Selected Sermons

The Church's One Foundation

I Corinthians 3:10-17

by Tim Reimer

Sermon: January 13, 2002.

Henderson Highway runs north of Winnipeg, always following the Red River, sometimes more closely, sometimes farther away. But always, the properties along the riverbank are very desirable. In one case, where the highway comes quite near the river, someone had calculated that there was just enough room to build a house, even though the back yard would probably have to consist of a deck which would protrude over the water. The foundation was built, the frame house was erected on top of it, but there never was a deck of any kind built onto that house. Before it got that far, the concrete foundation began to shift, tilt, and look like it was going to slide into the river.

We learn this when we are children playing with building blocks. Unless there is a solid foundation, there is no sense trying to build anything on top of it.

The same thing is true of the church. And the church has a firm foundation. Its foundation is Jesus Christ. Did you know that Menno Simons always, and I mean always, started anything he wrote, with the words:

11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Menno Simons wrote way back in the 1500's. He wrote all kinds of things from personal letters, to books about God, and even little five page pamphlets on how to raise children. But every one of these things began with the same verse:

11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Mr. Simons was writing during a time and in a place where some church leaders were spreading the idea that you could get right with God if you just hooked up with the right authorities. Menno Simons said, "No, it is not what powerful people do that counts, its what Christ has done." To make his point Mr. Simons reminded his European readers of what Paul wrote to some believers in Corinth fifteen hundred years earlier. There, too, people were arguing that to "truly" understand spirituality, you had to get to know Pastor Apollos, "or you had to talk to Father Cephas."

But to all of this Paul said, "no, the church is not a popularity contest, there is only one foundation, and that is Christ." It doesn't work to have two foundations. Have you ever been in a canoe or boat and tried to disembark perhaps at a place on the shore that is a little awkward? And have you ever placed one foot perhaps a little unsteadily on a place outside the boat, and kept the other foot in the boat, and have you ever felt the boat - and your other foot - move away? . . . and have you ever gotten wet? (LaVerna and I can tell a "disembarking" story that goes back to the days we were dating, but we won't go there.) It doesn't work to have two foundations. The church needs one foundation.

Now, what do we mean when we say Jesus is the "foundation" of the church? Well, Weight Watchers is based on certain principles of weight loss, the College of Physicians and Surgeons is based on schools of training in medicine and science, and the Professional Golfers Association is based on certain levels of achievement. What is the church based on? What "qualifies" anyone to be part of the church? The answer: Jesus Christ. It is no accomplishment of ours, no special spin on spirituality. It is simply Jesus Christ.

When Paul says Jesus Christ, it is clear, from the first two chapters of this letter to the Corinthians, that he means the Jesus who died and rose again. (1Cor2:2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.)

On the day Jesus died for us, God was sending a message of caring to all of humankind. On the day he rose again, time was touched by eternity and a path was opened for every human heart. Our sin and our finiteness can be overcome as we respond to God in faith.

The church is "based" on Jesus Christ. Congregations and denominations and sects are all grounded in the one Lord.

It is fitting that we focus on this unifying foundation today since we are at the threshold of the global Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (20-27Jan02). Even more, it is fitting because in the stories of the baptismal candidates today we have touched the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, United, Amish, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches, and perhaps even more.

Today marks a day when these candidates acknowledge to the world again, that salvation is through the finished work of Christ on the cross. I encourage you today to continue following Christ. As you open your hearts in prayer God promises to fill you will peace and wholeness.

I encourage those of us who have gathered today, to likewise reaffirm your own faith. I encourage you to get to know the new members. Commit yourself to pray for them. As we do this we will together be rooted and grounded in the faith and built up with joy upon Jesus Christ, the church's One Foundation.

"Berlin, Manhattan, and the Kingdom of God"

Matthew 11:12-30

by Tim Reimer

Preached at a Joint Worship Service of Danforth Mennonite Church and Toronto Chinese Mennonite Church, November 11, 2001.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. This year on Remembrance Day, nobody needs to ask their grandparents or consult history books to be reminded of the unspeakable tragedies of war. We all read it in the newspaper this morning. This year, it is the eleventh of September that vies for our attention.

Do we remember what the world was like before September 11th? Do we already long for a world without war? Remembrance Day is certainly a day to observe silence. It is a day for reflection. But it is also a day to speak.

And if we speak on remembrance day, we will reveal what we truly long for in this world. The buttons some of us are wearing say it well, "To remember is to work for peace." Are we longing for peace? John Lennon saw that longing in each one of us:

You say you want to start a revolution,
Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Since September 11th, there is another song that has been haunting me. It is the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, the Canadian songwriter who, in the early eighties belted out his ambitious, but somewhat cynical,

First we take Manhattan,
Then we take Berlin!

Cohen was a child of the free-spirited sixties, and knew how to put his finger on the sicknesses in our society. In his song he struggles with "trying to change the system," and he wasted no time naming the two cities that determined the shape of his world: Manhattan, New York, and Berlin.

This past Friday, it was exactly twelve years since Berlin "fell"

Today it is exactly two months since Manhattan "fell."

(One happened on the ninth day of the eleventh month; the other on the eleventh day of the ninth month.) Leonard Cohen was bang on, except that history took Berlin first, and then it took Manhattan. Now the world is a different place. Now, more than ever we long for peace. We long for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Have we learned any lessons from Berlin and Manhattan? Have we been getting it wrong - twice? Are we like the children in the marketplace that Jesus described in Matthew chapter 11? How can we, a despairing generation, find the Kingdom of Heaven on this Remembrance Day?

Comparison of Berlin and Manhattan

Before we examine Jesus' words more carefully, let's compare what happened when the Berlin Wall fell with the events surrounding the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

First, both were symbols of power. The Berlin Wall separated East and West Germany, but it came to signify the separation between communism and capitalism, lead by the Soviet Union and the United States. These two superpowers were piling up nuclear weapons to use against each other. Words of hatred and provocation flew back and forth, but the bombs were never dropped, and so this was called "The Cold War." As long as the Berlin Wall stood, the Cold War raged.

The World Trade Centre likewise was a symbol of power. The buildings that made up the Centre, and the street on which it was located - Wall Street - housed the largest banks and financial institutions in the world. It was no accident that these buildings were the tallest in the city. They were America's emblem of superior economic welfare, and for that reason they needed to be a tall symbol.

What brought these symbols down? I will say at the outset (and I am not saying this to make light of the situation) that it was men who brought them down, just as it was men who put them up. Let this clearly be part of the picture here. What kind of men were those nineteen named by the FBI who carried out the hijackings? They were committed, they knew exactly what they were doing, and they had a carefully worked out plan. On the other hand, the government of East Germany in 1989 was in a state of disarray. It is still debatable today whether the dictator Egon Krentz, may have accidentally made the announcement that finally allowed East Germans to leave the country. One poster held up by a jubilant East German showed a comical picture of Mr. Krentz with the letters of his first name "Egon" spelled, small "e", large "G" and small "o," so that it looked like it just said, "GO!" The fall of the Berlin wall may have been an accident, but the attacks in Manhattan were definitely planned.

There is another way in which the two events were opposites. When the Berlin Wall fell, and the Bloc of Socialist countries dissolved one by one, there was a keen sense afterwards that United States had lost an enemy. The Cold War had ended. There was no longer a need for nuclear build up, because there was no real threat from any other super power.

September 11 changed all of that. Very quickly, the enemy was named. Not even two days later, the name "Osama bin Laden" became known in every household in the western world. But since it is difficult to wage war against an individual, a larger enemy was named. The country of Afghanistan was named as enemy because the country was believed to be harbouring this individual. But even more than this, an ideology was named as the enemy, namely, "terrorism." Now the United States has an enemy large enough to warrant the deployment of its entire armed forces. It is waging war against terrorism with the same fervour that once it waged war against communism.

How did people respond -- how did we respond to these two very different events. It is simplistic, but perhaps not too far wrong, to say that the response to Berlin was euphoria, while the response to Manhattan was paranoia. We are talking here about people's feelings, about their longings. If we watch Americans and Canadians and Torontonians react to these world events, we get a glimpse of how they view the world. We are talking here about our attitudes on Remembrance Day.

Soon after the Berlin Wall was opened up, Christians began making comparisons to the wall of Jericho. There was jubilation in the streets, and rightly so. There were many church services where prayers of thanks were raised. But if one watched the larger society, in West Germany, in United States, and in Canada, there were growing numbers that were using God's name in making all kinds of claims. The "Western" world boasted the victory of capitalism, and because it seemed so miraculous, they were chanting that "God is on the side of the capitalists!" "God is in favour of our government!" "God is ushering in God's Kingdom right here in our country!"

By now this was a very different cry than the original prayers of the churches in East Germany. It seemed that people wanted to take the Kingdom of Heaven by force, and claim it as their own! (We will soon look again at Jesus' words in Matthew 11:12.)

How are people reacting to the events in Manhattan? We have heard God's name used on the news media probably more frequently in the past two months than in the past ten years! What is especially disconcerting is that it is on the lips both of the perpetrators of the vicious attacks and of the victims! One side says, do it in the name of "god," while the other says "god bless America." Both want to lay claim to the Kingdom of God. First they took Berlin, then they took Manhattan, and now they want to take the Kingdom of God.

Matthew 11

We long for the Kingdom of Heaven, but are we finding it this Remembrance Day? Is it possible that the Kingdom of Heaven has "suffered violence" at the hands of people who want to take it by force (Matt11:12)? Do the words of Jesus in Matthew 11 describe those of us who think we are wise enough and powerful enough to lay claim to God's Kingdom? Could it be that in our obsession with our own interests we are clouding our own eyes so that in fact we are like children playing a silly game?

When I was a boy in school, my friend came up to me and asked whether I wanted to learn how to be a millionaire. He said, "Give me a dime, and I'll show you how you can make a million!" After enough cajoling, I handed him a dime. My friend grabbed it and laughed, and said "Do what I did often enough, and you'll be rich!" Not to be outdone, I turned around and tried it on some of my other friends. And so the silly game went on. The trick didn't always work, though. When they didn't give me a dime, I was the one who looked sillier than ever.

Jesus says that those who want the Kingdom of Heaven on their own terms are like children playing games in the marketplace. They want others to dance when they play a flute. They want others to mourn when they wail. They doubted John the Baptist's words because he was too severe for them. But when Jesus came eating and drinking, they held him suspect, because his zest for life was beyond anything that they felt was appropriate. We would do well to examine our attitudes this Remembrance Day, to see whether what we long for in this world is really God's Kingdom, or whether it is our own selfish security and whimsical well being that we are desiring. Jesus can see our stress and our fretting, our anxiety and our fears. Jesus invites us to a different kind of longing. God is calling us to be burdened, not in a way that saps life from us, but in a radical way. Jesus is asking us to bring to him all of our burdens and worries, and to learn true wisdom, to experience truly the Kingdom of God.

Our desires for the world will never be fulfilled by taking- whether taking Manhattan or Berlin. Let us learn instead what it means to take Jesus' yoke on ourselves, and learn from God. Listen to Jesus' invitation:

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."