THE HOUSE BUILT ON THE STUMBLING ROCK:

What the Parable of Matthew 7: 24-27 is really built on

Everybody knows the meaning of the concluding words of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. To build a house wisely on rock rather than foolishly on sand is to build our own lives on solid foundations that protect us from the storms of life. The commentary on this image embodied in the famous story of the Three Little Pigs confirms this understanding. We must build our lives on discipline and hard work and, most important, strong materials that will resist attacks from the big bad wolf. This edifying insight confirms one of our basic prejudices: we must put ourselves into positions of strength from which we negotiate our way through life. The firmer our foundation, the less vulnerable we are. If we should go on to use this wise saying as the basis of a prayerful meditation, we can imagine ourselves pouring a slab of concrete and then building a fortress on this slab, equipping it with all the conveniences we want, arming it with ballistic weapons and insulating ourselves from all those people who aren't bright enough to build in the same way.

However, anyone who finds this line of reflection is attractive is strongly advised to avoid taking note of the words Jesus has just spoken which are, presumably, the words we must put into practice if we wish to build our lives on firm foundations. If we should turn back recklessly and read these words and reflect on them, we learn, to our horror, that Jesus is suggesting that we build on rock if we are poor in spirit, are meek, are persecuted for righteousness' sake. After this unpromising start it gets worse. We then shore up our foundation by turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and forgiving as our heavenly father forgives. Lest we think we have some security left from following all this good advice, we then find that we should stop worrying about what we will eat or wear, avoid judging other people, and ask God for those things that we need. This incomplete sample of teachings is enough to suggest that the rock we are supposed to build a house on is a pretty strange rock. Indeed, following words such as these is more like building a house on quicksand. How will we ever get on in life if we build on this foundation? Who wants to meditate on building life on a foundation that is purposely designed to bring down the house as soon as the wind picks up or anyone approaches us? Maybe we had better think again about what kind of rock we want to build on. The third pig seems to be a lot wiser than Jesus.

While we are on the subject of rocks and stones, we can let our minds drift to another stone, "the stone that the builders rejected" which becomes the "chief cornerstone," in Psalm 118:22. The cornerstone for a building is chosen carefully for good reason: it has to support two sides and if it fails to do that, the building collapses. The reason the builders would reject a stone is very simple: it is seems too weak for the job. And yet it is weakness that gets the last word in Psalm 118. This psalm of thanksgiving is hardly a paean to human strength and invulnerability. After a stanza of praise climaxing in the admonition that "it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes," the Psalmist tells us what these "princes" did to him. They "surrounded me on every side," "they surrounded me like bees; they blazed like a fire of thorns." In short, the psalmist was the object of collective violence at the hands of princes from which he was delivered by God. The Psalmist, in the midst of persecution and helplessness is the rejected stone. And yet it is the rejected stone, the victim, who becomes the "chief cornerstone." No wonder the workers reject a stone that seems inordinately weak. Who wants to build a culture on the weakness of a loser like this? And yet God chooses differently than the engineers of human culture, as the Psalmist says:"this is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." The engineers would build culture on the collective violence perpetrated against the Psalmist. God builds culture on the victim of that violence.

It happens that Psalm 118: 22 is the most frequently quoted verse from the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament, and it could easily have been in Matthew's mind when he recorded Jesus' words about the house built on rock at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. In any case, this verse is quoted in the pivotal Parable of Vineyard and the evil Tenants (Mat. 21:28-45). As with Psalm 118, this parable has to do with collective violence. The tenants band together to murder the owner's son so that they can have the vineyard for themselves. But it is the rejected victim and not the tenants who is made the cornerstone. Jesus goes on to designate this stone a skandalon, a stumbling block: "the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." (Mat. 21:44) Here, another verse from the Hebrew Bible has stumbled into this parable to trip us up. Isaiah prophesied that Lord of Hosts will became "a stone one strikes up against," that God will become "a rock one stumbles over." (Isaiah 8:14) Jesus is saying then, that the weak stone is stumbled over when it is rejected.

This parable seems to make the question a no-brainer as to which rock we should use for a foundation. It is obvious that by attempting to build the vineyard as their own on the solid rock of triumphant violence, the tenants lose the vineyard altogether, just as Jesus' listeners are in danger of losing God's kingdom if they imitate the evil tenants, which they proceed to do once they realize that the parable is "speaking about them." However, anyone who has any appetite left for prayerful meditation might try entering into this parable. Would we rather be one of the agents sent by the owner, or even the owner's son? Or, would we rather be one of the tenants in the vineyard. Suddenly the question appears to be a no-brainer in the opposite direction. Most people do not go out of their way to be beaten or killed for the fun of it. If this line of thought makes one's conscience a bit squeamish, we could raise the stakes a bit higher and imagine being a tenant with a conscience, that is, a tenant who disapproves of beating up the owner's agents and killing the owner's son. Then, try imagine standing up to all the other tenants and explaining the matter to them. This may be the way Jesus would have us build on rock, but nobody in the shoes of a tenant with a conscience will feel secure in that position.

In his first Epistle, St. Peter brings these themes together when he invites us "come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house." (1 Pet. 2:4-5) That Peter is alluding to the rejected stone of Psalm 118, is confirmed when he goes on to quote the verse, along with a quote from Isaiah 28:16, also about a cornerstone laid by God. Peter then complicates the picture by bringing in Isaiah 8:14 to say that the rejected stone will cause the rejecters to stumble, in much the same way Jesus alludes to this verse in the Parable of the Evil Tenants. In their original contexts, we have three very different stones: a rough stone out in the middle of the field that happens to get in the way (Isaiah 8), a foundation stone laid in Zion by God, and the cut stone that is rejected by the builders but chosen by God. (Psalm 118). By the alchemy of textual fusion, Peter has forged one stone: a stone rejected stone by humans but chosen by God that has been made a stumbling block for those who continue to reject what God has chosen. When Peter invites us to come to Jesus, the "living stone though rejected by mortals," he invites us to build our lives on the same vulnerability and weakness on which Jesus built his own. Worse, this invitation seems to extend to suffering the same fate as Jesus. Peter would have known. He himself stumbled on this very stone and made himself a stumbling block for Jesus.

It is precisely such a house of many members that Peter also envisages in the second chapter of his first epistle. Here, the faithful are called by God to become parts ("living stones") of the house, that is, members of God's household. This is the household built up of the living stones of the rejects of society who have rejected the lifestyle of mimetic rivalry for the living stone rejected by society's leaders. This puts a very different complexion on Jesus' admonition to build on rock by following the words he had just spoken during the Sermon on the Mount. When considered from this individualistic standpoint, turning the other cheek is not only a nice but impractical idea in the "real" world, it is downright terrifying. We are sure to fall on our faces if we take that route. However, we are not called to make ourselves weak and vulnerable in isolation. Rather, we are elected by God to participate in a mimetic movement where we imitate Christ and each other in turning the other cheek and walking the extra mile. This is a mimetic movement, then, Jesus which reverses the mimetic movement of the evil tenants of the vineyard who killed the owner's son. What Peter is building on is the mimetic movement put into motion by the psalmist who praised God for using the rejected stone as the chief cornerstone in the temple. This psalm, like so many others, is unmistakably liturgical with its refrains at the beginning and its "festal procession with branches up to the horns of the altar" at the end. The mimetic action here is another reversal of the mimetic process that caused culture to be built by the rejection of the weak stone. In this reversal, culture is built by welcoming the weak stone and placing it at the center where it serves as the new kingdom's foundation.

We should realize now that Jesus is not asking us to build a house in the sense of our contemporary Western notion of a house as a place owned by an individual or a nuclear family and set apart from everybody. In both the Roman and Hebrew cultures of Jesus' time, a house would be a household, i.e. a society. Jesus' words then, are about the way we create human culture. That is to say. Jesus is enjoining us to build a whole new culture, not and just an ethic for the rare individual who is willing to try and be good. A culture built on mimetic rivalry and reciprocal violence where an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the law is built on sand. According to Rene Girard, such a culture resolves its tension through collective violence. This resolution of societal tension is inherently unstable, however. There is the constant danger of another breakdown into mimetic rivalry that will necessitate yet another act of collective violence. All one has to do is imagine how stable the society of the Vineyard will be after the tenants have killed the son and taken the vineyard for themselves. The culture envisioned in the Sermon on the Mount is a culture where retaliatory violence and mimetic rivalry are renounced. This is the culture built on rock. Jesus, then, does not envisage each follower building his or her own little house based on the rock of his teachings. Rather, like Peter, he envisages a household with many members.

When we meditate on the Parable of the House built on rock, then, we should imagine ourselves as one of many living stones making up this house that is built on the vulnerability of the victim and not on the security we are tempted to fight for on behalf of ourselves. If we mediate honestly, we will find no cause to pat ourselves on the back for the way we contribute to building on the stumbling rock for the very reason that we find ourselves stumbling over it all the time. We are not reflecting on a stone that was rejected once and has been affirmed by everybody ever since. What we are reflecting on is a stone that is rejected time and time again. Every time we feel threatened in our vulnerability and we try to shore up our security in our own terms, we are rejecting the stone chosen by God. However, at those times when we do build, however tentatively in the tenement building with the rejected stone as the cornerstone, we are apt to feel discouraged by the small impact we seem to have in the world. We feel that we, too, are rejected stones kicked out of the way by the builders of modern culture. And so we feel tempted to share our lot with the rejecters. But insofar as we stick with the rejected stones in God's tenement building, we find that the quicksand of Jesus' words have us sinking into the solid kingdom of God.