At the turn of the 20^th century, Galveston was poised to become the New York City of the Gulf.  Representing all the hubris of American culture, it was winning the race with its Houston neighbor to the north to become the southern Mecca of culture, trade and commerce.  People were wealthier than ever.  Peace reigned.  Scientific discovery had brought medical care to an all-time zenith.  America was unstoppable in 1900.  Galveston was helping lead the way except for one major problem.  It had been built at sea level, right next to the Gulf of Mexico. 

For Galveston, the ninth month of 1900 would turn out to be a very dark September, much like the one through which we’ve just lived.  Late in the evening of September 8, a hurricane of greater intensity than any in recorded history slammed Galveston Island head-on.  Hurricanes weren’t named in those days.  So, what is now known as the Galveston hurricane of 1900 still ranks as the single greatest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. The most advanced instruments of the day were literally blown away at the peak of the storm.  But, scientists today estimate that the storm surge was fifteen feet, sustained winds were one hundred fifty miles per hour with gusts up to 200.  A wall of water some two stories high washed over the island just before midnight.  Like a giant lawnmower blade, in only a few hours it all but raked the city off the map.  Partly because some were just washed out to sea, there is no way of knowing how many people died; estimates range from six to ten thousand.  Galveston recovered, but never regained its status.  Just as 9/11/2001 will always be for us, 9/8/1900 was a ground zero moment for Galveston.  A day after which the city would never be the same again.  And, all because of where the city had been built.  (Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm, Crown, 1999)

Jesus was not a meteorologist.  But, when he came to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he made an eerie prediction about storms, those who would survive them and those who would not.  Now, I have to confess to you that, every time I’ve ever read this passage I have felt something like what Isaac Cline must have felt like the day before the hurricane hit.  Galveston’s chief meteorologist, he didn’t have access to the Weather Channel or real-time satellite photos.  But, as he stood on the beach and watched people play in the rising surf, he saw ominous warnings of what was coming the next day.  The tide was unusually high, the sky and water were strangely colored.  He knew something bad was brewing, he just didn’t know how bad. 

For some reason, whenever I’ve read Jesus’ warning, I’ve always felt the same way.  A storm is coming, just for me.  And, the words that have always stood out to me, more than any others of Jesus’, are those of someone surveying the damage the morning after, looking at what was once my life and saying, “‘it fell with a great crash.’”  That probably has something to do with the fact that Jesus did give us a warning.  It’s possible to live a totally futile life.  A life that, once tested, proves to have no substance of lasting, eternal value.  To build, in his words, a house on sand that can’t take the blast.

And, it would be foolish, in Jesus’ own words, to ignore the warning.  “‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.’”  It doesn’t take much to hook that not as yet completely dead legalist in me with those words.  There’s something I can do, or fail to do, that will actually determine whether Jesus lowers a life rope to me just before heaven’s ship sets sail?  How is it possible to have the feeling, after all these years, of the possibility of being left behind, just washed out to the sea of eternal nothingness?  Maybe I should write a book, a whole series even, warning others about being left behind because of something they did, or didn’t do. 

This summer at the CBF Assembly in Atlanta, I heard a black Congressman tell a chilling story.  He had been raised, very poor, in the deep south and stayed a great deal of the time with a grandmother along with a number of other children.  One day, as they were playing outside, a storm blew up and she called all the kids in.  Hers was a frame house with a peer and beam foundation so that its floor was up off the ground.  When the wind started to blow, it got up under the house and started to lift it away.  As one corner lifted, she would have all the kids run to that corner and put their weight on it to hold it down.  Then, another corner would lift and they’d all run to that corner.  They survived the storm running from one corner of the house to another, holding them down with their collective weight, until the wind subsided.

Is that what it means to survive the storm Jesus predicted?  Is that what Jesus wants?  Not enough Bible study, run to that corner!  Not enough prayer, run to that corner!  Not enough tithing, run to that corner!  Not enough . . ..  How many corners can there be in one house anyway?  And, since you can’t be in more than one corner at a time, what happens when you let go of one to tend to the other?  We all have relationships that demand that kind of joy-killing high maintenance.  Some live in families like that.  But, is that what Jesus means for us to do?  To spend the rest of our lives legalistically running from one corner of serving him to the next, sweating out the storm never knowing for sure whether we’ll survive or not.

What about that scripture your grandmother cross-stitched?  That one in the antique frame hung in the hall by all the family pictures?  The one that says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).”?  What good is that promise if you have to keep corner-hopping to hold the house down?  What did Jesus mean, “‘Not everyone who says . . . but only he who does,’”? 

Maybe Noah can help us with this.  “Build a boat,” God told Noah.  Not a stitch of wind.  Not a cloud in the sky.  And, here he is at 500 years of age, building a boat.  A big boat.  One and one-half football fields long and four stories high, on dry ground.  Not because it made sense at the time but simply because God said that’s what he should do with his life, Noah did as God said (Genesis 6).  Was it his faith that saved him when the flood came or the boat that faith built?  In the end, when the storm came, was it possible to know the difference between Noah’s faith and what he did because he had faith? 

It is faith in Jesus, faith alone in his good grace, that saves.  Simple refresher, faith means totally trusting all that Jesus did in his death, burial and resurrection to suffice for our salvation.  There’s nothing we can add to that, nothing we can take away.  But, Jesus is saying that those who trust him enough to save their eternal soul will trust him enough to actually do what he says now.  It is not the way we live now that gives us hope of eternity.  But, if we have hope of eternity, that will alter the way we live now.  “‘Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice,’” Jesus said. 

So, exactly what does Jesus mean by, “‘these words of mine’”?  Jesus is at the end of the Sermon of all sermons.  He’s pointing back to words he’d already spoken.  Words about “‘the poor in spirit . . . those who mourn . . . the meek . . . those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . the merciful . . . pure in heart . . . the peacemakers . . . those who are persecuted because of righteousness.”  He’d also talked about people who influence the world for what is eternally good, “‘salt and light’” people, forgiving instead of getting even, keeping sacred words of promise, caring for those who are beaten down, genuine prayer and piety, living for what is of eternal value, trusting God for our daily needs and trusting him, too, to handle the judgment of others instead of doling it out ourselves.  We don’t get to heaven by doing those things.  Too many corners to hold down at one time.  But, if we have the hope of heaven in us, if we’re trusting Jesus to deliver our souls to God, then we’ll trust him enough to live like that, to do what he says, whether it makes sense to live like that or not right now.

What about those two missionary girls in prison in Afghanistan?  It makes us wonder why they’d take such risks to tell others about Jesus.  This is a country where women are relegated to a Stone Age level of social worth.  Where preaching about Jesus carries the death penalty.  Makes us wonder why two young women would take such risks.  Maybe it ought to make us wonder why we won’t.  If we take Jesus seriously enough to trust him to save our souls, we’ll take him seriously enough to do what he says now.  And, all he promises is that those who take him that seriously won’t live to regret it.  Therein lies the promise.  That kind of faith is built on rock.  A rock no storm can wash away. 

Honestly, I’ve been rather amused at some who would say, in light of 9/11, that the foundations of America’s buildings have been shaken but the foundation of America hasn’t been shaken.  Maybe it was the patriotic, self-reassuring thing to say at the moment but was it true?  America’s foundation not shaken?  Really?  I felt movement eight weeks ago.  How about you?  Aftershocks, too.  Companies dropping like flies.  October’s unemployment rate the highest in five years, the highest one-month jump since 1980.  Anthrax, just up the road, in Kansas City.  For a nation that has learned, in no small part because of the way some pulpits have given leadership, to define the presence and blessing of God in terms of the Gross National Product and take its spiritual pulse by the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I’d say we’ve been shaken to the core.  Either that, or we’re no wiser than those who built Galveston at sea level and then played on the beach even as the storm clouds gathered.  We’ve lived too long as though our ingenuity, our culture, our science our wealth and even our middle-class religiously conservative piety would sustain us when the storm came.  And, now that’s it’s here, where I was standing, I felt movement.  How about you? 

Maybe we’re about to learn the lesson the French did in 1415 at the battle of Agincourt, the one about which Shakespeare wrote in Henry V.  Some 20,000 to 30,000 French troops, in one of the most decisive battles of the 100 Years War, defeated by only 6,000 English troops using the 15^th century’s high-tech weapon, the longbow (C. T. Allmand, "Agincourt, Battle of," World Book Online Americas Edition, 2001).  Our enemy doesn’t have to be bigger than us to put us down.  Ask Goliath about David.  Do we honestly think our size and our military prowess and our technological genius is our hope of salvation?  Is that where you want to build your house, on that foundation?  I feel sand wiggling up between my toes when I stand there.  Jesus said every house would be tested.  He didn’t say what form the storm would take.  He only said that where you’ve built when the storm hits would mean everything.

Any day we awaken, we may find ourselves standing at ground zero.  The point directly beneath the center of the blast.  The point at which everything is vaporized, nothing left standing.  Jesus’ words should make all of us take a look at where we’re standing.  If we feel sand pushing up between our toes, like when we play on the beach, like when we’re trusting our wealth, our genius, our intelligence to see us through, then Jesus’ words are the most ominous warning we’ve ever heard.  “‘A foolish man . . . built his house on sand . . . and it fell with a great crash.’”  But, if our bare feet can feel the hard slab of granite, the rock that is Jesus alone and faith in him alone, then we can lift our head, put our face to the storm, and say into the howling wind, “Bring it on!”  We have the promise of Jesus.  When the storm is over, our house, the life we’ve built on faith in him, will still be standing.  Not because America was smarter or better or more holy than those who kneel on rugs to pray and cover their heads with strange cloth.  Not because we’re right and they’re wrong.  But, only because Jesus made us a promise and we’ve taken him at his word.

The gospel writer John was there when Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount.  He later wrote these words.  “God is love.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:16, 18).”  The more I trust God’s love, the more I see my house standing when the storm is over.  The more I know that the storm is not coming to destroy me but to prove my Savior’s love, in me, for me, through me.

I take my stand on the rock that is Jesus.  I feel safe here, after all.  And, not because I’m good with my hands, either.  I wouldn’t want to live in the house I could build.  But, I choose to take Jesus at his word.  He’s going to save me.  He’s saving me now.  Not because I’ve built the most beautiful house in the neighborhood or because I’ve been smarter or more holy than the guy down the street or because I’ve been good at holding down all the corners when the wind blew.  But, because, and only because, he promised that if I’d just trust him, even enough to do what he says now, he’d take care of the rest. 

There’s plenty of room on this rock.  Anyone care to join me?