June 1^st, 2008, Pentecost 3, All Souls' Episcopal Church

 “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.”
Mathew 7”24

As you might imagine, the clergy are sometimes asked difficult questions.  There are times when the only truthful response we can give to a question is to say that we just don't know the answer.  If someone was to ask me how God created the world, I would have to admit that I don't know.  You see, the science of it all is beyond me.  I rather suspect it's beyond all of us.  What the Bible tells us about this question is fascinating, though.  In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, we are told that God spoke creation into existence.  God said, "Let there be light, and there was light."  God's Word went forth from Him and creation was brought into being.  In the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, we are once again told of this creative Word of God.  John writes, "All things in the beginning were made by Him."  We are then told that this very creative Word of God became flesh and lived among us.  Our Lord Jesus Christ is this very Word of God, in the flesh, or incarnate.  This is who he is, and this is who is addressing us in today's reading from St. Matthew's Gospel.

St. Matthew tells us that the people who heard Jesus speak were amazed by Him because He spoke as one who had authority.  Now, this observation is based in part on the fact that our Lord Jesus did not spend much time quoting various scholarly articles written by this or that learned Rabbi.  He was not much interested in dazzling His listeners with footnotes or citing legal precedents.  He spoke to the people plainly.  And yet, His words carried with them authority in another sense as well.  They were creative words.  They were the words of life.  When Jesus told a lame man to get up and walk, the lame man got up and walked.  When He told a leper that he was cleansed and healed, the leper was cleansed and healed.  When He told the blind to receive their sight, the blind received their sight.  When Jesus, the Word of God, told the dead to arise, the dead arose.  His words had authority.  Jesus says: "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."  Our Lord goes on to say that the man who listens to His words but does not put them into practice is like someone building his house on sand.  Such a house has no solid foundation and is easily swept away.

St. James, in the first chapter of his Epistle, tells us that a man who hears the Word of God but doesn't put it into practice is like a man who sees himself in a mirror and then walks away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  When words aren't put into practice, no lasting impression is made.  There is really nothing for the memory to hang on to.

The Word of the Lord is the word of life.  It is intended to have authority in our life.  We are meant to live by the word and to live it out.  We are meant to clothe His words with our flesh, putting them into practice.  Doing this amounts to building our lives on a solid foundation, a foundation which shall not be swept away by high winds and driving rains or floods or by whatever else life throws at us.  Our question today is this ... are we building our lives on such a foundation?

I'm sure most of you remember Robert Preston's portrayal of Professor Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN. He was playing a con man who pretended to teach music according to what he called "the think method."  He claimed that if the students just thought about Beethoven's Minuet in G, they'd be able to play it without any practice.  Such a method might have been in Professor Hill's favor, but only because he couldn't read a note of music.  We know it doesn't work that way. Neither does the practice of Christianity.  We cannot apply "the think method" to our Christian walk, because we won't get very far.  It is not enough just to have the right ideas or sound doctrine or the best intentions.  We must put our faith into practice.  Our words must become incarnate through our actions.  Only in this way can we build upon a rock solid foundation.

Our Lord Jesus gives us a stern warning in today's Gospel reading.  It is a warning which comes with some of the saddest words in all of the Bible.  He says that many will claim to be His followers.  Indeed, many will preach and even perform great and mighty deeds in His name, and on the day of judgment, they will say to Him "Lord, Lord, did you see all the things we did for you?"  But, the Lord will say to them, "I never knew you."

Some of the Church Fathers, most notably, St. Augustine, explain that when the Lord says, "I never knew you," it means the same thing as "you never knew me."  Well, be that as it may.  Who are we to argue with St. Augustine?  And yet, we might look at these words another way.  Just imagine someone you have always admired and perhaps even loved but who never really allowed you to get to know them.  They have always shut you out of their world.  Perhaps it wasn't intentional.  Perhaps they just didn't ever have the time; they were too busy.  How many children, I wonder, grow up and move away and slowly grow into adulthood, phoning home from time to time, visiting a few times a year, and imagine that their parents are exactly the same people they were when they left home twenty-five years ago?  It's as if they think that when they left, their parents immediately went into a state of suspended animation, and they expect things to be just as they were when they visit, with nothing changed.  Or, let's approach the question from the other angle.  How many children take the time to let their parents really know what is going on in their lives; what they think about things; how their opinions and view of the world have changed and developed?  What I am asking is whether there are people we love but do not attempt to really know?  In other words, do we get so caught up in ourselves; in our own inner monologue, that we fail to communicate and we fail to reveal our thoughts, our feeling, and our selves to those we most care about?  Now, I want you to ask this same question with respect to your walk with God.

            You see, the purpose of prayer is for us to learn to will ourselves what God Himself wills.  In order to do this, we must come to know God.  However, it is also true in a sense that the purpose of prayer is that God comes to know us.  You might rightly say, "Well, doesn't God know us already?  In fact doesn't he know us better than we know ourselves?"  Yes, this is true.  It is also true that God knows what you need before you ask, but He still wants you to ask.  God knows what your problems are, but He still wants you to tell Him.  God understands your fears and your frustrations, and yet He still wants you to come to Him and proclaim them to Him. Prayer is not a monologue.  Prayer is a dialogue with God.  Work on making your prayer just such a dialogue.

There is another way to understand what our Lord means by "I never knew you."  We simply need to think of that phrase in the context of what He says to us about doing His words; putting them into practice.  When we live out the teachings of Christ, day by day, putting them into practice and making those words incarnate by fleshing them out in the lives we live, we become recognizable as those who follow Him.  He knows us.  He sees his own words with our flesh on them.  He sees Himself in us.

It must become our prayer and our fervent desire both as individuals and as a church that we be recognizable as His disciples.  We must pray and we must live in such a way as Christ becomes recognizable in what we say and do; in the loving way we treat one another, in the way in which we forgive each other, in the manner in which we respond to those in need, in the charity which defines our actions, in our desire to seek reconciliation and restoration with all who have fallen away, and in the purity of lives lived to the praise and glory of the God who is love; His love which is unfailing and unconquerable and is given us in our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.