Kramer Chapel

June 4, 2008

Text: Matthew 7:15-29 [show]Matthew 7:15-29 "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is 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 mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. (ESV)

Probably most of you know about a structure called the leaning tower of Pisa. In the year 1174, Bonnano Pisano, an Italian engineer, began to work on a bell tower for the cathedral in Pisa, Italy. The tower was to be 185 feet high. Construction started and three stories were completed when it was noticed that the tower had begun to lean. Pisano tried to compensate for this problem, but his efforts only caused the tower to lean still further. Construction stopped and started again over the centuries. The tower was finally finished in the 14th century, but each year it leans another 1.25 millimeters further.

In 1934, fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini ordered that the tower be returned to a vertical position, so concrete was poured into its foundation. However, the result was that the tower actually sank further into the soil.

What was the problem? Poor design? No. Poor workmanship? Certainly not. An inferior grade of marble? No, only the best. The problem was below the surface. The tower was built on weak soil, not stable enough to support a structure this size. There was no firm foundation. A beautiful tower, but in danger of collapse.

Perhaps you are in danger of collapse. Perhaps your life is the Tower of Pisa, where in a certain sense everything is brilliantly designed and crafted, but it’s obvious to everyone around you that it won’t last and your eventual breakdown is only a matter of time.

Many other buildings don’t have the same advantage of the Tower of Pisa. At least in that case, you can detect the coming catastrophe and hopefully do something to amend it.

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and I recall a terrible tragedy that occurred in 1981. At the downtown Hyatt Regency hotel, in the ballroom, there were two skywalks, several floors apart, one above the other. It was a high society dance and all the local cultured elites were there dining and dancing. Suddenly, the top skywalk filled with revelers came crashing down, hitting the skywalk beneath it bringing both to the floor. 114 people were dead and 200 more were injured. The reason, poor construction. Shortcuts had been taken and inferior materials were utilized. The dollars that were saved were paid for with human blood.

My point in that illustration is simply that sometimes, as in Pisa, you can easily see the problem but in other cases, you are caught unaware, as in Kansas City.

A life that is founded on the warnings and promises of God is firm and stable and can withstand the storms of this world. A life founded on any other basis will only come to ruin.

Jesus used the illustration of the building of two houses. It would be fair to say that these houses would have looked pretty much the same to the average passer-by. The difference between the houses was in the foundations. He was not giving hidden messages to the Masonic order, nor is he merely making the mundane observations of a civil engineer. Rather, he is explaining the kingdom of God.

The Christian Church is indeed the House of God, founded as St. Paul writes, upon the prophets and apostles with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone. Furthermore, the psalmist writes that Except the Lord build the house, its builders labor in vain (Psalm 127:1 [show]Psalm 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
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Many of you are here today because you are in preparation to serve in the church, either as pastors or deaconesses or dedicated laity. Jesus Christ is the One ultimately who builds and edifies his Kingdom, not your labors or mine. By His grace, we find ourselves in His service, becoming indeed the living stones of the structure itself. What brittle clay He chooses. But justified by Him and eternally fortified by Him, you will not fall down.

Like the unhappy Tower of Pisa, all of your efforts to patch yourself back together, to improve yourself by fits and starts, to buttress one area only to find dangerous structural cracks somewhere else, are essentially futile. Our defect is something so basic, something so foundational, that instead of duct tape and bubblegum, we need simply to be torn down and rebuilt by the Master Builder Himself upon the sure foundation which never moves.

Jesus’ own body is the Temple or House of God. While the ultra Orthodox Jews and the modern Judaizing Christians look at a block of real estate in Palestine and place their hopes in a building made with the hands of men, we rejoice to dwell in the Temple of God today, namely the very body of Christ, the Holy Church. We who eat the Body of Christ are, in fact, made the Body of Christ, an eternal temple not made with hands. When God knocked down Solomon’s building in the year 70 A.D., He proved that the presence of God is not to be found in the labors of mankind but in a new and everlasting edifice, the man Jesus.

He who had no flaws of his own, took upon himself the very foundational defect which underlies all the other children of Adam. He became a sin offering in the place of sinners, making Himself the willing recipient of the condemnation of His Father. Like a derelict building, he was declared condemned, that is unsafe, unwholesome, unwell, and unsound. And He underwent the demolition we deserve. But so also was he reconstituted fully in the resurrection, undoing all the errors of Adam and more than that. I say more than that because what we have gained in Christ is greater than what we lost in Adam.

In the summer of 2006, I spent a couple of weeks traveling by train across eastern Russia. And to help myself prepare for such an adventure, I read what many consider to be the greatest modern novel, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. His famous first line is right up there with the greatest first lines. He wrote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I mean no disrespect to the literary genius of Leo Tolstoy, but I think he’s got it the wrong way round. There is nothing more boring than the catalog of human sorrow. Likewise nothing is more interesting, nothing is more invigorating or beautiful and engaging than life in God through Christ. The new Household of God, the sons of Abraham who share the faith of Abraham, know joys even in the face of torrents and tornadoes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.