BUILDING ON ROCK

 

I was away this weekend, celebrating the wedding of my great-niece. Here are the notes from the sermon I gave at the ceremony.

It’s obvious to all of us gathered here that you two, Daniel and Joanie, took your time in choosing  the readings we just heard.   I think we can catch your point:

The first reading, from the Book of Proverbs, tells us, “Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Clearly, “fearing the Lord” is not something currently in fashion, but is important to the both of you.

The second reading, a familiar one at weddings, reminds us that love cannot be reduced to a romantic emotion, but rather describes it as being kind, patient, generous and so forth.   Love means giving up what I want for the sake of what the other needs.  Again, you’re being countercultural: 

This seems much sounder advice for newlyweds  than anything that our ego-centered culture has to offer.

And I particularly like your choice of the gospel passage, the third reading, where we hear Jesus’ advice about building your house on rock and not on the sand of the world’s empty promises of possessions, power, prestige and pleasure.

 We get the point of these readings.  Thank you for that reminder this afternoon. Of course, the best reminder you’re giving us is your example as you come here together asking God to consecrate  your love for one another.

I’d like to take a careful look at this image of building your house on the rock which is God.

Think about the tendency that some believers have of treating God as if God were just like a fellow human: this was the Pharisees’ problem.  They learned how to work the system, how to keep God happy,  how to stay on God’s good side and earn their rewards. God became just another someone in their life that they had learned how to manage and even control.

This God had gradually, imperceptibly,  gotten awfully small. A pocket-size God. Ever meet someone who’s got God in their pocket? They can be pretty terrifying.

But this is certainly not the God that you, Daniel and Joanie, are calling on this morning,  Such a small sized  God cannot be the rock on which you want to found your marriage. This God is way too tiny to  contain the expanse of your love.

But have no fear. I think St. Paul might be able to help us here.  In Chapter ten of First Corinthians, the letter we read from in our Second Reading,  Paul offers the following image of a  rock: the one which Moses struck in the desert, from which flowed life-giving water for the thirsty Israelites. Paul tells us,

“And this rock was the Christ” (v.4)

Hmm. here we may be on to something. 

Let’s remember that “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name, “Christ” is a title” - Greek Christos = anointed = meshach in Hebrew, the  Messiah: The promised one who will one day deliver God’s people.  The title “Christ” is only used after the resurrection, of the victorious one who conquered death..

This “Christ” title can teach you so much about founding your marriage on solid rock! The notion of “the Christ” is, you see, absolutely thrilling, even mind-blowing. Let’s start with the opening words of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word,” Here, “Word” is spelled with a capital “W,” It refers to a person: Namely, the Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity.

Listen as the passage continues: “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” 

Did you hear that? The Christ was there, before the beginning.

Here I want to digress for awhile: [NOTE: The bride is an aerospace engineer at JPL]

How appropriate that your wedding is taking place here in Glendora, so near Pasadena, JPL and Caltech. Some of us drove to church this afternoon right past Mount Wilson, where the name of Edwin Hubble is still venerated.

Hubble, you may remember, is the astronomer who worked at the observatory up there, and proved that many objects that were thought to be clouds of dust and gas were actually galaxies beyond the milky way. He then set about using scientific measurements of variables in luminosity and pulsation periods to calculate distances in the farthest reaches of space and concluded that our universe is expanding.

Scientists immediately realized that we could use Hubble’s calculations to run the movie in reverse, so to speak, and peer farther and farther back in time, to the earliest days of the universe.

Today, millions of us are familiar with the mind-blowing images captured by the Hubble Telescope. (Do we have any JPL people here? Thank you for helping to publicize these beautiful pictures!) We now have countless images of tens of thousands of galaxies--not stars! 

The light from some of these galaxies has been traveling to us for 12 billion years. We’re seeing them not as they are today but as they looked billions of years ago. And we keep peering back deeper and deeper in time, closer and closer to the “big bang.”

Try staring into one of these glorious 3-D full color images for a few minutes; something awesome will start to sink into your spirit. And finally, here’s my point: You realize that you are staring into a 3-dimensional image of the first verse of John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word. - the Cosmic Christ.”

It’s almost as if each of these images has an invisible label that we can read with the eyes of faith. The label says: “This is Christ Country.” 

St. John’s image merges perfectly with Edwin Hubble’s! The one difference is this: St. John suggests that instead of asking “WHAT was there before the Big Bang?” We should ask “WHO” was there before the Big Bang?” His answer is, of course, “The CHRIST. 

Listen as the evangelist continues in that same passage:

“All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.“

In other words, The Christ is before the beginning, present everywhere and in everything: in muons and mountain peaks, in atoms and asteroids,  in cosmic rays and corona viruses. Christ is present there, in every created thing. Try sticking that God in your pocket! 

John’s prologue continues, moving toward a climax:

“ What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;”

Ah! The human race! Now John is starting to bring us back from outer space to our own human experience. Good. I know, you were afraid I was getting lost. But now, finally, comes his crowning final statement:

  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!”

Now when you gaze at the helpless infant in the manger in Bethlehem, this Christmas, I invite you to see not just a familiar, human-sized, pocket size God. With the eyes of faith you can see lying on the straw  the Christ in our human flesh!  The one who existed before time began but who is Love Incarnate.

Let me switch metaphors: ?” A “rock” is too static and lifeless for our purposes. I want to switch to the idea of “story.” The story of the Christ forms a single saga of God’s boundless love for us. A story that begins before the Big Bang, and has been surging along for billions of years as the Christ keeps loving everything into existence. 

The saga contains God’s choosing a particular people, Israel, to prepare for His coming in person. Until he finally becomes human himself. Yeah! Think about that for a second:

      The Christ became human!

This is infinitely more mind-blowing than even the best deep-space photograph!       

The story includes how Jesus the Messiah took upon himself human suffering, yours and mine. He takes on death itself in a head-on battle on Good Friday. And, the story goes, on Easter morning He WINS the fight. He rises from the dead and brings us with him.

“Jesus Christ is Ris’n today. Alleluia!”

This is the Christ on whom you want to base your marriage!

And the story is still going forward, right up to this afternoon, right into this very church of St. Philip the Apostle, because this story of the Christ is our story - yours and mine.

This afternoon you are about to start writing your own special chapter together. And all of us are here today because we want to be part of your story, to encourage you and promise to stand by you.

So I now invite you Joanie and Daniel to stand,  as we call upon the Universal Christ.