Foundational
“Foundational”
Psalm 19 Luke 4:14-21
Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C January 23, 2022
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
When we moved into our house 11 years ago, I suffered sinus infections that seemed to activate during moist seasons like spring or fall, sometimes winter, like the typical January thaw cold air having 100 percent humidity. We have a two-story house on a foundation with a decent-sized crawlspace about 4 feet high. Have you ever been in an old home where the floors slope? Old houses seem to settle. But ours was built in 1979, so it’s not that old, but that crawl space was starting to show signs of deterioration. The floor joists from the first floor had dark stains near the foundation walls. They were taking on moisture and starting to rot and settle by the weight of the house pushing down. The dirt floor of the crawlspace was covered by a black tarp to keep the moisture from the ground from infiltrating the area, but it didn’t extend from wall to wall; there were gaps of a few feet all around the perimeter. Support posts down the center seemed sturdy, but showed water stains, which meant that the crawl space had flooded at some various points in its past.
Conventional wisdom and official building codes call for venting. Foundations have vents installed to allow the moist air from crawl spaces to leave the building. This does not work! What does happen is a chimney affect. Houses act like a chimney and air goes up and through them. Air from the crawl space seeps its way to the first floor. It is replaced by humid air from outside drawn in through vents.
Moist air in our crawlspace was causing rust and dripping condensation on the water line pipe, and our wooden floor joists were so moist that bracket fungi, other fungus, and molds were growing on them. Moist air fed them, and came into the house from both vents and from below, from ground water. This moist air rising through the first floor created a breeding ground both in the crawl space and in the first-floor carpet pads and carpets. Guess what grew? Mold. That mold enjoyed the warm air of the main floor living area, and released spores, thus inviting my body to an allergic response which festered into sinus infections. In a house, much of the air you breath comes from sources largely unseen and ignored.
After a couple years in the house, we sold some other property and used some of the money to pay a company (and I’ll give them a plug here), Premier Basement Systems out of Spokane and Post Falls area came to help us. They dug out trenches and installed drainpipes and a sump pump. They lined the entire dirt floor from foundation wall to wall with a white vapor barrier and the light color reflects light so it’s bright down there now. Especially from the reflective stiff foam insulation installed along the foundation wall that has a reflective layer to keep the heat in and the cold out.
Before they came, I did much of the prep work. Because people don’t like floors made cold from outside air in the crawlspace, they put insulation between the floor joists, but over time the moist air fills the insulation and renders it useless. Like a wet sponge, it gets heavy and starts to fall out, but in the meantime, creates a great home for mice and other creatures. I removed the horrible insulation that had soaked water for decades, along with mice nests and a couple of carpenter ant nests with thousands of big, black ants happily enjoying the rotting floor joists from 1979.
The new sump pump now gets the bulk of seasonal ground water away from the house, no more flooding. We later put on rain gutters which also helps a huge amount to keep the foundation area dry. We sealed up the vents; it’s called encapsulation. No more moist air coming in at any time of year. Like right now, all that 34-degree humid air is safely kept outside, and warmer air that holds more moisture in other seasons is also blocked.
Our crawl space is now too dry to support molds and fungus, so without the need for chemical treatment, these simply dried up and died. The bugs went away because they didn’t have anything to eat. No need for pest control. Because that insulation habitat is gone, we don’t even have mice. But the best part is, I have not had a sinus infection for years, for which I’m thankful. The chimney affect air is clean, and I highly recommend an encapsulated crawl space with a sump pump to help a home not end up sagging under its own weight as it ages.
A house built with good intentions on a solid foundation inadvertently led to a dark and ignored space of rot overrun with insects and rodents. But through a transformation there is now a bright, dry, relatively warm, and usable space that even has some storage. But to get there, we needed to challenge conventional wisdom, we needed to learn about encapsulation as a process for buildings, and we needed to trust that in covering vents, having a sump pump, and using rain gutters, these would be proactive practices toward health and wellbeing. We saved our house from sagging under its own weight, and I would never go back to the old space.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m telling you this story as a metaphor for the spiritual life. Just like today’s biblical story, we can challenge ourselves to look deeper into our own lives and at things we assume are true, so God can heal us in ways we didn’t even know we needed, often in unseen realms. But like the chimney affect, a transformation of heart and renewing of mind by the Spirit shapes a life of love.
Luke looks at Jesus teaching in his hometown of Nazareth. While we could take it literally at a historic level, like a play-by-play account of what happened, we could also see this biblical narrative as an artistic illustration. The entire story could be a metaphor that points to the life of Jesus like an architect looks to a blueprint. The blueprint of Jesus points us to Christ’s archetypal patterns. These are foundational to life itself and show something deeper than conventional wisdom and things that are assumed to be true. This story can speak to us at those deep, foundational levels.
It helps us to come alongside the Psalmist who asks and requests, “But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults.” (Psalm 19:12). With this humble stance we acknowledge there may be things in our lives that we are not paying to attention to, intentionally or not; things so difficult, or painful, or assumed to be true, that the only way to challenge them is through the divine help of God’s saving grace.
“Clear me from hidden faults” is a plea. If we allow these teachings room to work in our lives at deep levels, and if we are open to their unnerving challenges, our experience of faith can grow and God’s love becomes more real to us in our lives. The Psalmist says, [awe and wonder] of [God Almighty] is pure, enduring forever; the [ways] of [God Almighty] are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (vs. 9-10). As a beekeeper, I know that’s pretty sweet! Honeycomb is amazing! “The drippings” means nothing is wasted.
Jesus speaks to the hometown crowd. He is filled with the Holy Spirit, just come from time alone in the wilderness as his call to ministry found focus through temptation and struggle, fasting, and prayer. His teachings begin to inspire many in the villages around Galilee and his reputation precedes him as he goes back to the place where he grew up, Nazareth.
Here he is back home after spending an unknown amount of time away. He’s serving as worship leader, reads a very important passage from Isaiah that resonates with Jewish belief about God’s faithfulness and deliverance in times of trial.
Jesus is the small-town kid who has made good, amounted to something, and in surprising ways gets peoples hopes up as they are filled with new expectations and excitement.
He reads from the scroll, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” He goes on with what some call the mission statement of his ministry. This resonates with people, and as their tradition has it, he sits down to teach. “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” He has their attention. “‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” You’d be amazed too if you thought history was being made right before you very eyes and you got to be part of it in ways that would benefit you and validate everything you think and believe. You were part of the inside crowd, and you assume it’s only going to get better.
Jesus is one of them and they are so proud. They remember him as a little kid and here he is teaching with such authority and a great reputation is forming. This story is about good intentions, the love and support of community, the importance of identity and belonging.
At foundational levels, this archetypal story affirms first half of life development. As the story goes on there is a creative shift. This points out that there is a struggle involved in breaking out of entrenched and unexamined patterns, of letting go things we cling to, held as strongly as belief, identity, and wounds we use to define us. Whether we’re victims or heroes, the pressures of life, the rejections, the injustice, the grievances; these can become toxic to us as life goes along and they compound in ways that the consciousness that led to them is not able to solve. We either crumble from the inside or become bitter, defensive, or reactive.
Even though second half of life offers tremendous spiritual growth and freedom from ourselves, most people resist this movement. But that is where the rest of the story comes in, the part we don’t read today as the entire, affirming hometown crowd changes and all of them are filled with rage. Again, as a metaphor, this means that everyone needs to deal with this; no one is left out from great love and great suffering that invites spiritual transformation.
May we have courage like the Psalmist to invite God to work in our heart. May we, like Jesus, trust the Spirit to lead us into deeper expressions and experiences of God’s divine love. And in foundational ways, through our living, may God be glorified, now, even as forever. Amen.