On Not Tripping the Neighbor

1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Ordinary 4
January 31, 2021
William G. Carter

Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. “Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

Some of our best lessons are learned at the dinner table. For that reason, the Bible doesn’t shy away from talking about the meals that we share and the food that we eat.

In the Gospels, Jesus sends out seventy of his followers to extend his work. He instructs them to travel lightly: don’t take a lot of money, don’t carry any luggage, take only the clothes on your back. And then he says this: “Eat whatever they put in front of you.” (Luke 10:7)

I have often winced when I think of that word. Back before the pandemic struck, I enjoyed sharing meals with people in the church, but I can be a picky eater, so I was wary of whatever people out in front of me. Specifically, I don’t pork as a matter of preference. Do you know how much ham Presbyterians eat? And one of God’s beloved servants would lovingly prepare a ham and set it before me. And Jesus said, “Eat whatever they put in front of you.”  

Eating has always been an issue in the early church. When the early Christians ate together, there was never any pork on the table. They were Jewish; traditional Jews wouldn’t touch a ham hock or a piece of bacon. But as the Gospel spread beyond its Jewish beginnings, the church had to work through its own diversity. That’s part of the back story of the passage we have just heard.

In another of his letters, the apostle Paul recounts a painful episode. He remembers how he went to Jerusalem to discuss his work with the church leaders. After a long conversation, Peter, James, and John agreed that Paul’s mission was to the Gentiles, and their work would continue among the Jews. They shook hands, sang “Kum Ba Yah,” and encouraged one another to remember the poor.

But then, he says, he and the apostle Peter met up later in the city of Antioch. It was a big deal. The church planned a potluck meal. It’s not every week that a church gets two apostles at the same table. One of the Gentiles brought pork chops, and nobody thought otherwise. Paul had been among the Gentiles, so he would eat anything. Peter had a well-known vision about food (Acts 10), so he stuck his fork in a pork chop.

But then the door opened, and some of the Jewish believers showed up. Peter picked up his tray and went to sit at their table. Paul says, “I stomped over there, stared him in the eye, and said, ‘You are a hypocrite before God!’” We don’t know if they ever spoke to one another again. It had to do with food (Galatians 2:1-14).

There are lessons to be learned at the dinner table. Whom do we welcome? Whom do we exclude? I confess to all of you my reluctance to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on YouTube. We had done it a few times, but frankly, it’s not the Lord’s Supper if you can’t be here. I hope you understand and are patient with me.

And I am guided in this thinking by the apostle Paul. He talks about communion in this letter to the Corinthian church. They gathered in those early days to hear the Word of Jesus, break bread, and drink the cup. Well that was the plan. Sadly some of the wealthy members were hoarding all the wine, even to the point of getting tipsy. They also went ahead with their meal while the poorer folks went hungry. Paul said, “I don’t know what you think you are doing but that’s not the Lord’s Supper!”

“When you come together,” he says, “you proclaim the saving death of our Risen Lord. Wait for one another. Discern that the Lord is present, for together you are the body of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). This is a lesson that comes from the dinner table. A lot of good lessons come from the dinner table.

So today, we listen in as Paul takes up one more matter about meals. The people of Corinth have reached out to ask, “How do you feel about beef sacrificed to Zeus? Or lamb dedicated to Aphrodite?” Apparently, the local butchers would haul their goods to the local temples to get the local priests to bless the food before they sold it. Or something like that. If the meat was Temple Blessed, it was more desirable. Perhaps they could charge a higher price for it.

This may sound like a crazy question to you and me, but it was a big deal for the Corinthians. For one thing, it clashed with local economics. No doubt the priest, the temple, and the butcher got a piece of the income as the food was dedicated to the deities du jour, a series of surcharges passed on to the consumers. That’s why scholar Ken Bailey claims the poor folk in the city of Corinth couldn’t afford the temple-blessed meat.[1] If Christ calls rich and poor to the same table, it must be a level table where all sit together.

For another thing, the Corinthian church had an ample supply of know-it-alls. You didn’t even have to poke them with a stick, and they had a ready answer. From what we can surmise from Paul’s document, some of the know-it-alls didn’t think this matter was worthy of the attention of an apostle, much less themselves.

We can almost hear them say it, “Why are you bothering Paul with this? We know there is only one God. Pagan idols are stupid. Food sacrificed at a pagan temple is nothing. It’s only food. And if this matter ever ends up in the pages of scripture someday, we don’t want smart people thinking we are a city full of superstitious idiots.”

It's curious, then, how Paul addresses the matter. He does not make light of it. He does not dismiss it. He takes the concern seriously because he takes the Corinthian people seriously. Maybe not so much the know-it-alls, but he cares about the sensitive souls, the confused believers, the good Christian folks who are trying to make sense of what their faith in Jesus has to say to a world that doesn’t believe in Jesus.

It’s a big question. If your faith teaches you there is One God who is above all other things, how do you buy meat from a butcher shop that does not reflect your values? How do you purchase the daily goods you need from merchants whose view of the world is so different from your own? In the broadest way, how do you make your way through the world with those of different beliefs, temperaments, and commitments? It’s a big question, so big that it will spill into next week’s text and sermon.

For the matter of buying, eating, and serving pagan meat, there are a couple of options. One option is to pull back from the surrounding culture and stand apart. Some people do this. They pull their kids out of schools that teach science and deal with facts. They would set up an alternative enclave that welcomes only those who agree with them. In the matter of meat, they would never buy a cow from Zeus; they would raise a calf for Jesus.

Notice: Paul does not respond in that direction. Oh no, he takes an expansive view. There is One God – One! This is the God who makes everything! To quote one of the Psalm that the apostle could recite, “The earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). There is one world, and it is God’s world. Even that neighbor of yours – whether indifferent to God or troubled by Zeus – is someone “for whom Christ died” (8:11).

So we don’t pull back from the world. We engage it, in the name of the God who made it. This is a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of time. It requires deep thinking and an open heart. For this is the mind of Christ, to redeem the world that does not know Christ.

If I might say it, any scheme that entices Christian people to withdraw from the world and hide is not Christian. Not in the name of the God who comes into the world in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. He never pulled back the world he so loved, and neither will those who love him. There is One God, through whom all things exist. That’s the first move Paul makes.

The second move is even more important and timely for us. To put it in his words, “Take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” That is the message for our times.

Paul knows he is free in Christ. In Christ, he can live as a Jew or befriend the Gentile. He is free. If God creates all things, he is not beyond taking a bite out a Zeus Burger, especially if it has a little mayonnaise and a slice of red onion. Yet he doesn’t have to do it, especially if it going to offend a sister or brother in the faith.

There is something better than freedom: it’s employing your freedom to serve somebody else. There is something far greater than being right: it’s showing love. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if people backed off from any arrogance and shared a little love? What if we spend a whole lot more energy lifting people up rather than identifying enemies and putting them down?

I believe the world is ripe for a message like this. It cuts across the spectrum in so many ways. The most obvious, of course, is this pandemic. Eleven months in, and some still refuse to wear a face mask. To extend Paul’s concern, if you don’t think you need to wear a mask, how about if wear it anyway? Life is not about you, it’s about everybody else with you. It’s not merely about following a rule. It’s showing love for others by showing restraint. It is changing the lives of others by making sacrifices that lift them up.

A couple of years ago, I was driving the car and listening to a podcast. Malcolm Gladwell reported that an engineer named Hank Rowan had given a $100 million dollars to a public university in New Jersey. The school used to be called Glassboro State; now it’s called Rowan University. Gladwell asked, “Why did you do that?” Rowan said, “Engineers make things, so we need a lot of them. I wanted to make it possible for any hard-working student to become an engineer.” So he gave a 100 million to build an engineering department and provide a lot of scholarships. 

Malcolm Gladwell went to another school, an elite university on the coast, and asked the president, “What would your school do with a 100 million dollars?” The president perked up and began to share his dream of an advanced institute for biotechnology, a think-tank with a small number of high-paid researchers.

Gladwell confessed that universities have many visions for their endowments, but the contrast between these two is striking. He said it’s the difference between professional basketball and a soccer team. In pro basketball, the team puts five tall, overpaid, competitive superstars on the court. But soccer is a game where all the players depend on one another. The team is only as good as the weakest player on your team. If the soccer team is going to improve, it will only happen by lifting everybody up.[2]

Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  More about love next week!

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011) 239.

[2] Malcolm Gladwell, “Revisionist History,” season 1, episode 6. Accessed through http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-million

A Light Touch

1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Ordinary 3
January 24, 2021
William G. Carter

I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

There are plenty of scripture verses that give us a jolt. The first line of our text ranks high on the list: Paul says, “From now on, let those who have wives be as though they had none.”

Over the course of my pastoral ministry, I’ve encountered married people who didn’t act like they were married. It got some of them into trouble.

Picture a middle-aged sales manager who traveled a lot for business. He liked to meet up with his buddies in a nearby city. They had a favorite watering hole and frequently started the evening early. Sometimes it got out of hand, he confessed. On one occasion, he motioned to the waitress and declared, “I’ll have another.” One of the buddies said, “Does your wife ever get on your case for how much you drink?” Tom said, “I don’t care. And she’s not here.” 

Unknown to all of them, his wife had driven into town to surprise him. She had walked up behind him just in time to hear his wisecrack. “Tom!” she exclaimed. He snapped to attention. Then she asked, “Why did you take off your wedding ring?”

And Paul says, “Let those who have wives be as though they had none.” Why does he say something like that? It’s an unusual thing to say.

Of course, there are different ways of being married, as different as one couple from another. Some hold hands when they walk down the sidewalk. Other travel in separate cars. There are some extraordinary marriages where the two spouses work and sleep in separate cities. I don’t know how they do it. One wife said, “It works for us, and I never complain about him using my toothbrush.” Some of you can sympathize.

“Let those who have wives be as though they had none.” Who talks like this? The apostle Paul, for one. And he was never married, so what does he know?

What we have today are a few verses from the chapter where the apostle announces his commitment to staying single. He says to those who are unmarried, “It is good to remain unmarried, just like me.” (6:8) “Stay the way you are.” “I don’t want you to feel the anxieties of being married.”

It almost sounds like Paul is the one who is anxious. Years ago in a study group, some of us were reading through this chapter. One woman piped up, “I wouldn’t want to be married to him anyway.” We turned and looked at her.

She said, “Well, look at what he does: hopping on a ship, floating across the Mediterranean, arguing in the synagogues, running away before a mob comes after him with torches and pitchforks, in and out of jail, never staying in one place very long. You’d have to be crazy to be married to the apostle Paul. It would be exhausting.”

One of the seasoned widows smiled at her and said, “Now, honey, don’t be too hard on that man. I’m sure there was a Special Someone out there who would love to marry a preacher. After all, there’s a lid for every pot.”

To which Paul writes, “Let those who have wives be as though they had none.” I may be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like he was looking for a lid.

To read this whole chapter, we discover Paul is giving advice. The church in Corinth had a list of questions.

·         Some of them were converts, new Christians married to people who were not Christians. They loved their spouses, but what should they do?

·         Some of them were single people, a few with an eye on somebody else. They wanted to know, “Can we step up our game?”

·         Some of the church folk were engaged couples, tempted to get on with the honeymoon before they stated their vows. They were committed to one another, but the marriage wasn’t official yet.

·         All of them were citizens of Corinth. By all accounts, both sacred and secular, that Greek city was electrically charged with physical expressions of passion. How should a Christian live in a burning hot town?

Paul, the single man, takes their concerns seriously. He doesn’t dismiss a single question. In one situation after another, he offers the best advice he can. Paul does not presume this is “Christian advice,” as if he is the absolute authority on such matters. Rather he responds as a Christian to say, “These are my opinions. This is what I think. These are my rules. I think I’m speaking with the Holy Spirit.” 

And he already stood in a long-established moral tradition. I was on the phone with my friend Jim yesterday. He was asking about the sermon and is tuning in today to listen. “I’ve been reading the Book of Sirach with my coffee every morning,” he said, “and you might find some help in chapter 9.” (I have some unusual friends.)

So I found a copy of Sirach, also called “Ecclesiasticus.” It’s a Jewish book of wisdom from 200 BC. It almost made the cut for getting in the Bible. I looked up chapter 9. Let me give you a few highlights:

·         Do not be jealous of the wife of your bosom, or you will teach her an evil lesson to your own hurt. (9:1)

·         Do not go near a loose woman, or you will fall into her snares (9:3).

·         Do not dally with a singing girl, or you will be caught by her tricks (9:4)

·         Turn away your eyes from a shapely woman, and do not gaze at beauty belonging to another (9:8)

·         Never dine with another man’s wife or revel with her at wine, or your heart may turn aside to her, and in blood you may be plunged into destruction (9:9).[1] 

Now, Rabbi Paul certainly would have known the ninth chapter of Sirach. As a man, he certainly would have been instructed by this teaching to other men. He also would know how much of it is easily translated for women. Naturally, Jewish teachings like these would have bubbled up in his memory when he gets a letter from Corinth that asks, “Is OK for a man to touch a woman?”

But Paul has a concern of his own, a deeper concern. He knows the Corinthian church wants to talk about marriage and romance, but he wants to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because the death and resurrection of Jesus has changed everything. This is the conviction woven throughout all his writings.

For Paul, the world has changed – or more specifically, the old order of things is passing away. God gives birth to a new creation, a new kind of dominion. Christ was crucified, cancelling the powers of sin and destruction. Christ was raised from the dead, lifting him up as the Crucified and Living Ruler over “all things.” He is the One who is coming – and in that promise, every human relationship is flooded with light.  

We can hear him struggling to say this in a way the Corinthians can hear it. On the one hand, they are looking for helpful guidance to stabilize their chaotic lives. So Paul says, “I encourage you to stay the way you are. Don’t go dashing around. If you are single, stay single. If you’re in a relationship, be in a relationship. If you are married to a pagan, hang in there if you can because you might be a good influence on him. Don’t lead a disruptive life. What God is birthing in the world will be disruptive enough.

On the other hand, Paul has tasted the redemption of God in Jesus Christ. Here’s a man who was knocked off his high horse when he was chaotic and destructive. Then he was lifted out of the dust, forgiven, and offered new vision. He knows this is how the Gospel is unleashed in all its power. This is how the crucified and risen Christ works among us: through death and resurrection.

So his advice must be more than “don’t drink with wine with somebody else’s spouse” or “don’t dally with the singing girl.” The advice is more like “don’t dally with anybody.” The time is short, he says. Lead the life to which Christ has called you. For the present form of the world is passing away.  Ahh – there is the key to all of Paul’s thinking.[2]  

As I was working on this, my wife said, “What is your sermon about?” I confess I stammered a bit, started to say something, backpedaled, tried again. And then I remembered the other scripture text for today, the call of the first disciples. You remember it. Jesus walks the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. He sees two fishermen and calls them to follow. They drop everything and follow him. Then he sees two more and calls them; they abandon their father and follow Jesus.

There has always been plenty of speculation about why they did it. Why did they drop everything to follow him? Was there a twinkle in his eye? A special sound to his voice? Did they have some prior history with Jesus?

Mark doesn’t say any of that. Rather, Mark says Jesus preceded the call with an announcement. The time is full. God’s dominion is at hand. It’s right here, breaking in. Turn from the old ways and embrace the new.

Mark believes – and I believe – that Simon, Andrew, James, and John believed what Jesus announced. As Paul says it, “The present world is passing away.” As he says it somewhere else, “If anyone in in Christ, there is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come (2 Cor. 5:16).” As Paul says it somewhere else, “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).”

His invitation, then, is this:

If you are married, be married, yet keep a “light touch,” because Christ is going to reveal a love much more magnificent than anything you’ve ever experienced in marriage.

 

If you are grieving, that’s important work. Yet don’t let grief define everything, because something better than grief is at work in you through Christ.

 

If you are rejoicing, delighted that everything is going just fine for you, don’t expect the advantages and assets you enjoy will remain the same; for there must be a death before God’s resurrection.

 

And if you are preoccupied with buying a lot of possessions, filling up your garage with things you might need someday, spending your stimulus check on goods you never thought about before the money arrived, loosen your grip. Learn to live with less. The day is coming when having a lot of stuff will not matter.

 

And if you are consumed with dealing with the world, especially the powers and present principalities, take a breath, step back, and lighten up. Soon you won’t be dealing with the world. You’ll be dealing with God.

So the invitation today is an invitation to a certain kind of Christian freedom. It’s not a freedom that releases us from our commitments. Neither is it a freedom to turn us loose to pursue any old whim or hunger as it strikes us. No, it is the freedom of belonging to Christ, who, as Paul says more than once, “bought you with a price.” Whoever was called in the Lord is free, and you belong to Jesus before anything else. That is the Word from God for today.

Now I need to tell you, of course, that freedom can become distorted, even twisted out of shape. That’s the Word for next week, and I will see you then.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See online at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecclesiasticus+9&version=NRSVCE

[2] See J. Christiaan Beker, Paul’s Apocalyptic Gospel: The Coming Triumph of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1982, p. 29.

Thinking About Your Body

1 Corinthians 6:12-20
January 17, 2021
Ordinary 2
William G. Carter

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Among all the slogans tossed around over the last ten months, here’s one that I believe to be true: “The body is big business.” I don’t recall who said it, but it might have been uttered by the proprietor of a local gym. He was complaining how the health department shut him down as the corona virus took off. Offended by the action, he unlocked the doors and texted all his customers. That earned him a visit from the local police, with the threat of a whopping fine.

As I remember, his explanation ran in two parallel directions. The first was his affirmation that I believe to be true: “The body is big business.” Nobody can question that. People pay good money to join a gym and work out. They will hand over cash to purchase vitamin supplements and work-out clothing. They will join Weight Watchers and sign up for Zumba classes. Most of them feel better when they exercise. When they feel better, their positive spirit justifies the cost of getting in shape. For the gym owner, and for others in the industries of fitness, wellness, and health, “The body is big business.”

There was a second explanation which accompanied the first. His complaint was the temporary loss of his livelihood. People could not pay him when his gym was shut down. There were still expenses of rent and utilities. He wanted to keep most of the workers, and felt he needed to pay them something. But his chief offense was that somebody Out There was telling him to shut down. That’s what bothered him the most. And so he threw open the doors and declared, “I can do whatever I want.” So the authorities visited him again.

Those two slogans are familiar to us: “The body is big business,” and “I can do whatever I want.” In a strange way, both slogans intersected in the ancient city of Corinth. Situated by the sea on a narrow land bridge between the northern and southern halves of Greece, Corinth served as a way station for those passing through.

This may have been why the apostle Paul went there. He wanted to preach the Gospel in a high-traffic area. It was like plucking a ripe dandelion and puffing on the seeds. With a good gust of breath, the Gospel would spread. Jesus would be preached. The kingdom of God would take over the empire of Rome. That was his hope.

But this was Corinth. And one of the realities that a short-term preacher doesn’t realize is that much of the time you are preaching against the wind, not with it. You can lay out your five or six good sermons and then ride off into the sunset. Tomorrow morning, the people who hosted you are going to return to what they knew before you ever came to town.

The city of Corinth was known for a couple of things. The first was the Asclepeion. Named after the Greek god of physical healing, this was the temple where you went to get your body fixed. Did you break a leg? Hobble over to the Asclepeion. Shatter your wrist in a fall? The Asclepeion would patch you up. Have some trouble with your eyesight? The Asclepeion promised renewed vision.[1]

Here's what happened there. The ancient priests would make clay replicas of each broken body part. The damaged person would pay them a small fee. There would be incantations, a sacred fire, some dancing. Then the priest would cast the clay replica into the sacred fire and pronounce the patient healed. For another small fee, of course. The body is big business!

No wonder, then, that Paul frequently refers to human body when communicating with the people of Corinth. He refers to the church as “the body of Christ.” He also offers a homily in chapter 12, when he says, “The eye can’t say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ and ‘If all we had was an ear, how could we smell?’” When we hear such passages, we know he was addressing people who lived near the Asclepeion. A good sermon illustration always points to what the people already know.

I mentioned the second long-established institution last week. High on the mountain that towered above the city was the largest of the three Temples to Aphrodite in the region. Aphrodite was the goddess of love, beauty, and the three P’s: pleasure, passion, and procreation. If you were looking for love, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation, you could aim to Corinth.

On the way up the mountain to make your generous offering, there were one thousand courtesans ready to welcome you in your pursuit of love, beauty, and the Three P’s, all for a small price. Like the man said, “the body is big business.”

I can’t imagine Paul, the very traditional Jew, wandering around in such a place. It was like New Orleans on Fat Tuesday, or the docks of San Francisco before the US Marshalls rode into town. Maybe that’s why Paul didn’t stay there very long. He preached for about 18 months in Corinth, then crossed the sea to the big city of Ephesus. After he left, the Corinthian congregation began to come unbuckled.

As we heard last week, the church had splintered into rival groups and they were bickering. There was some immorality in congregation, which you can read about in chapter 5. Some church members were dragging one another into court. And as we can infer from today’s portion of chapter 6, other church members were wandering up the hill to visit Aphrodite’s love merchants.

No doubt, Paul tossed and turned through a few sleepless nights, and mulled over how to respond. As he reflected on the matter, the Corinthians’ behavior wasn’t simply because they were surrounded by those who believed the body is big business. At the core, it was the second slogan – which you and I know all too well. I’m referring to that premise, “I can do whatever I want.”

The people of Corinth glorified freedom. They valued freedom of expression before Paul sailed into town. They heard him preach in the synagogue, “We are free in Christ.” It is the liberating message of the Gospel. Thanks to Jesus, we are not bound to the status quo. We don’t have to do whatever everybody else is doing. We can claim a different set of values. We can live by a different code. Thanks to the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are free.

The Corinthians heard him say this and breathed a sigh of relief. They heard him say, “We are free!” In fact, that’s all they may have heard him say. If that’s all you hear, or all you want to hear, it resonates with a long-established principle that still guides a lot of people in our own time and place, namely. “I can do whatever I want.” That I am free to pursue my own desires. That I am under no restriction about how I wish to live my life.

It’s an enticing premise. When my sister and I were teenagers, we were sitting on the couch one night watching a beauty pageant. One of the contestants declared, "I am my own person, I think for myself, I am responsible for my own dreams, and I am sufficiently empowered to pursue them."

My sister said, "Wow! She's got it together. I bet she's going to win." Indeed she did.

The idea sounds so enticing, that "I belong only to me," that "whatever I want to do, I can do." It sounds like freedom, but it’s something else.

This is the point at which the Apostle Paul enters the conversation. The word in the air is that “all things are legal for me,” a wonderful liberating freedom, and Paul quickly adds, “That doesn’t mean that all things are good and helpful.” You hear the difference?

Think of the kid who starts smoking and can’t give it up – that’s enslavement. Think of the man who loves good food and can’t get enough of it – it dominates him. Think of the person who takes a quick peek at a naughty picture, or puts a bet down on a card game, or kisses somebody they don’t even know. They felt free to do something, and then they do it again, and it attaches to them. Soon it takes over.

Is that freedom? No, it’s another form of enslavement. A lot of addictions begin with presuming we are free to do whatever we want. That’s how Paul warns his people. “All things are lawful for me,” says the apostle Paul, “but not all things are beneficial.” “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.”

What are those things that look so pretty that we cannot see they are deadly? What is it, that promises to set us free – but shackles us and demands even more?

Paul cuts to the chase: we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to Christ. We are free from living like the rest of the pack because we belong to Christ. We are liberated from the need to consume other things, or consume other people, because our value comes from the love of Jesus, “who bought us at a price.”

This is how he refers to the death and resurrection of the Lord, how it has both freed us from sin and death, but bound us to the One who truly gives life. “He bought us at a price.” The language is from the ancient slave market, where redemption meant purchasing a slave to set the slave free. That is the meaning of redemption.

So how should we live as free people? Paul says, “Glorify God with your body.” What a radical thing to say! Some people have always thought religion is supposed to free you from the baggage of flesh and blood, that somehow the liberating ideas will lift us out of our carcasses and closer to heaven. Absolutely not, says Paul. True faith begins by inhabiting our own skin, by walking on our own feet on the land where everybody else walks.

After all, Christmas came just three weeks ago, and with it, the stunning revelation that the Eternal God who is Spirit was found in a human baby named Jesus. The Word took flesh. God spoke in human words. In the human touch of Jesus, God healed aching human bodies and fed human stomachs. The word “spiritual” does not signify something amorphous. St. Athanasius put it this way, “God sanctified the body by being in it.”

Or as the apostle Paul declares to the church, “Don’t you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” What we do with our bodies reflects how God’s Spirit works in us and through us.

So the kids can say to the grandfather, “You have to stop smoking. Your lungs are a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The mother can say to her middle schooler, “Please stop eating so much junk food; your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The apostle Paul could say to all the Corinthians wandering up the hill, “Knock it off.”

It matters what we do with our skin and bones. It matters what we speak with our tongues and how well we take care of our feet. It matters if our A1-C is too high or our blood pressure is too low. It matters if we don’t get enough exercise, or if we fill our blood stream with toxic substances, or if we pollute our minds with too much cable news. Our lives matter because God can work to redeem the world through our bodies.

We know this to be true. In the love of Jesus, we do not feed the hungry by wishing it so; we prepare them meals. In the power of God, we do not comfort the grieving by praying for them from a distance; but by listening patiently to broken hearts. In the communion of the Holy Spirit, we do not correct the world’s injustices by thinking about them; we speak up with our tongues, organize up with our minds, step up with our feet, and push forward for constructive change.

Paul looks across time and space to his people and tells them the truth: “You were bought with a price.” Your slavery has been paid off by the Lord who love you more. Look to the cross and consider the extravagant price!

Do you know how much God has loved us, to claim us as God’s own? I think you do. That’s why it makes perfect sense to glorify God with our bodies.


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://www.corinth-museum.gr/en/archaeological-site/sanctuary-of-asklepieion/

Glad I Didn't Baptize a Lot of You

1 Corinthians 1:9-17
Baptism of the Lord
January 10, 2021
William G. Carter

God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

Oh, what a week to be a preacher! I don’t know what you expect me to talk about today. I suppose I could talk about all kinds of things, most of which I am not an expert.

What I want to talk about is the church in Corinth. Corinth is a city in Greece. Greece is a country surrounded by the sea. The country is in two parts, the north and the south, and the place where they connect is the city of Corinth.

It was a cosmopolitan city, an intersection for world travelers who exchanged a wide range of perspectives and ideas. Corinth was a seaport with a mountain temple to Aphrodite, goddess of love and fertility. The whole way up to the temple, there were “specialty shops” where visiting sailors could practice up on love and fertility (but we will get into that next week). 

For our purposes, the ancient city of Corinth had a church. There were about fifty souls in that congregation which was established by the apostle Paul. Surrounded by a largely indifferent world, the saints of Corinth met to share the stories of Jesus, to sing and pray together, and to discover ways to witness to the grace and love of God. Paul got them started. Then, as was his custom, he went off somewhere else to start another church.  

The text we have heard today, and the texts we will hear over the next six weeks, come from Paul’s correspondence with the church. They wrote to him, he wrote back. They had questions and concerns, he wanted to reply. And Paul has gotten wind of some issues swirling around in the church. It doesn’t matter how big or small a congregation may be, there are always issues. As long as there are people in any group, there are issues.

Did you notice today? No sooner does Paul say hello to these people when he rolls up his sleeves to tackle the first of the issues. “I beg all of you to agree,” he says. “I want you to stop fighting and get along. I want you to stop dividing and come together.” Imagine that – people in a church, taking up opposing sides. Perhaps you thought a church it would be different. Not necessarily.

Michael Lindvall tells about two churches in his favorite town of North Haven. One Sunday in June, half the people of First Presbyterian walked out during a sermon. They formed Second Presbyterian, right down the street, and both churches proceeded to trade dissident members every year. A hundred years after the split, nobody can remember the cause for the split and who stood on which side. But the division remained. When First Presbyterian had a catastrophic fire and burned to the ground, some of the survivors refused to consolidate. They stuck to their principles and became Methodists.[1]

Michael is poking fun at us, of course, but church fights are every bit as terrible as two sisters at war with one another. It’s no laughing matter. Over the years, I have been called in as a fire fighter for congregations burning out of control. Communication has broken down, lines are drawn, and all love has grown cold. It has given me some perspective on the fierce divisions in our nation.

So what was going on in Corinth? A lot of things. The whole group has splintered. In fact, Paul admits that one of the groups has squealed on the others. He calls them simply “Chloe’s people.” We don’t know if that was the leader’s name. “Chloe” is a woman’s name. It means “fertility.” Maybe she used to work for Aphrodite.

On the face of it, the quarrels were based in rival allegiances, a division over their favorite leaders. Some of them liked Paul; he was the founder of the congregation and they remember him fondly. Others said, “No, we like Apollos: he’s our guy. Silver tongued preacher, he could evoke tears one minute and make us laugh the next.” Others said, “No, Paul and Apollos got all their sermons from Peter, who we called Cephas. He was our Rock Star, traveled with Jesus, heard the Sermon on the Mount, saw the healings.”

Meanwhile, over here in a corner, arms folded in smugness, was the Jesus Group. They weren’t interested in those groups. They wanted spiritual truth, not earthly interpreters. Burning incense, chanting the Psalms, zoning out, separating from the mere mortals.”

Paul blurts out, “I’m sure glad I didn’t baptize any of you. Well, wait, maybe a couple of you. And, um, well, a few more – but that’s it. It’s all about Christ, not about any of the rest of us.” So there was some hero worship going on. Empty adulation. Paul didn’t have enough history with the Corinth church to learn what I have learned: that if you stick around long, they won’t be able to remember anybody else.

But there were more issues underlying the dissention. We know this from other sections of the letter. When it was time for the Lord’s Supper, the richest members brought fine wine and got drunk, while the neediest among them couldn’t afford a scrap of bread (11:19-21). Why do you have such contempt for one another? Examine your hearts. Discern that together, you are the Body of Christ! So there were economic differences.

There were social differences, too – divisions between men and women, especially women inspired by the Holy Spirit to break out of old gender roles. In that church, there were slaves as well as free people, bound together by Christ but splintered into sects; and Paul says, “Christ has paid the price for all of us; we belong together through him (7:23).”

Yet there was something else at work, a force far more sinister. You see, the Corinthian church was so divided that Paul brought it up over and over. In chapter three, Paul says, “Beware of envy which leads to rivalry.” That is, you have something I don’t have, and I want it.

Last night, our two springer spaniels came looking for a treat. So I pulled out a chew stick, gave it to Oakley, and off he went. Pippa said, “Where’s mine?” So I pulled out another and gave it to her. Pretty soon, Pippa is under the kitchen table, one chew stick in her mouth and Oakley’s chew stick under her paw. Envy leads to rivalry. This is natural animal behavior.

Paul calls this life “according to the flesh,” according to our self-interest, according to “what’s in it for me,” according to the unmediated behavior of what any of us would do, unless we are interrupted by a High Power. According to the apostle, it leads to strife, then wrangling, and then something that Paul calls, “dichostosia.”

What is “dichostosia”? It can be translated as “division” and “dissention.” It can also be translated “sedition.” This is what uncorrected self-interest does. It blows up human relationship. It fractures what once held together.

The antidote, says Paul, is found in our baptism. Baptism announces a new relationship. Those who are baptized are claimed in the name of the Trinity and called away from all the false attachments that are so much less than the love of God. Baptism does not offer some weird kind of spiritual magic. Rather, baptism invites us to invest in the life revealed by Jesus. We choose whom we will follow and obey, and we choose what we will reject.

From the very beginning, the church has asked questions of all who gather at the baptismal font. Do you renounce evil and its power in the world? Do you turn to Jesus Christ and receive him as Lord and Savior?

Like the Corinthians, we know how evil surfaces: envy, rivalry, strife, division, dissention, and sedition, all rooted in self-interest. And we know, through Christ, there’s another way.

Like the mother who confronted a sassy daughter. She was rebellious, always angry, made terrible decisions. Mom called her on it. Daughter said, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” Her mother looked her in the eye, full of righteous love, and said, “Yes, but you could be so much better!” Baptism determines our ethics. When we belong to Someone greater than ourselves, it positively changes the way we live.

Paul says to a contentious church, “I’m glad I didn’t baptize a lot of you.” They were baptized, to be sure. It had nothing to do with Paul and everything to do with Christ. Baptism is the moment when God speaks to us, when heaven claims us on the earth. In a splash of water, a Voice from heaven, a whisk from the Spirit’s wings, we are invited to take part in something greater than ourselves. We are adopted into a Family larger than our natural family. We are commissioned to grow up in Christ, to welcome what grace can do for all of us, and to work for the benefit of all our neighbors because of the love that God has revealed to us.

Last Wednesday was a terrible day for our nation. History will not be kind to those in our American family who have lived by lies and stirred up envy, rivalry, strife, division, dissention, and sedition. But in the aftermath of a violent mob busting into the United States Capitol, there were many who offered a holy alternative and took a higher road. Let me name just two, both Presbyterians.

The first is retired Rear Admiral Margaret Grun Kibben, my classmate from Princeton Theological Seminary. Margaret was just appointed the chaplain of the House of Representatives and Wednesday was her third day of work. As the invaders smashed into doors and climbed through windows, Admiral Kibben took a microphone and offered a prayer like those she offered during combat in Afghanistan, “Lord God, cover us and put a hedge of protection around us. In the middle of this chaos, let your Spirit descend into this room to grant us peace and order. Give us the courage to care for one another, even under stress.”[2]

When Congress reconvened in the evening, she prayed with them once again. In the presence of the Spirit, she says, “The tenor of the room changed significantly. There was a sense of, ‘Our lives are important. Our business is important. The welfare of the country is important.” Call it what you will, friends; I call it “baptismal ethics.”

The second Presbyterian is Andy Kim, a congressman from district 3 in New Jersey. At one o’clock in the morning, Congressman Kim was walking through the Capitol rotunda, through water bottles, discarded clothing, and tattered Trump flags. He noticed police officers putting pizza boxes into trash bags. (I mean, if you’re going to storm the Capitol, order out pizza, right?)

“Hey guys,” he said to the officers, “do you have any more bags?” And Congressman Kim got down on his hands and knees and helped to clean up the debris. He did that for about an hour and half, by himself, when nobody was looking. When asked, Andy said, “When you see something you love that’s broken, you want to fix it. I just felt compelled to do something. What else could I do?”[3]

This is a broken world. Christ was crucified in a world like this, a world prone to hostility and division. But we affirm Christ has been raised from the dead, wounded but thoroughly alive. And our Risen Lord is now at work with those awakened by faith, providing assurance, taking out the trash, and rebuilding relationships.

There is something for all of us to do. Because we’ve been baptized.

 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Michael J. Lindvall, The Good News From North Haven (New York: Pocket Books, 1991) 2-3.

[2] “How House chaplain calmed tense hours in besieged Capitol,” Religion News Service, 9 January 2021, https://religionnews.com/2021/01/09/house-chaplain-siege/

[3] “What else could I do? https://apnews.com/article/andy-kim-cleans-capitol-siege-c5a303337cd63e4312ef7e1a17509371?

Over Our Heads, But On the Ground

Ephesians 1:3-14
Christmas 2 (B)
January 3, 2021

    Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

    who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

    just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world 
    to be holy and blameless before him in love.
    He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ,
    according to the good pleasure of his will,
    to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
    In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
    according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.
    With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will,
    according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time,
    to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
    In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance,
    having been destined according to the purpose of him
    who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will,
    so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.
    In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, 
    the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him,
    were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;
    this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, 

    to the praise of his glory.

I will understand completely if your heart did not flutter with the reading of the text. It comes from the first chapter of Ephesians and it is a little over our heads. Scholars who are paid to handle such matters tell us there are 201 words between verses 3 and 14. In the original Greek language, it was a single run-on sentence, the longest sentence in the Bible. Thank God the English translators added commas and periods!

There is a lot of high-faluting language. The writer speaks of huge concepts that aim pretty high. We have a spiritual inheritance, he says. Our destiny is to live out God’s eternal purpose. As we set our hope on Christ, we live for the praise of his glory. Nobody but a preacher talks this way. When you turn off today’s worship service, when you converse with loved ones over lunch or on the phone, I cannot imagine anybody saying, “I am claiming the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption, to the praise of God’s glory.” 

This is the letter to the Ephesians. There are a lot of big words in Ephesians, words like salvation, redemption, predestination, and revelation. Nobody normal uses words like these. Such words shut down conversation. Should we speak them, people look at us curiously and clam up. They figure we know what we are talking about, and they need a dictionary just to look them up.

I am aware that nobody talks like that, outside of a church. The truth of the matter is few people talk like that inside of a church. In a normal year, we would have sign-up sheets and lists of ushering duties. We would wonder why the office radiator had to be repaired three times in December. One committee is adding up all the contributions received from our members to see how far we may have been in the hole in 2020. Others are trying to keep in touch with all our scattered members.

And then we hear the opening line from Ephesians, “God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” 

To some folks, there is a disconnection between the high and holy words of our scripture and the kind of lives we actually live. That reminds me of the man who went to visit a Russian Orthodox Church. It was so much more than he could take in: the gold icons, the haunting chants, the heavy incense, the heavenly liturgy. “It was so incredibly beautiful,” he exclaimed, “but I have no clue what it has to do with my life.”

It’s possible to get the same feeling when we hear the lyrics of the Ephesian letter. The words swirl up high like chants and incense while somebody downstairs forgets it was her turn to bring muffins for coffee hour. Do you know about that disconnection? Some call it the divorce between Sunday morning and Monday morning – to put it as a question: what does our worship on Sunday have to do with the labor of Monday?

Yet the first chapter of Ephesians would declare the question is backwards. It should be: what does our labor on Monday have to do with our worship on Sunday? What is it that we discover here that makes a difference in everything we do all week? What are the mysteries in here that we live out when we step outside?

Reflecting on the massive sentence that is our text,   Eugene Peterson says the writer of Ephesians describes the church that we never actually see. We see the building with the leaky radiator, visited by its share of comics and cranks. Ephesians sees a people in whom God is saving the whole world. Here in chapter one, for instance, the church is full of people called “saints,” the “holy ones.” (Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, p. 14)

We squint and scratch our heads. We have seen the fidgety child playing games on Grandma’s cell phone, the liturgist who just stifled a yawn, the woman who sneaked in late. But Ephesians sees a gathering of saints, saints whose names have been given by Christ. They are the holy ones because holy power is at work in them ever since God raised Jesus from the dead. The saints recognize a greater authority over their lives than the threat of illness or the quicksand of despair.

Thanks to the grace of God, something really big is going on. Ephesians uses all those enormous words to name it: “redemption,” “salvation,” “glory,” “wisdom,” and “power.” This is God’s mission to the world – if only we can see it.  

In my upstairs study at the house, there’s a framed print of a favorite Norman Rockwell painting. Rockwell paints St. Thomas’ Church in New York City.  It’s a gloomy day on Fifth Avenue and people are shuffling by. The priest has just given his sermon title to the sexton who puts the words on the bulletin board: “Lift Up Thine Eyes.” A flock of doves fly upward while the pedestrians shuffle by with their eyes downcast.

“Lift Up Thine Eyes.” That is the message from Ephesians to the church. See that God has come down here to salvage the world, and then do something to take part in that work. Look through the moment to see what is truly going on. Through the preaching and mission of the church lives are claimed and commissioned by God. The community is fed by grace. See these moments in all their glory.

Even in the prison cell where Paul writes this letter, he sees nothing but the blessing of God. In every single line, the spiritual inheritance is named:

• In Jesus, we have redemption and forgiveness
• In Christ, the riches of grace are lavished upon us.
• In Jesus, we come to understand the hidden wisdom of God's will.
• In Christ, all the scraps of our lives are gathered up and stitched together.
• In Jesus, we inherit the promises and purposes of God.
• In Christ, we know God's good pleasure.

And even though, from age to age, the church may be shaken and tested, the God we know in Jesus Christ still conveys these blessings. As somebody has written,

[The blessing of Christ] is hanging over Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, that triumphant letter in which he crowns Christ as the ruler of all creation and the church as Christ’s body – not two entities, but one – God’s chosen instrument for the reconciliation of the world. The church shall be a colony of heaven on earth, Paul says, the divine gene pool from which the world shall be recreated in God’s image. From the heart of Christ’s body shall flow all the transforming love of God, bestowing hope, Paul says, riches, immeasurable greatness. As God is to Christ, so shall the church be to the world – the means of filling the whole cosmos with the glory of God.[1]

At the beginning of a New Year, with the carols of angels still ringing in our ears, I can almost believe it – can’t you? To know that all our believing and hoping and giving and serving is not in vain – but it is part of God’s great purposes – indeed a visible sign of God’s good pleasure. The blessings named above our heads are lived out on the ground. We only need the eyes to see the grace beneath out feet.

A handful of years ago, we visited some friends in New Hampshire. On the way home, we stopped by to see the grave of novelist Willa Cather in the church yard of Jaffrey Center. We discovered we weren’t far from Mount Monadnock, a large slope nestled between some lakes. They tell us the locals never climb Monadnock, just as the denizens of Manhattan never visit the Statue of Liberty. But I said, “Let’s find it,” off we went.

We turned at the sign, went down the road, and must have drove right past it. How do you drive by a famous mountain? Well, we did – three or four times, until a wise voice said, “Are we done with this? Can we go home, please?” So we turned toward the border of Massachusetts and gave up the search.

Sometime later, I came across a poem by Robert Siegel who had an experience just like ours. Here’s what he writes:

We see the sign, “Monadnock State Park”

as it flashes by, after a mile or two

decide to go back, “We can’t pass by Monadnock

without seeing it,” I say, turning around.

We head down the side road – “Monadnock Realty,”

“Monadnock Pottery,” “Monadnock Designs,”

but no Monadnock. Then the signs fall away –

nothing but trees and the darkening afternoon.

We don’t speak, pass a clearing, and you say,

“I think I saw it, or part of it – a bald rock?”

Miles and miles more. Finally, I pull over

and we consult a map. “Monadnock’s right there.”

“Or just back a bit there.” “But we should see it –

We’re practically on top of it.” And driving back

we look – trees, a flash of clearing, purple rock -

but we are, it seems, too close to see it:

It is here. We are on it. It is under us.[2]

It is under us. All of is under us. Remember all those high-in-the sky blessings of Ephesians? In case you forgot, let me run the list: redemption, forgiveness, riches of grace, hidden wisdom, heavenly inheritance, promise and purpose, and God’s good pleasure. All of those seem over our heads. But the truth is they are under our feet, sure, and solid, and steady.

God has come. God has come to us. So go and claim your inheritance, for you are on solid ground.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Palpable Paradox”

[2] Robert Siegel, “Looking for Mt. Monadnock,” The Waters Under the Earth (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2003) 70.