A message right to you

1 Corinthians 16 (all if it, but especially vs. 13-14)

Last weekend Andy got a bug to clean out the basement storage area, and he plunged right in. I didn’t realize it was happening until I heard the dragging, thumping and banging, and the occasional shout of an unintelligible swear word that comes when something gets pinched or whacked, a sure sign in my house that a construction job of sorts is well under way. By the time I came down to investigate, tubs of baby clothes and Easter baskets, a treestand and a typewriter, empty luggage and over a dozen full boxes of college and grad school notes were pulled out of storage and piled around the playroom, and he was dismantling the shelving piece by piece.  It’s been ten years since those walls have seen the light of day, and there was some work to do to get everything “back up to code.”

 In the midst of the chaos, I poked around in a box or two and found some old journals of mine, which I carried upstairs and spent some time reading this week.

These journals are funny and sad, boring and captivating. There are things I remember differently than I wrote about them and things I didn’t remember at all. I felt strongly about some things that don’t matter to me anymore, and some of my thoughts and beliefs that have changed a lot. There were dilemmas I was in the middle of that found resolution, and prayers written in great longing that I can look back on now and see clear answers to. Mostly, I marveled at how open and transparent I was with God.  Each entry is addressed to God because journaling was, for most of my life, my primary way of praying.  There is celebration and gratitude, anger and frustration, confusion and doubt, seeking, wondering, doing the best I could, failing and learning.  My life unfolding in connection to God.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the Bible is a kind of scrapbook of faith, the story of those who’ve gone before and their unfolding connection to God.  The Psalms are like journals written to God, honest and rejoicing, struggling and angry.  There are and letters and lists, poetry and prose, so many different and diverse individuals and communities and God’s relationship with humanity in the midst of their real life. All of it pointing us to: Who is this God? And what is God up to?

I love this closing chapter of 1 Corinthians that we have before us today simply because it’s so weird.  We don’t know what to do with it – it’s not in any lectionary; I have never heard any sermons or read any commentaries on 1 Corinthians 16. It’s just so darn ordinary. It’s the end of a letter, Tell so and so I said hi. Be nice to so and so when they come, they can be a little annoying. I keep trying to get so and so to visit but he is being stubborn about it.  I guess he’ll come when he’s good and ready. I really miss you. I am planning to come but want to stay a long time and not just pass through. All these other people say hi and hang in there, they’re praying for you.

It’s so obviously pedestrian that I get a little bit of awe - like finding a baby picture of your grandma, or pictures of ancient artifacts of dinner dishes buried in an Egyptian tomb – it makes me stop suddenly, struck with the awareness that we’re all just ordinary people. They were just living their life.  This chapter of 1 Corinthians says, This really is a letter; these people’s struggles and questions were real, their longings and their mistakes, their hopes and their dreams, their arguments and their bad habits – they were really wanting to follow Christ and live the faith alongside each other. And so they wrote and received letters.

And all that we’ve seen Paul talk to them about in this letter – scolding, encouraging, frustrated and joyful – had an impact in their community-  their actual lives were changed by this letter.

Paul blasting them for dividing themselves over who they first heard the gospel from – Has Christ been divided? Was Paul baptized for you? And admonishing them to be vigilant about rooting out division in all the insidious and subtle ways it creeps in… Someone received those words and felt convicted. Somebody thought, “He’s talking about me! What have I done?”  And then they had to talk about it and forgive each other, and new ways of relating were established because of what he wrote to them.

And when Paul talks about the true wisdom –that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other- that God came in weakness to share suffering and not in might to save the perfect and the powerful, it goes so radically against the world’s wisdom and logic that they needed to keep hearing it again and again and again. I wonder if that portion of the parchment was worn thin, read over and over, passed around and discussed in hushed tones and wonder.

Paul noted how – even perhaps accidentally – their meals together leading up to the Lord’s Supper were not reflecting the true communityof God. They were held in a rich person’s home and rich folks came first and sat in the best spot and ate their fill before the slaves got off work and the poor people made their way on foot.  And even though they said, and believed, they were all in this together, this meal in here looked a lot like the lies out there.  So he said, Don’t you dare sit down to this meal – don’t you lift that bread or cup -  without first seeing your brother and sister alongside you, really seeing them. And really seeing yourself- all of you, sinners in need of forgiveness, and saints sharing in the holy healing work of God.

And then they had to go have a communion together after reading this! They had to suddenly hold off the food until everyone got there. Stop the ones who started eating too soon. Figure out a new place to meet maybe, or a different time of day, that shifted the power dynamics.  Notice where they were sitting, who was being greeted first, and ask themselves if it reflected the kingdom of the world or the kingdom of God? They had to see their sin – their separation from God and each other-  to own it and repent for it, to see each other and try things a different way.

And then, when he talks all about them being all one body, all different – each with gifts just as valuable as each others – and that it is love that makes the whole thing move, what did that feel like to read?  Did it make them look inside at how they had discounted their own contributions, or look around and see for the first time the profound impact of the quiet ones, and the generous ones, and the hidden ones who don’t get noticed but, it turns out, hold the whole place together?

Did they find themselves growing in love for one another, when they realized love isn’t something they can muster or perfect; it can only be received and shared? How did it feel to acknowledge their weakness and celebrate each other’s strengths? How did look to own their blaming, boasting, critiquing and jealousy, and deliberately let love be the true guiding force within everything they did or said?

And then the death part- the part of the letter Paul saves for last – that part about how Jesus’ resurrection means that death no longer has the final say about life –and that death is not, in fact, the end. That the sting of death is sin – it’s power to separate us from God and each other, to degrade and destroy and stunt a hope and a future – that that power is taken up in Christ Jesus and defeated, so that one day there will be no more suffering, and all that is wrong will be made right.  And in the meantime, Christ has died, Christ has been raised, death’s say is temporary, and the conclusion of everything is God’s love.  How was that for them to hear? These people who were struggling to make sense of all this? To let this bizarre claim that Jesus was raised from the dead actually shape them? How did it impact their regular lives – their sleep, their waking hours, their work and their prayer, the way they treated each other, the way they saw their own bodies and futures, when they began to see that the final word over it all is not death, but life? Did it make them braver? More open? Did it give them a new lens to see the world around them - precious to God and being redeemed?

And beyond all this, the letter is filled with so many more particularities that we didn’t get into this summer- real world problems and questions these people struggled with, and in response to them all Paul keeps hammering home these truths –You belong to God and to each other, everyone is valuable, quit finding ways to separate yourselves from each other and from God, that is sin. The love of God endures forever and it claims you – you can live bravely instead of fearfully, you can use your gifts to contribute to the well-being of everyone, you can seek God, and be honest about your weakness and your need for forgiveness, you can celebrate with each other and grieve with each other because God’s love holds you, and now defines you, and you can trust in this love, because it will never ever end.

Imagine receiving that message by courier, and cracking it open! And not just in generalities, but in the very situations you had found yourself mired in! The very places you were doubting God’s love, breaking connection with each other, struggling to understand, wishing you were seen. Imagine what a gift, and a challenge, these words would be!

Right now this little diverse community, in all our quirks and oddities, is gathered here, and we come with all different burdens and worries, or own questions, struggles and situations.

We’re in the midst of transitions – and even good change is almost always both hopeful and fearful. We are so excited to be soon officially acknowledging Lisa’s calling as a pastor to this congregation, believing that by her sermons and visits, her teaching and her care, God will keep leading us to love each other more and seek Christ in all things. 

But also lots of people around the country have been waiting for Lisa to be ordained for a really long time, and suddenly, for a short time, a lot of attention will be on our little congregation. And I feel protective, a bit, of the gift that it is to be in this Jesus-following thing with each other, and the faithfulness with which we try to share each others’ burdens and joys, and seek God together. And I don’t want that to be overshadowed or swallowed by other people’s perceptions and noise.

Along with this, after eight years, my job is changing a bit to include writing. And some people here might feel anxious that it means I wont be as available, or that my focus or attention will drift away from this community. And I feel anxious that people feel anxious about that. Because I love this church, and I love being your pastor, and I am completely committed to you.  

And at the same time I feel both grateful, and nervous, that this calling to write about what God is doing in our lives, in my life, is being recognized by session as part of the ministry God is doing here. And in the middle of all that anxiety and hope, as one person said, “We will have to trust God and trust each other.”

And we all have questions we would ask Paul if we could. 

We wrestle with our voice and our role as Christians, and frankly, humans, in the midst of a vitriolic election season. 

We struggle with how to parent our kids or support our grandkids in a break-neck paced world with competing voices everywhere. 

We’re faced with our own mortality and weakness in half a dozen different ways. 

We see violence and hatred around us, and fear seems like a more effective, or at least more prevalent, response than love.

Change is scary and life is hard, and it all makes us sometimes doubt what we trust in, and fall back on the wisdom of the world, the always available way of fear: hunker down and divide, compare and rank, hide your real self for fear of judgment, judge others, count your money, horde your resources, build up your boundaries, and let suspicion and apprehension speak louder than faith, hope and love.

I wish Paul’s letter was written right to us. That we could read it addressed right to our own circumstances…

But that’s the power of scripture, beloveds, because it is. 

We believe the Holy Spirit speaks right to us, through these words written in a letter long ago to an ordinary group of people who were learning how to live in the freedom of Christ.  What God wants us to know and trust and see and change comes to us through their experience, because we too are an ordinary group of people learning how to live in the freedom of Christ. God was with them. God is with us. These words are to them. These words are to us.

So after all these weeks we’ve lived with the messages of this book, watching how they interact with our lives, helping us ask, Who is this God, and what is God up to? In our world, in our hearts, in our homes, in our relationships and our questions, I love that in this last, rambling chapter, Paul leaves this nugget:

Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

And so I will hold that in front of us today. Sisters and brothers:

Keep alert: Stay open, pay attention.

Stand firm in your faith: hold to what you know to be true.

Don’t back away from your trust in God.

Be courageous: Give it all you’ve got. Speak up, reach out.

Be strong: resolute, tenacious and steadfast.

And let all you do be done in love. Everything. Every word spoken, every action taken.  Love is meant to be what holds us together and propels us forward, it is the lifeblood of it all.

I am thankful to the Corinthians for all their screw-ups. I am thankful they had the courage to write and ask their questions. And that they really longed to love each other, and that they really sought to turn their whole lives toward God. Because their experience of God and life together shapes our experience of God and life together.

And I am thankful for the people in this room. I am thankful for all of our own questions and struggles, and our longing to love well and our seeking to turn our whole lives towards God. Because your experience of God and life shape my experience of God and life.

And so it continues.

Amen.

Dear Fellow Faithers...

Romans 1:1-17

Paul is about to write a doozie of a letter, a tome, that one scholar (NT Wright) calls an “Alpine peak that towers over the hills and villages” of his other writings.  

Dear Romans…

Oh, he has so much to say to them! 

He is going to say something about everything he believes in and all that leads him! He is going to go on and on and paint the whole picture for them, and for us: all about our relationship to God and all the things we turn to instead, and how we have been made free but continue to live as though we were slaves to sin, and about grace and how it changes us and invites us always back into that freedom. About how it’s for everyone, and all that it looks like to live in freedom and life with God and each other. 

He’s going to unpack it all!

And he needs to start out by saying that it all begins with Jesus and comes back to Jesus.  That in him we are reconciled to God, called God’s beloved, called to be followers, sharers in grace. 

And even though he really is going to say all of this in such a very thorough way in the letter, he can’t help himself, so he launches right into it with his greeting, filling the return address box with perhaps the world’s longest run-on sentence. It begins, “From Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” which is this – about Jesus, who is this - and then goes on to jam it with an ever unfolding description of what it all means, dropping descriptions open like an accordion file, one leading to the next, leading to the next, conjunction upon conjunction, like scarves being pulled from the clown’s sleeve.  Before I even say hello, this is what I want you to hear- where this gospel begins and what it’s for.

 “Gospel” means good news, and Paul is insistent that it is not just some flat message; it is the very power of God to change the world.  And it isn’t just words about something that happened – that Jesus came – but it’s truth about something that keeps happening, claiming us and doing something in us and to us and through us, and he can hardly keep from saying it all right off the bat.

I tried to diagram this opening sentence, and instead ended up making lists about all subjects and objects in the text – God, Jesus, the gospel, Paul, the Romans, others, how the text describes them.  Then I added arrows going every which way – the power of God and choosing of God flowing through Jesus to Paul and the believers in Rome, the way Paul sees his whole mission and calling as coming through Jesus, from God, and connecting him to them.  It’s all a lovely web of interconnection, really, coming from God and returning to God and empowered by Christ and bringing us to Christ, and needing one another and meeting one another. 

I considered bringing in a ball of string and asking people to stand up here and throw it around as each person is mentioned as the source, recipient or vehicle of action, so we can see how Paul really does see it all connected to God through Christ, inviting each other to trust God, and finding that when we hear about one another’s obedience of faith our own faith is strengthened all the more.

At our session meeting Thursday I shared about a hard decision I had to make to say No to something I had already said Yes to.  And part of the decision process for me was realizing that living in God’s abundance, instead of in scarcity, means accepting that I am a limited human being.  And it means believing that I can trust that God will accomplish what God wants to do through those who can participate in freedom and joy.  It means not choosing to do something because I am afraid to miss out (which I often am) or because I think somehow God can’t get it done without me (which, unfortunately, I often do).  And, after three days of hesitating, when I finally said No, I felt peace and release. I felt like I was living into trust in God and my interconnection in the world.

And when I shared this with the other folks at session, more stories came out, about the courage to live in trust instead of fear.  And how it feels when we do, and how hard it is to do.  How we are so pulled toward wanting to live in fear and self protection – what we will hear Paul call slavery to sin -  and instead we are to be, as Paul describes himself here, "a slave of Jesus Christ," meaning that everything in our life reflects the life of the one to whom we belong, who sets us free to live in love and connection to God and each other, instead of being trapped in cycles of self-protection that shut others out, and self-destruction that shuts God out.

And what a gift it is not to be in this alone!  We looked around the table at each other and could feel how we need to hear each other’s struggles with this, and share each other’s successes, how we help each other to trust and to live in the promise of God’s freedom and life when the alternative is breathing down our necks all the time.

I imagine the community in Rome receiving this letter from Paul.  Getting the huge package from Fed Ex and breaking open the seal.  They had not yet met Paul, and wouldn’t until years later when he ended up in Rome under house arrest and they could visit him whenever they wanted to hear him teaching from his front porch rocker in between writing letters to other churches and people far and wide. 

But Paul has heard of the believers in Rome, and they have heard of him, and they all know are in this thing together.  And Paul is longing for the chance to sit down with them in a way that strengthens all of their trust and encourages them all in this life in Christ.

They didn’t have things figured out.  They were bumbling along, messing up and learning from it, having conflicts and sorting them out, facing adversity and persecution and figuring out who they were in the midst of it, as they learned how to be in relationship with God and each other in this new way. Jews and Gentiles, with all these different beliefs and cultural practices that had shaped their upbringing, and still directed their lives, trying to figure out together how to follow this Jewish Messiah and what it means to be in the Body of Christ together. 

Imagine what it felt like to open this giant letter, filled with deep theological explanations, how rich and wonderful it would be to begin to digest it with one another! To read it aloud all together, and lay it alongside the scriptures the Jewish brothers and sisters brought with the stories of God’s faithfulness of old. To speak it out beside the word of mouth stories from Jesus-followers passed around, and use it to enlighten the transformative encounters with God through the Holy Spirit they themselves had, and to wrestle together about what it all means and how to live faithful to it.

There was no bible yet. This letter, which ends up in the bible, would’ve been such a gift, such instruction and direction and encouragement.  

And perhaps Paul is thinking about this as he begins in such an intense, verbose and deliberate way – drawing their attention immediately to Jesus, to their connection to God through him, and to their mutual call to faith and trust.

So our verses today from this letter are the address label and the opening greeting, the delicious doorway into what’s coming - Paul’s message that will unfold wider and wider, into a huge, colorful, elaborately detailed canvas of language and ideas, explanations and admonitions, words that point to the reality that we are drawn into the life of Jesus Christ and all the rest of everything else begins from this place and leads back to this place.

And it is by faith that this happens.  “The righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith,” it says.  We are going to spend a lot more time with this word, so let me just introduce it in Paul’s introduction – his thesis statement for the whole letter that our text ends with today - by saying Faith is trust, but it also has loyalty in it, and it originates in God’s trustworthiness and loyalty, God’s relationship to God’s beloved people, and Jesus relationship of trust and obedience to God, and we are called to participate in that.

There is one word family, pistis, that encompasses “believing, trusting, faith, faithfulness, belief, trust” and can be translated any of these ways or even as some verb form like, "faithing."  One scholar (Michael Gorman, in Reading Paul) explains, “Forms of this word-family appear in Paul’s letters more than 200 times. Depending on the context, Paul can stress one aspect or another of this complex phenomenon that we…refer to as faith.”

So in “faith” we are drawn into this bond of trust that exists between God and Jesus, this connection that binds us to one another in love, and shapes our lives into a response of trusting and faithing, and helping each other do the same.

If we zoom up from the big web we’ve just created from imaginary string, here is basically what Paul is so eager to get started saying: we’re all called by God into a life defined by God’s saving love in Jesus Christ that happens through a trust relationship opened up to us in God.

I want to close by reading you a paraphrase of these verses (adapted from Eugene Peterson's The Message), and I am going to ask you to close your eyes and imagine that this letter is coming to you. 

We are going to pause a few minutes, and I invite you to call up in your mind where you are right now in your own faith, by which I mean, consider, and then hold in your imagination, an honest sense of your own relationship of trust with Jesus, your connection to other believers/trusters, and how that trust plays out or doesn’t, in your life these days… 

I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God’s words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Minneapolis, God’s friends.

The sacred writings contain preliminary reports by the prophets on God’s Son. His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master. Through him we received both the generous gift of his life, and the urgent task of passing it on to others, who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus.

You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ! And I greet you now with all the generosity of God our Father and our Master Jesus, the Messiah.

I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That’s first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him. And God, whom I so love to worship and serve by spreading the good news of his Son, knows that every time I think of you in my prayers, which is practically all the time, I ask him to clear the way for me to come and see you. The longer this waiting goes on, the deeper the ache. I so want to be there to deliver God’s gift in person and watch you grow stronger right before my eyes! But don’t think I’m not expecting to get something out of this, too! You have as much to give me as I do to you.

Please don’t misinterpret my failure to visit you, friends. You have no idea how many times I’ve made plans for Minneapolis. I’ve been determined to get some personal enjoyment out of God’s work among you, as I have in so many other non-Jewish towns and communities. But something has always come up and prevented it.

Everyone I meet—it matters little whether they’re mannered or rude, smart or simple—deepens my sense of interdependence and obligation. And that’s why I can’t wait to get to you in Minneapolis, preaching this wonderful good news of God.

It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of the power of God for new life to everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right relationship with God by trusting him REALLY LIVES.” 

Amen.