Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

preached by Winton Boyd

Text:Matthew 7:24-28

As a part of the Sermon on the Mount, this passage is core part of Matthew’s gospel. The words themselves are important, but how they are received is even more importaant. When the text says people were amazed at Jesus’ authority – it also points to a rising tension within the community that surrounded Jesus. The “official” authorities were increasingly concerned about Jesus, and there was a growing gap between how they viewed, explained, and lived out their faith AND how Jesus was calling his followers to live out their faith. Clearly, in Matthew’s gospel, this parable foreshadows much more complicated and difficult relations to come.

The parable of building the house on the rock is one of several in this segment of the sermon. As he begins this segment in verse 15: Jesus tells his followers to beware of false prophets, and it concludes with “they were astounded with his authority,” “They had never heard anything like this.”

Jesus offered a new kind of authority – and engaging, exciting, inviting authority. Jesus embodied a long tradition of rabbinic leadership – where schools of disciples followed particular rabbis. What compelled people to follow him was not tradition, rules, or a sense of social obligation. What compelled them was authentic living, transparent and engaging authority and faith. And the writer makes it quite clear that this was in sharp contrast to others claiming or wielding religious authority.

Jesus’ authority, the faith he calls his followers to seems to be rooted in compassion and defined by both relationships and freedom.

Relationships

Most scholars believe that what we call the sermon on the mount was probably not spoken by Jesus all at the same time. In Matthew’s gospel, these teachings are placed at the beginning of his public ministry. From this teaching flows a shared life. These young men who were compelled by his teaching became disciples, students, followers. What Jesus sought to do over the next 20 chapters in Matthew, the next couple of years in real time, was to grow relationships with these young people (men and women) so that when the time came, they could take on the kind of authentic teaching, living, praying and loving that he had shown. Time and again we see that while they didn’t get the ideas right, Jesus never gave up on his relationship with them. He did this because he understand and modeled that faith was not about beliefs, but growing a relationship with God.

Ours is not a denomination that suggests, “I can believe whatever I want.” Rather, we say, “I commit to relationships with others, I covenant with others, and expect to learn and grow, be challenged and held accountable by them.” The question is less “what you believe” and more “with whom are you in relationship?” That is true for a church community and it is true for our personal faith in God.

Tell me the characteristics, the qualities, the commitments of your God, John Dominic Crossan once wrote, and you will tell me more than enough for me to know about your faith.

Freedom
As Matthew portrays Jesus engaged in a somewhat testy relationship with religious authorities, he shows a religious life that challenges established norms in an effort to create new ones. Jesus’ is not shown suggesting everyone must toe the line – rather he values an emerging, growing, and engaging faith. The religious authorities he challenged were not straw men – they were very real, very powerful and had a good deal to do with Jesus’ downfall and crucifiction. But they also did not define the rules. He did not give them power to establish the parameters. So much so that at the end of his life, he told a very unlikely, untrained, unprofessional, and in many ways unnoticed group of disciples – “upon you I will build my church.” Were he looking for conformity to existing religious standards he wouldn’t have chosen them. Were he looking for religious power according to the standards of his day, he wouldn’t have chosen them.

So, we ask the question ourselves? By what and whom are we compelled to be a person of faith? Part of the growing up process in life and faith is redefining ourselves in relationship to those authorities in our lives. But maturity emerges when we are no longer defined by someone else – either positively or negatively.

I sit on the Division of Church and Ministry for the Southwest Association, the committee that approves ordinations for incoming UCC pastors. One of the final steps in the process is for candidates to write ordination papers. A recent paper began with an eloquent defense of why the candidate’s faith diverged from “orthodox” faith. They sought to stake a claim for a faith that was growing, evolving, responsive to today’s questions, and relevant to the lives of many who have fled the church. I not only appreciated their sense of pastoral ministry, I found myself in agreement with much of their specific theology and vision for the church.

Where I cringed was when they repeatedly stated their views were not “orthodox” or the “norm” within the Christian church. Normal or orthodox for whom? For 19th century evangelical protestants? For the framers of the Apostles Creed in the late 4th century? For a southern Baptist church in the Carolinas? For Orchard Ridge UCC? For their seminary?

For a child growing up at Orchard Ridge, their definition of “unorthodox” would have been very orthodox? While 19th century Protestants might have disagreed with them on a number of issues, they would have also disagreed with 17th century Catholics, African Presbyterians today, and Seattle congregationalists.

To be a vibrant tradition, a vibrant church we need to be vibrant, engaged, and authentic people who seek to be in relationship with a vibrant God. If our church or our tradition is to have meaning and purpose for today, we must be engaged at a personal level with important, meaningful and life driving questions.

• On this Sunday when we share a covenant with new members, when we share at the table of communion and as we bless these graduating seniors in our midst – I hope that we are consciously, faithfully, delightfully creating new norms.
• Rather than saying we are unorthodox, might we live into our faith with the knowledge that God cares less about orthodoxy than an open and prayerful life.
• As we struggle with someone else’s definition of Christian, might we live into our faith that knows beliefs, ideas, concepts, doctrines – are all in the service of a relationship, not the other way around.
• As we seek to understand our faith – might we focus less on the people and churches and experiences we are turning away from – and the Holy One, our Only Home, who compells us to a life of love and relationship; and may we turn towards the people, expereinces and communities that nurture that relationship.

Our text ends by saying, “this was the best teaching they had ever heard.” For sure they didn’t understand it all. But they did follow. They were compelled by what they understood and trusted the mystery just beyond their grasp. May we do the same.