Foundations
Today is a good day, a very good day,
when we, like the children of Israel, get to celebrate the beginning of something. And if our experience is like theirs, the event carries some emotion. In the midst of this, today is a day to look at and to gain new appreciation for foundations and all that gets built upon them.
Until I read and contemplated this Ezra passage, I admit I had never really considered how truly significant, not only physically, but also emotionally, the laying of a foundation can be. It marks the beginning of a process after all. Often we are more interested in the end product, rather than the beginning and all the sometimes cumbersome work that follows. Wouldn’t some of us any way just rather get to where we’re going? “Are we there yet?”
This morning I want to begin with a look at the critical nature of foundations and then touch a little bit on the process that follows.
So I thought about the foundations of buildings that I have witnessed being laid. What is it about foundations that matter so much? And what kind of foundation do we have or do we need? These seem like obvious questions with obvious answers, but I would like us to spend some time contemplating those questions and their answers this morning.
In my own experience there are two relatively recent experiences of quite literal foundation building that come to my mind.
First, I helped to plan a renovation of my home some years ago that included an expansion. So, a new foundation for the new part of the building had to be laid.
As I recall now it was a great day when the machines dug that hole in the ground. And then during the days that followed, I watched as the workers poured gravel for drainage and set the wooden frames for the concrete footing – that’s the part that keeps the walls from sinking. Then they poured the concrete, set more wooden frames for the concrete walls, added the steel rods for strength, poured more concrete and then added Styrofoam insulation to that foundation both inside and out. I could see that the work was hard and dirty, muddy even if it rained, but step by step it took shape.
Now others may see this differently than I do, but there was nothing particularly aesthetically pleasing about this part of the process, however for me it was fascinating and exhilarating to watch the project get “off the ground” so to speak, even though we were a long way from the envisioned end-product.
My second experience of watching a building take shape was very different.
The “foundation” that was used for this second building, a small cabin near Bancroft, was the granite rock of the Canadian Shield. Initially, I hired some men to build a cabin for me on vacant land that I purchased there. I envisioned a small hermitage. The workers that I hired set a sturdy and well-insulated floor properly levelled and supported on the granite rock. Again I experienced a sense of excitement as I began to anticipate the finished project and it appeared to get off to a really solid start.
“We can build it in three days,” they said.
Echoes of Christ’s words, yes, but these builders were far from Christ-like.
Weeks later when the builders disappeared along with my money, the foundation and the barest of frames were all that stood on that rock. I was a lot farther away from the end product than I would ever have imagined. I will come back to this story, but first let’s look more closely at the story in Ezra.
The story in Ezra begins with a solid foundation on so many levels. And in the land of Israel, they will rebuild their Temple on rock: two kinds of rock,
first, the literal physical rock of the land,
and second, the figurative bedrock of their self-understanding as the people of God.
In fact, it is the story of their self-understanding and the rocks of the destroyed temple that is all these returned exiles really have. On the first day of the seventh month, they set up an altar to YHWH on its original foundations and they began to make sacrifices to God: they began to worship God, even before they have anything else.
They worship the God they know;
the God they turned to when they were afraid of their neighbours;
the God they knew when they lived in exile; even if at times God might have seemed just as absent as present;
the God that accompanied them on the long four month journey back from Babylon that Maureen reminded us of in last week’s sermon.
What do the foundation stones of this God look like? What is the nature of this foundation? I can’t help but think of the massive blocks of stone that make up the base of the temple in Jerusalem. I have a picture of Michele standing in front of one of those stones. The stones at the base of the Temple in Jerusalem that Michele and I stood beside are so large that it would only take about three of them end to end to cover the width of the church from the window on that side to the windows on the other side.
As a way to describe the foundational nature of the God of Israel that is also the God of our Story, I will label these massive stones.
And I will label them as follows:
1. I would label one – the self-revealing Creator of Heaven and Earth – the one who breathed the breath of life or Ruah into the mud of our humanity.
2. I would label one – the One who made Covenant promises to the ancestors of the children of Israel.
3. I would label one – the One who gave them the gift of the Law through the story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt –This law was a description of a way of life that honoured time – the Sabbath and sacred seasons, it honours people – the children of Israel and the strangers and aliens in their midst; and it Honours God as the One God who desires to be loved with all of their and our heart, soul, mind and strength and invited them as it does us to love our neighbours as ourselves.
For Christians there is a fourth massive stone. You know which one:
4. It is the cornerstone, that is Christ Jesus – further revelation of a self-revealing God.
This is a pretty solid foundation. – a steadfast and merciful, loving God, creator, covenant maker, law giver and redeemer. Now this is a foundation. And the people in Israel, when they began to lay the literal and physical foundation of the temple, they were deeply aware of the foundation that was God and in their exhilaration about this new beginning, they sang antiphonally to each other, “For God is good and God’s steadfast love endures forever…..”
Now as we contemplate what gets built on top of this foundation, things get a bit more challenging.
I want to suggest that the next layer of the foundation, or the first layer of the building, however you wish to view it, is the response of God’s people to the solid foundation that is God
I would label some of this second row of stones as follows:
1. Prayer or communication with God,
2. Our own part of the covenant that we make to God and with each other.
3. Gathering together for Celebration and worship
4. Rituals of the church – like installations and communion
The foundation and the stones that are built upon them become the ongoing received story of God and God’s people. This story has and will continue to shape our lives – some would say for better or worse.
We know without a doubt that there are times when this story that shapes our lives is deeply and profoundly life-giving and at other times when things go awry and the people of God do not live justly and or do not act mercifully and do not walk humbly with our God, it is then that the story also carries within in it the experience of sin and death.
This is also what the people in Ezra’s time remembered – they remembered a faithful God, and they also remembered both faithful and unfai
thful ancestors.
And so as they began to lay the new foundation of the Temple with all the excitement of a new beginning, as they worshiped and celebrated and sang back and forth antiphonally, in this text it says that they were overcome with emotion – both joy and sorrow. And it says their cries were loud and were heard for miles.
In this story in Ezra, the re-building of the temple was underway, built upon the foundation of a steadfast and ever-loving God, creator, covenant maker, law giver and redeemer.
And this story shows how building foundations are an emotional and important time. When built on the rock that is God, the foundation won’t sink, it will be strong, and it will support all that is built upon it. That, quite simply, is why the foundation is so critical.
In my ministry with you we are building foundations right now. And as critical as these foundations are they are only the beginning.
If the next layer for us includes prayer and communication with God, keeping of the covenant that we made to each other today, continuity in our gathered life of celebration and worship and careful attention to the faithful participation in the rituals of the church that sustain us, we will build a solid structure together on the solid foundation that is God.
And that’s not to say that there won’t be setbacks,
In the next chapter of Ezra – significant setbacks are recorded there for us to read. For them the rebuilding of the temple in their time took about two decades. Sometimes there was significant resistance to the building and sometimes there was significant support.
But let me tell you what I learned from my own setback with the building of my cabin.
The men I had hired to build the cabin took my money and eventually it became clear that they had no intention of finishing the project they started. Needless to say I was very disappointed and I looked into ways to recoup the lost money. In the end, I simply chose to do my civic duty by reporting their actions to the Better Business Bureau and Tarion a company that protects new home builders by requiring that their builders carry a warranty.
This event occurred well over a year ago and I remember sharing my distress with Maureen at the time when she was temporarily helping me with my work at SCOC. With Maureen’s encouragement we prayed together for these men and then we prayed together that I might be able to let go and move on. The answer to our prayers came in what followed. My friends and I decided to learn how to build the cabin ourselves and proceeded to do so. In the process we learned about framing windows and putting on typar. We, learned how to shingle the roof and put on siding. During that part of the process, it felt like my cordless drill had become an extention of my arm. We learned how to put in the windows and door, we learned about proper ventilation for the roof and insulation. So many friends helped me. Even my parents helped with the soffits. In the end I did hire someone to professionally install the woodstove. The whole thing became a labour of love, lots of hours, lots of sweat, and lots of black fly and mosquito bites later, but I think the whole process taught me that although starting with a good foundation is critical, the rest is all about how we carry on from there. And that the way we get to the end-product is as important and sometimes just as rewarding as the end product itself.
God is our foundation, God the creator, covenant maker, law giver and redeemer. As Christians, Christ is the cornerstone. How we build together is our ongoing story as the people of God. Today we have already had and will continue to have opportunities to build on the foundation that is our steadfast and loving God.
We have made a covenant together, we have prayed and sang and worshiped together and in a few moments we will celebrate communion together. May God Bless our Building, the way we build together, the structure that we build and may all that we do together draw us closer to the steadfast love and mercy of God. Amen