February 20, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When we travel to ancient civilizations like visiting Israel, Jordan, and Greece, many of the stops we make are to ancient ruins. We walk around fallen rocks and now and then, some modern day archaeologists along with the tourism bureau may have reconstructed some pillars to show us how it was like then. What we often forget is to look down instead of only looking up. At our feet are usually what is more authentic and original than what we might like to see reconstructed to appeal to our tourist expectations.
The most important part of a building is that part that none of us ever get to see—the foundation. The foundation goes deep into the earth. The higher and more glorious, the building that rises above the foundation, the deeper the foundation needs to be. Get that foundation wrong, and the whole building is in peril, no matter how good it looks to the out of town tourist.
When we retrofitted this building 13 years ago, we knew that we needed to ram 4 steel beams deep down into the bedrock so that if or when a major earthquake might happen in the Bay Area that we will still have a building standing. There’s got to be a strong foundation for this church to keep all of these clinker bricks from falling down. Unless we get the foundation right, the whole building regardless of how historic or interesting it might be is vulnerable to collapse.
Christ is the Foundation
Paul writes to the church at Corinth that Christ is the foundation. A wonderful church has been built and the people made up all the diverse members of a new building that is named the church. Paul tells the Corinthians that they are all elements of a great new construction project that is built on the foundation of Christ.
But reading between the lines in Paul’s letter, we see that the building is not in very good shape. There are hairline fractures in the building. There seems to be tensions between people who had been Gentiles, pagans, before they became Christians, and the people who had been Jews before they became Christians. There was a deep wall between these two religious, ethnic groups. There’ve been persecutions down through the centuries. Knowing that the Gentiles didn’t know these sacred texts that the Jews knew put out the Jews who knew the Scriptures. And now they have been brought together in the church. Well, mostly together.
Gentile Christians thought one way; Jewish Christians thought another. The new building called the church was in danger of falling down!
And let’s be honest. We’ve got tensions in our congregation as well—tensions between folks who have been a part of this church since the earliest days and people who just showed up last week. There are tensions between those who know a great deal about the Christian faith and those who are sure and confident in their use of Scripture and those for whom all this Christian faith is a very new experience. Added to that are stresses between the rich and poor, educated and less educated folks, Chinese-speaking and English-speaking, are we in danger of collapse?
The church can be a broken-down shack sometimes, with huge cracks in our walls, a leaky roof, a boarded up window or two. At times when we are exposed to the elements of sun, rain, and wind, things begin to leak.
Paul is honest about all of these tensions and stresses in the building that is the church. And yet Paul is equally honest about the “foundation” on which the church rests—Jesus Christ. The words and work of Jesus Christ gives trustworthy support to the building of the church. True, the church is not always the group of people God intends us to be. But we rest, despite our weaknesses, upon a strong foundation—Jesus Christ.
FCBC Foundation
If you look around this sanctuary, we are, for better or worse, the form that the risen Christ has chosen to take in the world. If people are going to meet Christ, if they are going to be called into discipleship, if they are going to grow in their understanding of the Christian faith, it will have to be here in the church. It’s too great a responsibility for ordinary folk like us if it were not for the faith that all of this rests upon Christ.
Your discipleship was his idea before it was yours. The church was his idea before it was Paul’s or anyone else’s. FCBC was his idea before it was ours. Christ not only founded the church, we believe, but he promises to stick with the church, through thick and thin, to preserve the church until the end of time, to make the church that which we could never be on our own.
If we dig down in our church or for that matter, any church, digging down through all of our tensions and differences, and that’s who you will find, deep down, at the bottom of it all—Jesus Christ. And that’s our ultimate hope, not in ourselves and our rickety, broken-down attempts to be the church, but rather in Jesus Christ, the foundation of the church.
Sometimes, at some of our meetings and certainly during the recent events and decisions that our church has made, I confess that I may have lost sight of the true meaning of the church. When we are struggling with finances, when there are sharp differences of opinions among us, it is easy to lose sight of the church as the body of Christ and think of us as just another contentious ordinary group of people. I admit that I am not in anyway perfect and mistakenly allowed the process of our recent decisions to get out of hand. If some of you still feel that someone needs to take responsibility for rushing through the process, I take that responsibility and seek your forgiveness, understanding and support of what we have decided as a church.
Reflect on the fact that whenever our church appears to be contentious, it’s usually when we meet in the afternoon. But then on Sunday morning, when we are all gathered here, when we join our voices in a hymn, when we come forward to receive the Lord’s Supper, when we pray for one another, when we give sacrificially to God’s work, I am reminded that this is what it’s all about. This is not just another club of people who try to get along. This is the holy church whose foundation is Christ.
When you participate and support the church’s Friday Night School to help new immigrants to learn English, acclimate into America, and share the Good News of Jesus Christ after a long week of work, raising a family, caring for loved ones, you are not simply motivated by your human desire to help out. You are giving of yourselves at the highest level. It’s a testimony to the presence of some other basis—the foundation of Christ.
When you reach out in service to others who are not your relatives, not a part of your tribe, and you take responsibility for their need—from whence does such service arise? I think it has a basis, its foundation, in some mystery greater than your own desire to volunteer. Its foundation is testimony to the presence of Jesus Christ.
When the Lanna Coffee team who will be going to Thailand this Thursday to visit American Baptist missions after 4 years, to explore how we can do more to sell coffee that can stop human trafficking, to understand how we might partner with other churches to sell coffee too, to rededicate ourselves to this mission because we would have spend valuable face to face time with girls and women rescued from prostitution and children with AIDS and HIV infected, that the basis for this foundation of the Lanna Coffee mission is beyond our vision just in San Francisco to have compassion. Its foundation is testimony to the presence of Jesus Christ.
We are the Word made flesh, God’s word made flesh first in Christ, then in is. If you dug down deep, to what we are resting upon, down to the bedrock, you will find Christ the Lord. Don’t be deceived by some of our trivialities, our triteness, and our many problems in the church. Down deep, where it really counts, there is Christ. He holds all of this up. He is the sure foundation.
One Foundation
One of the oldest tools in human history is a plumb line. The Egyptians used it to build the pyramids. Maybe the ancient Britons used it to raise the monoliths of Stonehenge. This tool is so ancient, it’s even mentioned in the Old Testament.
It’s a simple tool: a length of string with a lead weight to one end. Masons hang a plumb line next to the wall they’re building. Gravity pulls the weight straight down. By sighting along the string, workers can see whether the wall is perpendicular to the ground. If the wall’s “out of plumb”—if it’s leaning to one side, even the slightest bit—it won’t stand for long. The only solution, in that case, is to tear down the wall and start again.
When we are “plumb” in Christ as our sure foundation, the church will stand forever. Once Christ as our foundation is laid, some later builder can’t come along and change the foundation, that one part of the building that can’t be modified. We are allowed to contribute to the building—gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw that are visible of the work that we all contribute. But all that we contribute in the building up of the church is still on the one and sure foundation of Jesus Christ.
Every church regularly asks the question of what’s the purpose of our church. Being situated in the heart of Chinatown presents daunting challenges for us—no easy parking, too many people, street closures, steep streets to climb, homeless people, graffiti and trash. We are a church located in a difficult situation and yet we have a remarkable ministry.
Because our church faces these difficult situations week after week, if God does not want our ministry, it will utterly fail. When people see us and they might say to us that there’s really no good reason for our church being there, but we remain a faithful and thriving church. Then there is no sufficient explanation for why our church is still alive today, still here after 130 years, still witnessing, still serving, still proclaiming the Gospel, except that Jesus really wants us to be here.
You have heard this story before about a tourist visiting Italy and came upon a construction site.
“What are you doing?” he asked three stonemasons.
“I am cutting the stone,” answered the first.
“I’m cutting stone for 1,000 lire a day,” the second said.
“I’m helping to build a cathedral,” said the third.
While Jesus Christ is our one and sure foundation, each one of us here is invited to build up and represent the temple of God. Since the understanding in Paul’s days is that precise attention to detail that God prescribed for his tabernacle and temple means that everything is made of the finest materials: gold, linens, acadia wood, lavish materials, this means that we who are contributing to the life and ministry of this church are also made up of the finest materials. We are here building the cathedral together.
The most important part of any building is the foundation. We are not, thank God, in charge. Christ is not, thank God, dependent on us for the church to survive. We are not, thank God, the key to the church’s future. That belongs to our foundation, Jesus Christ the Lord.
I hope and pray that our church will not collapse if or when the next earthquake hit the Bay Area. But if our clinker brick building were to come tumbling down, we can be confident that the foundation that we can’t easily see is still deeply in the ground—the foundation to the testimony to the presence of Jesus Christ. Whatever may happen beyond our days, those who continue to believe in Jesus Christ will still be able to build up again the church because they will find the foundation of Jesus Christ here.
The bedrock upon which the church rests, the one and sure foundation of Jesus Christ is the first and last thing that needs to be said about the church. Thanks be to God!
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the foundation for our life together. You are the only good reason to be here. Give us the gifts we need in order to be more faithful members of your body, the church. Equip us for good works so that the world might see the outbreak of your reign in us. Imbue us with your spirit of love and charity so that our life together in the church might more closely resemble your life among us. Amen.