Luke

A Reflection on Luke 5:12-16

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Will

Luke 5:12-16 (New American Bible)

It happened that there was a man full of leprosy in one of the towns where Jesus was;
and when he saw Jesus,
he fell prostrate, pleaded with him, and said,
“Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
And the leprosy left him immediately.
Then he ordered him not to tell anyone, but
“Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing
what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
The report about him spread all the more,
and great crowds assembled to listen to him
and to be cured of their ailments,
but he would withdraw to deserted places to pray.

Luke 5:12-16 (My Paraphrase)

In one of the towns Jesus visited, there was a man consumed by leprosy, and upon seeing Jesus, the man fell face down on the ground and pleaded with him, “Lord, if you wish, you can heal me and make me clean.” Jesus stretched out his hand, touched the man, and said, “I do wish it. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy vanished.

Then Jesus ordered the man not to tell anyone what had happened. Jesus added, “Go, show yourself to the priest and, as Moses wrote in the law, make the appropriate offering for your cleansing. This will prove to them that you are now clean.”

But, in spite of this, the news about Jesus continued to spread. Great crowds of people came to listen to him and to be cured of their sicknesses and diseases. Jesus, however, would often withdraw into the wilderness to pray.

Luke 5:12-16 (My Reflection)

Two phrases from this reading strike me. The first is when Jesus says “I do wish it.” The second is at the end of these verses where the gospel writer reports: “Jesus, however, would withdraw into the wilderness to pray.”

The first passage tells me something about the nature of Jesus: that he was a person of great compassion. Many people are, of course, compassionate and giving. And I admire those who have such generous spirits. I wish, however, that I was less admiring and more possessing of their caring natures. While I am no Scrooge, I know that compassion is not my forte, that I am too selfish, and that I am often prone to overlook the ways I can be more loving towards others.

The second passage tells me that Jesus took care of his own physical, emotional ans spiritual needs. One cannot be “on” all the time. There is a pressing need to keep one’s batteries charged, if a man or woman is to be effective in ministry. Too many times I have forgotten this truth in my life and have found myself run down, burnt out, and more than mildly depressed.

What if I found my own wilderness or deserted places to retreat to on a regular basis. What if valued solitude and time spent with God as much as I value my time with friends or at work or leisure? Would I be a better pastor for it? Might that enable me to become more loving and caring as well?

Prayer:

Holy God, you have shown us your true nature in Jesus.
His compassion and care for even the “least of these” was evident throughout his life.
Help me to cultivate compassion in my dealings with others,
even those I do not like.
And when I, O Lord, find myself tired and worn from the activities of my life and ministry,
remind me that it is no sin to walk away for a time and seek your loving embrace,
for there I will be renewed and strengthened to do the work to which you have called me.
This I prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Categories: 42-Luke, christian life, Luke, Reflection | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Our Church Is Dying Because We Are Killing It

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Will

This was my sermon for Sunday, August 1, 2010.  The scripture passages I used were  Colossians 3 and Luke 12:13-21. It wa a harsh sermon, but one I felt needed to be preached. If you have a chance to read it and have a comment for me, I would appreciate it.

—–

A new Pastor in a small Oklahoma town spent the first week making personal visits to each of the church members,
inviting them to come to his first services.
The following Sunday the church was all but empty.
So, the next week the Pastor placed a notice in the local newspaper.
He said that, since the church was dead,
it was time to give it a decent Christian burial.
The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon.

Out of curiosity, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.”
The church was packed for the first time in years.
In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed coffin, covered in flowers.
After the Pastor delivered the message,
he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Wanting to know what the corpse of a “dead church” would like,
all the people eagerly lined up to look in the coffin.
Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at just the right angle, was a large mirror.
Every church, like every organization or living organism, has a life cycle.
Plants, animals, people and churches are born, they grow, they mature, and they also die.
When an organism’s or organization’s life is full and complete,
when it goes through it’s life cycle naturally,
death is often welcomed and seen as a fitting ending.
But if the death is not from natural causes,
if it comes early or is unexpected,
then death is seen as an unwelcome intruder.

First United Methodist Church is dying.
If present attendance and giving trends continue,
First United Methodist will have to become part-time church in 2 years or so,
and by the end of this decade,
there will fewer than 30-40 people worshiping here on a Sunday morning.

A church that has been a part of this community for over 170 years will be on life support,
perhaps breathing its last breath.
A congregation that once had over 500 people attending Sunday School,
now has fewer than 20 on any given Sunday morning.
Worship attendance that averaged over 400,
now hovers around 80.
Many of the people here today will not be here in 10 or 20 more years,
and since my arrival we have had more than 120 members die.
The funerals I conduct each year far outnumber the baptisms, new members we add, and the weddings I perform,
even when they are all combined together into one number.

Financially our church has also struggled for years.
Even before I got here, there were deficits at times of almost $50,000 a year.
And though we have been able to survive some tough times through several large bequests and the regular giving of our members,
the deaths of so many have begun to take a toll on our finances.
Your bulletin this morning tells you that we have a deficit of $16,000.
The fact is that this deficit is based on giving and expenses coming in and going out in equal rates throughout the year.
Of course, this is not how giving and expenses work.
As of last month our deficit was actually $25,000,
and our giving for the year was down $5,000 from last year at the same time.
We could very well end the year with another $50,000 deficit.

Needless to say, this can not continue for very long.
First UMC is dying.
We are hemorrhaging members and money and we are not long for this world if present trends continue.

Now if we are reaching the end of natural life cycle then fine.
Let us celebrate what has been accomplished here,
the many ministries that have been carried out,
and the hundreds, even thousands, of people who have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus because of First Church.
Let us acknowledge what has been done,
give God the glory,
give the church a decent and proper burial,
and then move on.

But what if this isn’t our God-given time to die?
What if our life as a congregation is being cut short by unnatural causes?
What if we are killing the church by what we are doing or not doing?
I think this is what is happening.
First UMC is dying because we are killing it,
We are choking the life right out of it in two notable ways.
First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Second, our priorities are all messed up,
that is, we are not at all concerned with what is most important:
the lives and souls of people.

First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Paul talks about life in Christ in our reading from Colossians.
So if you have been raised with Christ, Paul says,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
You must get rid of all such things-anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

And then he goes on to add in verses just after the ones we read:
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called in the one body.

Some of you know that I have been trained as a conflict consultant.
In addition, I was appointed to two churches that were high in conflict before my arrival – in Tamaqua and Elysburg,
and have done consultations in over seven churches.
In my experience there is nothing that kills a church faster than its members not being in Christ.
Churches in conflict and decline are known for high levels of pettiness, and they are places where people have forgotten about the dangers of the tongue.
You remember what James said about the tongue, don’t you?
“The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our Lord and Father,
and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.
My friends, these things ought not to be so.”  (James 3:8-10 ESV)

And in case you don’t think these verses apply to First Church,
let me say that I have seen some of our members leave Church in tears because of things that were said to them or that they overheard someone else saying.
People have walked into our church while members of the church stand outside its doors loudly complaining about things that bothered them about the service they just attended.
And when it comes to issues we might have with others,
with mistakes they make or concerns we might have,
we will talk to anybody and everybody about them,
but never approach the person we have an issue with.
This is not life in Christ,
and this kind of behavior is deadly for a church.

What would our church be like if we truly practiced, in Paul’s words,
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love?
What a place of joy this church could be if we got “rid of . . . anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from” our mouths.
What if we actually tried to work with each other and treat each other as fellow children of God and followers of Jesus?
And what if, instead of complaining and griping to each other,
we followed the advice of Paul who once wrote to the church at Philippi:
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
What would happen if we did this?
Well, maybe, just maybe, we could not only live again but thrive.

Second, our priorities are all messed up.
In this way, we are very much like the rich man in today’s gospel reading.
He has spent all his time and energy in trying to get ahead,
but he has forgotten the most important thing of all.
Many churches do the same thing,
and I am afraid that we are a part of that many.

Let me ask you,
what is the purpose of the church?
What is our reason for being?
Anyone?

And yet how much time or energy do we spend sharing Jesus with the world?
How much of our budget is focused on ministry or mission?
How much time do we spend in committee meetings talking about Jesus and our calling to make disciples?
I’ll tell you how much:  not much at all.

Instead, almost all of our time and energy is spent on preserving the church for ourselves and our needs.
Our focus is internal rather than external,
on maintenance rather than mission and ministry.
I don’t know about you,
but I do not want to be a part of a church that is almost exclusively concerned with keeping its doors open while outside of its doors is a world that is going to Hell in a handbasket.

I want to be a part of a church that, in the words of  Darryl Dash,
is willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes, whatever it costs.
A church willing to turn its back on everything – its building, programs, staff, everything – in order to follow Jesus.
A church where institutional advancement is not as important as Kingdom advancement,
and a church that is not concerned with its own institutional survival,
and where pastors are not CEOs managing/leading people toward a goal,
and plans/goals/numbers/budgets are not the main thing.
I want to be a part of a church where following Jesus is the main thing.
Where, in fact, it is the only thing.
Any focus that is not on Jesus, that isn’t geared toward mission and ministry is a focus that will lead to death.

Evangelist Robert Linthicum said this at a Presbyterian Church conference in New Orleans recently.
“If the church is caught up in trying to preserve itself and its institution, then preservation and continuance is exactly what is going to slip out of its grasp. Trying to save the store is the surest way to lose the store.”
Rather than trying to save itself, Linthicum said the church has to focus on its changed surroundings and serving the community.
“The church will not be saved by trying to preserve itself
but by giving its life away in service to the world.
Such service and ministry to the world is the surest way to salvation.”

It was the great Christian write, C. S. Lewis, who once wrote:
It is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services.
[Yet] the Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ,
to make them little Christs.
If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Another (Wade Hodges) has added:
The greatest crisis facing most churches in America is not a financial/attendance crisis.
It’s that our ministry in the world, our way of being in the world,
looks so unlike the ministry of Jesus in the gospels.
And to this, John White, says:
Our churches, like secular associations, are concerned with fund-raising, beautiful buildings, large numbers, comforting sermons from highly qualified preachers, while they display indifference to the poor, and to the pariahs in society – drunks, whores, homosexuals, the poor, the insane, and the lonely. Jesus himself would have no place in our all-too-respectable churches, for he did not come to help the righteous but to bring sinners to repentance.
Our churches are not equipped to do that sort of thing.

And not only are we ill-equipped to reach out to the world beyond our doors,
but on the rare occassion when the world actually comes to us,
we can be cold and distant and unwelcoming.

Last week I met a woman who attended one of our worship services while I was away.
I was saddened to discover that her experience was less than satisfactory.
In fact, she said that not one person in the church actually said hello to her or welcomed her,
let alone tell her that they were glad she was here.
I say saddened rather than shocked,
because I had heard the same thing before.
Here is a letter I received a few years ago from a woman who attended our church one time.
And please note, this woman actually took the time to sit down and write.
Her words are a warning to us.

To the Pottstown Methodist Church

Sunday, June 25th, I went with my daughters to visit your church.  I am a life-long Methodist from Kansas and visit in this area often.  We have been trying to find a church in this area to attend.  This church seemed like the right kind.  However, I think we must have been invisible.   As we stood in the dark entryway a woman’s voice called down “The sanctuary is up the stairs.”  We traipsed up the dark stairway to be met by an usher who handed us programs but made no attempt at a greeting.  We found our own plae to sit in a nearly empty church.  The organist was very good and the service was good.  We enjoyed the hymns. [But] no one looked at us; no one even nodded to us; we left at the end and no one seemed to see us.  We were invisible.  I hope this was an unusual occasion because you will never have a church in this way.

I think she was and is right.
And what this woman wrote about 4 years ago has become a word of prophecy for our church.
Will we heed it?
I hope and pray that we will.

Now I realize that I have been a little harsh this morning.
But I am critical because I care,
and if you are like me,
you care about our church as well.
If you are like me you want to see First UMC live.
You want to see us rise above the negativity and pettiness.
You want to see us get our priorities straight,
and you want to see this congregation be a light for the world around us.
You don’t want to see our church die a premature death.

If this is true,
then let us begin this morning to reject attitudes and a focus that will only lead us to that death.
Let us put on Christ,
who has been, is and will always be the source of our life.
Let us strive to reorder our life and focus so that it is only on Jesus Christ,
and let us reject the ways that lead to death and seek to live.

I end with some words from Dallas Willard, who wrote:
Now, some might be shocked to hear that what the “church” – the disciples gathered – really needs is not more people, more money, better buildings or programs, more education, or more prestige.
All it needs to fulfill Christ’s purposes on earth is the quality of life he makes real in the life of his disciples.
Given that quality, the church will prosper from everything that comes its way as it makes clear and available on earth the “life that is life indeed.”
To that I can only say, Amen.

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Categories: church, Colossians, death, Luke, Sermon | Tags: , | 19 Comments

My Sermon: Narrow-Mindedness Leads to Constricted Hearts

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Will

This sermon is based on the following scripture passages: 

Jeremiah 1:4-10
The word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD!
Truly I do not know how to speak,
for I am only a boy."

But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you,
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."

Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
"Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Luke 4:21-30
In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and began to say, "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. They said, "Is not this Joseph’s son?"

He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

—–

Let me state some obvious facts that need to be restated from time to time.
One, God is not a card-carrying member of the Republican Party.
Two, Jesus does not belong to or work for the Democrats.
Three, the Holy Spirit is not a Tea-Partier, a Libertarian, or affiliated with any other political movement.
Let me go even further in stating what should be obvious:
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not citizens of these United States.
And all of these things are true even if the Republican, Democrats or other parties and movements would like to lay claim to the divine presence.
And though we may print “In God we trust” on our currency,
and though there are many who confuse the priorities of our nation with the mind and purpose of God,
God is not confined to any nationality or people.

I bring this up because I believe that people can be very parochial,
and I don’t mean Catholic school system parochial either.
You see, parochial come from the Late Latin word parochialis.
Dating back to the 14th century, it did originally refer to a church parish,
but later it defined a unit of local government,
and then, finally, it came to mean “confined or restricted as if within the borders of a parish: limited in range or scope,”
and even “a person of local or restricted interests or outlook.”
That’s what I mean when I say this morning that people can be very parochial

I remember that, when I was in High School, the state of Kentucky,
issued new license plates for cars.
They were beautiful things . . .  with an outline of the state,
the imprint of a running horse and its foal,
and the twin spires of Churchill Downs for a top border.,
There was just one problem.
For the first time in as long as people could remember,
the plates left off the county names.
You see, people in Kentucky are quite proud of where they are from,
and this includes the counties they live in.
Kentucky has 120 counties, second most of any state in the U.S.,
and its good folk like to show where they’re from on the cars they drive.

To say this caused a brouhaha would be putting it mildly.
In just a matter of days legislators were inundated with calls and letters,
and in about a week the state began issuing stickers with county names that people could apply to their licenses.
And you know what?
Everybody did just that. 
I can’t remember seeing a single car without the county name on it after the stickers were mailed out.
And while on one hand this was all about pride of place,
on the other hand it was little more than sheer parochialism.
After all, one of the reasons people liked the county name on the license plate was so they could tell where other people were from.
You knew immediately if someone was from out of the area.
You knew right away whether or not someone belonged.
In a sense, you knew if a person was one of your people or not.
All that, just by looking at their license plate as they drove down the road.

Of course, parochialism is nothing new.
Narrow mindedness and prejudice has been part of the human race ever since Cain was exiled from his homeland for killing his brother Abel.
You probably remember, for instance, that one of our readings for last week was from Nehemiah.
The passage we heard described how the people,
newly returned to their homes after years of exile in a foreign land,
listened to and took the words of the law to heart as they were read to them.
It is a beautiful passage in many ways.
In it we see the power of God’s word,
and how it can reach out and touch those who hear it.
But all was not a bed of roses for the people of Judah upon the exiles’ return.

A little study of both Ezra and Nehemiah shows us that those who returned home had more than a little bit of a superiority complex when it came to how they treated those who had been left behind for all those years.
In fact, the exiles were deeply suspicious of them,
and ultimately Ezra, their religious leader,
issued a decree that he hoped would set some things right.
You see, many of the people who had been left behind during the time of the exile had begun to mingle with people from some of the surrounding nations.
Eventually some of them actually married foreign wives from Edom or Moab or elsewhere.
This did not set well with Ezra and others who had returned home.
They saw this as a dangerous practice.
They felt that being chosen by God meant that the Jews should keep their race and nation pure,
and so, shortly after the Temple was rebuilt,
Ezra ordered all the Jews who had foreign wives to divorce them and send them back to their former homelands.

Imagine the turmoil that this decree caused.
One wonders how many families and homes were destroyed because of this narrow-minded view.
How many lives were shattered because the religious leaders believed that this was what God wanted for his people?

And is that what God wanted?
Let’s look at scriptures for today for a answer to this question.
For instance, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in our first reading, what did God say to him?
Did he say, “I am going to make you a prophet to Judah?”
Did he say, “Look, I want you to only prophesy to my chosen people?”
No, this is what Jeremiah records:
The word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I consecrated you;
and I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
To the nations . . . to all people. . . not just to some.

Even the idea of being chosen,
which goes all the way back to Abraham,
has, at it’s core, that the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people,
were chosen for a purpose far greater than just their own good fortune.
As God told Abraham: 
“I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation.
You will become famous and be a blessing to others. . .
and all the families on the earth will be blessed because of you.
(Gen 12:1-3)

All the families on the earth will be blessed because of you.
What a wonderful purpose and mission!
And yet this grand purpose was often forgotten over the ensuing centuries.
This truth may be what prompts Jesus to say the things he says in the synagogue at Nazareth.
If you remember the gospel from last week,
you’ll recall that it ended on a high note.
Jesus has come to his hometown, goes to church, so to speak,
and is asked to read the scripture and preach a short sermon.
When he is finished,
everyone there is amazed at and pleased with what he has said.
As Luke records it: 
“And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.”
But then Luke adds: “And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’"

It’s almost as if they cannot believe that Joseph’s boy could be capable of doing and saying what Jesus did and said.
Everyone there, after all, knew all about Mary’s unexpected pregnancy before her marriage to Joseph. 
To them, Jesus was probably little more than an illegitimate son.
And we all know the word that is used to name an illegitimate boy, don’t we?
Their amazement at and pride of Jesus is mixed with more than a little prejudice,
and perhaps that explains what Jesus says next:
“Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’
And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’
Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.
But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,
when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,
and there was a severe famine over all the land;
yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha,
and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

What Jesus does here is to confront head-on their prejudices and narrow-mindedness.
He tells them that God has no use for their parochial attitudes,
and that God’s love and care is bigger than their tiny, constricted hearts.
He does this by picking out two foreigners, two non-Jews, from the Old Testament that received God’s favor over or instead of those who were “God’s Chosen People.”
Needless to say, this made the people in church that day very angry.
None of us like to have our prejudices exposed.
None of us like to have someone call us narrow-minded.
And yet, this is exactly what Jesus did.
It made the good church members so mad that they, in Luke’s words,
“got up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built,
so that they might hurl him off the cliff”

Now that is angry.
Thank God I have never preached such an inflammatory sermon myself.
I doubt that I could get away from an angry mob as easily as Jesus did.

But you see, don’t you, what Jesus is doing here?
He is doing something that has been described as the prophet’s and preacher’s job throughout the centuries:
comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Jesus is challenging them to remember why they were chosen in the first place.
He is trying to get them to see that God is bigger and better than their image of the divine.
That God is not just a reflection of what they think and believe.
God is not a Jew.  He is not Israelite. 
Further, God is not a Pharisee, nor a Sadducee . . . not even a Scribe.
God is above and beyond all those labels and human distinctions,
and God calls his children to be above them too.

And lest we think this problem of narrow minds and constricted hearts ended with the advent of the Church,
Paul shows us in his letter to Corinth that this isn’t the case.
All through Corinthians Paul has written about the things that have divided the church, divisions that threaten to destroy the very body of Christ in Corinth.
In chapter one he points out that just because a particular Christian was baptized by Apollo or Peter or some other church leader doesn’t make that person better than those who were baptized by somebody else.
As he says,
It has been reported to me that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ."
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1Co 1:10-13)

Paul then goes on to address the fact that some Christians in Corinth think themselves better than other Christians because of their wisdom and knowledge.           
Paul also confronts those Christian men who think themselves better than others because they have been circumcised.
Still other believers are chastised because consider themselves above the newer Christians because they have rejected the religious laws of Judaism,
In effect, they ridicule those who still follow the law,
and in their “freedom” they cause some of their weaker brothers and sisters in the faith to stumble,
Even the celebration of the Lord’s Supper has become an opportunity for those who have in the church to lord it over those who do not.
And that finally brings Paul to a discussion of spiritual gifts.
And again, some Corinthians seem to have a knack for finding a way to look down their spiritual noses at those who don’t have the same gifts they possess.
I speak in tongues and prophesy, says one Christian,
so I am better or more spiritual than you.
Another counters, “Yeah, well I can heal people, so I am better than you.”
And on and on it went.

By this time, I would be ready to wring a few necks,
but Paul is better at dealing with this type of thing than I am:
He tells the Corinthians that they are all part of the body of Christ,
that none of them are better than the others,
and that each of them have been given a gift or gifts,
not for their own good or spiritual pride,
but for the good of the body.
He then tells them that the real problem is their narrow minds have led them to have constricted hearts,
although he puts it in a different way:
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts,
and I will show you a still more excellent way. (1Co 12:27-31)

And what is that more excellent way?
And what is also the cure for narrow-mindedness and hearts that are three or four or five times too small?
It is the way of love, of course.
And this is what Paul writes about in today’s epistle reading.
I close my message with my own paraphrase of text.

If I speak with great eloquence, conviction and beauty, but do so without love, my words are little more than bombastic bellowing or a grating noise.
And though I have the power to speak for God and understand every mystery and comprehend all knowledge, and if I have all the faith that could move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I give away everything I possess, and even if I offer my own body as a sacrifice to the flames of fire, but have not love, I have gained nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy, love is not arrogant or proud. It does not act unseemly; it is not self-seeking, not easily provoked, and does not dwell on evil. It does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, has faith in all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

As for prophecies, they will vanish away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it too will end. For now we know in part and prophesy in part, but when all is brought to completion, then all that is partial will pass away.

When I was I child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I put away childish ways. For now we see as in a mirror darkened and distorted, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know even as I am fully known.

And so it is that faith, hope and love live and dwell within us, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Categories: 1 Corinthians, Jeremiah, Luke, Sermon | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

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