The Waking Dreamer: Book of 1 Corinthians

Showing posts with label Book of 1 Corinthians. Show all posts

Monday, February 16, 2026

The Common Good

1 Corinthians 12:1-11[1]

Over the course of about a thousand years, the work of the church evolved from being something that was primarily the work of the people to being something that was exclusively the work of priests. In fact, there were times when the priests were the only ones in worship. For centuries, most people actually went to church only on Easter Sunday. A typical Sunday in “church” saw the priests and their assistants working at the altar. If anyone happened to be sitting in the church to pray, the priests might not even have noticed, because they would have been facing the altar, with their backs turned to the rest of the church. You can see a remnant of this style of worship practiced still to this day in Orthodox Christian Churches. The priests do a lot of their “work” in leading worship facing the altar.

When the Protestant Reformation came along, the idea of the “priesthood of all believers” emerged as a foundational principle. Especially in the Reformed branch of the Protestant church under John Calvin, where the origins of Presbyterians lie, the idea was that the work of ministry belonged to everyone in the church. And those Reformers changed worship completely to focus on the reading of scripture, the singing of songs, hymns, and even the Psalms, and preaching. All of that was, of course, directed toward the congregation. Those who were doing the reading, singing, and preaching faced the people.

Today we’ve celebrated this aspect of our roots in the Presbyterian church. By ordaining and installing elders and deacons to serve the people of this congregation and this community with “energy, intelligence, imagination, and love,” we celebrate our belief that the work of the church doesn’t belong to some exclusive class of priests. Rather, the work of the church belongs to us all. But then that also puts us all on the spot, to some extent. Because in the Presbyterian church, we believe that we’re all a part of the work of this church. We all have a role to play, and unless we all play our roles, we cannot fully carry out our ministry as a church.

Some of us might object that we don’t have the skills or the training to do the work of ministry. In our Scripture reading from 1 Corinthians for today, Paul reminds us that we already have all we need to fully carry out the ministry of this church. He says it this way in our reading for today: “God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate [with the Lord Jesus Christ]. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all” (1 Cor 12:4-6, MSG). One of the reasons why Paul was addressing this topic is because some in the church at Corinth were claiming that their “gifts” were superior to the others. Paul made it clear that there’s no room for that kind of thinking in the body of Christ. In the body of Christ, every member is important.

Throughout his letters, Paul makes it clear that all of life in the church is the result of the work of the Spirit of God. When the church thrives, it’s because the Spirit of God is working among us and through us. When the church comes together in a way that unites believers from across all the lines that would divide us, it’s the work of the Spirit of God. When the members of a congregation like this one share in the serving one another and the community around us, it’s because the Spirit of God has enabled us to do so. For St. Paul, every aspect of the church’s life and ministry comes from the Spirit of God. And part of the point of this is to assure us, just like those early believers at Corinth, that God’s Spirit is indeed working among us and through us.

Perhaps the most surprising element in all of this is the fact that God has chosen to accomplish this work through people like you and me. And to do this, he gives us the “gifts of the Spirit,” which Paul says are given to each person “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). In The Message version we read together this morning, it says it this way: “Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits.” In other words, every single person in this church has some “gift” from the Spirit that is to be used for the benefit of the whole church. But that also means that for the church to thrive all the members of the body have to share the gifts they have been given. We may have a variety of gifts, but all of them come from the same Spirit and are meant for one purpose: to build up the body of Christ.

I think one major mistake people make when they try to figure out what their “spiritual gift” might be is that they try to see where they fit into the lists of gifts mentioned in the Bible. But I don’t believe Paul ever intended for the gifts he named to be taken as the only ones out there. They are examples of the ways that the Spirit of God was working through people in the churches of his day. To be sure, some of those gifts are timeless. There will always be a need for teaching. There will always be a place for generosity. There will always be a call for leadership. But I would say that your “spiritual gift” might not even be in one of the biblical lists. That may make it a little harder to discern how you fit into the body of Christ, but it also gives you the freedom to be the person God has called you to be in building up the body of Christ.

One of the challenges facing most churches like ours is what might be called a “generational shift.” Many of the people who have been doing the work of ministry may no longer be able or available to be as involved as they once were. And the families who are mostly being served by the church are reticent to step up into leadership roles, because their lives are pretty hectic already. As a result, there are “jobs” in the church that may fall by the wayside. It may leave some of us wondering “whose job is this?” It seems to me that Paul gives us at least one piece of helpful advice: the Spirit of God has given us all gifts to be used “for the common good” in building up the church. If I may be so bold, it would seem to me that his answer to the question, “whose job is this?” would be, “It’s our job.” All of us. Today, we celebrated that aspect of our faith by ordaining and installing a group of people who stepped up and said “yes” when they were asked if they would serve. But whether or not you’re serving in a formal role, we all share the same calling: to serve one another and this community with the gifts God’s Spirit has given us.

All We Need

1 Corinthians 1:1-9[1]

I’m not sure which is harder: renovating an existing building or starting from scratch. I’ve had some experience with both. Those of you do-it-yourself-er’s out there know what happens when you try to renovate an older home. There’s always something underneath what you can see that makes the project take three times longer than you expected. The home in Houston where I lived was a mid-1960’s Ranch style home that had been “redone” by the previous owners. Unfortunately, they had cut a lot of corners in the process. A lot of corners. It seemed like every time we started a project, we had to spend a significant amount of time undoing what the previous owners had done. It was frustrating at times, but the end result was satisfying.

Building a new structure from scratch presents its own challenges. If you’ve never had the pleasure, let me assure you that all the delays—from permits to suppliers to contractors—can make it just as frustrating a process. Maybe more so. As some of you know, one of the churches I served in Houston was destroyed by fire in 2010. This was a congregation with maybe 40 members. We had a great insurance policy, so we were able to hire architects to design a beautiful building. And with a little bit of “value engineering,” we were able to build that beautiful building with very little money out of pocket. But it wasn’t an easy process. We had to spend $300,000 just on moving dirt around to comply with the new flood plain policy. I guess I’d say building something new took only twice as long as expected, so maybe it was a little easier. Maybe.

There are people who would debate whether it’s easier to lead an existing congregation to thrive, or to build a new congregation from scratch. An existing congregation typically has the “critical mass” of resources needed to thrive. But with those resources come established traditions, and traditions are slow to adapt to the times. With a new congregation, you have a “blank slate,” so to speak. You can come up with new “traditions” that seem to work best for the specific time and place you’re trying to serve. But all that takes time and a whole lot of energy on the part of a few people, maybe primarily one person. I think how you approach this question depends on your gifts. Some people have the gift of coming into a new situation, seeing exactly what the needs are, and organizing a group of people to meet those needs. They have a knack for the work of planting a new church. Others have the gift of working with an established congregation to lead them forward. In both cases, as a friend of mine put it years ago, leadership is essentially about listening. You listen for the needs and try to respond appropriately.

Two of our scripture lessons deal with communities facing challenging situations, almost like “rebuilding.” In our lesson from Isaiah, the prophet was addressing people living in exile. Everything they had known—at least those who could remember it—had been taken from them. They had been uprooted and dropped in a place that was strange and seemed very far away from God. Their greatest challenge was maintaining their faith. In that place where they all felt displaced the Lord spoke through the prophet to change their focus. The people of Israel had focused all their attention on restoring what they had lost from their past. But through his “Servant,” the Lord God commissioned them to something much bigger than they had imagined. They were going to be “a light to the Gentiles,” to “bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isa 49:6, NLT).

I think the believers in Corinth had some similar doubts about what they were doing. They were a new congregation. The Apostle Paul had started the church in Corinth during an 18-month ministry there. But they had become confused about how they were supposed to live their lives together in Christian community. They were divided, and the factions were pulling the congregation in very different directions—some closer to their Jewish heritage, some away from it. One of the fundamental challenges they faced was how Jewish Christians and Christians from other nations could live together in one community of faith. And I would imagine the people in Corinth saw the task of trying to integrate people of such different backgrounds as next to impossible. It might have been similar to trying to build a congregation from two groups of people who speak completely different languages.

But the Apostle began his instructions with the assurance that they already had everything they needed to accomplish the task. He reminded them that everything they did was built on “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:4). That’s a pretty good foundation. More specifically, he told them that they had already been fully equipped by the Spirit to carry out their work: “in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind ... so that you are not lacking in any gift” (1 Cor 1:5, 7). He’s talking about the “gifts” of the Spirit they needed to do the work of ministry and build up the body of Christ. And just in case they had any lingering doubts, Paul encouraged them that their faithful God would strengthen them to the end (1 Cor 1:8).

We’re living through a time of sweeping changes: changes in culture, changes in family structures, changes in our economy, and also changes in the church. Many of us may feel like the people of Israel: we may feel like refugees living in a strange land! We may find ourselves grieving that what was so familiar in the past is gone. Others among us may see ourselves more like the people at Corinth. We may be eager for the future to come, so eager that we’re not willing to practice patience and understanding toward those who may seem to be “dragging their feet.” We may be thinking that it’s impossible to forge a true community from people who have such deep differences in the way they look at life.

I think in both cases, the challenge of our Scriptures for today is to re-direct our focus toward what God is doing among us. It’s often called a “new thing” in Scripture, something unexpected, something we can’t even imagine. I know that it’s hard to see the past and things that we have cherished for decades seemingly slipping away. Instead of wringing our hands about the way church “used to be,” I would say that perhaps the way to move forward positively is to always be open to the possibility that our God is calling us on to something new, something bigger than we can even imagine. That means having the courage to let God lead us into the future that he’s planned for us. At the same time, some of us may feel stuck in frustration that things aren’t changing fast enough. I think it’s important for us to remember that God’s timing isn’t our timing. It’s also important to remember that the Spirit has fully equipped us with all we need to carry out our mission.

Life has changed so much, just in the course of my lifetime. It can be hard to look back on what worked so well for so long and see that they’re not working now. We struggle with not understanding why they’re not working. We struggle with trying to re-energize those programs, trying to figure out a way to rebuild them. It’s a little bit like renovating an existing building. It’s also hard and scary to think about what new things God may be doing among us, because we’re used to the way things have been. But if God is the one who is sovereign, and if we’re trusting God with our lives, then that always means recognizing that while we may not know what God is doing in and through us, we place our hope and faith in God to lead us. At the end of the day, Scripture reminds us that our faithful God will complete the work he is doing among us. It seems to me that’s where our faith is rooted: in the promises of our faithful God. He will always be with us. He will always guide us. He will always give us all that we need to accomplish our work. And he will complete the work he is doing among us. May we trust him as we seek to be faithful in completing the work he’s called us to do.

Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Not In Vain

Not in Vain

1 Corinthians 15:25-28, 35-58[1]

I mentioned last week that hope is something we all need to thrive in this life. But hope can be tricky, because it can be hard to know what to place your hope in. Especially in times when it feels like everything you thought you could count on in life has dropped out from under you. Those of us who practice faith in Jesus Christ have a hope for something more, beyond this life. But that hope has resulted all too often in an attitude that what happens now doesn’t really matter. That was why Karl Marx criticized religion as a kind of drug that made people passive in the face of the wrongs that were being perpetrated against them. I think that’s why we need the full version of the Christian hope: not just that we’ll go to heaven when we die, but also that God is working to restore all our lives and everything he created in the same way that Jesus was raised to new life. The miracle of the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday points us to the promise that God is working to change this world, and everyone and everything in it.

Even with that hope, there are still some pitfalls to avoid.[2] For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly optimistic view. Because we have the hope of being with Jesus at our death, we can treat death like it’s no “big deal.” It’s just “passing on” to another stage of our journey. That’s not the biblical view. As Paul puts it in our lesson for today, death is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). Death has a “sting” that is real and harmful (1 Cor 15:55). Paul’s not just talking about physical death, although as many of us have experienced, that can be truly harmful to those of us who have lost loved ones. Paul is also talking about the destructive power that “death” exerts in our lives and in our world to this day through the powers and persons who align themselves with evil.[3] Our hope is not that somehow death is no “big deal.” Our hope is that in Jesus’ very real death on the cross, and especially by raising Jesus to new life, God has overcome the power of death.

The other pitfall goes to the opposite extreme. For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly pessimistic view. Because of the harm that death continues to inflict in our lives and in our world, we can decide that God must not be able to do anything about it.[4] But that’s also not a biblical view! Not by a long stretch! The God to whom the Apostle Paul points us is the God who not only worked in the lives of the people of Israel and in the lives of believers in the early church all those centuries ago. This God is the God who continues to work in and through us to bring life out of all the harm that death can inflict on us. We have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because Jesus died a very real death on the cross. But we also have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because God raised Jesus to a new life that is just as real. That means death will not have the last word for anyone.

The hope of the Gospel is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s the promise that the life God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection is a new kind of life that is stronger than the worst that death and all its powers and those who align themselves with them can throw at us. Paul points to this hope when he insists that “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54), the victory Jesus won when God raised him from death. Paul can go so far as to “taunt” death like one might do to a defeated and humiliated bully: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55, NLT). The reason he can act so confidently in the face of the harm that death still can and does inflict on us is because he knows that God has given us “victory” over all of it “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The life that God has injected into this world through Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated death and all the powers and persons aligned with it. And the promise of our faith is that this new life will finally and fully define all creation. For everyone and everything!

Our faith and our hope exist in a balance. We don’t naively water down the power of death or the very real harm those who align themselves with evil can do in our world. Rather, with Paul we take all of that seriously as an “enemy.” But on the other hand, we don’t just give up in the face of the sometimes overwhelming discouragement we feel over the influence of those powers and persons. That’s because we’ve seen the light of new life that dawned on that first Easter morning, and with Paul and the hosts of believers throughout the ages we put our faith and our hope in the power of that new life.[5] We hold our faith and our hope in the power of God to overcome evil in this world in a balance. But the scale is tipped in favor of hope, because Jesus’ resurrection points us to the day when the final victory will come.

We don’t place our hope in some idealistic vision that attributes to humanity a goodness that can prevail against all evil. There is much goodness to be found in the human family, to be sure. But it’s not equal to the task of overcoming the powers of evil and those who align themselves with it. Neither do we place our hope in sheer determination and willpower to resist in the face of all the wrongs that are so blatantly perpetrated in our day, every day. Human willpower isn’t sufficient to the task either. We place our hope in the confidence that, as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “God is not God in vain.”[6] Or as Paul puts it in our lesson for today, ultimately God will be “utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT).[7] And so we place our hope in God, and in the victory he has won in Jesus Christ. And that hope leads us to the confidence that God will fulfill all that he has promised to do. One day, we will share in the new life that Jesus now enjoys.

So how then shall we live in these times of turmoil? Do we retreat behind the walls of our homes and churches and sit back, waiting for God to work a miracle? Or do we “plunge into the present struggle” as our affirmation of faith last week called us to do, putting the courage and energy our faith and hope give us to good use here and now?[8] I think St. Paul would have us do the latter. After all that he had to say about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope it gives us, Paul concluded this chapter by saying, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). That last phrase is often translated more literally “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We may or may not see tangible results from our work. But I believe that every act of integrity, every act of kindness, every act motivated by faith and hope and love can and does make a difference.[9] Not just because of our sincerity, or our determination, but because the new life of our resurrected lord Jesus means that what we do here and now is “not in vain”!

[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 378.

[3] Paul speaks of this especially in Romans 5, where he contrasts the effects of death’s “reign” with the effects of God’s grace that lead to the “victory” that we have through Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom 5:17). See especially The Message translation: “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Cf. also Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, p.1302.

[4] This was Harold Kushner’s view in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He and his wife had experienced the loss of a child, so while I may disagree with his view, I would not want to criticize him personally.

[5] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 283. See also ibid., 285, where he says that Christians “know of a power at work here and now greater than the power of evil, a power that keeps breaking into our godless and godforsaken world to heal old wounds, make new beginnings, and (if only now and then, here and there) give us a glimpse of the final victory of God’s compassion and justice that are on the way.” See further, ibid., 375: “The God in whom we hope is a God who not only will be but is the powerful and compassionate Creator and Ruler of the world. The crucified and risen Christ who will come to overthrow all the powers of darkness and evil that spoil God’s good creation and human life in it has already triumphed over them and even now is at work to complete the work he has begun.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.1:196. While he concedes that work of reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished through the cross and resurrection (elsewhere he calls it “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation”; ibid., p. 191) still faces opposition in this world, he insists that we must see this “battle” as resulting in the victory of God.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 163, where he points to the final victory of Jesus’ resurrection as serving “the sole and all-embracing lordship of God.”

[8] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 10.5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[9] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 280-81: “we can and must confidently throw ourselves into the fight against evil in our own lives and in the world around us, knowing that we do not fight alone but with the one who is stronger than all the forces of evil.”

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Our Hope in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:12-26[1]

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life. We cannot thrive without a sense of hope. While I think many would agree that hope is a mindset we can learn, it doesn’t just come automatically. And when we lack a healthy sense of hope about our lives we can find it hard to believe that they have meaning and purpose. That puts us at risk for sliding into depression, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts. A lack of hope can affect us in more “physical” ways, like diminishing our ability to cope with the stress we all face as a part of life. Hope gives us confidence to persevere in hard times, because we believe that there is indeed meaning and purpose to our lives, each and every one of our lives. That kind of resilience enables us to move forward with our goals in life and with our commitments to family and work and service.

Hope keeps us going when everything in life seems to conspire against us. But hope can be risky as well. We can put our hope in all the wrong things. We may be hoping for a nicer car, a bigger home, a better job, a more fulfilling relationship. Hoping for those things isn’t in and of itself wrong. There is a forward-looking aspect to all hope. But when we stake too much of our well-being on hoping for the wrong things, if those hopes come crashing down, so do we. That’s when false hope can hurt us deeply. It can shake our faith in others, in the meaning of life, even in the goodness of God.

Our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for today addresses hope from the perspective of Christian faith. Specifically, Paul was addressing the hope of the resurrection. I dare say that’s not something that’s high on our list of hopes these days. As Christians, we hope to “go to heaven” when we die, to be with Jesus and to be reunited with our loved ones. But that’s not the focus of hope in the New Testament. The focus of Christian hope is that we will share Jesus’ resurrection, in bodily form, and that in that new body we will enjoy new life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.[2] In fact, for Paul the hope of sharing in Jesus’ resurrection is so foundational for Christian faith that he could say, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless” and “we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Cor 15:16-17, 19, NLT).

It may be hard for us to understand how Christians who lived only 30 years after the first Easter Sunday could somehow doubt the resurrection of Jesus. Part of the problem in Corinth may have been that in the Greek world, the idea of a future “resurrection” in which the dead live again in physical form was thought to be crude and disgusting. In the Greek world, people looked forward to being set free from the “prison house” of the body. They believed that death was a transition from physical life in a body to living among the stars in the heavens as an immortal soul. “Resurrection” just didn’t compute to them. They would have been much more comfortable with our notions of “going to heaven” when you die. In fact, it was the influence of this line of thinking about three hundred years after Paul’s day that shifted Christian hope from sharing Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation to eternal life in heaven.

Some of the believers at Corinth went to the opposite extreme. They heard some of the wonderful promises of new life in the Gospel message Paul and others had preached. And because they heard in that message that they already had eternal life fully and completely because of what Jesus did, they believed that they had all they were ever going to receive of salvation. They bypassed the promise of God’s future as resurrected people living on a recreated earth in the way God had intended in the first place—without sadness or pain, suffering or injustice, violence or even death. They believed that all they were ever going to get from their faith was what they had right then and right there.

But St. Paul wouldn’t accept either of these options. For him, the inevitable consequence of Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning was that we would all share in the new life Jesus now enjoys. He says it this way: “Christ has been raised from the dead” as “the first of a great harvest of all who have died” (1 Cor 15:20, NLT). For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant more than God had intervened to vindicate Jesus and his message. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant the beginning of the transformation of all things and all people! It meant the beginning of God’s whole new creation that would eventually “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).[3] It’s hard to wrap your head around that big of an idea. But for Paul tampering with that hope meant tampering with the Gospel message. And that was something he never allowed!

The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that he died on the cross so that we could know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves us—he always has and always will. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his death broke the power of everything that could separate us from God or harm us in any way. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his resurrection overcame even death itself and brought new life to everyone. Paul said it this way, “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again. (1 Cor 15:22, NCV). And that means that what God has done through Jesus is nothing less than to set in motion the process of restoring everything in all creation to the way that he intended in the first place. Just as Jesus enjoys that resurrected life now, so we too can look forward to enjoying the same life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.

We need all kinds of hopes to keep us going. Hope in the form of looking forward to doing something fun. Hope in the form of knowing that there are friends and family who will always love us no matter what. Hope in the form of trusting that all our needs will be supplied by our God. But more than that, we need a hope that can motivate us to do as our affirmation of faith for today puts it: “to take up our cross, risking the consequences of faithful discipleship; to walk by faith, not by sight.” It takes serious hope to give us the courage and the strength to “plunge … into the present struggle.”[4] The reason for that is that we can see injustice and violence and even death at work all around us to this day.

Yes, we already have a taste of the amazing grace of God at work in our lives here and now. But I think our experience with the bitterness of death can help us truly appreciate the hope Jesus gives us by rising from the grave.[5] Those of us who have looked into the eyes of a loved who was there a few moments ago, but is gone now, those of us who know the bitterness of death, must know that we cannot accomplish God’s work in this world on our own. It’s just too big! Because what God is doing is nothing short of restoring of all things and everyone to the life that God intended for us in the first place. And that’s what he is doing even now through the power of Jesus’ death and the power of Jesus’ resurrection to new life. Our hope is that power is already working to change our lives now. But our hope is also the recognition that we have not yet tasted it fully and finally as we will when we all share in Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation. Sharing that life, the life that Jesus now enjoys, in God’s (re)new(ed) creation: that is our hope in Christ. And that hope gives us courage and strength to press on, come what may.

[2] Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, 1229: “the resurrection of Jesus was not to restore life in the conditions of continuing earthly existence (and eventual death) but to initiate a transformed mode of existence as the firstfruits (v. 20) of the eschatological new creation.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 55, where he says that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “the eschatological turn of the world begins, from transience to non-transience, from the night of the world to the morning of God’s new day and to the new creation of all things” (emphasis original).

[4] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 9.5, 10.1, 5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 171-72, 210-11. He holds in tension the “deadliness of death” which still persists in our experience of life with the “promise and hope of a still outstanding, real eschaton,” that is, a future that is defined not by death but by life.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Worthy

1 Corinthians 15:1-11[1]

The question of our personal “worthiness” can be a thorny one. Some of us may feel that we’re unworthy at the very core of our being. We may think we don’t even deserve to be here. Others may believe without a doubt that they are deserving, worthy of every opportunity, achievement, and accolade they’ve ever received. And perhaps more! It can be tricky navigating the middle ground between a basic sense of shame over who we are and a fundamental arrogance. Many of us have worked hard throughout our lives, and we have a well-earned right to be appropriately proud of our accomplishments. Others of us have worked hard and have seen all they hoped for slip through their fingers. The question of our “worthiness” as individuals is one that is complicated and fraught with pitfalls. But it’s one that we all must face.

Our scripture lesson from 1 Corinthians for today addresses this question from the perspective St. Paul’s life story. The lesson tells us part of the story of Paul’s calling to serve as an Apostle, proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We might find it strange to hear Paul talking about how he was the “least” of the Apostles, and didn’t even “deserve” to be called an Apostle. When you take a close look at what Paul says about himself in his letters, two things emerge.[2] First, he confessed that all he was and all he was doing was the result of a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ. When he met the risen and living Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, it transformed his whole life. Using the language of our lesson, Paul could say that all that he was and all that he was doing was the result of God’s grace at work in and through him. That’s what made Paul’s zeal for following the way of Judaism give way to his conviction that Jesus Christ had chosen him to serve the body of Christ—from “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4)!

The other thing that Paul says about himself is that he was unworthy to be an Apostle. I think a part of this came from the fact that he was always very consciously aware of his failures and shortcomings. Several times he expressed his feeling that, because he had persecuted the church before being called by Jesus, he wasn’t fit to serve as an Apostle. And this wasn’t just initial reluctance on his part. Even toward the end of his life, Paul continued to see himself as unfit to be an Apostle because he had previously “blasphemed the name of Christ” (1 Tim 1:13-15, NLT). But I think the other side of this sense of “unworthiness” on Paul’s part was because he knew in the deepest part of his heart, that “whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his grace on me” (1 Cor 15:10, NLT). And he knew two things about God’s grace at the same time: there was nothing he could ever do to deserve God’s grace, and he would never have to try to deserve God’s grace. It was all a gift!

I think this applies to the issue I raised last week: how we find the strength and the faith to continue serving others in a challenging time. For myself, I must confess that, like Paul I don’t think I deserve the opportunities I’ve been given. But, like Paul I’m also grateful because I believe it’s all been through God’s grace. Many of the people I grew up with wouldn’t be surprised that I’ve spent most of my life working in ministry. They would consider it a natural outcome of who I am. But it was never something that I would have thought. I came from a nowhere town and a no-name family. Although I knew I was good at school, I never thought of myself as being all that special.

I “volunteered” for ministry at the ripe old age of 17. I’ve always wondered whether God really wanted me or he just “had” to take me because I stepped forward. And, truth be told, I never thought I had what it took to be a pastor. I was quite comfortable in the classroom as a Seminary professor. It was an environment that I knew well, and it was a task that I was confident I had the skills and expertise to carry out. Working as a pastor felt a bit too risky for me. To me it seemed like starting a business from scratch, and I wasn’t sure I wanted go out on a limb like that. In fact, when I was 40 I stepped away from ministry for several years. I tried to move into a parallel career, but only made it more clear to me that serving the body of Christ was where I belong.

When it comes right down to it, however, I would have to say with Paul, “whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his grace on me.” Like Paul, I have certain gifts and abilities that God has used in my service to the body of Christ. And like Paul I’ve worked diligently to serve to the best of my ability for decades, continuing to “sharpen the saw” to be as effective as I can at what I do. But I would also confess with Paul that “it was not I but God who was [and still is] working through me by his grace.” Like Paul, I would say that, despite my reluctance about whether I am worthy to serve the body of Christ, I believe God chose me from “before the foundation of the world.” God’s grace led me down the path of life that has brought me to this place and time. And, like Paul, “I’m not about to let his grace go to waste.”

I bring this up because I think there are others who may find themselves at places in life where they never thought they would be. And I think most of us would agree that we could never have imagined we would be facing the issues we are today. You may know that I’m a “Lord of the Rings” fan. Throughout the years, I’ve found myself agreeing with Frodo Baggins when, while talking about the rise of evil, he says to Gandalf the wizard, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” To which Gandalf replies, “So do I … and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”[3] The truth is that none of us gets to choose the backdrop against which we live our lives. We don’t always get to choose the direction our lives take in the circumstances we face. All we get to choose is how we will live our lives right where we are.

Again, if we’re trying to figure out how to keep on serving in circumstances that make it all seem futile, I think we can take our cue from St. Paul. What I didn’t say above is that he faced opposition and criticism of his ministry from the very first. Not just from “enemies” outside the church. Some of the believers in churches he had founded, some of the believers at Corinth, thought that Paul was unworthy to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ. In the face of that fierce opposition, Paul responded in a couple of ways. First, he admitted that he wasn’t worthy in and of himself to represent Jesus Christ. I think it may be healthy to follow his lead in that respect. Not one of us, and especially not me, deserves to serve the body of Christ in the ways we have open to us. But secondly, Paul confessed that all that he was and all that he did was due to God’s grace poured out in his life. I think each and every one of us can make the same humble confession today. We may not understand why we have been placed in this particular time and this particular situation. But we can trust that God will use our gifts and abilities right where we are. And we can draw encouragement from the community of faith that supports us as we seek to use our gifts and abilities where we are. But at the end of the day, God’s grace has called us, God’s grace has brought us to this place, and God’s grace is working in and through us. And that’s all the worthiness we need!

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.1.4, 196-211, where he surveys the story of Paul’s change of life from zeal for Judaism to proclaiming Jesus and serving the body of Christ as a prime example of the interaction between the knowledge and ignorance of “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation” by God through Jesus Christ. Barth argues that this tension between knowledge and ignorance can arise only “to move to it’s overcoming” because “God is not God in vain” (ibid., 191). Of Saul/Paul’s conversion, he says (ibid., 202), “It was in the power of the self-witness of Jesus Christ that he passed from ignorance to knowledge. Jesus Himself met him before Damascus. … . This is the decisive element in the story.”

[3] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2004, p. 51

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The Energy to Serve

1 Corinthians 13:1-13[1]

There are times in our lives when we are full of energy. Our work, our relationships, our hobbies are fulfilling to us, and we feel like nothing can stop us. There are other times in our lives when it seems like everything is against us. No matter how hard we may try, it seems like other people, or God, or perhaps even our own shortcomings conspire against us to make everything seem hard. In those times, it can feel like we’re trying to swim through molasses. Or perhaps quicksand. We just can’t seem to find the will, let alone the strength, to keep moving forward. Those are the times when we may ask ourselves why we’re going to so much trouble. We may do some deep soul searching to figure out whether we really want to keep pushing so hard.

It's those hard times in life that test what we’re made of. When we find ourselves running the gauntlets that life puts in our way, we may wonder what made us choose this path in the first place. We may wonder why we keep going. We may wonder whether we should change direction and just walk away from it all. But if we stay the course, we find that those hard times become the times in our lives when we do some of the most important growing we can ever do. Our ability to endure even the hardest of times may surprise us, as our faith grows strong and resilient. And the test of how strong our faith has become is, as always, how we respond to hard times. We can choose to respond in a wide variety of ways. We can feel hurt and decide to “pout.” We can get angry and perhaps nourish a grudge. But, as the Apostle Paul says it, faith “works” through love (Gal 5:6). When we respond to hard times with faith, it will clarify for us what keeps us going.

In our lesson from 1 Corinthians for today, the Apostle Paul is addressing a church that was badly divided. They were squabbling over just about everything, even who their “real” leader was—Paul, or Peter, or Apollos. While Paul had founded the church at Corinth, both Peter and Apollos had visited them, and had fruitful ministries there. I doubt that any of them could have imagined that the result of their work would have been a congregation fighting one another over which of them were most important. As Paul asks, “Has Christ been divided into factions? Was I, Paul, crucified for you? Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul? Of course not!” (1 Cor 1:13, NLT). It was ludicrous to think that they had any other “Lord” than Jesus Christ!

One of the issues the believers at Corinth were fighting over was “spiritual gifts.” It was a time when spectacular displays of spiritual power were particularly valued. Perhaps like the “faith healers” of our day, many of the Corinthians believed that if your faith is real, you should be able to demonstrate it through obvious acts of spiritual power. Now Paul didn’t completely shut them down on this thinking. And the analogy of “faith healers” might not be the best one. For Paul, everything every one of us does in the name of Jesus Christ is a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit working though us. That’s one of the main points he wants to get across to them. The Spirit is at work in and through us most powerfully in ways that might not be so obvious.

This brings us to our lesson for today. Paul was trying to help the believers at Corinth find a healthier perspective than trying to prove they were more “spiritual” than each other. And to do that, he called them to follow what he called the “way of life that is best of all” (1 Cor 12:31, NLT). And that way is the way of love. It is the way that Jesus chose for his life. And as Paul says elsewhere, our faith really works only as we put it into action through love (Gal 5:6). Here he puts it more bluntly: he says that even if he had the ability to demonstrate spiritual power in the most obvious ways, if what he did wasn’t motivated by love, he would only be making a lot of noise (1 Cor 13:1, NLT)! He says that even if his faith were such that he could “move mountains,” if it didn’t express itself through loving actions toward others, he would be “nothing” (1 Cor 13:2, NLT). He said that even he sacrificed everything he had, even his own life, if he didn’t do it out of love, it would do no good for anyone (1 Cor 13:3)!

For Paul, the measure of our service is the motivation that energizes it. From his perspective, our service has meaning only when it is motivated by love that actually cares about the well-being of another person, especially those who are different from us, and most especially those whom we may perceive to be “on the other side” from us. Again, as I mentioned before, in the Christian sphere of life, Paul could say that the only thing that matters is “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6, NET). From one perspective, that’s how we demonstrate that our faith is real: by putting it into action out of love for others. Of course, there are other motivations for our service. We may serve out of a sense of leaving a legacy, or because we are grateful for the gifts we have been given. But for Paul, it all comes down to faith put into action through love.

Some of you know that one of my “heroes” of the faith is Henri Nouwen. He was a Roman Catholic Priest who lived with a great deal of personal pain, and he became a pioneer in the field of pastoral care and pastoral theology. Because of that, he became something of a celebrity in American Christianity. He taught at the most prestigious and influential divinity schools in the country. But all of that left him burned out and empty. After spending a year living in France at L’Arche, a community where intellectually challenged people lived with their caregivers, he came back to serve as the chaplain at the Daybreak L’Arche community in Toronto. Many of his friends urged him not to “waste” his talents, reminding him of how much more “good” he could do in the Academic world. But I think Henri had found the joy of serving others out of love for them, and he never looked back.

We’re all facing some of the most challenging days of our lives. The very fabric of society has become frayed and is unraveling before our eyes. Sweeping changes are completely transforming our whole way of life in ways that none of us could have imagined or dreamed, even ten years ago.That has implications for everything from families to work to the ability to even talk to people who have different convictions from us. We’ve become so “tribal” that we can’t even talk to people who have different views from us. What does that have to say about where we are as a people and as a society? It can leave us feeling like all our efforts for good in this world are useless, just making a lot of noise. The difficulties we all face right now can test our motivation. It can leave us asking ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Especially when it comes to what we are doing in and through the church to serve others. If we take our cue from Paul, we may find that the only way we can continue to have the energy to keep serving in a way that truly helps other people is through love. Whether through “obvious” acts of service, or simple everyday interactions with the people around us. The lesson that Paul wants us to learn is that faith works through love! It always has and always will!

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Not Just About Me

1 Corinthans 8:1-13[1]

Most of us have lived our entire lives during great upheaval. That turmoil began with the sweeping social and political changes in the 1960’s and 70’s. In those days people began questioning everything from morality to economics to religion to government. To be sure, there had been those who marched to a different drum beat before that time. But in those days it seemed like everyone was willing to cross all the formerly recognized boundaries in their quest for personal “freedom.” Scandals like the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate burglary only added fuel to the fires that were already burning. To those who were committed to traditional values, it was a time when the accepted standards began to break down. To those who saw the status quo as unjust, hypocritical, and biased to benefit the powerful few, it was a time of righting social wrongs. In a very real sense, our society has been wrestling with this fundamental divide ever since.

One of the questions that is at the heart of this struggle has to do with morality. It’s the question of how you know what’s right from what’s wrong. There have always been those who advocated certain absolute rules that represented lines that were never to be crossed. And I think most people would agree that there are some things that are never right under any circumstances. It’s never right to harm someone who is weaker than yourself simply because you have the power to do so. It’s never right to enrich yourself by taking unfair advantage of others, especially those who are most vulnerable in our society. But, as the scandals of our era have sadly demonstrated, many of those who are the most vocal supporters of traditional values don’t practice what they preach.

Because the voices that supported traditional values so blatantly ignored them in their own lives, many have simply decided that there is no absolute right or wrong. If it seems right to you, then it is, regardless of what anyone else may say. In my day, the way people put it was “if it feels good, do it.” But of course, the real point was “if it feels good to me.” Again, I think it’s clear that we as a people have made progress over the last several decades toward recognizing the rights of those who had long been denied justice. But in the process, morality became personal and private, which didn’t actually make things any more just or fair. It merely opened a pandora’s box of self-indulgence. In the name of “rights” we as a people have claimed that we can do whatever we please. And the result has been lives broken by moral license, selfishness that approaches narcissism, epidemic levels of substance abuse, and greed for ever more power and wealth. And all of this without any concern for how our actions affect anyone else.

Of course, there are many who continue to make a sincere effort to try to do what’s truly right. But it gets complicated. Take, for example, the commandment “You shall not kill.” That seems pretty straightforward. It seems like an absolute boundary that no one should ever cross. I would say we could all agree that it’s absolutely wrong to murder someone in cold blood. But it’s not so clear when a person kills someone in self-defense or in the course of saving the life of another. It’s still a “violation” of the commandment, but as a society, we consider it to be “justified.” I’ve never been there myself, but I would say that anyone who has ever had to take a life in the line of duty, whether soldiers at war or officers keeping the peace, would agree it affected them profoundly, even though it was the right thing to do in that situation.

All of this is a way of getting into the lesson from 1 Corinthians for today. The first Christians lived in a world of competing moral standards, no less that we do. And it wasn’t always clear to them what the right thing to do was in every situation. St. Paul addresses one of those situations. Because the believers in Corinth lived in a world that was dominated by the worship of pagan idols, the question of how to remain true to God and avoid idolatry, which was another of the Ten Commandments, wasn’t always clear in that setting. The Hebrew Bible goes to great lengths to argue that idols are nothing but “smoke and hot air” (Isa 41:29, MSG). As a result, some of the believers at Corinth had decided that there was nothing wrong with taking part in a meal held in honor of a pagan god, where the main course was meat that had been offered as a sacrifice to that god. After all, as Paul himself could say, “we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God” (1 Cor 8:4, NLT). If that’s the case, then it’s just another meal.

But the problem was that those who were confident in this “knowledge” weren’t thinking about other believers who weren’t so confident. Many of the Christians in Corinth had lived their whole lives believing that the pagan gods were indeed real, and that the sacrifices made to them were a way of acknowledging their influence. For them, a meal held in honor of a pagan god was a violation of the commandment to avoid idolatry. But if they saw other believers partaking in those meals, they may have become confused and decided to partake in an idol feast themselves. But because of their upbringing, they would likely feel convicted that they had sinned by breaking the commandment by being unfaithful to God. In St. Paul’s words, by exercising their freedom, those who were confident that idols weren’t real were causing the others to stumble in their faith. So he concludes, “if what I eat causes another believer to sin,” at least in their own minds, “I will never eat meat again as long as I live—for I don’t want to cause another believer to stumble” (1 Cor 8:13, NLT).

In a world with a confusing array of competing moral standards, St. Paul argued that one principle for deciding what was right from what was wrong was the question of how an action would affect others. As he said elsewhere, “live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall” (Rom 14:13, NLT). And the way to do that was to make love the deciding factor. In this situation, Paul himself acknowledged that idols were not real, and that there was nothing wrong with eating meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan god. But he also recognized that there was more at stake in his actions than just his own welfare. He had to consider the welfare of those who would be influenced by his actions. That’s what it means to live in the community of faith with other believers: to live in a way that benefits others, not just yourself.

There was a cost to this course of action, and I think Paul knew it. The worship of pagan gods was such a common part of everyday life that it was hard to avoid these feasts. It would be like avoiding going to a football game in our culture! To avoid those feasts would be to risk more than just a loss of social standing in the community. It would and did mean the loss of livelihood, the loss of community, and even the loss of family. Paul knew the sacrifices following Jesus involved. But despite the sacrifices, I’d say Paul thought it was worth it to safeguard the welfare of fellow believers. For him, living in a community of faith meant sacrificing your “rights” for the sake of the good of the whole community. We used to believe in that. These days, our “rights” are almost our “idols,” and we will do anything to safeguard our “right” to do whatever we please. But Paul advocates a different way. Considering how his actions affected others was a central factor in his decisions when it came to moral questions that were not straightforward or clear-cut.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the principle of considering how your actions will affect others will make your moral choices clear and straightforward. But in the context of social turmoil in which we live, I’m not sure it’s ever possible to be completely certain of our actions. For most of us, whatever we choose to do is going to offend someone somewhere. Whether it’s what we eat or drink or what we watch or read, someone somewhere is going to think it’s wrong. To avoid offending anyone in any way, we would have to withdraw from life altogether! I think what we’re left with is doing the best we can to live our lives in a way that brings honor to Christ, not dishonor. I think what we’re left with is doing the best we can to follow his example in all our actions. I think what we’re left with is recognizing that for all of us, our decisions are “not just about me.” Knowing that, we can do our best, in so far as it’s humanly possible, to act in ways that will help others, and not harm them.

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

One Whole Body

1 Corinthians 12:4-14, 24[1]

Today is the day that we celebrate the birth of the church. All those centuries ago, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God swept through the group of Jesus’ disciples, empowering them to become bold witnesses for Christ. And the book of Acts tells the story of how they went out in the power of the Spirit to do unimaginable things in the name of the Lord Jesus. As they proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ to any and all who would listen, thousands responded. And what began in a backwater corner of the Roman Empire became a thriving movement. The power of the Spirit working through the church of that day would eventually change their whole world, including the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

When we look at our churches today, it may seem like a stretch to think that the same Spirit is still working in and through us. Churches that were filled with people 50 years ago are now partly, or mostly, or in some cases completely empty.[2] When you look around, you might be forgiven for wondering whether the Spirit who we say we believe empowers us “to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace” has passed us by.[3] Although the Church is thriving in other places around the world, in this country it’s a very difficult time to be the church!

While there are a lot of people saying a lot of things in about what churches “need” to do to thrive, I would say the place to start is with our own hearts. I’ve said before it is my firm conviction that only as we carry out our work in the power the Spirit supplies can we hope to achieve any lasting results. That applies to this and every other church. It’s one of the foundational themes of the NT. Everything we do in our Christian lives is the result of what the Spirit of God is doing. Everything we do, from praying, to worshipping, to planting seeds of faith, to growing in service to God, to living lives of kindness and respect, to sharing the love of God, will thrive or not thrive to the extent that we rely on the Spirit of God.[4]

That’s why we have to start with our own hearts. It’s not going to be enough for us to work hard for the sake of the church. That still presupposes that whether or not this church thrives is in our hands. But as St. Paul once confessed, “In ourselves we are not able to claim anything for ourselves. The power to do what we do comes from God” (2 Cor 3:5, NIrV). If that was true for Paul, how much more is it true for us. We start by recognizing that none of us can “make” this church thrive by our own efforts. We must look to God diligently, consistently, faithfully, and sincerely to pour out the Spirit in and through us if we hope that what we do will have any lasting results.

In our Scripture lesson from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul says it this way: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us” (1 Cor 12:4-6). Jesus promised, “I will build my church” (Mt 16:18), and the way he’s been doing that is through the presence and power of the Spirit working in the church. I believe we can trust that Jesus will keep his promise. I believe we can trust that the Spirit will continue working in and through us all. And I believe God will continue to supply us with what we need to carry out the ministry of the kingdom in this community.

With that in mind, we might wonder what we can do. Well, first and foremost, we can pray. Let me be clear about this: we don’t pray because it’s some kind of “magic wand” that will “miraculously” turn things around. We pray because that’s how we open our hearts to the work of God’s Spirit and align our lives with God’s kingdom. I invite you to join me in praying that God will pour out his Spirit and empower us to carry out his work in this community. I’ve been doing that since I came here. And one of the times I pray that prayer is on Sunday morning during worship. All I do is ask God to pour out his Spirit to help us thrive and to bring us the people we need to help us. Please join me in that prayer!

But St. Paul also knew that there was another dimension to a thriving church. He said it this way: “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other” (1 Cor 12:7, NLT). Many of us probably don’t agree with that statement. We think that if anyone has a “spiritual gift” that can benefit the church, it must be someone else. But St. Paul makes it clear in this passage that he believes that the Spirit of God works through every part of the body of Christ. That means that there’s no one who’s contribution is “dispensable.” For this or any other church to thrive, it takes every one doing what God enables us to do. We can’t sit back and expect someone else to do it for us. It’s going to take all of us working together as one whole body of Christ if we want to thrive as a church.

Whether we see this time in which we’re all working so hard to live faithfully as the body of Christ as a crisis or an opportunity depends on our point of view. We can lament that our churches are nowhere near as full as they were ten or twenty or thirty years ago. And if we take that approach, we will likely continue to watch the church decline. Or we can take the opportunity to step up. Each and every one of us. I believe that if Christians in this culture truly opened their hearts to God’s Spirit and truly aligned their lives with God’s kingdom, it would revolutionize the church. It would revolutionize our world! I believe that if Christians in this culture would embrace the promise that the Spirit has given each and every one of us gifts to help the church thrive, we couldn’t contain all the people in our buildings. If that’s what we want to see, it’s going to take all of us working together as one whole body of Christ.

I realize that all this may sound too simple to make much of a difference. But in my experience, a simple shift in mindset is one of the most powerful ways to effect change. That’s what I’m asking you to do today. I’m asking you to shift your mindset and trust in the power of God to build up this church. We don’t have the power in ourselves to do what needs to be done for this church to thrive. Only God can do that. But God has always accomplished his work in through people like you and me. And that means we’re all called to step up. If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting the same results. I’m asking you to step up in a new way. Pray for the people of this church. Reach out to ask someone you know how they’re doing. When the people of God open their hearts to the Spirit of God in prayer and turn to God by aligning their lives with the kingdom, great changes can happen. And not just in this community, but throughout the whole body of Christ. Let’s join together as one whole body of Christ to do unimaginable things in our time through the Spirit of God!

[2] Yonat Shimron, “Study: More Churches Closing than Opening,” Religion News Service 21 May 2021, accessed at: https://religionnews.com/2021/05/26/study-more-churches-closing-than-opening/. The report suggests that in 2019 about 4500 protestant churches closed, while only 3000 were started. This compares with 2014, when there were 3700 closures, but 4000 openings. For reference, there are about 320,000 to 350,000 protestant churches in the US.

[3] The Book of Confessions 2016, “A Brief Statement of Faith,” 11.4, p. 312.

[4] Cf. Henri J. M. Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy, 109: “The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised to his followers, is the great gift of God. Without the Spirit of Jesus we can do nothing, but in and through his Spirit we can live free, joyful, and courageous lives. We cannot pray, but the Spirit of Christ can pray in us. We cannot crete peace and joy, but the Spirit of Christ can fill us with a peace and joy that is not of this world. We cannot break through the many barriers that divide races, sexes, and nations, but the Spirit of Christ unites all people in the all-embracing love of God. The Spirit of Christ burns away our many fears and anxieties and sets us free to move wherever we are sent. This is the great liberation of Pentecost.”

Monday, January 16, 2023

Results

Isaiah 49:1-7, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9[1]

I think we all want to make a difference in this world. We want to know that what we’re doing with the time we have in life has meaning, that it makes some kind of contribution. That doesn’t mean that we all want to be in the “spotlight.” Some of us thrive there, and that’s a wonderful thing. Some of us don’t, and that’s wonderful too. Whether we’re “front and center” or working behind the scenes, what counts is that our lives “matter.” One of the challenges with wanting to make a difference in the world is that, at least in my experience, more often than not we never get to see the results of our efforts. We just don’t have the ability to see all the ways our lives may be impacting the lives of those around us. And that can leave us wondering whether we’re really making a difference in this world at all.

The sometimes frustrating truth is that this is particularly the case when it comes to what we do in the service of our Lord Jesus and the body of Christ, the church. I’ve served the church in some way all of my adult life, and I’ve found this to be true countless times. We do our best to “plant seeds” in the lives of the people we try to help, but we rarely get to see the results. As St. Paul observed, some plant, others water (and I might add that still others tend the field), but it is God who “gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). At times this can be frustrating, especially if you’re the kind of person who is “results-oriented.” At times it can be downright discouraging.

Two of our Scripture lessons for today give us some help with this. The first one from the book of the prophet Isaiah speaks about the work of the “servant of the Lord.” The servant, the one who chosen to proclaim God’s word to the people of Israel, begins by giving voice to his grief over his lack of success. He was given the ability to speak clearly and effectively to the people, and yet they remained closed off to God’s message and God’s ways. And so the “servant” of the LORD says, “my work seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and to no purpose” (Isa. 49:4, NLT). He was frustrated and discouraged by the lack of results from his efforts.

In response, the prophet reminds the “servant” that God was doing something bigger through him than he could possibly imagine. The Lord says to him, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob” (Isa. 49:6, NIV). That was not enough. He was called to a bigger task: “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” In the face of frustration and discouragement from a lack of results, the prophet speaking in the name of the Lord reminded the servant that God’s plans were much bigger than he could even dream. Despite frustration and discouragement from the lack of results, the Lord was reassuring the “servant” that his mission would succeed. And it would succeed so well that God’s salvation would reach to the ends of the earth![2]

In our second lesson from 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul was dealing with problems in one of the churches he had founded. After he had moved on in his service to Christ, they became confused about how they were supposed to live their lives together in Christian community. They were divided, and the factions were pulling the congregation in very different directions. Ironically, the situation at Corinth came about from the fact that the mission of shining a light to the nations was well underway, and it was causing some big problems! One of their questions was how Christians with so many differences could live together in one community of faith.

But the Apostle began his instructions to them with the assurance that they already had everything they needed. He reminded them that all they did was built on “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:4). He told them that they had already been fully equipped by the Spirit to carry out their work: “in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind ... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:5, 7). And just in case they had any lingering doubts, Paul reminded them that God who is always faithful would strengthen them to the end (1 Cor. 1:8).

I’ve said before that it’s a tough time to be the church. The sweeping changes in our world have certainly not left the church untouched. And while many of these changes are directly related to recent events, they are also due in part to deeper, more fundamental changes in our whole society. Churches everywhere in this country are facing the same daunting challenges that we are. And as is true here, so in most churches, we’re all working harder than ever to serve our Lord Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. But you couldn’t tell it by the results. At least not by the results that are obvious. And that can be frustrating and discouraging. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not making a difference! Because one of the lessons we learn when we choose to serve God’s kingdom is that while we may not be able to see the result of our efforts, God can!

That’s one of the lessons we learn when we serve God’s purpose. Later in 1 Corinthians St. Paul reminds us all that “nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). We may not always be able to see the results of our efforts, but then perhaps it’s not for us to see. It’s God’s business. What keeps us going, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, is not the results we can see, but rather the hope that is firmly grounded in Christ’s victory over death itself, which demonstrates “that there is light on the other side of darkness.”[3] The cause we are all working for is nothing short of the transformation of this world so that all our lives reflect God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven.” That’s a bigger task than anyone can wrap their heads or their hands around. And yet we all continue to contribute to the final victory of God as we continue to serve him faithfully. And as St. Paul reminds us, God will do his part: he will faithfully give us the strength to continue serving him.

[2] Cf. Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40-66,” New Interpreters Bible VI:433: “To witness to the God of Israel is not to share information with others but to be faithful to God in such a way that confrontation will occur but will not be an end in itself. The witness leaves the final accomplishment to God, assured that affliction and hardship will be the means through which ‘my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth’ (49:6).”

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (1979), 76: “A Christian leader is a man [sic] of hope whose strength in the final analysis is based neither on self-confidence derived from his personality, nor on specific expectations for the future, but on a promise given to him. … Leadership, therefore, is not called Christian because it is permeated with optimism against all the odds of life, but because it is grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as a definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light on the other side of darkness. Every attempt to attach this hope of visible symptoms in our surroundings becomes a temptation when it prevents us from the realization that promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. … Hope prevents us from clinging to what we have and frees us to move away from the safe place and enter unknown and fearful territory.”

Saturday, February 08, 2020

New Things

Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9[1]

There’s something special about new things. In these weeks after Christmas many of us are enjoying new things. We may be sporting new coats or jackets. That’s a fun thing when the weather turns cold. Some of us may be wearing new outfits. It’s nice to have a new outfit to wear. Others of us may be playing with new “toys,” whether our toys are video games, or electronics, or sporting gear, or crafting supplies, or even perhaps new books! There is something undeniably special about new things. The feel, the smell, just the notion of something new can be uplifting. But, of course, as with all things, that “new” feel will fade eventually. The new things we’re enjoying today will become “old” things tomorrow.

Newness can take on different forms than just the “things” we use. We may have plans to do something we’ve never done before this year, to make that trip that’s always been on our “bucket list.” We may be embarking on a new venture in our lives. New directions can be frightening and exciting at the same time. We get used to familiar routines, and getting out of our “comfort zones” can be a challenge. But once we take the step, we may find entirely new ways to thrive that we may never have even been able to imagine before we took that new step. I think one of the truly rewarding aspects of the Christian life is that, if we stay open to the future, God is always doing something new.

Our Scripture lessons for today addressed two communities among whom God was doing something new. In our lesson from Isaiah, the prophet was addressing people who desperately needed something new in their lives. They had been ripped away from their home by the conquering Babylonians. Everything familiar had been taken from them. They were stuck in a place that was strange and seemed very far away from God. Their greatest challenge was maintaining their faith in that difficult situation. One of the Psalmists sums up their dilemma well: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:4). In their minds, the past was where their lives lay, and the past was gone for good.

In a situation where they all felt like refugees, the Lord spoke through the prophet to change their focus. The people of Israel had been worrying about the seemingly impossible task of restoring what they had in the past. But through the Servant, the Lord God commissioned them to something new, something much bigger than they had imagined. He said that simply rebuilding the fallen house of Israel was “too small a thing.” Instead, God was sending them to be “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6). They had been worried about how to rebuild their former lives, and the Lord was calling them to build a living sanctuary for him among the all the “foreigners” of the world! I’m quite sure they had more than a few doubts about this “new thing” the Lord promised through the prophet that he would do among them. Perhaps that’s one reason why Isaiah reminded them constantly that the Lord ruled over all things, and that he would accomplish this seemingly impossible task through them.

I think the people St. Paul addressed in Corinth had some similar doubts. The Apostle had started the church in Corinth, but after he moved on they became confused about how they were supposed to live their lives together in Christian community. They were divided, and the factions were pulling the congregation in very different directions. Ironically, the situation at Corinth came about from the fact that the mission of shining a light to the nations was well underway, and it was causing some big problems! One of their challenges was how Christians with many differences could live together in one community of faith. I would imagine they saw that task as next to impossible.

But the Apostle began his instructions to them with the assurance that they already had everything they needed. He reminded them that all they did was built on “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:4). He told them that they had already been fully equipped by the Spirit to carry out their work: “in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind ... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:5, 7). And just in case they had any lingering doubts, Paul encouraged them that God who is always faithful would strengthen them to the end (1 Cor. 1:8).

We are living through a time of sweeping changes: changes in culture, in family structures, in our economy, and also in the church. Many of us may feel like the people of Israel: we may feel like refugees living in a strange land! All that may have been familiar to us was in the past, and we may find ourselves grieving that the past is gone. Others of us may see ourselves more like the people at Corinth. We may be eager for the future to come, so eager that we’re not willing to practice patience and understanding toward sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers who may seem to be “dragging their feet.” We may be thinking that it’s impossible to forge a true community from people who have so many differences in the way they look at life.

I think in both cases, the challenge of our Scriptures for today is to re-direct our focus toward the “new things” God is doing among us. Instead of wringing our hands about the way church “used to be,” I would say that we must always be open to the possibility that our God is calling us on to something new, something bigger than we can imagine. That means having the courage to let go of the past and letting God lead us into the future he has planned for us. At the same time, instead of getting stuck in frustration that things aren’t changing fast enough, I think it’s important to remember that the Spirit has fully equipped us with everything we need to carry out our mission. As we do so, Scripture reminds us that our faithful God will complete the “new things” he is doing among us.

The Waking Dreamer