Sunday, September 25, 2005
Sermon: “A Rock and a Hard Place”
Scripture: Psalm 78:1-4, , 12-16
Reverend Larry Gerber 

When we encounter stones or boulders in the road of life, we want to blow these rocks away. But doing so involves huge risks. God has a better way.

In February of this year, a mountainous 30-foot boulder teetered above the Pacific Coast Highway posing a serious risk to life and limb.

As California state transportation (Caltrans) engineers studied the problem, they applied complicated calculations and equations to the situation. Conventional methods of disposing of this boulder were inappropriate.

Granted, it would have been convenient if they could’ve applied the approach of the ancient Rabbi of Nazareth. If you had faith the size of a tiny pebble, you could say to this gigantic boulder, “move from here to there,” and it would move. Moses might have needed only to strike the rock to get results.

The traditional approach for disposing of huge rocks like this is simply to blast them to smithereens.

The problem is that such a blast generates flyrock, which, in the case of the boulder perched above the Pacific Coast Highway, was too great a risk to take. Flyrock is the sporadically deadly and often dangerous and destructive rock projectiles created when an explosive blast occurs.

Engineers can diminish the damage from flyrock by using blast mats at the sites. Blast mats are made of recycled truck tires, woven rope or steel mesh cable and are laid atop the blast spot in order to stop flyrock from flying out. Even so, it is a dangerous procedure.

There are other ways of stopping flyrock, but none practical for the stone at hand. The Caltrans crew considered mud-capping, which is basically dumping tons and tons of mud (of which there was a plentiful supply) over the boulder, but no technique was common-sensical enough to wrap around that 30-foot, 1,200-ton pebble. The flyrock danger to a couple of nearby homes in the area of the boulder, and the impracticability of completely covering the boulder, prevented the use of explosives. There are other methods used to destroy boulders, and each was perhaps considered for this one — including bursts of electricity from high-voltage capacitors, slugs of water shot at high speed or steel pistons rammed in water-filled holes.

In the end, the engineers used a super-sized jackhammer called a Ho-Ram, which is essentially a tractor-mounted jackhammer. They chipped it apart.

We all have rocks in our lives. Some are huge. Some are small. They may be at our feet as stumbling stones blocking our faith walk, over which we trip; or strung around our necks as millstones threatening to sink us down; or lurking in our hearts, shielding us from love, or pain, or hope, or joy, or perhaps even rocks inside our heads making us plain hardheaded toward God.

Shakespeare’s Othello says, “My heart is turned to stone: I strike it, and it hurts my hand.’’ The rocks of our lives hurt us. If we even notice our stumbling stones, our rocks of heart or head, our weights about our necks, our sins, our blindness, our denials, bigotries, hatreds, angers, prides, betrayals and jealousies that we carry, or trip over, hurting ourselves, we still may not turn to God for healing. Even when and if we notice the pain we cause others with the stones of our own making, even then we may not turn to God for healing.

Instead, lacking expertise, we still may choose to do the demolition alone, by ourselves. We tend to deal with things in our own way, and load up the stones with dynamite whenever we can, to explode these obstructions, sending flyrock debris scattering everywhichway, injuring anyone nearby.

So how do we deal with the boulders that hover over our lives, or squat stubbornly across the road, impeding our progress? Who can deal with this?

God can. God will. And there won’t be any flyrock.

God doesn’t need a Ho-Ram super-jackhammer, dynamite, high-voltage electricity, steel pistons or high-speed water slugs to crack apart the rocks in our lives.

The psalmist praises God, saying, “He splits rocks open in the wilderness ... He made streams come out of the rock.” He did so in the desert. He can do so to us.

The psalm revisits a critical chapter in the lives of the Israelites. The writer provides in this song a listing of the awesome things God did for his people. The author, perhaps a teacher or a priest, announces his intention at the beginning: “Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth” (78:1). Then he begins to remind his readers or listeners of God’s past activity in their lives:

• Their enemies, with superior weapons, had been turned away, verse 9.

• God worked miracles in the land of Egypt, verse 12.

• God parted the sea to allow them to pass through safely, verse 13.

• By day God led them through a daunting wilderness with a cloud, and at night by a pillar of fire, verse 14.

And if that weren’t enough, God “split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers” (78:15-16).

The reason the psalmist recounts these interventions is so that “they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (78:7).

You would think that if you have a God who is acting on your behalf in ways described in this psalm, having hope would not be a big problem.

Your enemies are turned away. You’re looking at miracles before your very eyes. The waters of destruction are rolled back, providing a way of escape, and rocks, rather than being obstacles, are split open to provide the waters of salvation.

What’s not to like about that? How hard can it be to believe in a God who does all that? How hard can it be to have hope when you have a God acting and intervening on your behalf like this?

Yet, the psalmist ruefully notes: “Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert” (78:17).

No wonder, then, that according to the writer, God reacts in “wrath,” and withdraws from the people. God, in this account, appears to be vengeful and petty, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Clearly, however, there’s a lesson to be drawn here. Whatever the dynamic between a providential God and the people of God, we cannot simply assume that God will intervene on our behalf while we, at the same time, disregard and disrespect the “commandments” of God. Doesn’t make sense.

So as we’re pondering this rock, or this boulder perched above us, about to shatter our lives with disaster, let’s at least have the decency not to call upon God in time of trouble, when we have no history of calling upon God in time of prosperity. Let’s not expect God to jump to our aid, to be at our beck and call, when we’ve had a miserable history of being faithful to God otherwise.

That’s why we often prefer to deal with these rocks in our own way. We drill a hole, drop a stick of TNT, and blast away with no thought about flyrock risk.

No wonder that this approach results in all sorts of injury to ourselves and those around us!

Better to confess our sins, approach God in humility, and understand that the God of cloud and fire, of parted waters and miracles, is perfectly able to deal with rocks in our lives that need splitting.

So how does God take care of these rocks?

Who knows? God deals with each of us in different ways. God may create a detour around the rock, provide a path in the wilderness that we’ve not yet seen, or show us some toeholds and handholds to enable us to climb over the rock.

Like the Caltrans engineers, God may simply chip away at these obstacles until they can be removed and do so without the risk of flyrock.

Perhaps there is yet another way, a via tertia. To look at this, we need to go back to these California engineers.

The original Caltrans plan to deal with this 30-foot, 1,200-ton boulder perched above the Pacific Coast Highway was to roll it down the mountain in a “controlled manner” and later to inject an expanding gel inside the big rock to quietly shatter it and disintegrate it over several hours from its inside.

This expanding goo is a special kind of powdered cement called DEXPAN, that when mixed with water and poured into holes drilled in rock, cools and exerts an improbable 18,026 pounds per cubic inch expansive capacity. It has strength more expansive than that of structural concrete or natural rock and is easily able to shatter either one as effectively as dynamite, but quietly and without the eruptive mess.

The Caltrans engineers proposed drilling holes in a proscribed pattern into the monstrous boulder, pouring in the goo, and then letting chemistry take its course.Let’s call it gooey grace.

We invite God to be present in our lives. We are faithful in prayer and meditation upon God’s word. We trust implicitly in God’s will, God’s methods and God’s timing.

We allow God’s grace to permeate our souls, our beings, every fiber of our existence. We allow God to be poured out, upon and into the cracks and fissures of the obstacles and troubles that confront us, and then wait for this pervasive, gooey grace to take over.

And just what happens when these rocks split open?

God “gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers” (78:15-16).

These look like rocks to you?

They’re not.

They’re fountains.

Fountains of living and life-sustaining water from which we’re invited to drink freely.

The next time you are caught between a rock and a hard place, enjoy the streams and the fountains of life in the midst.

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Sources:

“Caltrans works to remove boulder.” The San Diego Union-Tribune, February 25, 2005.

Engber, Daniel. “Goo that destroys boulders? How it works.” Slate.msn.com.