Sermons for the Month

Building Down
DATE: March 18, 2001
SERVICE: Lent III
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Car-dominated territory.
It's unfit for humans, some say. In fact, a study has shown that when any more than 9 percent of a place is devoted to parking, we feel we don't belong there any more. We get a rush of automotive anxiety. Any parking area with more than six cars is "car-dominated territory," and such a landscape makes humans very uncomfortable. Problem is, we Americans own 200 million automobiles - almost half of the world's 520 million cars. All those cars need to be parked somewhere when not in use.
One option is surface-level lots, but these consume land and space and contribute to rising temperatures in the summer in densely populated cities. Parking garages are another possibility. But they also consume massive amounts of space and are much more expensive to build.
One company is making robotic parking garages to address the parking crunch. About 5,000 are already operating in Europe and Asia. You drive your car inside the garage entrance, step out and take a ticket. A computerized system of pallets and elevators parks your car in a minute or two. To retrieve your car, you present your ticket to a machine, and your car arrives within two minutes. No attendants, no lines, no idling cars or fumes, and the cars stack up in half the space of a conventional garage.
But now land-use designers have come up with still another option. Build down, they say.
Parking structures can be completely invisible if we build down instead of up. And you can shield buildings by covering them with dirt and planting trees, grass and flowers on top - all of which improves both the natural and human environments. Wouldn't it be great if we could park our temptations somewhere and forget them while we get on with life for at least awhile? But what do we do with these 520 million enticements that come into our lives? Where do we put them?
Should we hide them in big, concrete garages - places that look a little ugly, but don't eat up too much of our spiritual landscape? Should we park them on surface lots visible to all, telling others, "Well, this is who I am, like it or not"? We certainly can't handle temptation robotically, because we are flesh-and-blood humans full of passions and desires.
What does our text say about temptation?
Paul readily admits that we live in sin-dominated territory, with at least 9 percent of our time spent struggling with temptation. Our ancestors, he said, "drank from the spiritual rock that followed them," he recalls, "and the rock was Christ" (10:4). But in spite of this divine presence in their lives, they desired evil, became idolaters, indulged in sexual immorality, put Christ to the test, and complained bitterly. "So if you think you are standing," concludes the apostle, "watch out that you do not fall" (v. 12).
It's so easy to fall, as we all know. You don't have to look far to see the ever-spreading stain of sin. Journalist Dan Maccarone has discovered, in the back of Yankee Stadium in New York, a group of beer-drinking, insult-shouting, proud fans of the Bronx Bombers called the "bleacher creatures." During any given baseball game, they've been observed committing all seven of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, wrath, greed, pride, envy and sloth.
"The funny thing about the bleachers is that you never know what you're going to see," says another reporter, who keeps binoculars with him in the press box in order to view the bleacher creatures' sudden outbursts. "You have your share of fights, you have your share of stuff being thrown. You might look out there and some woman is taking off her top." (Could they have been modeled from our own infamous "Dog Pound?")
All seven of the seven deadly sins - in the course of one game. That's gotta be a record of some kind!
Of course, our particular temptations may not make the Big Seven, but can be just as hard to park as the more notorious ones nonetheless. The apostle is not about to cut us some slack: If you think you are standing, he says, watch out that you do not fall.
Clearly, we need some help. We need a structure to support us. We need something to cover, i.e., to hide or put away, our sins.
That's why the solution may be to build down:

Down into the Word, into the lessons found there, and to learn from them and use them as a structure for life.

Down into the community of believers with whom we share the same problems and are searching for the same solutions.

Down into faith in a faithful God - the One who covers our sins and who provides a way to confront temptation.

Down into our family structures for support.

Down into our network of friends.

Down into our religious and spiritual traditions that provide a moral template for behavior.

Down into our vocation as "ministers" in the ChristBody.

Down into our service for others.

"God is faithful," promises Paul, "and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it" (v. 13).
The beauty of building down is that it gives us two important benefits: a cover for our sins and a grounding for our lives.
To speak of a "covering" for sin sounds peculiar to us, especially if we imagine it as an underground parking garage covered with dirt, trees, grass and flowers. But in Scripture, this concept is described by a variety of words - "send away," "remove" "loose," "pass over" and "cover" - all of which illustrate the Lord's life-giving pardon. "Cover" is a particularly challenging word, and it pops up:
· In Romans, where Paul quotes the Old Testament by saying, "Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered" (4:7). · In Proverbs, where we learn that "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses" (10:12).
· And in the first letter of Peter, where Peter challenges the Christian community by saying, "Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins" (4:8).
Now I'm not advocating that temptation is best handled by yielding to it and then seeking the covering of God's grace. Paul's well-known question addresses this very issue: "Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?" (Romans 6:1).
His response is strong. The NRSV puts it this way: "By no means!" But in the language of our day, if he were asked if we should conquer temptation by yielding and asking for God's forgiveness, he'd say, "No way!"
The point is that temptation is often best handled by being strong in the things that make us strong: the Word, community, tradition, family, friends, etc. It's the "best offense is a good defense" approach to faithfulness. Here's what we mean:
In Minot, North Dakota, Lt. Ryan Berry of the Air Force was asked to take a tour of duty in a missile silo. The bunkers are 60 feet underground, and according to one report, are in the "shape of two Tylenol capsules stuck end to end, in its entirety and with all the electronic equipment no more than 12 yards long by five feet wide - about the length and width of a school bus. At one end there is a small sleeping area with a mattress separated by heavy curtains from the rest of the bunker. At the other end is a small toilet which, until recent suggestions from crew members prompted the addition of a door, was also separated from the bunker only by curtains."
No one on the staff above ground is able to peek in on what is happening down there, for security reasons. And, in the interests of gender equality, one female is sometimes paired with a male.
When this happened to Berry, a promising young airman, a Catholic who could not "square his marriage and his Christian faith with the compromising situation in which the Air Force was placing him," he objected. His wife, at home in Minot, was nine months pregnant. Following procedure, he requested a "religious accommodation so that he would be scheduled to serve on alert duty only with men. Air Force Instruction (AFI) 36-2706 4F, 'Accommodation of Religious Practices,' is 'based on the constitutional right of the free exercise of religion in accordance with [Department of Defense] policy.' Commanders 'are expected to respect the religious beliefs and practices of Air Force members in a manner that is consistent and fair to all,' and to accommodate religious practices 'when accommodation will not have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, standards or discipline.'" Although his request was initially granted, it was later rescinded. To make a long story short, Berry was reassigned, but a negative review remains in his file.
Who would have thought that Berry, by literally "building down," 60 feet down in a missile bunker, would need to defend himself from temptation as he did?
Berry was obviously grounded in the Word, his faith, community, tradition, family and friends. For him, there was a "way out" as the apostle had indicated there would be.
But it came at a price.
Sometimes staying in Christ-dominated territory is costly. The question I leave to you this morning is "Are you willing to pay the price?"
AMEN