"Rock Solid" San Williams, UPC
Matthew 7:21-29
In his book, Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman argues that we are no longer living in a time of solids but of flows and liquids. The glaciers—which took millennia to form—are melting before our eyes. Ninety percent of the thirty-nine hundred square miles of ice shelves that existed in 1906 are now gone. By the years 2040, the region will be mostly water. This, says Bauman, is a symbol of the times in which we live—an age of global flows of communication, diffuse centers of power and wealth, changing assumptions about authority and identity.
Such is the nature of the world in which nine of our young people are stepping forward this morning to confirm the faith of their baptism and join the church. They are inheriting a world of flows and liquids, and yet here we are in church singing about a firm foundation, about a life built on a rock: “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Isn’t this an intriguing juxtaposition--holding before our young people a vision of something solid in a world that is increasingly fluid and ever changing?
After several months of study and time spent with mentors, these nine young people will stand before us and say in effect that Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which they will build their lives. Of course, simply standing up in front of the church and making a verbal affirmation of faith may or may not indicate one’s true intentions. Jesus acknowledged as much: “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…”
A few years ago the Lily Foundation sponsored a research project to find out what happened to people who went through confirmation classes. They tracked down a group of middle-aged adults all of whom had gone through confirmation classes in Presbyterian churches as teenagers. What they found was that somewhat less than half were still active in the Presbyterian Church or in any church. The others had not left the church in protest of anger; they had simply drifted away. The research confirmed that what we say we believe and what how we act upon that belief are not always the same. Simply saying “Lord, Lord,” doesn’t automatically place oneself in the Lord’s company. So perhaps our first word to our confirmation class is simply to acknowledge the obvious. Anyone can make an affirmation of faith, saying all the right words, but not everyone is going to actually build their lives on the foundation of that faith.
And here’s another reality check. Many people who seem to take their commitment ever so seriously still manage to miss the point entirely. My hunch is that some of you here this morning—young people especially—are hesitant to join the church because image of a Christian has been so distorted in our time. A recent survey of unaffiliated young adults asked about their perceptions of Christians. The three most common perceptions of Christians were anti-homosexual (an image held by 91 percent of the folks surveyed), judgmental (87 percent), and hypocritical (85 percent.) Isn’t that sad that the things for which Jesus scolded the religious elites around him are now perceived as characteristics of those who claim to be his followers? We have a major image problem. As one preacher said, “Jesus needs some good lawyers, because he’s been terribly misrepresented.” The reality is that it’s possible for a person to say that he or she is a disciple of Jesus and still miss the point of who Jesus is and what it means to be his follower.
Jesus referred to this unfortunate reality when he said in effect: “Look, you may be a highly accomplished preacher with a television ministry, thousands attending your worship, best-selling author of Christian books, and still have it all wrong. Or you may be able to recite the entire Westminster Catechism, memorize the Book of Order and know the Bible cover to cover, and yet not know anything about Jesus. Or you could even be a miracle worker able to heal people in the name of Jesus and still be on a completely different foundation than one Jesus represents.
So what comprises that solid ground about which we’ve been singing this morning? Jesus said in our reading that everyone who hears his words and acts on them will be like the wise man who built his house on rock. The rock in question is a life based on love. Not sentimental love, but radical love of neighbor that finds its fullest expression in love for ones enemies. In wrapping up his sermon on the mount, Jesus drives home the point that what counts ultimately is a life of compassion for others. Paul makes this same point in his famous chapter on love in I Corinthians 13: So what if you can speak in the language of angels and have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love? And what do you really gain if you give away all your possessions and even your own life, but lack love?
I’m sure the members of the confirmation class would tell you that they do not claim to have their faith all figured out, or to know everything there is to know about God, but they show in their personal statements of faith that they’re starting out on solid ground. Their statements are peppered with phrases such as, “God never stops loving us…Jesus was sent by God to remind the world of God’s never-ending love…The church is called to ministry to the poor…God calls me to love my neighbors as myself and show God’s love through my actions.”
Friends, something hopeful is emerging in the church today, and we can see it in these young people joining the church. A new authenticity is emerging in young disciples here and across the church. They know that words are not enough, that scripture apart from love-informed application is dangerous, that faith apart from works is dead. Yes, we live in a fluid, uncertain age, but the love revealed to us in Jesus is an unfailing foundation, a solid rock.
May God grant to all of us—young and old—the grace and the wisdom to build our life on that rock.
Now as we stand and sing our confirmation hymn, we invite the confirmation class to come forward.