Sermon Archive
Foundations
Sermon preached by Peter Brand at Evensong on 2 March 2003
Gen 13, Matt 7:15-29
You may or may not be aware that the team here meet together at regular intervals for what we are pleased to call Sermon Seminars. They usually start with prayer and possibly a short reading of some kind or other and then that individual is given his or her head to ride their particular hobby horse. The last time we met it was my turn to have a go, and my particular theme had to do with the value, if any, of the sermon at our services. I am well aware that the choir, or at least a fair proportion of them, feel that there should be none at all with choral evensong, so perhaps I should not be here raising the matter! We all agreed, however, that sermons have their place, and that they need to be tailored with an eye to the figure of the congregation concerned. They should also have the merit of being fairly short and assimilable - a bit like soluble aspirin rather than the old well-tried product. A further desirable thing was the consideration of their purpose - are they meant to be exhortations towards what is considered to be a Christian mode of life, or are they explorations as to the meaning of the particular passages of scripture that are being read? A further possibility is that they might be aimed at building up the speaker's audience in the Christian life. I don't think that these reflections of the team are intended to come to any definite or particular conclusions, rather it is felt necessary that matters be explored - in a sense a kind of building up process which may or may not be any more than the laying of a course of bricks as part of a broader design.
The other part of the evening is aimed at a different part of the preacher's task. Another individual is asked to share their thoughts on the passage presented to them for a sermon in the near future. This usually results in what, in my student days, would have been regarded as a fairly intensive piece of Bible study. All contribute, partly in the form of reaction to the lessons, but also with their own insights and understandings of what they are presented with. As a process of sharing it is a valuable and helpful tool.
You may wonder what all this has to do with this evening's talk, reflection, call it what you will. But were I to ask you, when you get back home, to look at the two passages read tonight and pick on something there which might concisely indicate the subject matter - what would you pick on I wonder? My own choice is the word 'Foundations', although I am aware that there are a considerable number of other choices which are available to you. As an account based on history, although I don't know how good a history it is, the Genesis lesson tells us about the tribes of Abram and Lot. The story we are given shows them to be wandering Israelites, driving their flocks and moving across the landscape almost like a crowd of locusts. It becomes clear that something has to be done to accommodate them, and they split, Lot taking what appears to be the easier option, and Abram going elsewhere. That, as I wrote it, seemed to be far too judgemental a comment, and that perhaps illustrates almost immediately part of the nature of the scriptures - they do invite us to make judgements, and to take sides, whilst at the same time cautioning us all that judgement, final judgement, is the prerogative of God, and is not in our hands at all.
But this story also represents something, which if not exactly Israel's beginning, is certainly the foundation to the stable community it had begun by the time Jesus had appeared on the scene. The first lesson makes it clear also that the foundation of the community was itself based on a relationship - the relationship between God and Abram. That, I am immediately aware, presents us with a problem. Few of us conceive of a relationship with God which is both so personal and so vital as such rare relationships appear to be in the Old Testament record. I now of people who, on reflection on their lives, can feel that what has happened to them has been the results of the mighty hand of God. And some of their stories are not always of the simplest of experiences - it is not always easy to say God is in something when a door closes, a barrier appears and life's direction has to change. And sometimes it is the awful thing which has happened to somebody else which effects the change. I wouldn't wish to say that God caused the evil; rather that out of evil something good can come; and as I say it I know that I might be playing with words.
Foundations, though, are something that has been part of my working life, recognising what might be less than good ground to build upon, recognising that the builder and the engineer need to take due notice before any construction starts. You may perhaps have seen the photograph of a caravan at a place on the outskirts of the city, up to its roofline n the hole in which it was sliding away from the surface, and of course there was the furore over the buildings at Ferniehill. It was such foundations I had in mind - and with it came the remembrance of a story from one of the said engineers - to the effect that if you knew of the problem, and had enough money available it could be solved. That, as a matter of course, also applied to peat and sand, although they were not in my purview. Nevertheless it is easy to see what the effect of poor foundations on these materials happens to be.
All these examples, however, does not lessen the need for good foundations for our own houses of life. Abram's was his relationship with God - a relationship, which we shall hear in coming Sundays, often became strained, yet never broken. The second lesson, with its story about foundations coming under stress as the result of flooding has modern connotations. What happens to us when life presents us with its more awful side? Jesus' answer to what was required in the way of foundations lies in the story. His contemporaries taught that the person who knew and obeyed the Torah cannot be moved. Jesus went further and drew on his own profound consciousness of authority to say, 'Every one who hears these words of mine and does them...' It was not just the knowledge about foundations that matters, there's more to it than that, there's the small matter of obedience. There is little doubt as to the meaning of this small parable. The wise one is the one who does Jesus' words, obeys his teaching, and the foolish one, the one who disobeys. With that one might say with some justification, what hope is there for would-be Christians? And it seems to me that that needs addressing. Mother Julian offers a phrase which might bring some sense of hope when she wrote, 'In God's sight we do not fall, in our sight we do not stand. As I see it both of these are true, but the deeper insight belongs to God'. So perhaps for us, the God whom we worship, the one to whom we offer what we are, as something given to us in the first place, may both be foundation and guide for the coming week.