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.
Some people may have gotten the wrong impression that mere association with Jesus was enough to allow them to gain access to the Kingdom. Yes, Jesus dined with sinners. But if sinners were unchanged by such experiences, if they had no contrition, and if their hearts were not moved, they could not hope to merely use the name of Jesus like a password in order to enter heaven.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
Being able to identify Jesus was not enough. But neither was it enough to merely try to perform good works without him. His words were not words like those of anyone else. His words had power to transform the lives of those who heard, causing them to desire the will of the Father, and giving them grace to carry it out. One needed not only to be familiar with the words of Jesus. One needed to make them the basis for her own life and existence. The concepts contained in the Sermon on the Mount were a recipe for frustration rather than fidelity apart from Jesus, since apart from the vine branches invariably wither (see John 15:5-6).
The Gospel this morning is not merely advising us to set about obedience and good works on our own. The point is not the things we do or don't do so much as where the foundation of our lives is built. We can try to attain to all of the ideals of the Beatitudes on our own, apart from Jesus and the power of his grace. But we will find such attempts, however good the intentions, to be built on sand. Because the words of Jesus are different from those of others we don't build on them in the same way that we might try to internalize those of a philosopher or a spiritual guru. We don't take his teaching as suggestions that we then run with on or own. The words of Jesus have the power to renew our minds, giving us a new and fresh spiritual way of thinking. But if we don't live in a way that is in harmony with his words we will prove that we do not trust them completely. In doing so their power to transform us will be blunted or even nullified.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
The words of Jesus do not necessarily always change our circumstances. Though, sometimes they do, since there is no limit to their power. They are not, after all, merely subjective. And yet, often we must still endure the rain, the flood, and the winds. Importantly, though, his will always change us if we let them. When we become rooted in Jesus, the source and origin of all things we become immune at the deepest levels to anything the world can throw at us. When we truly build on his words he becomes an anchor for our souls (see Hebrews 6:19) that keep us secure in any storm. The reason his words have such power, that they are unlike any other words, is because the one who is an eternal Rock is none other than the LORD himself.
Trust in the LORD forever!
For the LORD is an eternal Rock.
John Michael Talbot - I Am The Vine
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