Although generally I stay away from stories that begin, “There were a Baptist minister, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi,” today I’ll make an exception. Sometimes you just have to be corny to get your point across.
So, sure enough, there were a Baptist minister, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi, and they were, of course, involved in a religious debate. They had gone on a picnic together out by the lake, where they started talking about whose faith was best. One of them said, “My faith is so strong and my religion is so solid that, if I wanted to, I could walk on water.” And one of the others said he thought he could too. So the third one said, in a slight paraphrase of a verse in the Book of Acts, “See, here is water, what doth hinder us ..?” The Bible says, “What doth hinder us to be baptized?”, but they meant, “What doth hinder us making fools of ourselves?”
And so it began. The Baptist minister volunteered to go first. After all, he said, I have had a lot more experience with water than you fellows. We do baptisms right, all the way in. None of this sprinkling for us. I know water. And so he charged off the end of the dock and, you guessed it, plunged into water right up to his blessed assurance, and washed ashore embarrassed and spluttering. So much for us Baptists.
The Catholic priest volunteered to go next. I will show both of you whose is the true church, founded on the shoulders of St. Peter, who was among the original walkers on water. Father stepped briskly off the dock. But Father also faltered and fell face full forward into four fathoms of froth. He too had to climb out, his confidence shattered.
The rabbi smiled a knowing smile, walked out to the water’s edge, swung his foot around in the water as if he were testing it, and then, slowly but surely, began to walk right across the lake, all the way to the other side, with his head held high and his prayer shawl dry. When his clergy colleagues had recovered from shock, of course they were most repentant and most anxious to know how such a thing was done. In fact, they were almost ready to sign up to join the synagogue.
The rabbi had an explanation. “Oh, he said, “walking on the water, it’s no big thing. Not if you know where the rocks are.”
Seems like sometimes you and I are called upon to walk on water. Seems like sometimes you and I have to stay steady amid all the challenges of life, and it’s not easy to keep going. We are expected to manage our families, bring home a decent living, take part in community affairs, make a contribution to the church, further our educations, and be there for anybody who needs us. There’s so much to do sometimes we think we will drown in it all. Got to walk on water just to stay up with things.
And then they tell us it’s no big thing if you know where the rocks are. If you just stay focused on the right things, they say, you can do it. You can be superhuman. You can not only walk on water, you can leap tall buildings with a single bound. You can do it all. That’s what they say, if you know where the rocks are.
The only trouble with that is that sometimes the rocks get slippery. Sometimes the very things on which we depend get slippery and uncertain. Slippery rocks; even if you know where they are, have a habit of giving way. They feel more like the shifting sand in Jesus’ parable than the rock on which we can depend.
I
Let me be specific. If you have been in one of our discipleship groups, you’ve heard it said that the resources for our spiritual stability are four things: the Bible, prayer, our church fellowship, and our personal testimony. Four rocks, if you like, on which Christians stand tall and, somebody says, can help you just about walk on water: God’s word, which instructs us; prayer, which inspires us; a caring fellowship, called the church, to support us; and our witness, the testimony of our own experiences, to give us a means of expression.
Know where these rocks are and use them and you are secure. That’s what we have been taught.
But now, what if these rocks get slippery? Let me point out just how slippery all these rocks can become.
a
We’ve mentioned the Bible. God’s word. Being instructed in the ways of the Lord. It’s a rock. But have you ever been through periods of doubt? Have you ever just found yourself questioning the Bible? How can this old book, written hundreds of years ago by goodness-knows-who, still teach us today? How can we trust it, how can we make sense of it? Haven’t you ever felt that way?
Oh come on, now, admit it. Yes, this is church, and we are supposed to say good things about the Bible. We are supposed to stand up for it. Of course. But we are talking about reality now, your reality and mine. Is it not true that we have entertained doubts and questions about the reliability of the Bible? Isn’t it true that we have raised questions about something in the Bible, only to check ourselves, feeling that maybe it was sinful even to have such a thought? But there it was, just the same?
I’m saying that there are times when the Bible feels like a slippery rock. It’s not a matter of whether anybody can prove or disprove the Bible; it is that our restless minds are going to get skeptical about it. They just are. And if you get skeptical, then for you the Bible is a slippery rock.
Please understand what I am saying. I am not condemning anybody for questioning the Bible. Not at all. In fact, I think this is something we ought to do. One of the most productive growth periods in my own life came when I began to think about the Bible critically, well beyond my Sunday School upbringing. That’s not wrong. That’s not sinful. Doubt is not a bad thing. Not at all. But when we doubt, at that point the Bible becomes a slippery rock. It’s not likely you will bet your life on something you aren’t sure about. It’s not likely you will trust a leaky life preserver to keep you from drowning. The Bible can be a slippery rock.
b
Second, there is prayer. We have touted prayer as one of the bedrocks of the Christian life. And it is. It is indispensable. Prayer is the breath of our spiritual lives. Just as soon stop breathing and try to stay alive as to stop praying and try to stay vital spiritually. Nobody here is going to argue that you can do without the rock of prayer.
But what about those times when it seems your prayer is not heard? What about those occasions when you pray and pray, and nothing happens? What about that harsh reality: that God may seem very distant and remote, God may seem not to care, God has not delivered as we thought He ought to. What about when our prayers seem to ring back in our ears with a hollow mockery? Prayer is then a slippery rock, and it does not hold us up.
Let’s confess that we fail in prayer. Oh, we go through testimony times and talk about how God has answered this prayer or ; we like to speak of our successes in prayer. But we have to acknowledge our failed prayers, the things for which we have anguished, but we’ve never discerned an answer; the habits we’ve tried to give up and give over to God through prayer, but which come back over and over to haunt us; the prayers for people we think need to change, but the more we pray for them the more difficult and insufferable they become. We do fail at prayer.
If you are depending on prayer as one of the bedrocks to hold you up through life’s storms, that’s fine. That’s good. But sometimes prayer, rock though it is, becomes a slippery rock, and you fall off.
c
The third rock I’ve mentioned is the church. The fellowship of believers. And how precious that is! How many times I have seen people in this fellowship come to the rescue of others! How many times I have heard you speak of leaning on the strong shoulders of this brother or that sister, this group or that class. And that’s good. That’s great. I’d like to think that after our being here together all these years, we could be solid rocks for each other. The church fellowship can be a splendid rock.
Except when it isn’t. Except when your brother is so preoccupied with his own problems he hasn’t got the time or the strength for yours. Except when you sister is so inattentive that she misses the clues you sent out about needing help. The church is a rock, except when it isn’t.
The church is a rock, except when its fellowship is fractured by suspicion and insecurity. Some of us become so insecure that we’re no good for anybody else. It’s all we can do to keep our own heads above water. And like Peter, the original water walker, who was doing fine until he looked down at what he was doing and realized, “I can’t do that,” and thus began to sink, lots of us will do fine until we start worrying about whether we are doing fine, and pretty soon we aren’t doing fine. The church is a rock, except when it isn’t.
The church is a rock, except when you try to lean on insecure people and you find out that they need to be told that they are OK; you find out that they will tell you, over and over, that they are weak and weary, so that you will assure them that they are strong and savvy, but the more you do that, the more needy they become, but you cannot say it enough. The church is a rock, except that lots of us are living out of deficits, and if you’ve started life thinking that you are not good enough, chances are you still feel not good enough. And you are nobody’s rock. Or at best a slippery rock.
The church fellowship, made up of deficit people, is a rock except when it is a slippery rock.
d
And then there is the matter of our own experiences. Our own witness. And I tell you that if you try to keep your life on course by depending on the memory of your own experiences, that will work for a while. That will last for a time. But that too will finally become a slippery rock.
Most of us get by today’s challenges by remembering what we learned in the past. We think we know a few things, learned yesterday, that will help us today. And that’s right. You stay around a few years, you pick up something. They say that if you throw a monkey in a cage with a typewriter, chances are that in a few million years he will compose a Shakespeare sonnet! Stick around and you learn something.
But even your own experiences become a slippery rock, because the needs of now are greater than the lessons of then. Yes, the rumor is true, that I hit that sixtieth birthday this week. Somebody asked me how I felt about it, and my answer is that for the first time in my life I am beginning to reminisce as well as to create; I am beginning to look back wistfully on the way we were as well as to look forward hopefully to what we can become; I am beginning to think about preserving the past as well as about creating a new thing. And that scares me.
That scares me because I know that in the new world into which God calls us, it isn’t going to work to just look back and wonder how I got over. It isn’t going to anchor me just to think about the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done. That will always be a pleasant memory, and, to a degree, it will anchor me. But I know, because I know human nature, that those days will come when I will feel like a miserable failure and a doddering old fool, and none of my skills will be good enough. I know that my own feelings and my memories may look like a rock of sorts, but they are the slipperiest rock of all! How you feel about yourself may be healthy today, but tomorrow the tides will turn, and the fashions will change, the ground will shift under you, and they will laugh at your outdated ways and your unfashionable accomplishments. You will be hopelessly out of date, and you will feel as though your life is on the slipperiest of slippery rocks, indeed that it is founded in nothing more than shifting sand.
All of our rocks are slippery. The Bible, prayer, the church, our experiences. Slippery rocks. Slithery, slimy sands.
II
So where do we turn? To what do we go for a sure step in all that life brings us? What rocks are there which will be broad enough, sturdy enough, and gritty enough, to hold us up? The answer is at once simple and surprising. Jesus said,
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock."
Everyone who hears and acts. Obeying. Responding and doing. The key is obedience. Obedience is the forgotten discipline among contemporary Christians. We want to do everything else but obey. But the rock, the way to stand tall, is obedience to the commands of our Lord and savior.
Think about it. We want to feel good. We want to feel secure. But how do we search for it? We ask our churches to inspire us. We want a charge-up every Sunday. But entertainment without obedience is shallow. It ends with the benediction and does not resume until next Sunday’s prelude. We want to feel good religion, but we are not willing to do what Christ tells us to do. As long as we are going after feel-good religion, there will be no solid rocks on which we can stand.
Obedience is crucial. This is critical. We have sinned against Christ, against one another, and against ourselves by softening the radical obedience to which Christ calls us. We have figured out how to tone it down and dilute it so that it means very little. Where Christ commands, “Pray without ceasing”, we have decided that five minutes on the subway ought to be enough. Where Christ commands, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, “ we have gotten by with, “They know where the church is if they want to come.” Where Christ commands, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,” we have calculated the thing and whittled it down to where we can toss in the price of a movie ticket and be done with it. Where Christ commands, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, “ we have warbled our way out saying that nobody is perfect and we have to give ourselves time to grow.
Great God, do we not see that every time we fail to obey what Christ commands, we are whittling away at the rock on which we stand? Do we not see that every time we choose to think that mediocrity is good enough, we have turned one more rock into shifting sand?
“And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell--and great was its fall!"
Obedience. Obedience, a tough word. Hear and act. You feel as though you have to walk on water? It can be done, if you know where the rocks are. And even if the rocks are slippery, it can be done, if you follow closely, in obedience, the rabbi who has gone before to show you the way.
