|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Genesis 6:9–22, 7:24, 8:14–19 |
50:7–15 |
Romans 4:13–25
|
Matthew 7:21–29 |
Two important roles of higher education are to instill a love of wisdom and teach the skills of leadership, but scholarship without character becomes toxic and leadership without character becomes criminal. The Gospel today is part of a larger passage warning against the seduction of the smooth surfaces of inviting superficiality that hide a rotten core. It is likely from bitter experience that Mathew recalls Jesus warning, "Enter through the narrow gate for the road that leads to destruction is wide and easy. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? In the same way every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit". In Matthew's young church, there had been betrayals, and people who had turned out not as they first seemed, who tried to take advantage or lead others away from the Gospel. Matthew remembers well Jesus saying, "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father in heaven."
The parable of the two houses contains wry humor about someone who builds a house on a flood plain. Jesus is describing someone who, possibly unknowingly, builds on what in the region would be called a wadi, a dry, smooth, and sandy riverbed. The bed of wadi is soft, made up of the layers of silt that has been carried down by the occasional flood, for decades. It was easy to build an impressive structure very quickly and without much effort. Likely the plain would not have flooded for years, and vegetation and trees would also help disguise what it really was. Yet at some time, it was inevitable that a flood would uproot all the new trees, sweep away the vegetation, and the foundation of anything built on the silt would give way and all would be destroyed. On the other hand, all who first heard Jesus' story would have known that the higher ground above the riverbeds, was usually very hard and rocky. Digging foundations could be a frustrating process because of the many ledges and outcrops of rock. You could not build as quickly such a flashy home on such land, which is why many of the ordinary people of the land, who could not afford extensive labor, would use a simple cave already cut into the hills and build their structure out from there. It would hardly be a tall impressive palace, but it would be a relatively sound and safe one.
Good scouts know that it is dangerous to pitch a tent on a sandbank in the middle of a dry riverbed, but for most of us, the image of wadis is far removed from us. Jesus hoped that the stories he told would serve to hold the lessons of His teaching. Perhaps for us, the fall of Enron would be a better example. Enron was the darling of Wall Street and it produced fantastic earnings reports. Moreover it was considered a very socially responsible company, for it seemed to be very involved in charitable and community projects. Yet its earnings were found to be phony, and for every dollar it gave away for charity, its executives stole hundreds to line their own pockets from its lower level employees and overcharged thousands of consumers. Its packaging was flashy, but as an honest business it was rotten to the core, and like a house built on a flood plain, it collapsed and was swept away.
It is doubtful I will ever be invited to give a graduation address. Yet I wonder if today's Gospel would not be a good one in itself. "A good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Thus you will be known by your fruits." The same can be said for any educational institution of society. Education is much more than filling up with data and majoring in the skills of a charm school. Packaging is never the most important product. At whatever institutions of higher learning from which those high executives of Enron graduated, there should be some serious soul searching. Even more importantly, as alumni return to Ithaca to renew old acquaintances, revisit old haunts and marvel at the changes on campus, the Gospel invites us to reflect on what sort of person at our core we have become.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
