For a number of years the building had stood in the community, serving our children as their elementary school. It had weathered the coming and going of several generations of children. It had withstood not only the storms that beat on it from the outside, but also the onslaughts of thousands of junior-size feet on the inside. It had housed shouts of triumph, like the one which escaped this father's lips when he was told that his daughter was doing exceptionally well in one of her classes. And it had known moments of anxiety like those occasional trips to the principal's office to deal with what is politely called a "discipline problem". A good, solid, place, this school, a building with lots of fond memories.
But, as the years went by the population shifted and there was less and less need for an elementary school in our community. Several innovative educational programs were attempted to attract children from outside our immediate area, and that helped for a while. But eventually, the Board of Education of Montgomery County decided to close Four Corners Elementary School, and for a number of months there was only an empty shell there, a building with no school, a structure with no life in it. But a building, a structure nonetheless.
And then, overnight almost, with a suddenness that took your breath away, with a devastation that seemed unreal, it was gone. The bulldozers moved in and with a few swift and sure passes took that building out, moved away the rubble, and then pushed the earth over the site and planted grass. It was as if there had never been anything there at all. All that remained was a parking lot, a small stand of trees, and the side path along which I had occasionally dragged a reluctant child. Gone, wiped out, it seemed. My son said, "How can I take my children by here some day and say to them, 'That's where I went to school?' There's nothing there anymore."
But now there is a new development. Now, within the last few months, something new has happened on that site. A new building is going up, a senior citizens home, I am told, I suppose on the assumption that if the neighborhood doesn't have children any more then what it does have is folks at the other end of life. But a senior center is going up on the site and not just on the site, but, I have learned, on the original foundations. When the bulldozers came and took out the school building, they did not destroy the foundations. No they just buried them for a time, and now they are able to use exactly the same foundations to put up a new and useful and beautiful structure. The foundations, you see, were solid, they were secure, and so they were useful to a whole new enterprise, a whole new generation.
Herein lies a parable, a parable of our church and more to the point, a parable of Christian life. Shall I spell out this parable for you?
The parable says to me:
First, if you keep and secure the foundations, even though what you once had is gone, you are still ready for whatever it is appropriate to build now. If you are careful to secure the foundations, even though what once was built upon them is no longer useful or is even gone, still you have something that can be used for your future.
Second, the parable says to me: what is built on top of the foundations may change, it may have an entirely different look and it may have different uses, but still its shape and its structure are determined by the foundation. The foundation is in the ground, it's there to stay, and it both limits and defines what can be put on top of it. The foundation sets the pattern for the structure.
And finally, the parable says to me and to you: you can destroy a good thing overnight, with terrible swiftness. But it takes time to build, it takes time to be constructive. Still, you save time and you preserve a heritage if you use the old solid foundations. The bulldozers came and almost overnight swept away virtually any physical evidence that there had ever been a Four Corners Elementary School. But when the builders came to put up the senior center, though it will take them many months to do their work, still they have a real head start because the foundations are secured.
What does the parable say? You are not interested in a lecture on the building code this morning. What does the parable say to you and to me in terms of our own lives together in the church? Let's permit the apostle Paul to put it in spiritual terms for us:
"God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid." God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid, should be laid. This foundation is the one we want and the one we must secure. No other foundat1on ought anyone attempt to lay except Jesus Christ himself.
As you and I experience this church, I am quite confident that it seems very different now from what it was only a few years ago, and for some of you, utterly unlike what it was many years ago. You have undergone considerable change.
Let me just highlight that for you out of my own admittedly limited experiences. I can attest to the degree and the rapidity of change, as I have gone through some materials here – reports, bulletins, other documents that are as recent as five and six years old – I read all kinds of names that I do not recognize. You had as leaders in this congregation only a few years ago people who are not here any longer. Some of them are in other churches, some are inactive. But it strikes me as though that bulldozer that was at work at Four Corners School came in here too and swept away lots of folks, overnight and with terrible suddenness. Change, fast and furious.
And then I have been visiting, in a small way, but some, among inactive church members. I have been listening, as best I can, to some stories. And I am struck by the fact that there are out there now a whole host of people who feel as though their church has been swept away, that the church they knew is no longer here. Oh, there is something here that carries the name of Takoma Park Baptist Church, oh there is a building here with which they are familiar, but for a host of people the church they knew is gone, and whatever is here appears to be strange and forbidding and even painful.
Now what do I say to folks like this? How can you and I who are here respond to persons who have seen only the bulldozers of change and who have not allowed themselves to experience the painstaking labors of building?
I think we have to say to them and to ourselves, God has placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can or will be laid. No other foundation can or will be laid other than faith in Jesus Christ, and the first lesson of my parable – if we keep and secure that foundation, even though what once was here is gone or changed, we will be ready to build whatever is right and appropriate for now. On the foundation which is still here, providing we secure it well – on the foundation of the lordship of Christ, we can still build for a new generation. No other foundation can anyone lay than the one which God has laid, even Jesus Christ himself.
Now if you know something about the Corinthian church in the first century, you know that it was a church in conflict, a church which had experienced, among other things, a crisis of leadership. Whom would they follow? Whose pattern would they adopt?
To this the great apostle replies that his concern is not whether or not the Corinthian Christians were loyal to him, but rather whether they would go on and build on what he had placed in their care. "I laid the foundation," he says. "I laid the foundation, and others build on it. Some will use gold and silver and precious stones; others will use wood or grass or straw, but when the test of fire comes you will see what the quality of at all is." Still, he says, go on and build if you are sure that you have a secure foundation. If you have Christ at the base, then what ever else you do is off to the right start; it is of uneven quality, perhaps some of it is better than others, but if it is built on the foundation of the lordship of Christ, then it will still be of value.
You know, I think it is indeed a gracious word what Paul says here: that whether you build of gold and precious stone or whether all you can bring is wood and stubble, in the end, even if what you did was not of top quality, Christ will save. Isn't that interesting? Listen to this word from the Scripture: "The fire will test everyone's work and show its real quality. If what was built on the foundation survives the fire, the builder will receive a reward … but if anyone's work is burnt up, then he will lose it, but he himself will be saved."
Isn't that a word of grace for us? We are not necessarily called as church folks to do the best, but we are called to do the best we can, and even if it is not topnotch, God will honor it. Let me make that distinction again: we are not necessarily called to do the best or have the best or be the biggest or be the most upscale church, but we are called to give the best we have, to do the best we have, and even if it does not last forever, still God will honor us and God will save us. And we most certainly do not have to be all alike or all in complete agreement. We have to use a found foundation.
So there is lesson number two from the parable of Four Corners Elementary School: that what you build tomorrow may look quite different from what somebody built yesterday, but if you have a secure foundation, if your basis is the right and strong basis of Jesus Christ, then what you build tomorrow will serve its purpose. Mrs. Dixon sometimes sings for us, "Only what you do for Christ will last." No other foundation ought anyone lay than Jesus Christ himself.
But then what shall we build? And where does all this speak to you as persons, to you as believers? Where does this come down to my life and yours?
There are some essential and crucial foundations you and I must lay down and secure if we are to be God’s church, if we are to be God's people. There are some elements that we must be about, things that to a degree have been misplaced or lost sight of.
For example, there is the intellectual foundation which is knowledge of the Scriptures. No church can build for the future without Christians who are Biblically literate. I am not talking simply about waving the flag for the Bible, I am not talking about professing that you believe the Bible from cover to cover, including the maps and the index. I am talking about the hard work of studying and understanding the basic textbook of the Christian faith. That is a foundation that must be laid, for our Christ is Word made flesh.
There is the spiritual foundation of prayer and worship – again, not simply saying prayers and going through the motions of formal worship, though those things are not bad. But I am talking about every single person among us becoming sensitive to the dynamics of the life of prayer and worship, and I am talking about an atmosphere so pervaded with prayer that we are able to reach out and touch it. It can become almost tangible, this awesome discipline of prayer.
And again there is the relational foundation of integrity and trust and care. I discover, over and over again, to my dismay, that it is possible for some Christians to study the Scriptures and to pray without ceasing, and still to drop the ball on this one. A basic relational foundation of a church, of a Christian, is to exercise the discipline of trust and love and care and patience.
Paul says, if we think we have an abundance of worldly wisdom, then please know that what we really need is a bit of foolishness. We need to be fools in the world's sight in order to be really wise. And for me that means that we need to start again at the foundations that are provided for us, the intellectual foundation of Biblical knowledge, which so often seems contradictory to the world's knowledge. The spiritual foundation of disciplined prayer, which characteristically is pushed aside by an activist world. The relational foundation of trusting and loving and caring for and being patient with one another, which the yuppie culture brushes off as hopeless. But I tell you, without these foundations there will be no church worthy of the name and no Christians left to carry on the church anyway.
And so lesson three of the parable of Four Corners School: you may destroy a good thing overnight, but it takes time and discipline to build. It takes time and energy and commitment and discipline to build, but if you have used the solid foundation that was never destroyed, if you secure that foundation whose name is Jesus the Christ, then you will be off to a head start. You will end up with something worthwhile because you took the time to secure the foundation.
I could speak to you in some detail about what this will mean for us together, and the insert with its hints of what may come over the next seven years will help you understand it to some degree. Actually I will interpret all of this in much, much more detail at the annual meeting of the congregation. So I will say nothing more today about where we as a church may choose to go. I will say only that it is my intention as your pastor, as one who is here not only to sense what you want, but, far more important, to sense and to provide what you need … and please do not miss that distinction … to sense what you want, yes, but more important to provide what you need (and they are not always the same), it is my intention throughout 1987 to work very intentionally on securing for you and with you the foundations. And as we walk through this year we are going to have to remind ourselves again and again, God has already provided the one and only foundation which can be laid, that is Jesus Christ. No other foundation can or should be laid.
But I want also to speak a word to each of you personally, not to the church as a whole but to persons, individuals. I want to ask you whether the foundations of your own lives have been solidly secured. I want to raise the issue, whether, if the storms of life might come and rage around you, whether you are prepared for them. Is the Lord Jesus Christ and his will and his way the foundation, the bedrock on which your life is anchored? Is He for you the heart and center and core of your life? Or is it that you can drift by here on a Sunday and nod in his direction and feel somehow satisfied?
And for many of you I need to raise the question, too, is the foundation of your life secured and committed to the company of God's people? Are you doing the kind of building that the Scripture speaks of? You may have a foundation of loyalty to Christ, but have you taken that gold or stone or wood or stubble or whatever you have and begun to build anything? Have you seen the church, this church, as a place to be grounded and committed to building? Have you determined that you might help secure these foundations; or are you simply going to wait and enjoy the shelter that others built?
This morning, let's determine to secure the foundations. Let's determine to begin a program of spiritual discipline so that we will be ready for whatever the future brings – whether my puny vision as embodied in this document or something else that someone else may lead, let's be ready. And let's claim the matchless promise offered by the great apostle: all things are yours. All things are yours – this world, life and death, the present and the future, all these are yours, and you are Christ's and Christ is God's. What a promise!
It all depends on a secure foundation.
