Well, it started out as a sort of competition between me and my brother-in-law. You’ve met my brother-in-law, Ed. He and his sister and their two girls have visited here once or twice. They attend a Methodist church near their home, but we don’t hold that against them.
Anyway, I don’t remember which one of us initiated the competition. All I know is that we were at the beach one day, with our families, a beach that was covered with rocks and thus was not very good for swimming.
The rocks that covered the beach were of various sizes. Most ranged from golf-ball-size to the size of my fist, though some were larger, even as large as a watermelon. Most were smoothly rounded, but some had jagged edges.
One of us took a few of these rocks and stacked them on top of one another. The other of us responded by taking the same number of rocks plus one, and stacking them … and the competition was on.
It’s amazing how tall you can balance a stack of rocks. I wouldn’t have believed you could do such a thing until I tried. In fact, that right there is a very powerful lesson, one that probably deserves its own sermon: that so many things actually seem impossible, until you actually try.
People walking by stared in disbelief. One person actually asked, “Did you use glue to hold those together?”
No. I just balanced them. Carefully. Patiently.
On subsequent visits to the beach, I found myself stacking rocks, even if Ed wasn’t around. Eventually I found a facebook page devoted to rockstacking. I discovered that among some Buddhists, rockstacking is a form of meditative practice. And at Bella Cosa, perhaps the cutest store in Bixby Knolls, they sell a sculpture that is nothing more than 5 egg-shaped stones stacked on top of each other, held together by glue or a rod drilled through them or something like that. It retails for $34.95.
It wasn’t long before stacking rocks became for me more of a spiritual practice and less of a friendly competition or way to pass the time on a beach that wasn’t conducive to body surfing. Everyday life has so many anxieties and worries. We feel the pressure to do ten things at once. Hardly ever do we have the opportunity to focus on a single task, to meditate on a single topic, without being distracted by other thoughts.
Robert Fulghum, who has had many different jobs throughout his life, once wrote about the job he’d really like to have. If I remember correctly (it’s been many years since I read this), the job he most wanted was to live in a culture or tribe where his job would be to polish the stick. That’s it. He’d be the stick-polisher. It would be his one task, a task he could focus on and do well. Nothing else would distract him because he would be the stick-polisher.
I get that. I feel the same way sometimes when I’m doing a simple but important task, like painting a room. I get all set up, and start painting. For the day, until it’s done, that’s my one task. I can focus on it, and do it well.
Most tasks in life are not so simple. But balancing rocks on top of one another is as simple as it gets. And it requires all your concentration, all your focus. You have to know the tower, and anticipate how the addition of each new rock will affect the balance of the whole thing. You have to know each individual rock, intimately, for lack of a better word. Sometimes the rock just doesn’t want to balance, so you discard it and find another. Most rocks are willing, however, and will balance if you just have enough patience.
And, for some reason, it’s all very satisfying.
Last year at Loch Leven, I convinced a dozen or so kids to spend an hour with me stacking and balancing rocks by the stream. Some of them were actually pretty good at it. I was surprised. They were able to focus and show the patience necessary to make some really beautiful towers.
It made me think that rockstacking might be a really useful practice for kids and adults with attention deficit disorder. I think someone should do a study on that.
As we were stacking rocks, I introduced those kids to Ebenezer. Are you familiar with Ebenezer? I started thinking about Ebenezer soon after I started stacking rocks.
Perhaps this will help you remember Ebenezer. This morning we sang the hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Verse two includes the line, “Here I raise my Ebenezer.”
I purposely had us use the original words to this hymn. If you happened to open up your Chalice Hymnal, you probably noticed that the words “Here I raise my Ebenezer” have been altered to read, “Here I raise to thee an altar.” So if you don’t know already, that should tell you that Ebenezer is an old word – an old Hebrew word, actually – and that it means an altar.
It comes from the first book of Samuel. God intervened on behalf of the Israelites by saving them from the Philistine army. The scripture says that, in response, “Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer,” which means stone of help.
Jacob also made an altar by stacking rocks in response to his sacred encounter with God. Well, he took one rock and set it up as a pillar, or, depending on how the Hebrew is interpreted, he took one rock and set it on top of a pillar of rocks. He did this in response to a special encounter he had with God at that place, which he named Bethel, a word that means house of God.
Of course, the altars built by Samuel and Jacob were probably a bit studier than my rock towers, which were easily toppled by seagulls, ocean breezes, or even the vibrations of the nearby pounding surf. Those biblical altars were built to last, to serve as a reminder to future passersby and even future generations of a special encounter with God that took place at a specific location.
Well, one thing leads to another, and just as my rockstacking led to an exploration and study of these biblical altars, that exploration and study in turn has led me to wonder how people today respond to a significant encounter with God. What altars – literal and figurative – do we build today? What do we do to remind ourselves and the world that, in our life and location, God has been present?
65 years ago, a committed group of Christians decided to build an altar in a new and growing section of Long Beach, and call it “Bixby Knolls Christian Church.” Do you know how much effort it takes to build a church? To raise the interest, to get people to commit their time, and to raise the money? There are times when I walk around this place, and I look at the buildings, the stained-glass windows, the classrooms, and I think: Wow. The people who built this church were incredibly generous and hardworking. This place really is a testimony to their dedication to God. They sacrificed great amounts of their money and their lives to establishing a place where God is worshiped, where the good news of God’s love for all people is shared with neighbors near and far.
You are impressed by my ability to stack rocks, something that takes one hour and is knocked down in the next hour. Far more impressive, I think, is the ability of a group of dedicated, committed Christians to establish a church and keep it going.
The generosity of our current members and friends is what keeps this church going, which is a remarkable thing given that we live in an age when it seems everyone wants to keep as much as they can for themselves. It’s harder to get people to commit to any kind of social or religious organization these days. This church, this building, this ministry, continues to be an altar to God.
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