“ARCHITECTURAL EXPEDIENCY” Luke 6.39-49
by The Rev. Chet Okopski
Preached at Grace Presbyterian Church, Spring Hill, FL.

        One of my favorite essay writers who has been one of my favorite essayists for most of my adult life is G. K. Chesterton.  He once wrote that without God and faith in God we would simply have “cures that don’t cure, blessings that don’t bless, and solutions that don’t solve…. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” 
        There is some worry about the Church today, especially in America where so many are simply throwing up their spiritual hands, and walking away from the Church, to seek their own spiritual way, a way which for many demands no sacrifice at all.
         I often think of what the Great Soul Gandhi said were the modern Seven Deadly Sins:   “Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Politics without principle, Science without humanity, and Worship without sacrifice.”
        Now I would not always fault individuals for walking away from church today, since those who actually come to a church on a spiritual quest sometimes end up in the midst of a controversy over money, or an argument over music, or a hurt caused by non-loving or terribly judgmental church members… I would not say “Christians.”  G.K. Chesterton once said: “Christianity isn’t a failure.  It just hasn’t been tried yet.”
        We really need to seek Jesus.  But part of the problem today is that many who seek Him already know a little about Him, and therefore cannot truly find Him.  Preconceived notions about Jesus usually end up coloring our perception of God.
        For example, if this church caught fire during worship, we would have at our disposal 7 exits.  However, most of the people sitting in a pew, during a disaster, would attempt to go out the exact door that they came in.   We could easily leave through the side emergency doors of this sanctuary, but it is human nature, during an emergency, to seek egress in the same way that access was found.
        A preconceived idea about where the exit is sometimes keeps people from finding the closest exit during an emergency.  Likewise, preconceived idea about Jesus sometimes keeps people from finding and knowing the real Christ.
        The Jesus message is a message of transformation. Those people who are profoundly affected by the Jesus message experience a transformation in their lives, a transformation from hostility to love, a transformation from vengeance to forgiving, as St. John would say, from darkness to light. 
        The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault says it this way:  “Jesus came first and foremost as a teacher of the path of inner transformation.”  We call it conversion, when a person experiences the transformation from darkness to light, from malice to forgiving love.
        St. Paul said it this way in Ephesians 4:  “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
        Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

        Throughout this transformation that the Holy Spirit brings to us, He calls us to a non judgmental life style.   Jesus said:  “Can a blind person guide a blind person without them both falling into the same pit?”…Why do you see the speck in our neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your neighbor...”Here let me help you get that little speck out of your eye”  while there’s a big old log sticking out of your own eye.”
        Jesus was a man filled with humor and joy. When he said this about taking the speck out of your own eye, don’t you think that lots of folks who listened laughed and smiled at the image, as Jesus poked fun at the religious people who were there?
        Maybe you’ve never thought of Jesus having fun and using humorous illustrations in his talks. I know when I first came to Grace Church that there were a couple of ‘old stick in the mud’ Christians who were offended that a preacher would use a humorous illustration or a joke from the pulpit.   Their preconceived ideas about Jesus kept them from the sheer joy of listening to Him with their hearts.
        Those Christians today who are claiming that their church and their worship is exclusive or better than everybody else’s are the guys that Jesus is talking about here, people who are trying to cure eye specks without being able to see their own logs.   What we must do as Christians, to get to God, to gain understanding of our Christ, is to go back 2,000 before all the traditional interpretations of Christ were established, and then look for and find the Christ of Galilee, the Jesus of the Gospels.  In God’s Word we find the Jesus of the Evangelists:  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul.
And then, according to God’s Word, we must let His transformational teaching begin to powerfully effect us.
        I titled my message today “Architectural Expediency” because of what Jesus says near the end of Luke 6. Jesus says that whoever hears his words and does them is like a person who builds his house on a deeply dug and well laid rock foundation. The floods can rage against that house, but it will stand firm.
        Jesus said that whoever heard his words and didn’t do them was like the man who built a house upon the ground with no foundation, so that when the floods came, the house simply washed away.  “When the river burst against that foundationless house, it fell immediately, and wow, the fall of it was great!”
        If we take these words and look at them simply for what Jesus says, we begin to get a better idea of what He meant.  He wasn’t talking about being a member of a church. He wasn’t talking about putting money in a church envelope.  He wasn’t talking about rising in an organization to one’s level of incompetence.  He was talking about putting His teachings to work in our lives.
        Those who do the things that Jesus said (according to Jesus) will have a life that is unshakable.   People may come against you, natural forces may roll in upon you like a storm, but the actions that you have taken, in transforming your life from evil to good, in giving of yourself to others, the actions of loving and forgiving, the fact of being a follower of Christ, these things will create a Powerful Spiritual House for you that cannot be moved.
        Your feet will be set like the Feet of the Master, bronze and glistening legs pushing you up far above the madding crowd, when you begin to do what He said to do, to live the way that Christ prescribed.   It’s interesting to me that the traditional interpretation of this parable is that we are to build our lives upon a commitment to Jesus Christ, and therefore our salvation will be our strong foundation. That isn’t at all what Jesus said.
        We have to get back past the traditional churchy interpretations of what Jesus said, and actually read what the Bible says. Jesus said:  ‘When you hear what He says, and you do it, then you will have a foundation for your life that cannot be washed away by life’s storms.  But when you hear what he says, understand what he says, and don’t do it, then you’ll be a wash-out with God.’
        Your actions through the week speak way louder about your connection to Jesus than your Sunday morning worship.  In worship we learn the teachings of Jesus, but through the week we either act them out or we don’t.
And it is in this doing of the teachings of Jesus that your life will be transformed, and fixed upon the Rock.
        “I will show you what someone is like,” said Jesus, “who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.  That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built.”

Prayer:  Lord may the work of our hands lead the words of our mouths and the worship of our hearts to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.