One day God was looking down at earth and saw all the evil going on.  God decided to send an angel down to check it out.  So God called one of the best angels and sent the angel down to check things out.  When the angel returned, he told God, "Yes it's bad down there - 95% of the people are bad and only 5% are good."

God thought for a moment and then said, "Maybe I'd better send another angel down there to get another opinion. "

So God called another angel and sent her to earth for a time.  When the angel returned she went to God and said, "Yes, the earth is in decline.  The stats are right - 95% bad and 5% good."

God said that this wasn't good.  So God sent an email to the 5% that were good encouraging them and giving them a 'pep talk' to hang in there.   

Do you know what the email said?

So you didn't get one either, huh?

The opening of the new Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin, just a few weeks ago, was the culmination of years of planning and controversy in Germany. From the moment the memorial first became a topic of discussion seventeen years ago, disagreement and conflict have accompanied the process.  Battles raged between the German government and Peter Eisenman, the American architect of the project.

Because of the emotion, the outrage, and the terror connected to the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews there was a great deal of disagreement and dissension in the years between concept and completion. The opening of the memorial, three weeks ago, triggered a new round of public debate.

The memorial itself is constructed of 2,711 huge concrete slabs, all at various heights. The rows and rows of concrete create an undulating sea -- vast, stark, and unsettling. In addition to the slabs themselves, the pathways that lead between the concrete rows are made of cobblestone, and they are tilted and rolling, making them uneven and unsteady -- keeping all those who walk among them constantly off-balance – symbolizing the chaos, disorientation and dehumanization of the victims.

The memorial is intentionally abstract to the extreme. The architect said, "The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate."  But the non-traditional design took so much public flak that a visitor center was constructed underneath it, offering a more traditional concept.

While some critics have sneered at the memorial, the official definition of this stark monument is this: "to honor the murdered victims, keep alive the memory of these inconceivable events in German history; and admonish all future generations to resist all forms of dictatorships and regimes based on violence.”

I say let’s give credit where credit is due. Today Germany is a nation with an commendable record of examining and confessing its own history. You don't find anything like this in Japan which committed  atrocities on its Chinese neighbors.  You don't find anything like this in Russia, where Stalin killed millions of his own people.  You don't find anything like this in China, where millions of Chinese were starved and killed during Mao's 27 years of rule.  And of course, we must ask ourselves, if we find anything like this concerning the darkness of our own nation’s history especially concerning Native Americans and African Americans. Through the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, Germany is confessing its own history with incredible honesty, courage and repentance.

It reminds them in a poignant way of a time when their government called upon its own citizens, a so-called "Christian nation", to participate directly or indirectly in the Holocaust.  It was a time when people were either duped into believing, or out-rightly believed, you could simultaneously be a good Nazi and a good Christian.

The machinery of evil that allowed the Nazi horror to operate did so in the midst of normal, everyday life. People went to work, went to school, went to church, went about their lives, often looking the other way, much less denouncing, the propaganda of malice, hatred and violence that was swirling all around them.

This is also a theme in the latest and final of the Star Wars movies, The Revenge of the Sith.  An underlying theme of the movie is how the good and righteous Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker could be transformed into the personification of evil, Darth Vadar.  He convinced himself that what he was doing was for good reasons.  It eventually blinded him to his own darkness, and in so blinding him, he became the darkness, all in the name of good.

In today's gospel scripture Jesus' words should shock us and distress us. "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."   So to whom is he referring? 

And then we are shocked even more as Jesus identifies those who are failing to do "the will of my Father." Jesus specifically singles out those who had done things that would seem to place them firmly among the divinely favored few. Isn't naming the name of Jesus a good thing? Isn't prophesy a good thing? Isn't casting out demons a good thing? Isn't doing good deeds of power a good thing? Evidently, not always!  Jesus says to some of those doing such things not just "I never knew you;" not merely "Go away from me;" but he said, "Go away from me, you evildoers."

So what gives here?  How can prophesy, casting out demons, or accomplishing good deeds of power not be doing God's will?  Jesus himself empowered his disciples to do those very things (1:7-8). How can he now denounce those same actions?  What’s the key that unlocks this?

How can Jesus insist we must do God's will and then turn around and call those doing such things evil-doers?  What isn’t happening apparently in Jesus eyes, deems seemingly right-acting men and women into evil-doers?

What does Jesus really want from us and expect from us?

At this point Jesus' uses a parable to animate his teaching. Jesus' parable contrasts the stability of the house built on sand with that of the house built on rock. Although both houses are completed well before the rains, winds and floods begin their onslaught, the difference in their foundations determines their fate. It's not what the houses look like that predicts their survival in the face of bad weather and bad times. It's what they're built upon. The strength and stability of the houses' foundation is the key to its continued existence; its salvation if you will!

Jesus' harsh admonishment to those whose words and actions look good and may even do some good, uncovers the shoddy, sandy foundation upon which they may be built.

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  (“these words of mine”)   Matthew 7:24

The “words” that Jesus refers to are his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount to which this scripture for today is the conclusion.  This is the bed-rock foundation to which Jesus is referring. So what does his Sermon on the Mount teach us?  I say this from this pulpit about three times a year, but maybe you’d better go back and read it!  Allow me to merely high-light a few of the things Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount.  As I high-light them, close your eyes, open up your mind and heart and allow them to connect with your life – even if that connection calls up something that makes you feel uncomfortable.  Answer this question as I read few of his teachings from the Sermon on the Mount:  “With what thing in my life would Jesus connect this bed-rock teaching?”  Here we go:

• "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (5:7)
• “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (5:8)
• “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (5:9)
• "If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment." (5:32)
• "But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;" (5:39)
• "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…" (5:44)
• "Forgive others their trespasses…" (6:14)
• "Where your treasure is there your heart will be also." (6:21)
• "No one can serve two masters… you cannot serve God and wealth." (6:24)
• “Do not worry about tomorrow…” (6:34)
• "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but not notice the log in your own eye?" (7:3)
• "In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you;” (7:12)

So how did you do?  What connections in your life did Jesus’ teaching make? I must confess that I didn’t do very well.  The point is that it is easy to see the evil, sin and shortcomings in others: especially in others who are different in some way – in race, ethnicity, religion, nation, political party; denomination, social status, age, and a million other ways. It’s easy to see the evil out there.  However, the solid foundation that Jesus is talking about begins not with finding fault and seeing the sin in others, but with having the courage and humility to first and always look within ones-self to see the sin, evil, duplicity and shortcomings that dwell within our own hearts.

And once we do that, there is only once place we can turn.  We can only turn to the very Lord who not only gave us these incredible, and seemingly impossible, teachings, but who went on to a cross to demonstrate the most radical and outrageous love the world has or ever will witness – the forgiveness of your sins and mine – the forgiveness of your sins and mine when we fail to follow the bed-rock teachings he’s laid down in this sermon of sermons.

So what is the foundation built on rock?  What is the will of the father, to which Jesus refers? The bottom line is to love with the same outrageous and impossible love with which he has loved us.  But it can only happen when we look into the darkness of our own hearts first, and receive the amazing grace God in Jesus Christ offers us, and then extend that love and grace to all those others in whom we have found fault and deemed sinful and evil.  When we do that, only then we will begin to resemble the teacher who preached the greatest sermon and died on a cross for your sins and mine, and the sins of the world.  This is the foundation of rock.  Amen.