1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Are you always patient? Always kind? Are you never envious or boastful or arrogant or rude? Do you not insist on your own way? Are you never irritable or resentful?
It’s a tall order to love, according to Paul, who authored the words about love that we heard this morning. But I think that Paul hits the nail on the head this time. No one ever said that being Christian wouldn’t involve tall orders.
The trouble with this scripture is that it’s too familiar. We’ve already assigned it to the Hallmark division of our minds and have it tucked away for Valentine’s Day and weddings. But we’d miss its power if we were to do that. Though, yes, it does apply to those august occasions when romantic love is at the forefront, this passage also applies to every moment of our faith-filled life.
And it applied most assuredly to life in the church at Corinth to whom Paul was addressing this letter. For this church was in need of some love in its midst. Though Paul and God loved this group at Corinth, they apparently couldn’t find it in themselves to love each other.
If you remember from last week’s reading in Corinthians 12, Paul compares the church to the body. The body of Christ is just like a human body. We can’t have a body that’s just an eye, because we wouldn’t be able to hear. The head can’t do without the feet. The body of Christ is made up of many parts, as well it should be. Paul reminds the church in Corinth and us that there is a need for all the parts of Christ’s body: teachers, preachers, those who speak in tongues, those who interpret those tongues, etc.
There was clearly a lot going on in that church at Corinth at the time. We can infer from Paul’s writings that there were factions within the church, all arguing about who had supremacy. Some were followers of Apollos, a church leader of the time. Some put themselves in Paul’s corner. Others were claiming allegiance to another leader while some felt that they were followers of Christ. And each group tried to gain preeminence over the other.
There were deep divisions in Corinth. And Paul knew it. He addresses this letter to them in an attempt to heal some of those divisions. First he says that no group has supremacy and all have gifts that are needed in Christ’s body. Then he goes on to explain how they might get along: with love.
That’s the context in which we should read this chapter: as the antidote to divisions and arguments within the church. Love holds Christ’s body together. Love is the glue that keeps the church as one, in spite of differences, in spite of arguments, in spite of divergent thoughts and ways.
The folks in Corinth really needed this message. They were split into several factions and all of them were arguing for the top spot. They needed this message of love.
What’s that got to do with a congregation in San Carlos almost 2,000 years later? We don’t have followers of different leaders. We don’t argue about the gifts of the members of our church. We are relatively conflict free, aren’t we? So why do we need to hear this message on this January day in 2007?
Well, let me ask you again: are you always patient and kind? Do you never boast? Are you never rude? Do you bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things?
Perhaps we do need to hear this. Perhaps we may act this way in our congregation but need to remember to act it out in the world. We can do love with our friends and family but do we find love in our relationship with strangers? Can you truly say you love a street person or the person who just cut you off on the freeway?
This love thing is difficult, no matter what the upcoming Valentine’s Day cards say. It takes work to love one another: even those we are supposed to automatically love. It takes patience and kindness and all those other attributes that Paul listed. It takes overlooking dissimilarities and accepting the differing gifts that are needed to make up our world.
Love is talked about, discussed and sung about. John and Paul, not the apostles but the Beatles, remind us that “love is all you need.” And Hal David and Burt Bacharach proclaim that “What the World Needs Now is Love.” Of course, there are myriads of other songs I could quote. And that’s part of the problem. While the sentiments I’ve just quoted are true, many reduce love to just the romantic feeling of being attracted to one other person.
What Paul is getting at is different. It’s the love that transcends barriers and overcomes the arguments that we humans get into. It’s loving the person who is least loveable.
This is all a mirror of God’s love; the love that God has for each one of us. The God who loves unconditionally; who loves us through and in spite of our foibles and failings. Can we love each other as God loves us?
Well, the very next words that Paul writes, in chapter 14 of 1st Corinthians, are “Aim for love.” Paul recognizes that we are human and we may not reach the perfect love of God in our attempts at loving each other. We may try to be unconditional in our love but we usually attach conditions to our love. Conditions which limit our love…and our lovability. For that’s the thing about love; the more we do it, the more lovable we become. And we all want to be lovable, right?
Be patient and kind. Don’t be envious or boastful; arrogant or rude. Don’t insist on your own way nor be irritable or resentful. Don’t rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoice in the truth. Bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. In short, love.
21 January 2007
Luke 4:14-21
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? What does it look like when one has the power of the Spirit within them? Does it mean speaking in tongues and/or ecstatic movement by the one filled with the Spirit? Is there a noticeable physical change to one who has the power of the Spirit?
Today we heard about Jesus preaching in his own synagogue. He’s come home after his baptism and the temptations in the desert. According to Luke’s gospel, he hasn’t started his ministry yet; this is the beginning of it right here, when he gets up to preach in that Nazareth synagogue.
The synagogue was the local meeting place, church and school. Jesus would have spent many hours in this synagogue as a young man and while growing up. It was a gathering place for community meeting, likely only for the men of the community. But these people would have known Jesus and next week we find out that, indeed, they do know him, all too well.
But right now we’re focused on Jesus preaching in the synagogue. And, according to Bruce Prewer’s website, there were certain things done at the synagogue. The leader of the synagogue or president was called the hazzan. He was the person in charge of the worship. The typical meeting at a synagogue went something like this: they began with the “shema” or “Hear O Israel, the lord your God is one God” and then the prayers. This was followed by the “parashah” which was a set reading of the law. Then came the “haphtarah,” which was a free reading selected by the speaker of the day. The hazzan selected someone to be the speaker who chose the haphtarah. After the haphtarah was read, the selected person would then sit in the speaker’s chair and present the sermon. (Yes, he got to sit.) On this particular day, Jesus was asked by the person in charge to read that free reading, the haphtarah, and he selected a text from Isaiah.
But before all this happened, remember that our scripture reading began with the fact that Jesus was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s where I began this sermon. What does one look like who is filled with the Holy Spirit? Well, we only have to look at this story to know.
Because once again we have Jesus as our example. “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee.” What do we make of this, that Jesus finds himself filled with the Spirit and returns and immediately preaches the sermon of which we heard the beginning?
Well, let’s look at what Jesus, filled with the Spirit, says. The scripture he quotes is, as I said, from Isaiah. “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That’s what he’s on about. That’s what he is here to do, filled with the Spirit.
That’s what we’re called to do when we are filled with the Spirit. That’s our call as people of faith in response to the gift of the Spirit. We don’t have to participate in ecstatic dancing or speak in tongues. We don’t have to expect that we will go through cataclysmic events when we find we are filled with the Spirit.
No, we simply have to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s all. When we are filled with the Spirit we are, simply put, on about the work of justice in our world. That, following Jesus’ example, is our sign of the Spirit in our midst and in our souls.
Takes a lot of pressure off, huh? We don’t have to prove anything by ecstatic dancing. We aren’t expected to speak in tongues or anything like that if we follow Jesus’ example.
Just do justice. Hmmmm, kind of makes you want to go through the other things, doesn’t it? There is no “just do” when it comes to justice, is there? There is hard work and plenty of it when it comes to doing justice. But if we are to follow the example of Jesus, that’s where we’re stuck.
We need to bring good news to the poor. And what good news might that be? That the world seems tilted against them? That a tiny percentage of the world controls amazing amounts of the world’s wealth? That we tend to ignore them when it comes to our governmental policies? Well, the good news is that God cares about them as much, if not more, as God cares about the rest of us. But the good news would really be that our government is looking out for them as is called for in our Judeo-Christian ethic.
And we need to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind. This in a state in which we house more captives than anywhere else? Where we continually seem to be spending money on new prisons while ignoring the root causes of crime and violence? The release that the captives need to hear is that we’ve solved the problems of poverty and racism once and for all. How are we to do that?
And we’re to let the oppressed go free? This in a world in which there seem to be oppressed people around every corner? Oppression is how we keep people in their place and keep the playing field uneven so that the haves can continue to have at the expense of the have nots. Challenging the system of oppression that keeps anyone who is different from the ruling class down and out is a tall order. It will take changing centuries of societal patterns.
Whew! If we are indeed filled with the Spirit we do have a lot of work to do. But that’s just the point. We have the Spirit with us to empower us. We have God on our side. So challenging those century-old patterns is nothing compared to God’s power.
The Spirit of God is upon us to be what Jesus would have us be: to have us be the people of this earth that make a difference and cause justice to happen. There are people on the margins; children who need tutoring; families without homes; people who don’t know God’s love; prisoners who need to know that society cares about them; and myriads of other ways to use the energy that the Spirit gives us.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus said. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us to proclaim good news to the poor. May it be so.
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? What does it look like when one has the power of the Spirit within them? Does it mean speaking in tongues and/or ecstatic movement by the one filled with the Spirit? Is there a noticeable physical change to one who has the power of the Spirit?
Today we heard about Jesus preaching in his own synagogue. He’s come home after his baptism and the temptations in the desert. According to Luke’s gospel, he hasn’t started his ministry yet; this is the beginning of it right here, when he gets up to preach in that Nazareth synagogue.
The synagogue was the local meeting place, church and school. Jesus would have spent many hours in this synagogue as a young man and while growing up. It was a gathering place for community meeting, likely only for the men of the community. But these people would have known Jesus and next week we find out that, indeed, they do know him, all too well.
But right now we’re focused on Jesus preaching in the synagogue. And, according to Bruce Prewer’s website, there were certain things done at the synagogue. The leader of the synagogue or president was called the hazzan. He was the person in charge of the worship. The typical meeting at a synagogue went something like this: they began with the “shema” or “Hear O Israel, the lord your God is one God” and then the prayers. This was followed by the “parashah” which was a set reading of the law. Then came the “haphtarah,” which was a free reading selected by the speaker of the day. The hazzan selected someone to be the speaker who chose the haphtarah. After the haphtarah was read, the selected person would then sit in the speaker’s chair and present the sermon. (Yes, he got to sit.) On this particular day, Jesus was asked by the person in charge to read that free reading, the haphtarah, and he selected a text from Isaiah.
But before all this happened, remember that our scripture reading began with the fact that Jesus was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s where I began this sermon. What does one look like who is filled with the Holy Spirit? Well, we only have to look at this story to know.
Because once again we have Jesus as our example. “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee.” What do we make of this, that Jesus finds himself filled with the Spirit and returns and immediately preaches the sermon of which we heard the beginning?
Well, let’s look at what Jesus, filled with the Spirit, says. The scripture he quotes is, as I said, from Isaiah. “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That’s what he’s on about. That’s what he is here to do, filled with the Spirit.
That’s what we’re called to do when we are filled with the Spirit. That’s our call as people of faith in response to the gift of the Spirit. We don’t have to participate in ecstatic dancing or speak in tongues. We don’t have to expect that we will go through cataclysmic events when we find we are filled with the Spirit.
No, we simply have to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s all. When we are filled with the Spirit we are, simply put, on about the work of justice in our world. That, following Jesus’ example, is our sign of the Spirit in our midst and in our souls.
Takes a lot of pressure off, huh? We don’t have to prove anything by ecstatic dancing. We aren’t expected to speak in tongues or anything like that if we follow Jesus’ example.
Just do justice. Hmmmm, kind of makes you want to go through the other things, doesn’t it? There is no “just do” when it comes to justice, is there? There is hard work and plenty of it when it comes to doing justice. But if we are to follow the example of Jesus, that’s where we’re stuck.
We need to bring good news to the poor. And what good news might that be? That the world seems tilted against them? That a tiny percentage of the world controls amazing amounts of the world’s wealth? That we tend to ignore them when it comes to our governmental policies? Well, the good news is that God cares about them as much, if not more, as God cares about the rest of us. But the good news would really be that our government is looking out for them as is called for in our Judeo-Christian ethic.
And we need to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind. This in a state in which we house more captives than anywhere else? Where we continually seem to be spending money on new prisons while ignoring the root causes of crime and violence? The release that the captives need to hear is that we’ve solved the problems of poverty and racism once and for all. How are we to do that?
And we’re to let the oppressed go free? This in a world in which there seem to be oppressed people around every corner? Oppression is how we keep people in their place and keep the playing field uneven so that the haves can continue to have at the expense of the have nots. Challenging the system of oppression that keeps anyone who is different from the ruling class down and out is a tall order. It will take changing centuries of societal patterns.
Whew! If we are indeed filled with the Spirit we do have a lot of work to do. But that’s just the point. We have the Spirit with us to empower us. We have God on our side. So challenging those century-old patterns is nothing compared to God’s power.
The Spirit of God is upon us to be what Jesus would have us be: to have us be the people of this earth that make a difference and cause justice to happen. There are people on the margins; children who need tutoring; families without homes; people who don’t know God’s love; prisoners who need to know that society cares about them; and myriads of other ways to use the energy that the Spirit gives us.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus said. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us to proclaim good news to the poor. May it be so.
7 January 2007
Matthew 2:1-12
This reading from Matthew is familiar. Too familiar perhaps. It’s a story well-told. We hear it and our minds race to Christmas cards that we’ve received showing three elegantly clad kings on camels with a small city in the background with a bright star shining overhead. But let’s think seriously about this scripture for a moment. It’s one that deserves some attention.
We tend to conflate the two stories of Christmas, putting together Luke’s version of the angels’ appearance to the shepherds and with Matthew’s tale of the wise men coming to pay homage to the newborn king. Each story has a separate viewpoint and a separate lesson to tell.
Luke, for instance, brings the message of Jesus first and foremost to the poorest of the poor. Luke’s angels bypass the ruling hierarchy and the religious leaders of the day and go to the lowest members of the society at the time. God is concerned for the poor, Luke says. God comes for everyone, including and especially for those who are usually excluded.
Matthew has a different bent. Not that Matthew says that God came to earth only for the rich and powerful. Far from it. It would be wrong to state that Jesus’ concern for the poor is ever far from present in any stories about him.
But Matthew has a particular audience to think about. Matthew’s gospel, the scholars have reckoned, was written at the end of the 1st century. This is after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the occupying Roman forces.
There had been a great conflict throughout the first century between James and Paul. James and his followers wanted to keep the message of Christ for the Jews. James would have kept the followers of Jesus good practicing Jews.
By contrast, Paul felt that the message of Jesus was for a wider audience. He wanted to take the message beyond Jerusalem and Judea. He is famous for traveling to the Gentiles with this message of God’s love, redemption and grace through Jesus Christ.
This conflict did not end with the death of James and Paul around the year 60 either. In fact, some think the argument may have intensified.
Then in the year 72 the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed throughout the empire. Jerusalem was no longer the center of the worship of the Jewish faith. The synagogue took on more importance. And the earliest forms of Christianity followed along and through necessity spread into Gentile lands.
But in the meantime, Paul’s disciples continued to spread the gospel in Gentile lands also. And it was for these dispersed Jews and Gentile Christians that Matthew’s gospel was written.
And how does Matthew tell the story of Jesus’ birth? By bringing in outsiders—Gentiles—to worship the newborn baby. Matthew is putting his stamp of approval on non-Jews. By bringing in these visitors from outside Judea, Matthew is letting his original readers, as well as us, know that there is a wide world out there and God’s love is for all.
These days we’re hearing a lot about all of the world’s religions. Interreligious dialogue is occurring at many levels and we’re becoming accustomed to hearing more and more about Islam, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the other various religions that people on earth follow. In fact, when we became a congregation of The Center of Progressive Christianity, one of the 8 points we discussed was that “By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who...Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.”
The ones whom we remember today—the so-called Wise Men from the East—were not Christian and in fact, likely never became part of The Way or the earliest forms of the Christian church. But they worshipped the Jews’ God as found in a small baby born on earth almost 2000 years ago.
Matthew reminds us that there are other ways to worship God through this passage this morning. We are not alone in our worship of God. The way we worship the Almighty One may vary, in fact what we call the Holy One varies. But we worship the One who created us and loves us.
Unfortunately, lately, other religions have been getting a bad name. With the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, we are finding ourselves in the midst of a clash between these two religions. We’ve also seen signs of anti-Semitism and a linking of our culture with the Christian faith.
We are off course and moving away from Matthew’s gospel if we are to claim God as our own and try to keep God away from other faiths. God is bigger than one faith’s truth can contain. As humans, we have to recognize our limitations, which includes our faith’s limitations. This does not mean that we abandon our own Christian faith. God is revealed to us through the one named Jesus who was born in the tiny little town of Bethlehem. The same one that the Wise Men came seeking, following the star.
This reading from Matthew is familiar. Too familiar perhaps. It’s a story well-told. We hear it and our minds race to Christmas cards that we’ve received showing three elegantly clad kings on camels with a small city in the background with a bright star shining overhead. But let’s think seriously about this scripture for a moment. It’s one that deserves some attention.
We tend to conflate the two stories of Christmas, putting together Luke’s version of the angels’ appearance to the shepherds and with Matthew’s tale of the wise men coming to pay homage to the newborn king. Each story has a separate viewpoint and a separate lesson to tell.
Luke, for instance, brings the message of Jesus first and foremost to the poorest of the poor. Luke’s angels bypass the ruling hierarchy and the religious leaders of the day and go to the lowest members of the society at the time. God is concerned for the poor, Luke says. God comes for everyone, including and especially for those who are usually excluded.
Matthew has a different bent. Not that Matthew says that God came to earth only for the rich and powerful. Far from it. It would be wrong to state that Jesus’ concern for the poor is ever far from present in any stories about him.
But Matthew has a particular audience to think about. Matthew’s gospel, the scholars have reckoned, was written at the end of the 1st century. This is after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the occupying Roman forces.
There had been a great conflict throughout the first century between James and Paul. James and his followers wanted to keep the message of Christ for the Jews. James would have kept the followers of Jesus good practicing Jews.
By contrast, Paul felt that the message of Jesus was for a wider audience. He wanted to take the message beyond Jerusalem and Judea. He is famous for traveling to the Gentiles with this message of God’s love, redemption and grace through Jesus Christ.
This conflict did not end with the death of James and Paul around the year 60 either. In fact, some think the argument may have intensified.
Then in the year 72 the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed throughout the empire. Jerusalem was no longer the center of the worship of the Jewish faith. The synagogue took on more importance. And the earliest forms of Christianity followed along and through necessity spread into Gentile lands.
But in the meantime, Paul’s disciples continued to spread the gospel in Gentile lands also. And it was for these dispersed Jews and Gentile Christians that Matthew’s gospel was written.
And how does Matthew tell the story of Jesus’ birth? By bringing in outsiders—Gentiles—to worship the newborn baby. Matthew is putting his stamp of approval on non-Jews. By bringing in these visitors from outside Judea, Matthew is letting his original readers, as well as us, know that there is a wide world out there and God’s love is for all.
These days we’re hearing a lot about all of the world’s religions. Interreligious dialogue is occurring at many levels and we’re becoming accustomed to hearing more and more about Islam, Sufism, Buddhism, Hinduism and the other various religions that people on earth follow. In fact, when we became a congregation of The Center of Progressive Christianity, one of the 8 points we discussed was that “By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who...Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.”
The ones whom we remember today—the so-called Wise Men from the East—were not Christian and in fact, likely never became part of The Way or the earliest forms of the Christian church. But they worshipped the Jews’ God as found in a small baby born on earth almost 2000 years ago.
Matthew reminds us that there are other ways to worship God through this passage this morning. We are not alone in our worship of God. The way we worship the Almighty One may vary, in fact what we call the Holy One varies. But we worship the One who created us and loves us.
Unfortunately, lately, other religions have been getting a bad name. With the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, we are finding ourselves in the midst of a clash between these two religions. We’ve also seen signs of anti-Semitism and a linking of our culture with the Christian faith.
We are off course and moving away from Matthew’s gospel if we are to claim God as our own and try to keep God away from other faiths. God is bigger than one faith’s truth can contain. As humans, we have to recognize our limitations, which includes our faith’s limitations. This does not mean that we abandon our own Christian faith. God is revealed to us through the one named Jesus who was born in the tiny little town of Bethlehem. The same one that the Wise Men came seeking, following the star.
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