Spiritual Blindness (John 9:1-41)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 3/30/14

As a psychology major at Randolph-Macon, I remember studying many fascinating experiments  that have been done in the field of psychology. One of these experiments that I really enjoyed was an experiment in selective attention. Now the results of this experiment are so baffling that I probably wouldn’t have believed that they were true except for the fact that my professor first tested the experiment on us before explaining the results. The experiment goes like this: we were shown a video of people passing a basketball, some of them were wearing white shirts, others were wearing black shirts. Our objective was to count how many times only the people wearing the white shirts passed the ball. We sat and we watched focused on those people wearing white shirts, and when the video was over we were asked how many times the people in white shirts passed the ball, and most of us were happy because we had the right answer. But then the professor asked us a strange question, “Did you see the gorilla?” Did we see the gorilla? What kind of question is that?  So the professor played the video again for us and told us just to watch and not to count this time. At first things were just as we remembered it, but midway through the video sure enough someone dressed in a gorilla suit walks out in the middle of the people passing the ball. Not only does the gorilla walk out, but he actually stops in the middle of them, pounds his chest, and the continues off the set. The gorilla had probably been on the screen for 10 seconds in clear sight, and yet the majority of us watching the video had no idea. This is called selective attention.  It is when we become so caught up in looking for one thing that we completely miss what is going on around us, even something that is so obvious, like a man in a gorilla suit. As the old adage goes, “we can’t see the woods for the tree.”  Jesus in our scripture lesson for this morning might have called this selective attention blindness; not blindness in the physical sense, but instead a spiritual blindness.

            Our story from the John this morning starts out with Jesus and his disciples as they are traveling the come across a blind beggar.  The disciples’ response to the situation indicates where the dilemma in this story is going to be. First, the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  In those times illness and disability was seen as being something that was caused by sin. The question the disciples are really asking is really whether or not this man has committed some sin that has caused him to be blind, or whether his blindness is a punishment against his parent’s for their sin. Jesus responds by saying, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.”  This man has not sinned, but instead God’s works are able to be revealed in him. This isn’t that challenging of a statement for many of us today, but for the disciples this was mind-blowing. Jesus is telling them that something they had always viewed as being a result of sin is actually is actually a means by which God’s works may be revealed.

            In our scripture we don’t get the disciples reaction to this statement, whether they agreed or were upset; instead the story quickly goes into the disciples questioning Jesus once again. They told Jesus to hurry up and heal the man for daylight was almost gone and the Sabbath was almost upon them. Once again we must recognize the practices and beliefs of that time. For Jews of that time, and still some today, the Sabbath, this began at sundown on Friday to sundown Saturday.  There were  many strict laws about working on the Sabbath, this list was in fact long of things that could not be done including the making of clay.  We see that Jesus ignores the disciples protests, spits on the ground and makes mud or clay, and  tells the man to go wash in the pool of Siloam and sight would be given to him.  After just telling the disciples that the man’s blindness was not the cause of anyone’s sin, Jesus shocks the disciples again by committing what many believed to be a sin, working on the Sabbath.  These two elements of Jesus works in this story, the rejection of an idea of the man’s blindness being caused by sin, and Jesus’s working on the Sabbath are crucial to hold onto, as they will become the focus later on in the story. 

            Interestingly enough, the story changes, and now instead of focusing on Jesus and his disciples, John focuses on the once blind man. People around town notice that this man has sight and they begin to say to each other, “Wait isn’t that the beggar that used to sit on the road?” I  thought he was blind? Maybe it is just someone who looks like him. And they began asking what happened? How were your eyes open to which the man replied, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight.” All of this was very odd and so they took the man before the Pharisees to be questioned.

            As we see the man who had been blind from birth being questioned by the Pharisees we once again see those two stumbling blocks that we mentioned earlier at play. The evangelist John sets up the scenario for us he  says, “Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”  As the blind man tells the Pharisees about how Jesus had healed him, we see that the fact that the miracle was performed on the Sabbath creates a divide amongst some of the Pharisees. Some argued that this man was a sinner because he had done this work on the Sabbath day, while others argued, “How could a sinner perform such signs.” In order to help the debate the Pharisees turn to the man and ask him what he thinks about this man Jesus. This may seem like a harmless question asked in order to find out the truth but that is probably not the case. At that time it was a mandate forbidding Jews from following any heretical movements, so it is likely those Pharisees against Jesus asked the man this question assuming he’d be afraid and reject Jesus, but that’s not what happened. The man replies, “He is a prophet.”  These are brave and powerful words from this once blind man.

            Not satisfied with this answer the dismiss the man and call for the man’s parents. If they can’t prove that Jesus is a sinner, maybe they can dismiss the case by proving that the man who had been a sinner. Remember that blindness was seen as being a punishment for sin; those who committed a sin may become blind during their lifetime, but someone born blind would not be a sinner but rather the result of their parent’s sin.  The Pharisees desperately wanted to prove that this man was a sinner and therefore his testimony about Jesus would be tainted. When the parents arrive they ask the parents if this man was blind from birth, and the parents respond with the truth, yes.  When asked how he was healed however the parents backed down in fear, they said, He is of age to answer that, ask him.”

            So after finding out that the man was in fact blind from birth, spoiling their plans of discrediting the man’s testimony to Jesus, the Pharisees decide to once again question the man. This time they ask the man straight up, Was this man Jesus who healed you a sinner?  The man’s response is poetically honest, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." You can almost feel the frustration of the Pharisees they want to discredit this man’s testimony so bad, but yet have been able to do such, so once again that ask to hear his testimony.  Fed up the man replies, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Well this angers the Pharisees, but also gives them the leverage they think they need. They reply, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”  In other words, We do not follow this random man off of the streets, we follow the law handed down to us from Moses.  It seems like a valid argument, it seems as if the Pharisees finally have the upper hand until the man once again chimes in. It’s funny that you know nothing about him and yet he opened my eyes. Never have we heard of a man born blind being healed, and that very law you follow teaches us that God does not listen to sinner but to the righteous. If Jesus was not from God, how could he perform this miracle? Flabbergasted and angry the Pharisees label the man and dismiss him.

            Later the man once again runs into Jesus and Jesus asks do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds show me him so that I may believe. Jesus responds it is I, and immediately the man responds, “Lord, I believe.” Jesus concludes by saying, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” You see this whole story is about blindness and sight, but what Jesus reveals is that the story is just as much about spiritual blindness as it is about the physical. This blind man was healed, his eyes were opened, but he did not just begin to only see the world around him, he began to the Lord as well. Just look at the progression of how he describes this man Jesus. When first asked by the random townspeople asking how he sees, he simply refers to Jesus as, “the man named Jesus.” As he is being questioned by the Pharisees and asked who does he say that Jesus is, the man goes one step further and claims, “He is a prophet.” Finally after all the questioning and when Jesus meets with the man again, the man cries out, “Lord I believe.”  The man’s eyes were opened both physically and spiritually and now this man is able to go from recognizing Jesus simply as a man, then as a prophet, and finally as Lord. “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

            This seems like it should be the end of the story, except some Pharisees overhear this last comment from Jesus.  He has just told the blind man that he came to give sight to those who do not see, and to blind those who see. They ask Jesus, “Surely we are not blind, are we?"  Jesus responds, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.” But what does that mean?  Jesus tells the Pharisees, because you claim to see you are in fact blind. Because you think you have it all figured out, you have nothing figured out. I healed a man who was blind by birth and instead of recognizing the miracle that it was, you criticized me for working on the Sabbath and attacked the man I healed for being blind in the first place. You put so much trust in the Law of Moses that you failed to notice God working in the midst of you. Like the experimenters who failed to see a man in a gorilla suit walk in clear sight, because the Pharisees were so involved in finding the sin in someone else, they failed to see the glory of God in their midst they had become spiritually blind.

            We too in Christian culture often fall into this sin. We hold up the law of Moses as we should, but instead of using to work on our own holiness we use them to label others as sinners. Or like the Pharisees we follow the law of Moses believing that if we follow correctly we will earn our way into heaven, but Paul tells us that is not the purpose of the law. In Romans 7 Paul says, “What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” In other words,  the law does not save you, instead it helps us to see our own sin and recognize that we need saving. Being a good person, following all of the checklists does not get you into heaven, only by faith are we saved. And so instead of using the law as some checklist to follow or even worse as some tool for differentiating ourselves and discrediting others, let us use the law as a means to build our faith.  Let us use it to help us recognize that which separates us from God.  The fatal flaw of the Pharisees is that they were focused on the law and not how the law leads to Christ. They put their trust in the law, not in God. Sadly sometimes as Christians it is our very attempts to get it right that lead us astray. We can forget what we worship is a Holy and living God, not a set of rules. Let us  not be like the Pharisees who in their claims of wisdom found only blindness, instead let us use this Holy gift (hold the Bible) not as a way to prop ourselves up,  but as a way to humble ourselves, as a way of opening our eyes to our own sin.  So that we may not be blind but see, that what we need most is not our own righteousness, but rather the grace of God drawing us ever closer a love like Christ’s.

Selective Amnesia (Exodus 17:1-7)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington on 3/23/14

 So there is an interesting phenomenon that I  and a bet many of you have; this phenomenon is known as selective amnesia. Whereas amnesia is the loss of memory or even identity often caused by some sort of physical or psychological trauma, selective amnesia is an intentional loss of memory that usually benefits the person forgetting.  It is quite a helpful little phenomenon to have.  It helps around the house when laundry starts to pile up, and I was asked to do a load, but for some reason I can’t remember ever being asked.  In school, I conveniently forgot that homework had been assigned. When an email is sent asking for volunteers for this or that, I seem to forget about it until it is too late. Especially when it comes to my sport teams this selective amnesia helps me to cope with difficult realities. For example I remember that Duke played last weekend, but for some reason I don’t remember anything about the game.  ( Take time to “try to remember”) Well anyways, this phenomenon of selective amnesia is quite interesting since I can remember so much other random information. I remember my telephone number from my house growing up, I remember every super bowl winner that I’ve watched, and I remember that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066, and yet I can’t remember to do my homework or to wash my clothes.  All kidding aside, while selective amnesia seems like a good and fun thing to have, the consequences can be quite damaging.  Not doing my homework affected my grades; not doing laundry leaves me with dirty clothes, and probably an angry wife, and not remembering who won last weekend, well that’s still ok.   You see in life, we sometimes hold on to the memories we should ignore and forget things we should cherish.  We can become angry at a loved one for something so minor while forgetting  everything they have done for us. We can allow ourselves to lose hope in something just because of a minor setback.

            This is the case  with the Israelites in the desert; the Israelites had selective amnesia. Our scripture for today starts looks at the Israelites in the midst of their travels in the wilderness, however the story for the Israelites starts long before that. The Israelites were a people who had been enslaved in Egypt, forced to work long days for the Pharaoh. As a people, this was rock bottom. They cried out to the Lord for help, and as we see God hears the cry of his people.  God calls Moses, an Israelite himself, though now living amongst the Pharaoh, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. We see many encounters between the Pharaoh and Moses, miracles performed by God through Moses, and of course the plagues as a punishment for Pharaoh’s failure to listen. Finally we see the Israelites lead out of Egypt by the power of God, through fire and storm and through the parting of the Red Sea. God had lead the Israelites out of captivity, had closed off the Red sea to ensure their freedom, and on top of it all had promised them a land full of milk and honey. The Israelite’s history is one of God providing for them, God delivering them from evil,  God abiding with them.

            With this history in mind our scripture for this morning seems a little odd. Today we find the Israelites wandering in the desert, and quite honestly wandering in misery. It has been quite some time since they had left Egypt, and they are still not at the promised land of milk and honey.  Not only is there no milk or honey, there is hardly any food or water at all. Our scripture tells us, “They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.” The Isrealites had become fed up with the journey, fed up with their seemingly aimless wandering, fed up with Moses, and yes even fed up with the Lord.  The Israelites had come to the end of their ropes and so they cried out, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?  The once joyous moment of freedom from Egypt, the crossing of the Red sea, now seemed like a cruel twist of fate.  The freedom they had always longed for now seemed to be leading to their demise.  The people began to question whether or not it was worth it to flee, they even began to look back upon slavery and think about how good those times were; they thought this about slavery! In their minds Moses had led them astray, God had disserted them, and that anything would be better than what they were going through now.

            This is the danger of selective amnesia.  The pain and uncertainty that they were enduring now caused the people to forget how bad they really had it. They forgot about the beatings, the labor, their lack of power or of voice, and now all they remembered is that they we fed. At the current moment that seemed like a good deal. What is worse however is not that they forgot about how bad their situation had been, but they forgot about how faithful God had been.  They forgot that their leader Moses had thrown away all the comfort and wealth he had when he killed the unjust slave driver. They forgot about the plagues that Egypt endured and how they were protected from them. They forgot about the meal they shared at Passover, marking their doors with lambs blood so that in the morning they could hold their firstborn in their arms, and they forgot the agony of the Pharaoh and the other Egyptians who were not as fortunate. They  forgot the Lord parted a sea for them  to cross and then closed it so that no one could follow. They had forgotten all of this, and now cried out to a God they believed had forgotten them. They cried, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  After all that God had done for them they still ask whether the Lord is with them are not.

            It’s amazing how quickly things can turn from looking up to looking down, and it’s amazing how quickly faith and praise can turn into doubt and anger.  But even as the Israelites questioned and threated Moses, Moses continued to have faith in the Lord.  Now as I say that let us be clear in what I mean. There is a common misconception that in order for us to have faith we are not allowed to doubt at all, that if we have faith we should never be afraid or angry, but this is not that case. Moses kept his faith, but you better believe his was scared, and you better believe he was questioning whether what he had done was the right thing. In our scripture he says, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Moses is scared for his life, Moses has no idea what to do, but what makes it true that Moses had faith; Moses goes to the Lord with his problem.  Moses does not forget the ways in which the Lord had provided for him, Moses does not forget about God’s promise of a land full of milk and honey. Moses has no idea what is going to happen, he has no delusion that things will be simple or easy, but Moses trusts that if he follows the Lord all will be right, whatever right may be.

            And from there on we see that Moses was right. The Lord tells Moses to take some elders and go ahead in the journey to the rock of Horeb and with the same rod he used to part the Red sea, strike the rock and water will flow.  This moment is priceless, it is not just some coincidence that the same rod used for freeing the slaves is now used to quench their thirst, in fact God goes out of the way to make that point. It’s almost sarcastic how God uses the same instrument that freed them from slavery in order to quiet their doubts and provide them with water. As the Israelites cry out is God among us, God cries back, I never left.  Do you not remember this rod, this rod that I used in order to set you free. This rod will now once again save you. It is almost as if God is crying out to the Israelites, Moses has in his hands a sign, a symbol of my faithfulness to you, you see this sign every day, how could you forget?  And yet the Israelites history is one of selective amnesia, of forgetting God’s faithfulness and then abandoning the Lord, getting brought back and starting the circle all over again. In fact this is not just the Israelites history, but it is also our own.  How many times have we experienced the grace and power of God at work in our lives, and later felt as though God was nowhere to be found, or that God had abandoned us. How often do we traverse from a mountain top experience with Christ into a barren spiritual desert?  Like the Israelites who we tired, thirsty and hungry, sometimes we have some legitimate reasons to doubt. The loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, some goal we just can’t achieve, or some debt or addiction that we just can’t get out from under. In these wilderness times it can make sense for us to have some doubts. It makes sense for us to thirst for some spiritual water. It makes sense for us to have selective amnesia, but we cannot let ourselves fall into the same trap as the Israelites. When we thirst we cannot run away from God, we must not forget God’s steadfast love for us.

            Instead, when we thirst, we should be more like Moses, whose initial reaction is not to run away from God, but instead is to run towards God. Yes he was scared, yes he too was tired, and probably a little angry, but in his times of trouble and doubt, he sought out the Lord.

            Many of us today are going through our own spiritual wilderness.  Some of us are facing external dilemmas such as the ones mentioned earlier. Others of us feel guilty because our spiritual fervor has waned even though there seems to be no reason for it.  We become spiritually thirsty, and we begin to forget what ever nourished us in the first place. This however is not necessarily a sign of your faith diminishing, in fact it can even be a sign of your own spiritual growth.  Just like I showed the children for the children’s message,  as the glasses get larger, it takes more water to fill them up.  Likewise, as we grow spiritually we become capable and open to letting more of God’s grace into our lives, and so when we fail to fill the void we can sometimes feel thirsty or empty.  This means that what filled us up when we first became Christians probably doesn’t fill us up the same way anymore. I know that for me personally, My formative time was during my teenage years. Retreats with the same vibe as pep rally used to fill me up, and while I still enjoy these type of experiences they don’t quite quench my thirst anymore. As a kid all I needed was worship, as I got older throw in a bible study and I was good, but as I kept getting older and older I needed more and more to quench my thirst.  I still feel it now when I have served in outreach or mission in a while. When I fail to read, or be in prayer as often as I should I feel it. I can tell when I am not being spiritually fed and do you know how I know? I know because my selective amnesia comes back. I begin to forget all that the Lord has done for me, the ways God has carried me through difficult times in my lives, the people who have touched my life through the power of the Holy Spirit, all of this seems to fade from memory and all that is left is an aching, longing feeling. This Lent as we prepare for Easter, let us not miss all the signs around us reminding us of God’s faithfulness to us.  Let us not be like the Israelites who daily fixed their eyes upon the very rod that freed them and yet remembered nothing about it. As we focus on that which separates us from God, as we recognize our own sin, we also recognize that it is we that separate ourselves from God. That God’s love is steadfast, and yet so often we fail to see. That sometimes in our spiritual growth we become discouraged because what used to fill us, doesn’t produce the same results anymore.  So whether this morning we face some difficult situation that makes God seem so distance or if we simply have seemed to lost the spark in our hearts that once burned, the solution is simple, seek the Lord.  Seeking the Lord doesn’t mean everything will be better, it doesn’t mean that we will automatically be once again alive for Christ, but is means that we will have comfort that no matter what, God is with us. It means that we will be filling ourselves with God’s grace, it means we will never forget God faithfulness. 

The Fall (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

Sermon as preached 3/16/14 at Lambs and Evington UMC

This week we begin a new sermon series that is called “Separation Anxiety” As most of you know we have entered into a season of the church that we call Lent. While in today’s culture most people associate Lent with giving up some minor guilty pleasure in our lives like chocolate, or coffee, even caffeine all together. The true purpose of the season of Lent however is a time that prepares us for the great feast of Easter. Lent is not too dissimilar to the more familiar season of advent that prepares us for the for the arrival of the Son of God at Christmas. The major difference between the two is that in Advent we are preparing for Jesus’s arrival and therefore there is an emphasis on expectation and waiting, whereas for in Lent we are not preparing for our Lord’s birth but rather, for his death and resurrection. And so how do you prepare for Jesus’ death and resurrection; for this even that is the basis for our whole belief system, the essence of our salvation? How do you prepare to celebrate Christ’s atonement for our sins and the promise of eternal life that it provides. We prepare by reflecting upon why it is important in the first place. When we start this type of reflection it become apparent quite quickly that we need it because we are such broken and sinful people. No matter how hard we try we seem to keep falling short of the glory of God, we get corrupted by evil, we turn our desires towards ourselves rather than upon God and on others. We realize that we cannot save ourselves and we desperately need God’s grace to save us. And as we reflect upon our need for God’s grace we begin to truly realize the distance between us and God. Not because of anything God has done , for God’s grace is always extended to us, but because we have separated ourselves from God, we have put up our own barriers. And so during Lent we give up these things that devour our time and our energy, these things that distract us from God, and at the same time we take on spiritual disciplines that realign our hearts with the heart of Christ. This is the beauty of Lent, this is why over the next for weeks we will look at ways in which we separate ourselves from God, because to truly appreciate Easter, we need to appreciate why we need it so badly.

            We look at the world today and we see violence and wars, we see animosity in the political spheres, we see homelessness, poverty and starvation around the world and in our own community. We even find ourselves occupied and worried about so many different things  that “have to” get done. We get so used to this type of world that we live in that we begin to think that this is the norm, that this may even be what God wanted. But if we read from Genesis and look at the creation story, we start to find a world quite different than ours, we notice that this isn’t how it has always been. In Genesis 2 we find Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, and we find that they are living in paradise, in the garden of Eden. The two of them were together with the birds and the beasts, and the creatures of the sea. There did not have to worry about starvation because food was abundant, in fact its seems as though they did not have to worry about death at all. They were naked and not ashamed of it, for what guilt or what shame should they feel, they were as God created them. All of this was freely given to them with the one stipulation that they must not eat of the tree of knowledge of good or evil.  The Lord warned them that if they it from it, if they even touch it they will die.

            Things were great in paradise, that is until sin crept into the world through the power of curiosity and through the serpent.  The serpent persuades Eve to take of the fruit from the tree of good and evil, Eve persuades Adam to eat from the fruit, and from there on the course of history, of human nature had been changed.  Sin had entered into the world. Now there are certainly many questions that arise from this story, many are good questions that we just aren’t able to cover today.  Did God create the serpent, and if so did God create the serpent evil? Did God create evil? Why was there even a potential of sin in the first place. As I’ve said these are great and difficult questions, questions that pastors, laity, theologians, and philosophers alike have been trying to answer for centuries. It is not as important to focus on the why sin entered into the world as it is to recognized that we as humans have been changed because of it. Instead of asking why is there sin, we should be asking what is sin.

            What is the sin that occurred during what we call the fall of humanity?  We see that the action that led to the fall was the eating of the forbidden fruit, but was it simply the act of disobeying God that led us to the state we are in now? Not entirely, yes disobeying God was bad, but it was what happened before that which to that original sin. The serpent tells Eve that if they eat from the fruit “You will not die;  for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,^[a] knowing good and evil.” You see Adam and Eve ate from the fruit, ate from the tree of good and evil because they were tempted to make themselves like God. They wanted to be able to determine good and evil, the quality best reserved for a ruler. They wanted to have more power than that which God had already given them. They wanted to be like God. And so when they ate of that fruit their eyes were opened, and yet somehow as their eyes were open they lost focus. They became focused on themselves, they noticed that they were naked, something that had always been, but now they were ashamed of it. They recognized that it made them no different than the animals around them, and that just could not be. Those people of honor and glory hide their intimate parts, they were no longer like the animals after all, they were now like gods.  You see the original sin of Adam and Eve was that in that moment they changed their very natures from living as creatures in union with God’s vision of creation, and became creatures who rejected God’s vision, and saw themselves as something greater than they already were. They had turned their vision and their focus away from God and put it squarely on themselves. So when God questions what had happened, the damage was already done. The humans tremble in fear and feel an emotion they have never felt before, guilt. As promised the humans now face the fate of death, the face a world of toil and pain, they face a life of sin. There is a separation from the garden,  in our scripture it seems as some sort of punishment but for what purpose I’m not sure. Scripture tells us that God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”  What does this mean I’m not sure, maybe God is preventing humans from a greater hell of living an eternal life while  focused on ourselves, or maybe God’s banishment from the garden in God’s first act in trying to restore our nature to what it once was. Whatever the case may be the story ends with humans banished from Eden with a twisted, perverse nature that seeks our own pleasure and power over that of any one else.

            This is the essence of sin, that our focus has been shifted from God and shifted toward ourselves. As we continue in this season of Lent before we do anything else we must try to get a grasp upon what sin really means. In our culture we like to talk about sin as an action that we have done. Murder, lying, cheating, stealing; for us these things are sins, and indeed they are. And yet if we live our lives simply trying to avoid committing these sins, then we are doomed for failure, we are looking at sin all wrong.  Instead we should think of sin more like a disease, like a genetic disorder, like an illness. An example of a disease is more fitting than that of an illness, but out of respect for so many who have faced diseases, let us use the example of a flu to explain what I mean by sin being like a disease.  So say you wake up one morning shivering, and coughing. You start to feel nauseous, your body aches and so you take your temperature and find out that you have a fever. How do you react? Do you look at each thing separately and take medicine for each ailment, or do you realize that they are all symptoms of a greater illness, the flu, and realize you need to go see a doctor.  You see those daily sins that we commit they are much like symptoms of a disease.  We lie because we want to protect ourselves our make ourselves look better. We gossip because we enjoy the thrill of knowledge and the feeling of being superior to someone else.  We could try to treat eat symptom, we can try to stop gossiping, we can try to stop lying, and we should, but that doesn’t solve our overall condition of sin.

            So are you, how am I affected by sin? What does Adam and Eve’s mistake have anything to do with us?  Well if we viewed sin and simply committing evil acts, then the answer would be that it doesn’t affect us. That we are separate entities making our own separate mistakes; that the only way that they affect us is that we learn their bad habits.  It is because so many of us have this understanding of sin that we find the concept of original sin so disgusting. We ask how can a baby be sinful if they haven’t even done anything wrong? But do you see how that’s the wrong question to ask? A baby isn’t sinful because they have committed some wrong, the baby is sinful because we as humans are all sinful. We are all affected with this disease, this nature of sin.  It is quite amazing how our modern technology can actually help us to understand this point. Over the past few decades amazing research has been done in human genetics. In fact the human genome project has mapped our DNA.  Researchers are slowly now able to find abnormalities or predictors in a person’s genes that show the passing of genetic diseases from parents to children. Now I’m not saying that sin is a genetic disorder or that we can find sin somewhere in our DNA, but what I am saying is like genetic disorders are passed from parent to child, so too has sin been passed onto all of us. In the fall human nature was changed from a perfect state to a sinful state, so that all the offspring of humanity were no longer able to reap the benefit of the perfect nature originally created for us, but rather we have inherited that distorted nature of sin.  This morning as we begin to start out talking about what it is that separates us from God, we must first start by admitting we are in fact separated. That this life that we live, this world that we live in is not as it was intended to be. That we have inherited the sinful nature of sin, the disease of sin, so that now our inclination is to treasure ourselves over anything else, that serving God, loving God more than we love ourselves is a struggle. In fact so much of a struggle that so often even our faith is primarily focused on the hope of our own personal salvation and assurance of heaven, rather than the will and  desire that God has for all creation.

            And so as we begin this sermon series, as we recognize and admit that we live with this disease of sin, we can now start the process of having our health restored. Just like with a disease, the first step is recognizing the symptoms and getting diagnosed. So this morning we come recognizing our own symptoms of sin, that we daily fail to be obedient to God’s will, that we fail to serve our neighbors, and even failed to love God with our whole hearts. It is why we say prayers of confession because it allows us to recognize the fact that things aren’t the way they should be. We aren’t the way we should be.  The diagnosis is simple we have sin; sin is part of our nature. And yet the good news is that there is a cure. That Christ has come to Earth, taking on our sin upon the cross and conquering it and death with his resurrection. As is the case with most cures though the treatment is long.  We must strive each day to be drawn closer to Christ.  Each day will bring challenges are we get sidetracked by our own desires, as we feed our own ego, but today we take the first step, we recognize that we are sick and that we need help.  The good news is that even when we fail in our journey, and we do constantly, that God’s grace is there to pick us back up. Our sin is never terminal for even when our love fails and we turn away, Gods love remains steadfast, because grace is greater than sin.

Containing God (Matthew 17:1-9)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 3/2/14

Image courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity School

This Sunday is a special Sunday in the life of the church that we call Transfiguration Sunday. It is the Sunday in which we celebrate the special revelation to a few of the disciples of Christ where they saw Jesus transformed in white light and accompanied on the mountain by Elijah and Moses. This story fascinates many of us, while at the same time this story confuses many of us. There is just so much going on, what are we to focus on?  We could focus on what it means for Jesus to be transfigured by glowing light. We could focus on why Moses and Elijah are there with Jesus. We could ask why only a few disciples a privy to this revelation, and we can ask why Jesus tells them not to tell anyone until he is raised from the dead.  We could and we will talk a little about Peter’s request to build dwelling places. There are almost too many things going on to cover in the span of a sermon, and any of the things listed above warrant their own time and energy, but today we will talk about something that maybe is one of the lesser talked about parts of this story, and that is the cloud.

            Verse 5 tells us, “While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"  Here we see the presence of a bright cloud on top of the mountain, but what does this cloud signify?  As Christians the first thing that jumps out to us is that the words from the cloud here on the mountain are the same as the words from God during the baptism of Jesus.  These words tell us the significance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God as well as the command for him to be listened to, to be followed.  These words continue into the theme of revelation happening during the Transfiguration; that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. These words tell us something else about the voice heard from the cloud, and that is that the voice we hear is none other than that of God the Father. 

            For Christians today as well as Gentiles of that time, we may need this clue to understand the significance of the cloud; however for those from the Jewish tradition, like the disciples of Jesus already knew exactly what this cloud signified.  This is not the first appearance of a cloud like this in the Bible, in fact this cloud was present often through the history of the Israelites.  In Exodus 14 as the Israelites are escaping Egypt we see, “The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. ²⁰ It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.”  Likewise later when the Israelites were constructing the Tabernacle we read, “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. ³⁵ Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.³⁶ Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey;³⁷ but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up. ³⁸ For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud^[f] by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.  This cloud signifies the presence of God with the Israelites. First it is God with them as the escaped from Egypt, and later it was God with them in the Holy Tabernacle.  In fact it was Jewish belief at that time that where the cloud resided was where the Lord was, and the cloud as we read resided at the tabernacle. Those who were able to enter the tabernacle, we able to dwell in the presence of the Lord.

            When we understand this important aspect of the cloud, then it becomes clear why Peter reacts the way he does. Here he see Moses, Elijah and Jesus transfigured by bright light in the presence of this cloud, this cloud signifying that they God is dwelling with them on this mountain. And so Peter simply reacts the only way he knows how; let’s make three dwelling so that what is happening may last, so that this cloud, this presence of God may continue to last for others to come and see. Peter tries so hard to get it right, but poor Peter gets it all wrong. Peter doesn’t understand that God will not be contained, that there doesn’t need to be a special dwelling place for God. Peter misses the whole message of this transfiguration, that God is already dwelling amongst them as a human, as Jesus Christ. God is no longer contained to a special dwelling place, God is with us, everywhere.

            How often do we make Peter’s mistake? It is right and good for us to gather hear together in this sanctuary for worship. It is wonderful to gather here for Bible studies, and UMW, for special benefits, and for the planning and ordering of events of the church. But how often when we refer to church do we mean this building rather than those who are gathered in it?  How often do we view church as something that we go to rather than something that we are always a part of?  How often do we honestly strive to serve and reach out to others in our community but stay here in this building expecting others to come to us rather than we go out to others?  When we do these things, when we think like this we are making the same mistake as Peter did on that Mount of Transfiguration. Too often the church building becomes for us a false tabernacle where we expect God to dwell.  And God does dwell here, but far too often we try to contain God. That God happens here for an hour on Sunday mornings and then I can leave that behind. But the Transfiguration reminds us that God is always with us. That God lived among us as human, and as Jesus Christ ascended he gave the Holy Spirit to be with us always. God cannot be contained, the presence of the Lord is always with us. Let us not set us dwelling places to contain the Lord, instead let us reveal the presence of the Lord for all to see.  Let us always dwell in the presence of the Lord.

Building Blocks (1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 2/23/14

There is one movie that is out in theaters now that I cannot wait to go see. It has been the top at the box offices for the past two weeks. The movie that I cannot wait to go see is “The Lego Movie” I don’t know if you’ve seen ads for it but it is an action adventure movie in which all of the characters in the movies are Lego people.  While the movie itself looks funny and there are many great voice actors in it, the reason that I want to go see it so badly is probably because Legos remind me of my childhood.  Legos were a great toy to play with, small little blocks, different sizes and different colors, that you could stack on top of each other in order to create some wonderful structures. I loved playing with Legos except there was one small problem; I was horrible at building with Legos. In my mind I would have pictures of amazing bridges or castles that I was going to build, which then in reality turned into rickety oblong structures that one would really have to use their imagination to see a castle. My problem was that I had no sense of construction, no sense of building. I would want to build a castle but not understand the foundation that first must be laid.  I would want to build a bridge, but just quite couldn’t figure out how to stack rectangle blocks on top of each other in order to make an arch. People would walk by and ask me, “what are you building?”  I got so bad at Legos that eventually I started buying ( or my parents started buying me)  Lego sets that had directions for how to build what was on the cover of the box.  For example you would have step by step instructions for where to put each certain piece in order to make something like a spaceship or a car. Thank goodness, for the folks who put those things together with instructions to help poor little kids like me who knew nothing about building.

            Paul on the other did know a lot about building.  No, he may not have been able to construct a building or a bridge, but Paul certainly understood what it took to build a church, what it took to build up the Body of Christ. While we have seen this at play throughout our sermon series, today as we conclude our series, Paul seems to drive the point home. Paul in fact even uses the analogy of building in order to explain further to the Corinthians what it takes to build up the Body of Christ. Much of what Paul says to the Corinthians is nothing new; in fact much of it in a way recaps what he has been saying from the very beginning.

             While using the analogy of building a structure of some sort,  Paul argues that you much first start with a strong foundation.  It is no surprise then what Paul tells the Corinthians the foundation must be; that is of course Jesus Christ. We have heard this before from Paul.  We are all members of the body of Christ and Jesus Christ is the head. Everything that we have is from God and everything that we are able to do is through the grace of God.  It is nothing new for us to recognize that all life of the church, all life as the body of Christ must center around Christ, but this analogy may really help to drive the point home. There are many who can identify with a step by step approach to addressing an issue, like me and my lego sets a step by step direction for how to build up the body of Christ.  Paul cannot make step one any more clear. Step 1: Lay a foundation with the foundation being Jesus Christ. Any other foundation will eventually end in ruin. Like my Legos I can start with a piece and go from there and for a while it may even look  correct, but you get to a point where you can’t go any further, you get to a point where it all falls apart and that is because you did not start with the proper foundation.  The proper foundation, the only foundation for the Body of Christ, is Jesus Christ.

            Paul moves on in his analogy of building and notes that after the foundation of Jesus Christ is laid, we continue to build upon that foundation, and at the same time we are part of that building, of that structure being built. Paul talks about how he himself helped to lay the groundwork for the church in Corinth, and we have seen him earlier in the chapter acknowledge that Apollos also played a large role in cultivating and developing the church. At the same time the people of Corinth themselves have put a lot of work and heart into the growth of that church. With Jesus Christ as the foundation, these leaders and members of the church have helped it to grow.

            And yet though they helped it to grow, Paul makes the distinction that they are part of it. He says, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?
 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Now you may have heard before someone say that your body is a temple and therefore you must take care of your body; though our scripture for today sounds a lot like this; this is not what Paul is saying here, that comes later in chapter 6.  Instead when Paul says do you not know that you are God’s Temple he is using the plural for you.  In my Greek class in seminary we would sometimes joke that southerners have it right when it comes to languages because like Greek, we have a word for the plural of you, that is of course ya’ll. This is what Paul is saying, “Do ya’ll not know that ya’ll are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in ya’ll. For God’s temple is holy and ya’ll are that temple. This changes how we think about how we read this passage. We are not talking about our individual being as being holy (though it is), Paul is telling us that together, collectively we are God’s holy Temple.

            Once again this is nothing new for us, it is just another reiteration of the fact that together we are the Body of Christ. But here Paul uses the metaphor of the Temple to warn them against defiling God’s Temple. “So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.”  Paul once again brings up the conflict that has been happening in the church, once again he acknowledges the divide caused by different leaders, and this time he is telling them that it is defiling the Temple of God, for they are the Temple of God. That they are this Temple resting on top of the foundation of Jesus Christ, and instead of being a steady base to further build from, they rip and tear, they go off in their own directions and Paul warns that if they do not stop, if they do not unite then they will crumble back down to the foundation.  We are building and yet we are the building.

            While Paul’s words for the most part simply reiterate what we have already discussed throughout this sermon series as we have discussed becoming the Body of Christ, this analogy of building may give us a couple of insights about the Church that the analogy of the body might not suggest.  This first is that we need to recognize and observe what we are building upon. Recognizing what we are building upon is two-fold. The first aspect is to appreciate that we are not starting from scratch.  We are not building from the ground up because there have been many faithful Christians who have paved the way for us. Sometimes we feel like we have to reinvent the wheel, that we have to come up with something that is totally new and original, but as the old cliché goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  As United Methodists, as Christians we have a rich heritage, a rich tradition that we can learn and grow from. Leaders in the early church have already wrestled with some of the most difficult discussions of our faith, including the trinity, the role of the church, Jesus’s humanity and Jesus’ divinity.  In fact each week we profess these things in worship through our affirmation of faith, but that creed that we say each week took many years of debates and wrestling with scripture for our early church leaders to develop. We now simply have the benefit of learning and understanding the thought, prayer, and work that they have already put into expressing our faith beliefs. It doesn’t just stop with the earliest church but we can look at the founder of Methodism John Wesley and what he has taught us about grace through his own wrestling with scripture and through his sermons. We can appreciate and learn from the call for social justice from Boehm and Otterbein,  leaders of the Evangelical United Brethren, which merged with Methodism in the US  and is where we get the United from in United Methodist.  We can learn from the movement of a few women in Methodism who gathered for the purpose of education and mission and which grew into the powerful organization we now know as the UMW. And we can learn from those members of this very church who have served before us. Who built this church as a mission to the community, who taught Sunday school, who gave generously of their time and gifts. When we gather as the body of Christ we gather in appreciation for those who have faithful served before us. We gather knowing that we do not have to start from scratch but simply build onto the rich tradition that has come before us.

            But when we reflect upon the fact that others have built before us, we must also examine what it is that we are building upon.  As I said earlier there is so much passed down to us through our tradition that can help to shape, and guide us in our own service to God, but we must recognize that not everything passed down to us is helpful.  One of the biggest killers of any church is the phrase “because that’s how we’ve always done it.”  The problem is not that it has always been done that way, there was probably a reason why it was originally done that way. The problem arises when we no longer understand why we do something, but simply do it because that’s the way it’s always been done.  Sometimes what we build upon can lead us off of our foundation.  A church with an unspoken tradition of being exclusive, or a tradition in which the laity of the church have no responsibilities, these are not helpful traditions, these are Legos hanging of the edge of the foundation, that if we continue to build upon will cause  us to topple. We must take time to examine what it is we are building upon. When we do that we may also rediscover the original intention of something that we have always done, and in doing so renew a vigor in our spiritual life. I heard the story of one church that had a tradition of having a monthly meal as something the church had always done. At one of their council meetings the discovered that this meal was costing them a great deal, and someone called into question what was the point, since members just came and ate together. One of the older members of the congregation spoke up and said that when they started, it was a meal for the less fortunate in the community in which they would serve guests and then eat with them, and slowly over the years it has just turned into a members meal. Well this reminder sparked a new fire in the church and they set out to once again make the meal a time of service to the community.

            That leads us to our final point, is that as part of this body, as part of the Holy Temple that Paul tells us we are a part of, we must not only examine what it is it that we are building upon, but also what are we going to leave to be built upon. Just as so many have come before us paving the way for our ability to worship and serve, we must also think about what we are going to leave for the church after us.  Are we going to leave a massive heap for our later generations to have to sort through, or even for them to leave in rubble, or are we going to build upon that strong foundation of Jesus Christ, and the solid work of those who have served before us. And we must also question what it is we are building toward? Are we building toward a guarantee of our own personal salvation and a plot in the graveyard for our bodies when we die, or are we building towards a church, a body,  kingdom in which God’s mercy and justice reigns and we live in peace in love with our brothers and sisters.  Are we building for personal reasons, or are we building in praise and gratitude for the grace we have received through the Lord almighty. Are we building with hope that we can help to build up the Kingdom of God until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.   As we close our sermon series today we close having explored what it means to be the body of Christ. That we are all important members of this body, and that Christ is the head that leads us. That we are called to obtain the mind of Christ and that we can do that through the grace we receive through the power of the Holy Spirit. We have learned that true growth first starts within, with us seeking to be drawn into closer communion with Christ and with each other, but as we close we realize that we do not stop there. That we are part of something built before and that will last far after we are gone. We realize that we are building on a firm foundation, and that we have the ability to build towards something extraordinary. And so as a church, as the body of Christ, reflecting upon all we have learned we must ask ourselves as we go forward, what are we building, and what are we building towards?

Church Growth (1 Corinthians 3:1-9)

Sermon as Preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 2/16/14

Today in our sermon series we finally take a look into what has become one of the most popular topics for churches around the nation; that is church growth.  If you attend any type of pastor’s seminar or venture to take a look at some of the books in a Christian bookstore geared towards churches, you will surely find many that deal with this topic of church growth. 5 easy things for church growth,  10 ways  to tell if you church is growing,  Is your church growing or dying? Now these are some made up book titles but I bet you would be able to find some actual books out there that are eerily similar. Online you can find signs, coffee mugs, Bible studies, and sadly yes even sermons, that are guaranteed to help your church grow; well maybe not the guaranteed part, but you get the point. Even in our conference there seems to be seems to be a push towards more numbers, as we record and analyze our average worship attendance each week as part of our Vital Congregations initiative. This push for growth is not unfounded either, Jesus tells us in Matthew 28 to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Now here in the third chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul addresses this issue of church growth. Finally we are no longer talking about a theology of Jesus as the head of the body of Christ, no longer are we talking about unity in the church, no longer talking about wisdom and spiritual disciplines, we are talking about church growth! How exciting, except we are still talking about all those things, because while we are talking church growth is very different than what we normally discuss.

            Paul’s discussion about church growth is not a discussion about numbers, in fact Paul’s message to the Corinthians in our chapter for today is not even explicitly evangelistic. So far we have been talking about what it takes, what it means to come together as the body of Christ, and here Paul does not abandon this idea.  Paul picks up right where he left off. If we recall last week we talked about the power of the Holy Spirit and how we had different means of grace by which we are able to experience the grace of God.  Paul talked about how because we as humans are both physical and spiritual beings, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit our spirit is able to connect to the spirit of God.  Now Paul picks up by talking about growth in the church, but here Paul does not discuss growth in numbers, rather he discusses growth in spirit.

            In fact Paul calls the members of the church of Corinth babies. Yes you heard that right he says, “ And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” Paul calling the people of Corinth babies, or infants cuts two different ways. The first is a harsh indictment of the church, or in other words Paul is intentionally insulting the Corinthians.  He goes back to the division that has been going on in the church, and calls their actions into question.  He once again mentions the divide that has been caused by following the different leaders of Paul and Apollos and essentially calls the conflict childish. He says, “for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?  Paul tells the people that though they claim to be spiritual people, full of spiritual gifts, they act no different than those of this world. That through their actions there is no way to tell whether they are Christian or not.  That people who were spiritually discerning God’s will would be able to recognize that the way they are acting is not conducive to growth as the body of Christ. They are acting like babies.

            Paul drives the issue home further, he says, “ For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.” Paul acknowledges that though he and Apollos may have had their differences, that they are still working together fulfilling their own role in kingdom building. Paul is the planter, Apollos is the waterer, but God gave the growth.  We actually lose some of the intensity of this point in this translation, for the Greek actually says something more in verse 8 more along the lines of, “the planter and the waterer are one.”[1]  That though Apollos and Paul differ, though they have different gifts and responsibilities, that they are one because they both work together in strengthening the body of Christ.  Paul calls the Corinthians infants, because they have failed to see that how they are behaving spits in the face of body of Christ.

            Like I said earlier however, Paul’s use of the word infant has two sides to it; it was an insult as we have just discussed, but at the same time it was instructive. In chapter 2 Paul has just told us that we are able to obtain the mind of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. That since we are spiritual beings the Holy Spirit connects us closer to Christ.  As we talked about last week however this is not an instantaneous event. Our first moments as a Christian does not mean that we know it all; in fact if we can look at our own spiritual lives and realize that there is still a lot that we have to learn. It is for this reason that Paul calling the Corinthians infants or babies is also quite fitting, for we are all infants in our spiritual walk.  It is a reminder that Christianity is not a name it and claim it title, where we are baptized and then are allowed to go about living our lives as if nothing has changed, for if we go about living our lives as if nothing has changed, then spiritually nothing really has changed. We receive grace from God, inviting us to come closer, but if we do not continually seek to be closer to God,  why would we expect it to happen? Jesus in the gospel of John tells us that we must be born anew, born of the spirit, and at baptism that is exactly what happens, but we must remember that is but the birth. If we do not seek to be drawn closer to Christ through the grace of God, then we are exactly what Paul says we are; infants.   For this reason we must continue to seek the grace of God through those means of grace that we talked about last week. We must continue to pray, both in private and with others. We must continue to receive the sacraments, as often as possible in fact. We must continue read the Bible and to also discuss it with others, because though our culture tells us the importance of our personal faith, we must remember that we are members of the body of Christ, and therefore our faith is not just a personal faith, but one that is connected to all members of the body.  We must be in service to those in need, seeking justice where injustice lies. When we talk about church growth, we must first talk not about growing in numbers, but growing in in faith, or in spirituality as Paul puts it.

            Paul makes a wise observation about growth however, and that is that things change when we grow. It is in making this point that I believe Paul’s term of infant is so powerful. After calling the Corinthians infants, he makes an interesting analogy using baby food.  He says, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready,” Paul reminds us that in our own physical lives the nourishment we receive changes. When we are infants we are fed milk, when we grow a little we begin to eat baby food, mashed up carrots or peas, pretty bland food, As we grow we begin to eat more and more; when often begin to like spices that we didn’t use to, and we begin to recognize our need to eat healthier as well. Our growth in Christ is very much like this.   When we first came into the church we probably came and grew from simple messages of faith. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not die but have eternal life.” The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”  We were satisfied with just sitting back and being passive listeners in worship, and an occasional Bible study would fill us, and we would never really wrestle with some of the difficult questions.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  What really is the trinity?  How do we interact with other Christians who have some different theological ideas than us? 

            Paul reminds us that in the beginning of our new life as a Christian we are fed what he calls baby food. This sounds harsh, but in reality there is nothing wrong with this. For most of us when we are young in our spiritual lives this is what we need to ground and strengthen our faith. It would be almost foolish to demand answers to those hard questions from someone who is still young in their faith.  The problem arises when we never move past baby food. If we live with a shallow understanding of our faith, then our faith will be shallow. As we have said our goal as Christians, our goal as the body of Christ is not to be baptized and then just sit and wait, but we must continue to grow closer to God. We must continue to strive towards Christian perfection, that is to love as God loves. That means we need to move past baby food, and start feeding us with the rich nourishment that God provides to us through those means of grace that we talked about last week.  It might mean a more active role in worship or in the life of the church, it may mean taking more time for prayer, or reading the Bible more, or even reading in through the lens of views that might challenge your own. Just like our bodies that grow when we take on the nourishment that we need, so too will we grow both individually and together as we continue to grow in our faith. You see those church growth seminars, books, and vital congregation statistic collection is not wrong about our need to grow by reaching out to others and bringing them into the church, but real church growth begins with how we push ourselves, challenge ourselves and grow in our faith. Because others will see that growth in the church, and see the growth in our personal lives and say, I want that in my life, I want to be a part of that.  The real growth of this church, the real growth of any church, begins within.

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary Volume X

"Means of Grace" (1 Corinthians 2:1-16)

Sermon as Preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 2/9/14

A few weeks ago in a children’s message as we began this sermon series, I asked the children, “If you had to tell something very important to someone else how would you do it?”  There was a variety of responses, starting with the most obvious you would tell them by speaking to them. But then I asked, “What if that person is far away, how then would you tell them this message?” The children and I came up with a great list of ways to communicate the information such as: calling them on the telephone, texting them, emailing them, and of course writing them a letter; the means in which Paul used to communicate with the church in Corinth.  This little exercised showed us that there were many different means in which we are able to tell people the good news of Jesus Christ.  But what if I rephrased the question, what if the question was no longer about how we can tell others about the gospel, what if it were not about means of communicating with people at all but instead means of being in contact with God?  How then would we answer the question? What are the means in which we experience God, what are the means in which God’s wisdom is revealed to us, what are the means by which we experience God’s grace?

            Why do I ask this?  I ask because this is the next logical question to ask if we continue to follow Paul’s line of thinking in the beginning of 1 Corinthians, like we have been doing over the past few weeks. How so?  Well let’s do a little recap of the argument that Paul has been making.  At the very beginning of chapter 1 Paul commends the people of Corinth for the ways in which they have shared the gospel message and  the ways in which they have grown; but throughout this commendation Paul makes it abundantly clear that everything that they were able to do was through the power of Jesus Christ. In other words, all authority belongs to Christ, and everything that we do in the church is a testament to the glory of God, not to our own power.  This is key to our understanding of 1 Corinthians; the rest of Paul’s argument centers around an understanding that all honor, power, and glory belongs to God.  Paul will later develop this point further by using the analogy of a body for the church, stipulating that the head of the body is Christ.

            We see that this understanding of the authority and power of Christ is important for Paul to write to the Corinthians because there were many divisions amongst the members of the church. There were divisions based upon authority; some claimed authority based upon who they were baptized by, For example some claimed Apollos, and others claimed Paul.  Other divisions occurred in the church due to a diversity of spiritual gifts; those who had a particular spiritual gift believed that theirs was the most important, and that it warranted them having more power and authority in the church. Other divisions in the church centered around those with Jewish heritage and Gentiles, while still other divisions occurred due to wealth and poverty. Paul once again reminds the Corinthians that authority and power does not belong to any individual, but that it belongs to God; that we were not baptized in the name of anyone other than Christ.

            This moves Paul into the last part of the first chapter that we talked about last week in which we see Paul starts to make a differentiation between our power and God’s power; between our wisdom and God’s wisdom.  Paul acknowledges that there is a wisdom of the world, that especially in those times power was derived from those who were the greatest speakers, greatest debaters, those who were fluent in the writings of Aristotle and Plato and many of the other classical philosophers.  Paul recognizes that there is a understanding of power in the world that raises up an individual based upon his knowledge, and based upon what signs of strength and wonder they have performed. Paul labels these things as the wisdom of the world. Paul then contrasts this wisdom of the world, with the wisdom of God. He says that to the standards of the world, the wisdom of God seems foolish, where in reality, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”  For this reason we can all recognize the call that God has given us, for most of us are not from noble birth, nor are many of us rich, but Christ can use that which may seem foolish to the world as part of his wisdom, the Holy Spirit can take that which seems weak to the world and make it powerful.

            And it is at this point in the argument that we find ourselves this morning, now into chapter 2.  Paul has set up the wisdom of the world against that of the wisdom of God, as these two vastly different things. Paul has then left us with the notion we as members of the body of Christ are able to act in the wisdom and the power of God.  And so the question must be asked how. If we are human, not God, which of course none of us are God,  then the power that we have is power that we have is the power of this world, the wisdom that we have is the wisdom of this world? How are we as humans supposed to obtain the wisdom of God?  By what means do we receive this grace? Can we even obtain it at all?

            Well, the last question is by far the easiest to answer; Can we obtain the wisdom of God? Paul tells us flat out that the answer is yes. “Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. ⁷ But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.⁹ But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived,what God has prepared for those who love him.”   Yes we are able to obtain the wisdom of God; it is not the wisdom of this age, or the wisdom of the rulers of this age, it is the eternal wisdom of God. Paul makes it clear that we who love God, who seek to be in relationship with God truly can receive this wisdom.

            But how? How can we as mere mortals receive wisdom from the Almighty God?  The way that Paul answers this question is one of the reasons I love this text so much; Paul’s answer is very Trinitarian. We have already acknowledged that the head of the Body of Christ is none other than Jesus Christ, and Paul refers to God the father and the eternal  nature of God’s wisdom; but here in the second chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul stresses the importance of the often neglected third person of the trinity; the Holy Spirit.  these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.¹¹ For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.”   Paul reminds us that humans are both mortal and spiritual creatures, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to receive wisdom from God. This Holy Spirit working within us is the way that we are able to be in communion with God, as Paul says in another one of his letters, the letter to the Romans, “When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” In other words it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to experience the grace of God.

            The question still remains, how?  If the Holy Spirit is working with me to reveal God’s grace and wisdom to me, then shouldn’t I know it all? Shouldn’t bask in the power and glory of God rather than falling into the darkness of my day to day failures?  If the Holy Spirit connects us with God, then why do I still feel as though I am not wholly connected?  Paul tells us, “Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny. For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.” Paul once again tells us that we are able to have the mind of Christ, but how? We know that it is through the power of the Holy Spirit, but it certainly doesn’t seem as though we obtain it now.  But Paul tells us that those who are spiritual discern all things, and this discern is a critical word. We do not obtain all things, we search all things. The Holy Spirit does not give us the mind of God so that we ourselves may be like God; instead the Holy Spirit connects us to God. The Holy Spirit helps us to follow God’s will, to love as God loves. We have the mind of Christ not as our own mind, but we have the mind of Christ because we are all members of the body, and Christ is the head that leads us. The grace of God helps us to discern God’s will, and the love as God loves.

            And yet still we ask how? Yes we know it is through the Holy Spirit, but what are ways in which we are able to receive this grace, what are the means of grace? John Wesley described means of grace as, “outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to men, preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.”[1] Wesley says it pretty well, it is the channels in which God conveys to us grace. For Wesley, the means of grace could be broken into two different categories, “works of piety” and the “works of mercy”[2] Works of mercy are exactly what they sound like. It is our joining in with service to God and service to others.  Through works of mercy, these acts of service, we are able to receive the grace of God.  Now let me be clear, it is not that these acts of service cause grace, it should not be viewed as an action that produces the outcome of grace, if that were the case we would be saving ourselves. Rather, it is through works of mercy that we open ourselves to experiencing the grace of Christ in our lives. They are channels that we know of in which it is possible for us to receive grace.  Many people today are brought into the church through participation in acts of service.  The act of helping someone else in need can stir something inside to make a person realize there is something much greater at work. Cleaning a park, planting new trees, or participating in a recycling program can allow us to understand God’s love for all creation.  There are so many works of mercy available to us, and they are truly amazing ways in which we are able to experience God’s grace.

            We are able to experience this grace in other ways than works of mercy as well; Wesley called these means of grace works of piety. These are the actions that we do, both individually and communally, that are more intentionally geared towards spiritual growth.  We often call these spiritual disciplines, and they include but are not limited to, public and private prayer, worship, public and private reading of scripture, fasting, and the sacraments, which for United Methodists is Baptism and Communion.  Just as the was the case with works of mercy, works of piety do not produce grace, but they are channels in which we can experience it.  They are almost like the tuner on the radio, that you turn and turn and work at, that helps to bring a station in more clearly.

            Paul tells us here in chapter two, that though we are humans, we are capable of obtaining the wisdom of God. We know that this is through the power of the Holy Spirit, and John Wesley has helped us in our understanding of how exactly we can best receive this wonderful grace. And yet if we do nothing, how will we ever grow closer to God?  If we are not out in service, if we are not participating in worship, reading or Bibles, praying with God, receiving the sacraments, how can we expect to experience God’s grace drawing us into a deeper communion with Christ, with each other, and with all the company of heaven?  If we do nothing we are relying on our own strength, our own wisdom, but I don’t know about you, but I’d rather rely on the strength and wisdom of the Almighty. Paul’s message for us today, is that if we want to grow as the body of Christ, we must grow closer to God, and that this is not an impossible task because of the grace we receive through the power of the Holy Spirits. A church that serves, a church that studies the word, a church that prays, a church that partakes of the sacraments, that is a church that grows, for that is a church growing closer to God.

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[1] John Wesley, “Means of Grace”

[2] John Wesley, “On Zeal”