doing the work of religion without the compassion of Jesus, and we are no different than the Scribes and Pharisees.

Applications: Now let’s apply these two related stories and words, foundations and cornerstone, to our lives, the life of the church, and to the life of our nation.

First Application:  Our personal lives
The house of our lives must be built on a solid foundation, all of the words of Jesus, but these stones and the rest of the house must be lined up with the living spirit of Christ or it will collapse when the storms of life batter us.

Questions for us: Do we know the words of Jesus? Do we attempt to live the words of Jesus? Do we know the presence of the living Lord in our soul, and do we attempt to align all of our living with his spirit: our work, marriages, families, friends, pastimes, values?

Second Application: Our Church Life

Questions for us: Do we teach and learn the words of Jesus in our church life? Do we build solid foundations in the lives of the people in our community by offering and encouraging everyone to learn and live the words of Jesus? Do we measure everything in our community life by the spirit of the living Lord?

Third Application: Our National Life
Celebrating July 4, the birth of our nation, and applying the two biblical principles, foundations and cornerstone in an analogous way, the words of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence must be aligned with the principles which guides us toward freedom, equality, and justice for all, contained in our founding documents...

It’s dangerous to address political life and the life of faith in our society, which understands the dangers of two close and identification with church and state, but which also knows that we cannot separate life in Christ from the life of our nation as well, but there is an analogy we can apply between our scriptural words, foundations and cornerstone, to our national life. Our national foundation is our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendments to the Constitution, and court interpretations of our constitution. Our national Cornerstone is the Declaration of Independence. the Declaration of Independence is the spirit of America, as it expresses the living spirit which must always fuel and judge the words which we consider foundational law for our nation life, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” Our nation is founded upon ideals of human equality and the notion that the nation is a sacred trust from God. Our task is to diligently protect the welfare of every human being as we constantly hold ourselves to the high standards of liberty, equality and justice.

Let me close with this point about application of the two words, foundation and cornerstone, to our personal, church, and national life: If we are serious about knowing and living the words of Jesus and aligning all of our lives with his spirit, we must take on the mind of Christ, his humility, gentleness, love and grace. This is necessary because there’s always a gap between human ideals and human reality.

In our personal lives we always remain forgiven sinners. The Apostle Paul lamented, “The good I attempt to do, I keep messing it up!” In our church life we never live up to all that Christ invites and demands of us. The church should be understood more as a hospital for sinners than as a country club for saints. In our national life our cup is always half full and half empty. This is why we have such different definitions of what being patriotic means. Some of us rightly emphasize all of the wonderful qualities of America, our freedoms, our accomplishments, and our huge contributions to the world. (The half full cup)

Others emphasize the ideals of America, the standards by which we must judge our progress. These persons are proud of what we stand for, and are impatient to close the gap between our ideals and the realities of our national life, that is marred by flaws and shortcomings as well. (The half empty cup)

A large part of the conflict we experience when we talk about patriotism stems from the different ways we look at the relationship between our ideals as Americans and the reality of not ever achieving them perfectly. Some persons focus upon how far we have come in achieving equality and justice for all in our country, and how much the United States of America is contributing to leading the world toward a better future. Others focus not so much on our successes as upon our failure to live up to our ideals perfectly, upon our flaws as imperfect citizens of our country and of the world community, upon how much more we need to strive to live into the ideals of our nation as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and its amendments.

Discipleship and patriotism need to be both/and instead of either. We should be able to positively celebrate our progress, under God’s grace, in our personal, church, and national life, while at the same time adopting the spirit of humility of Christ, and not being satisfied with the gap between our discipleship and patriotism and the reality of our always falling short of the mark.

Let us pray: This July 4 holiday Lord, help us to refocus our living upon all of your words and to realign our lives with the living Spirit of your son as we attempt to live lives of obedient discipleship as individuals, as a church, and as a nation. Amen.