Building a Solid Foundation
Continuing on in our series on all the stuff you shoulda learned in Sunday school…we’re going to talk about a few parables over the next few weeks and then we’ll be done with this series and you’ll graduate with a Sunday school education. Congratulations! You’re basically in your senior year. Which means you can skip class and stop paying attention and you’ll still probably turn out just fine.
Today’s parable:
Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. 26 But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. 27 The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.
~ Matthew 7:24-27, CEB
When I was a youth- well- let’s just pause here for a second. If you grow up in the church, teenagers are called youths. Not teens. Youths. Anyway. When I was a youth- we were taught a mantra for spiritual disciplines. Specifically: daily morning scripture reading combined with prayer. Imagine these words being spoken with an almost military-level precision, rhythm, and delivery. It went like this: 5 minutes a day? No. Way. Gotta have more. To be hardcore.
The message was clear: in order to be a spiritual person you need to do more than 5 minutes of scripture reading and prayer each day. How much more? Well- you know- “let your heart be your guide.”
As a youth- I was curious- could I do 5 minutes and one second? It’s tricky to say 5 minutes isn’t enough but then you have to follow your heart to find the right number of minutes. What if my heart says 3 minutes? My heart must be wrong. So, I guess the principle is, listen to your heart for any amount of time over 5 minutes. But then 6 minutes still seems like cheating. So maybe follow your heart for anything over 10 minutes? But then WHY NOT JUST SAY 10 MINUTES!? My guess is 10 minutes still wouldn’t be enough because 10 minutes just doesn’t feel hardcore.
This is the kind of spiritual anxiety spiral that it’s easy to fall into if we confuse spirituality for spiritual performance. The good news is: This wasn’t a trap Jesus fell into.
Now, these verses are commonly used to tell people to do more spiritual stuff because, so the logic goes, Jesus is saying to do spiritual stuff. Because, if you do more spiritual stuff, you will have a firm foundation for your spiritual house.
Logical enough, right?
But- read these verses closely. Jesus says to put his words into practice. The question is- what words is he referring to?
Well, the simplest solution is whatever he just said right before this. So let’s look at some of the instructions he gives right before this (in Matthew chapter 7):
Don’t judge (and make sure you’re cleaning up your side of the street)
Don’t try to convert violent people (re: don’t throw pearls before animals that will attack you)
Ask God for what you need
Take the road less traveled (because following God’s will is hard)
Be discerning about who you listen to (by paying attention to the “fruit” their lives bear)
Follow God’s will
Okay- that’s a bit different than spending 15-300 minutes per day doing spiritual exercises. These are, on the whole, pretty concrete instructions. The instructions have nothing to do with daily quiet time (yes, Jesus spent time alone in prayer, but a daily quiet time would be totally foreign to him because the vast majority of people could not read or write. So reading scripture was impossible).
Jesus’ instruction is more like live a spiritual life. We may hear other instructions rising to the surface: treat others the way you want to be treated. We may remember the story of the good samaritan- a reminder to not only love but to care for and offer mercy to people who we might otherwise find despicable. We may think of the prodigal son- and remember the importance of returning home to a loving father when we’ve strayed (as opposed to staying “lost” out of fear or shame or whatever else). We may consider the call to offer forgiveness where we can. We may even fast forward and think of Paul’s instructions to build others up, and bear each other’s burdens, and so on and so forth.
Of course- living a spiritual life may include spiritual disciplines. But spiritual disciplines in and of themselves are not the goal. They are one piece of a much larger puzzle. As a kid, I knew plenty of people who were good at spiritual disciplines (or so they say) who I would not consider spiritual people in any way.
For instance: Would you consider an adult volunteer in the youth group who calls a youth an asshole just because he slightly giggled to be a spiritual person? This kind of thing was common for him. And pretty common for the adults who were supposed to be leading me in general. This was not a person who was bearing fruit. He just happened to be hanging around.
Spiritual disciplines don’t guarantee a spiritual life. The only way we know if a person is spiritual, according to Jesus, is by the fruit that person bears. But even in saying this- we’re missing part of the picture- which is that we should not be so preoccupied with the fruit others are bearing and more preoccupied with whether or not I am bearing fruit.
Yes- I have demonstrated my own hypocrisy by judging my former youth leaders and doing so publicly. To be honest- it feels good to put them on blast a little bit and if God is upset with me for it later I might repent. We’ll see! Either way, I’m trying to illustrate how hard it is for me to live out the principles Jesus is calling us all to even when I’m the one drawing attention to them.
The ultimate point here is a challenge to all of us: Are you willing to examine your life and consider whether it bears the fruit of a spiritual life. And, if it doesn’t, to then ask the question: What am I going to do about it?
