Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Psalm 46; Matthew 7:21-29

Happy first day of hurricane season! Hello Dolly, but before Dolly, hello Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal; and after Dolly, hello Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike, Josephine, Kyle, Laura, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paloma, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky and Wilfred. Unless of course we are thinking about the Eastern Pacific in which case, hello Alma, Boris, Cristina, Douglas, Elida, Fausto, Genevieve, Hernan, Iselle, Julio, Karina, Lowell, Marie, Norbert, Odile, Polo, Rachel, Simon, Trudy, Vance, Winnie, Xavier, Yolanda and Zeke

Alma, an Eastern Pacific tropical storm, was the first named storm of the season, actually predating the season by a couple of days as it formed May 28. And yesterday, Arthur was already developing in the Caribbean. Kind of like Christmas decorations in October, don’t you just hate it when tropical storms rush the season?

Some disasters have a seasonality to theme – cyclones, hurricanes, even tornados, and obviously blizzards and spring floods. But some disasters come out of the blue, and earthquakes are among these. In the last several years, some of the storms that have come – from the Indian Ocean tsunami to Hurricane Katrina, from Cyclone Nargis to the recent earthquake in China – these storms have raised questions about the way we build our houses, offices, schools, from where we choose to build to what kind of foundations we build upon.

We’ve grown to understand that there are elements to disasters that are not solely acts of God – that the choices of humans can have be a significant determinant in how we are impacted by disaster. I was reading about best building practices for withstanding earthquakes, and I learned some interesting things. The key to a building withstanding an earthquake is that it can move along with the quake, without falling apart. How best to do that? The building needs to be built solidly, so that it moves as a single entity, not rocking and pulling within itself. The building needs to be on a flexible foundation, so that it can move with the earthquake rather than crumbling from it. And then, the foundation itself, should be built on rock instead of sand or soft soil. Rock will move during an earthquake, but is likely to stay intact, and move uniformly. Sand and soft soil can sink or collapse, and possibly unevenly, which adds more strain to a building.

We don’t only live in buildings – we live in our lives, and we can take care to build lives of habits, relationships, and values that can withstand strains, stresses and upheaval. Following the advice of building earthquake-resistant buildings is a good start, and it’s advice that Jesus gave also. Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew includes the closing verses of the Sermon on the Mount – that long section of Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus lays out his teachings. It’s helpful to remember that these are the closing verses of that piece and not merely an isolated teaching. Jesus is not talking about making a salvation decision – he is talking about building a coherent life, in which our actions match up with our professed faith, and he has just finished describing what a “life-with-God” should look like. Jesus isn’t talking only about consistency – after all, murderers and thieves can build lives that are consistent with philosophies of “getting what’s yours” and “what goes around comes around”.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is showing that there is an appropriate middle ground between slavish legalism to and unprincipled disregard of God’s teachings. He repeatedly, throughout the Sermon, prefaces remarks with “You’ve heard it said that…” as he describes a teaching of scripture and then “but I say to you” as he rolls forward the teaching adapting it to current circumstances. He demonstrates this approach to building a God-based life that takes very seriously the teachings of God found in God’s Word, and uses those teachings to build a life that is inwardly coherent, consistent with God’s Word, and responsive to particular circumstances. Jesus, in taking this approach, is himself following an approach that has been revealed in scripture earlier.

Basically, this approach looks at a teaching in its earlier context, asks the questions “what was this saying to people at the time?” and then looks at how such a message would speak to us in our time. This approach assumes that God is always challenging us to be and do better, that God is calling people in every era to live according to God’s teachings as they apply to the circumstances of that era. And if we take the Bible seriously, we have to recognize that in it, God changed God’s instructions to us over time in ways that continually called us to lives that are loving, integrated, and prophetic.

So that early in the Bible, we have God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, and then an angel directing Abraham to substitute a ram. In this story, we might understand that God was teaching people at a time long ago that this God is not a god who asks us to practice child-sacrifice, but who will accept animal sacrifice. Yet later on, in Isaiah, God says that he hates blood sacrifice – that the sacrifice acceptable to him is a penitent heart.

Another ancient teaching, in Leviticus where many of the purity teachings are found, says that no one who is a eunuch, who has been ritually mutilated, can enter the temple. A later teaching, in Isaiah, says that eunuchs who love God may enter the temple. In early periods, a eunuch was usually castrated in order to fulfill a certain role in a royal household or in a religious sect – so perhaps the teaching was meant to show that people coming to the temple should not be those who have their primary loyalty to someone other than God – the later teaching amends the literalism to say that eunuchs who love God may be in the temple.

Similarly, the early teaching on “an eye for an eye” was meant as a limiting teaching –preventing God’s people from killing someone who had merely injured them, or from wiping out a village in revenge for the killing of one person. It was a teaching that was progressive it its time. Later, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers the teaching on turning the other cheek instead – rolling forward the earlier teaching with a more progressive, anti-violent, teaching. Both of these teachings are less violent than the cultural norms at the time, and they both acknowledge the injury yet call for a response that is assertive without gratifying the desire for revenge. If we take the foregoing examples as a pattern, we can see that in them God is constantly challenging us to respond in ways that are actively loving and thoughtful, not passively weak or legalistic. God is calling us to a way of life that is demanding, life-giving, and whole. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, is not talking about a salvation decision in the modern sense – what you can say or do today so that you will be in heaven after you die – Jesus is describing a life of radical discipleship, his is the gospel of God’s dream according to Episcopal bishop Michael Curry. He is describing a life that works, and that is consistent with God’s view of life as it is, and as it can be. When Jesus is describing salvation, he is talking about saving the life of the whole world – he is teaching a way of life that connects with the eternal truth of God, and is not limited by my own individual wellbeing. And yet, Jesus is calling us each to find our own wholeness in the health of the whole world, to find our own goodness in what is good for others.

Going back to guidelines for buildings that can withstand earthquakes – the first principle is to build a strong building, one that acts as a solid entity, without being pulled in different directions by the stresses of earthquakes – that is, a building with structural integrity. For us, too, the first step in building a rule of life that can bear us through stresses, strains, and earthquakes is to develop our own personal integrity. Integrity isn’t as simple as merely telling the truth, although it involves truth-telling – integrity means, essentially, oneness and wholeness. It means building a character that is internally consistent, and driven by its own values rather than external influences.

Clinical psychologist and author David Schnarch distinguishes between a contractual and a covenantal approach to relationships. The cultural approach is contractual – that is you behave toward others in such a way that is guided by either their past or future treatment of you – it’s a “you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours-what-goes-around-comes-around” approach to relationships. In such an approach, you return kindness with kindness, or you precede hoped-for kindness with kindness. So a contractual approach to a business relationship might involve building contacts now that you hope will pay off later…and in a personal relationship might involve being nice to your spouse in the early evening because you hope they’ll be nice to you in the later evening.

Schnarch contrasts this contractual approach with what he calls a covenantal approach to relationships – in this approach, we treat other people in accordance with our own values and decisions about how people should be treated. Schnarch does not write as a religious writer, but his term covenantal approach reminds me of God’s love for us – a love that is not based on our behavior, or our decisions, but on God’s own loving character and prior decision to love us.

A covenantal approach to life says that we treat other people in the way we believe we should treat others, not in response to how they treat us. It is a challenging approach, but it is a rule of life that is characterized by integrity, an inner wholeness that relies on our own values, our own character in deciding how we live. Such a wholeness can lead to a consistency in our behavior that values each person whether they are important and influential or not – such wholeness leads to our making decisions based on whether they are right, not based on whether or not they pay off, or whether we will get caught. This way of life is challenging, and simple – its drive doesn’t come from outer influences but from inner conviction and strength. Like a building constructed to withstand storms, it is a life that is not at odds with itself.

In addition, if we want to withstand shocks and tumult of great change or persistent challenge, we will need to build our lives not only of inner integrity, but on flexible foundations. I have tried to describe earlier, in showing how Jesus interpreted God’s Word, an approach to the Bible that provides flexible foundations. In our own denomination, our Book of Confessions provides such a flexible foundation – it is a collection of nine creeds and confessions that have been written over the centuries by men and women who were grappling with what God’s Word demanded of them in their own time. At the Presbyterian General Assembly later this month, our church will be looking at two confessions – the Heidelberg Confession and the Belhar Confession. In the case of the Heidelberg, our church will be considering an overture to replace the current translation of the Heidelberg Confession with one that is more historically and linguistically accurate. The older, inaccurate translation, contains language that incorrectly characterized the Heidelberg Confession as teaching against same-gender relationships.

The Belhar Confession is one that was written in Afrikaans and adopted by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa in 1986. This confession affirms the diversity and reconciliation of the universal church, and calls for us to live in unity and reconciliation with one another. The PCUSA is looking at including it in our own constitution, in the Book of Confessions, presumably to challenge us to live as reconciling people in a diverse world in our time. In both cases, the PCUSA is trying to grapple with how God’s Word challenges us to live with integrity and faithfulness to an unchanging God in the changing circumstances of human history. We have found that living in community with those women and men of every era who grappled with theology and practice in formulating creeds and confessions is a good way to challenge ourselves to discern the flexible foundations of faith. In a few moments we will say the words of the Nicene Creed together – the Nicene Creed is the earliest creed in our Book of Confessions and was developed as early Christians in the fourth century argued with one another about how to understand Jesus Christ in relationship to God.

The older creeds don’t always adequately address our current concerns – but they remind us of the importance of faithful thinking in community, of conversationally discerning how to respond to current challenges in a faithful way.

Finally, the guidelines for construction in earthquake zones calls for building the flexible foundations upon rock, not upon sand or soft soil. For us as people of faith, God is our bedrock – our lives are not built upon principles but in relationship with the living God who made us and the world, and who loves us continually. The psalmist reminds us in this morning’s psalm that it is the very God who is our strength, and that our relationship with this God is the true foundation.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult… God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us….

Be still, and know that I am God.

Be still and know…. Be still…. Be. Amen.