From Blessing to Building

Brian and Kathy Emmet

Blessed are the poor in spirit … Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock (Matthew 5:3, 7:24).

Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with blessing.  Who doesn’t like to be blessed?

Jesus ends the Sermon with a story about two builders and two buildings.  Building, especially what Jesus calls wise building, is hard work!

It’s harder to build on rock than on sand.  It’s more expensive – which means the building (your life) may not be as big and fancy.

Houses are obvious; foundations are hidden.  In our social media age, it’s easy to “build” a house (a life) that looks pretty spectacular online.  In our affluence, it can be easy to build a house that’s “the envy of the neighborhood.”

We can’t tell if a life has been built well or foolishly until …

The storms come: “The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew against the house,” Jesus says.  One house survives; the other collapses. The storm reveals what’s really there, in a house, in a life.

It’s normal for us in the affluent West to interpret “the storms” as the normal vicissitudes of life: accident, illness, getting laid off, having a relationship implode or explode, that sort of thing.  The vicissitudes of life are real and tragic and have to be dealt with; however, they’re not what Jesus is driving towards as he brings the Sermon to an end.

Jesus is speaking about the “storms” that come to us because we seek to both hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice, building our lives upon the words of Jesus instead of the myriad of words (information, analysis, expert opinion, advice, commands, and “promises”) that come at us every day.  “Storms” are a picture of the opposition that will come to us because we are straining to learn right side up living in the Jesus Way. “Storms” are the response of an upside-down world to people who are calling the upside-down world to account before God by hearing and practicing the words of Jesus.

We are blessed in order to build.  Each of us and all of us together, in this strange community called “church.”  Every word in the Sermon, especially the hard ones, is a blessing for us, a blessing towards a well-built life.  A well-built life for each of us; for us together; and for the needy world around us.

What are your top three take-aways from this sermon series?

Is there a specific part of the house-that-is-your-life that Jesus, the master architect/builder/renovator, is asking your permission to go to work on?  What kind of help do you need to “sign off” on his proposal?