Built on Rock?

             In 1992, my mother and I bought a townhouse in a southwest suburb of Chicago. There were about 50 homes in the development that we moved into. The homes were built next to a wetland that was transformed into a beautiful park. During our first year there something happened to a number of the homes. People reported that their walls were cracking; their ceilings were cracking. They could not open their windows. Their doors would not close properly. After investigation by engineers, it was discovered that some of the homes were built on sandy, marsh-like ground that could not support the houses. The houses were literally collapsing because of the soil they were built on. Teams of engineers had to be brought in to reconstruct and support the foundations of the homes. Despite the hard work put into the reconstruction, most of the homes are still not the way they should be. The value of the homes has diminished significantly.

            When I hear Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew this weekend teaching us to build our houses on rock, that they might stand and endure, and to avoid building them on sand, which could not support them, I have a graphic image in my memory of what happens to houses that are lacking a good foundation. I know of people whose houses began to collapse for lack of good foundations. The image of the house in the gospel today stands for our lives. Jesus is teaching us that we must build our lives on rock, on solid foundations. We are challenged and invited this weekend to reflect on the foundations of our lives.

            Sometimes I have a thought; and the thought seems important enough to write down, so that I remember it. A recent thought that I wrote down was this:  “Most of my ultimates have not been ultimate.” One of my favorite theologians is Paul Tillich. Tillich had a term that he used to describe faith. He said that faith was ultimate concern. Consider those two words with me: concern – intentionality, focus, direction; ultimate – the non-finite, the transcendent, the divine. For Tillich, faith was and is building our lives on the ultimate, who is God. Ultimate concern is a way of saying that we need a solid foundation for our lives. Tillich suggested that such a foundation could only be God. My insight that most of my ultimates have not been ultimate is related to Tillich’s notion of ultimate concern. He felt that many people make non-ultimates into ultimates, or at least they try to. Such activity is equivalent to idolatry, for only God can be God.

            Some of us make work our ultimate concern. Others turn money or resources into their ultimate concern. Still others make the approval of others ultimate. Some make position or power their ultimate concern, and on and on. Most of our ultimates are not really ultimate. When we make a non-ultimate the foundation of our lives, we risk, metaphorically, what happened to the homeowners in my townhouse development. Without a firm foundation, our houses, or our lives, risk collapse.

            I have many of my own demons, so I do not mean the following to be judgmental. We have witnessed the meltdown of Charlie Sheen on our television screens recently. Sheen reportedly suffers from multiple addictions. Substances seem to have become the ultimate, the foundation of his life. This is true of anyone who suffers from untreated or denied addiction. What people in addiction remind us of is that the non-ultimate cannot be treated as ultimate. When we make the non-ultimate, ultimate or foundational we are risking the very collapse of our lives. In Sheen’s case, he seems to be risking career, fortune, family, and health to stay with his faulty life foundation. It is painful to watch him fall apart, perhaps because all of us in lesser ways have had periods in our lives, when we have tried to build our lives on foundations that were and are faulty.

            Jesus reminds us of reality this week in the seventh chapter of Matthew. He tells us that in each of our lives rain is going to come; floods will come; strong winds will buffet our houses, or our lives. It is the nature of being human to deal with struggles, difficulties, and pain. How we handle the struggles of life, the pain of being human, is largely influenced by the kind of life foundation we have chosen for ourselves and on which we build our lives. Jesus offers Himself as the foundation, the rock on which we can build our lives.

            How do we make Jesus, and through Jesus, Abba, and the Holy Spirit foundational for our lives? Having God as our ultimate concern necessitates, first of all, a decision. We need to decide that we want God to be our rock. We then need to work on a relationship with God, through Jesus, in the Spirit. This relationship develops and deepens through regular prayer and worship. Prayer and worship are the language and activity of conversion. They change the dominant images of our consciousness and lives. To have Jesus as our foundation we need the support of others. We need community. Disciples are a community of learners, gradually appropriating the wisdom and vision of Jesus, which is the Reign of God. We need, on a regular basis, to listen to the Word of God in Scripture. We need to engage in exegesis, which is a movement backward, to understand the times, the culture, and the intentionality of the author of a given passage of Scripture. We need also to engage in hermeneutics which is a movement forward, asking what a particular passage of Scripture is saying to us today. We need to reflect on our own personal lives; we need also to reflect on what is going on in the world around us. It is this marriage of exegesis and hermeneutics that results in the experience of revelation: God speaking to us today through the words of Scripture.

            Jesus indicates in the gospel today that the real challenge of making Him the foundation of our lives lies in acting on His word. He says in today’s gospel, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on rock… Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand… It collapsed and was completely ruined.”

            Have we decided for Jesus as Lord, as foundation of our lives? Are we trying to deepen our experiences of prayer and worship? Are we connecting with other faithful disciples who help us to grow in faith and spirituality? Are we striving to listen more deeply to God’s Word in Scripture and as it is spoken in our daily lives? Are we trying to live the values and behaviors of the Reign of God? Let us remember the words of Jesus in today’s gospel: “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one does the will of my Father in heaven.”

For years, I studied psychology at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. Alfred Adler and his followers spoke of life tasks which we need to address as we grow. The life tasks are: the self (developing a good self-concept); work (engaging in meaningful activity that uses our gifts and benefits others); friendship (having a network of relationships that supports us); intimacy (having someone with whom we are very close). They referred to the final life task as the cosmological task, that is, deciding on whether there is a God, and whether we want God to be part of our lives. This task was seen as almost getting a picture frame for the portrait of our lives. This is simply another way of expressing the possibility of having God through Jesus as the rock of our lives.

            Moses warns us in the book of Deuteronomy this week to not “turn aside from the way I ordain for you today to follow other gods.” He is cautioning us to avoid the mistake of idolatry. He is inviting us to build our lives on the true ultimate concern.

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan
pbrennan@theclareatwatertower.com

This week marked the 30th anniversary of HORIZONS, a radio program that I co-host with Dawn Mayer.  Thanks to the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, we are on the air every Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m. on 560 AM and at 11:00 a.m. on 1160 AM.

Join me for a Lenten Parish Mission at St. Thomas the Apostle in Naperville on March 14-16.  Visit www.stapostle.org for more details.