Indexed by Date. Sermons for Epiphany Year C

January 7, 2007

Isaiah 43: 1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8: 14-17
Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22

What is the core of our identity? What is our reason for being? What will bring us true satisfaction in life?

If you took a survey of the magazines at the grocery store checkout you would conclude that all we need to be concerned about is having a beautiful body, losing weight and having a great sex life.

We can have many experiences in life in which we are treated as objects, or as the means to someone else’s profit or self gratification. We can get the feeling that we are being treated as ‘just another number’ and it’s very frustrating and demeaning.

We look at hundreds of television and print advertisements that treat us only as consumers. We will be happy if we buy such and such a product. We have just come through the busiest consumer season of the year: Christmas. The ads would have you believe that the be all and end all of the season is the purchase of the right gift for your loved one.

Yet we all know that the things we can buy often grow dull with time and will require replacement with the newer and shinier models if we are to achieve the same buzz from them. That’s what keeps our economy going.

It should come as no surprise to us that the Christian faith gives us a different perspective on this and other matters. We are not created to be consumers; we are not created to worship at the altars of consumerism and materialism.

As the season of Christmas ends we move into the season of Epiphany in which our exploration of just who this Jesus was and is, gives us clues as to our own identity and purpose.

We go first to Jesus. It’s been almost 2 weeks since we sang with the angels about his birth and ran to Bethlehem with the shepherds to see him lying in the manger. BUT, just who was this baby and what was so important about him? The season of Christmas is over and we have entered the season of Epiphany, the season of revelation. In this season we receive our answer to the question: “Who is this baby of Bethlehem?”

Of course, it was the grown up Jesus that was the one whose coming was really anticipated. It is the grown up Jesus who gives us our identity and our call. And, it is in his baptism that his identity and ours come together.

Our gospel lesson for today gives us yet another chapter in the life of John, the strange man from the wilderness who spends his time inviting people to be baptized as a way of showing repentance which is simply a resolve to go in a new direction and lead a new life. One of the people in today’s crowd is a thirty year old Jesus; the Jesus who was thought to be the child Mary and Joseph the carpenter. Traditional Christian theology has said that Jesus was without sin and therefore he had no reason to NEED a baptism of REPENTANCE. After all, John himself has just said that he himself was unworthy to even act as his servant, to untie his sandals for him. Yet we are told that Jesus was baptized; presumably by John, though Luke does not make this clear. While other gospels give a fuller account of this event, it seems Luke is concerned with only the bare facts. Considering that this is the season of Epiphany, the season of revelation, we need to ask the question: What does this passage tell us about who Jesus is and what he came to do?

On the surface that answer is simple enough: Jesus is God’s son and God is pleased with him! Yet, when we go a little deeper there is a great deal in this.

We know how important affirmation is, and not just for children. We know how important it is to know that we are loved and to be shown that love. We know that affirmation is also an essential port of our identity. It’s not only affirmation that we need, but affirmation form those close to us; from those important to us. Someone once said that this passage does not so much tell us who Jesus is, but rather WHOSE he is. And at our baptism we are not told who we are, as much as we are told WHOSE we are.

Our Old Testament passage comes from a time when the people in exile and far from home and all that was familiar needed the affirmation that they were still loved and cared for by the God of their ancestors; the God who called them by name and gave them their purpose in life was still naming them as his beloved.

Now more than ever they needed to hear that they were still loved and their God had not abandoned them. They needed to know that the God of their ancestors still named them as his own and still loved and cared for them.

There is an old joke about the elderly couple that were having a bit of a fight and the woman said to her husband, “you know what it is that is really troubling me?”

“NO, what?”, he replied.

“You never tell me that you love me”, she responded.

“Well dear. I told you that the day we were married. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know!”

In most cases, we need more affirmation than this!

I am sure we can all name a special time when a comment or word of praise meant a great deal to us. Back in the late 1980's, when I was first in ministry, I visited a man from a nearby community in PEI who was a patient in the Moncton Hospital. At that point in his recovery he was allowed five minutes of visits every hour and that was about it. I went in to see him and during that short visit he grabbed a hold of my hand and told me that my grandfather, whom he had known much better than I did, as my grandfather had died when I was 7, would be so proud of me. Coming from one of his contemporaries and friends, that affirmation was very important for me to hear at that point in my ministry.

Our faith gives us an important identity and affirmation. I tell parents that baptism is not the naming of a child as “Mary Louise” or “Joseph Henry” or whatever names it is that the parents have chosen but rather giving the child the additional name of “Christian”. At baptism we accept, or we accept on a child’s behalf, this naming as God naming that Child as “God’s own”. In baptism we accept our identity as God’s child, as God’s beloved. In seeking to respond to the gift of grace showered upon us at baptism we seek to live out this baptismal identity and this affirmation. It is as if the heavens have opened for each one of us and as if God has said, “YOU is my child and I am pleased with you.”

Martin Luther, a leader in the Protestant reformation would sometimes become discouraged with the stress of his life and when that would happen he would say to himself, “I am baptized” and that fact alone would give him strength and hope.

As a community of the baptized we are called to affirm one another in love and care. We are called to support one another as we each seek, individually and corporately, to live out not just our baptismal promises, but our baptismal identity.

We are all God’s children. We are called to live out of that identity each and every day. We are assured that we will not be alone as we seek to do so. God will be with us on this important journey. Amen

January 14, 2007

Isaiah 62: 1-5
Psalm 36: 5-10
1 Corinthians 12: 1-11
John 2: 1-11

A prominent (Rexton) (Bass River) family was having a wedding. As usual, the highlight of the wedding was the reception. The music was good. Finally the pictures were taken and the neckties could come off, the top buttons could be undone, the high heels could be kicked into the corner and the dinner and desert plates could be loaded up again and again.

This was a family who loved to eat and there was unlimited food. On this night it was the best of food: lobster and scallops, seafood casserole, roast turkey, a variety of chicken wings, bacon wrapped scallops, a couple of kinds of meatballs and barbequed spareribs, and salads of every description. For dessert there was a variety of cheesecakes, fancy chocolate “thingies” and a few low cal options thrown in for good measure! And there was supposed to be unlimited wine.

There was one problem though. Before 9:00 pm the wine ran out. There was lots of food left, but no wine. The champagne for the toast was long gone. The bottles of table wine had all been checked and rechecked. The bride’s family was frantic. Someone hadn’t messed up on the math. There were a couple of hundred thirsty people there and when they realized that ALL the wine was gone they would be very disappointed. What an embarrassing way for the young couple to start their lives together.

Then, all of a sudden there was a bit of commotion in the kitchen and the caterer ran out of the kitchen with big smile on his face. Someone had discovered 750 bottles of wine in the closet. How could you lose 750 bottles of wine? They were sure they had already checked that closet. At any rate, everyone agreed that the couple had saved the best wine of the night for the last and everyone went home happy.

One day a minister told this story as part of the “children’s time” in church. At the end of the story the children were asked, “What do you think this story says to us?”

One child responded, “When you run out of wine at a party get down on your knees and pray!”

Another child said, “I think it means that you should invite Jesus to your party, ‘cause he’s a good guy to have around. ”

Historically, in the United Church as in many Protestant churches there has been a great deal of uneasiness around this miracle. In today’s society there are a lot of quite legitimate concerns around alcohol abuse and it’s social costs which go far beyond the dangers of driving while under the influence.

Indeed, for many years our tradition was so anti-alcohol that some biblical commentators have even tried to rationalize this event by saying that what Jesus made must have been grape juice because it was newly made and did not have any chance to ferment.

But I think we simply have to accept the fact that Jesus and his contemporaries did drink wine, especially at wedding feasts. Unfortunately they didn’t have good water or soft drinks or fruit juices like we do. So we have to set these concerns aside when we are looking at this miracle which begins Jesus public ministry.

What we need to realize is that in this story the wine is really just a sign; and any sign is not as important as the thing to which it points. The yellow signs we see on the side of the road with the moose in the centre are not important in and of themselves. The real, live, living, breathing, lumbering animals which can weigh 3/4 of a (metric) tonne are what we really need to worry about as we make our way along the highways at 100 km/h or more.

In fact the whole Gospel of John can be seen as a sign, pointing to the identity and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. The author of this Gospel tells the reader: “These things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in is name."

We know that John’s gospel begins with a glorious and poetic statement. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being (t)hat has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1, NRSV, adapted)

So, the gospel stories about Jesus are signs which point us to a greater reality, a life-giving reality: the God of heaven and earth; the One who created all that is.

It seems to me that this passage is primarily a sign of God’s abundance. Our Protestant tradition has long praised the virtues of frugality. We praise the virtues of somberness and sobriety. We aren’t to get too excited or to express to much strong emotion. Saving and not spending foolishly are benchmarks of this way of looking at life.

In many ways that actually may not be a bad thing since we have been told that we have been eating too much, particularly too much rich food, and spending far more than we earn , on luxuries and socking up way too much credit card debt. We burn too much non-renewable energy which results in too much pollution and global warming. So frugality seems to be a good thing to be practising.

Even though we can’t always succeed at it, we assume that God is the model of frugality. God is austere, doles out the goodies to only the most deserving of his children and only in the amounts really needed.

At the same time the Protestant tradition has been based on the idea of grace. We have been taught all along that we are recipients of God’s unmerited grace and it is only in receipt of this grace that we can have a relationship with this God at all.

Yet often those of us in the church often act like we either have a corner on this grace or that we are it’s guardians.

What we forget is that grace, by its nature is delivered in excess. True love, by its nature is delivered and experienced in excess.

I feel that this lavish and unmerited grace is the true meaning of the miracle at Cana. That was more wine than any crowd could ever consume, especially at the end of the reception, and we are given far more blessing that we could ever really NEED.

The Common Cup Company, at one time based in Winnipeg, sang about this miracle in a piece called Cana Wine. It goes like this:

Some friends of mine got married about three days ago.
I could take you to the place in the valley just below,
but I think I'll stay up here a time and enjoy the sweet warm
glow that has come from the taste of Cana wine. 

It was just a simple wedding feast,  you know the kind I mean,
holding hands, holding hearts and holding fast to all their dreams.
But somehow I got the feeling it was more than first it seemed,
Must have been from the taste of Cana wine.



I didn't have that much to drink but I've never felt so tall.
The wine was filling empty holes I hadn't known at all.
It touched the deepest hurts in me 'till it found and filled my soul
Never tasted the like of Cana wine.

That marriage down in Cana brought new life to my friends,
I bless them and I wish them  all the fullness that life can bring.
But a new life's rising in me too, like an overflowing stream,
and it comes from the taste of Cana wine.

CHORUS:
Cana wine, Cana wine working on my heart and mind;
flowing free, filling me, 'till I lose all sense of time.
Cana wine, pure and fine, from the fairest of all vines;
come, sit down and we'll share some Cana wine. 

This passage is about the power of God, working in Jesus of Nazareth, a power sufficient to bring life from death, light from darkness, joy from sorrow and abundance from scarcity.

As Christians we are called to live as people who celebrate abundance, not as people worried over scarcity.

Nine years ago, in early January, a large area of Canada, stretching from Eastern Ontario to the Maritimes was hit with an ice storm. Ice laden power lines snapped together and blew transformers plunging us all into cold darkness. For most of us in Northern Nova Scotia, and I assume here in Kent County, we experienced little more than inconvenience and discomfort for a couple of days. In the Montreal area though, it was a different story as almost the entire power grid failed and people were plunged into a cold and dangerous darkness. People had to be housed in overcrowded shelters and there were many without heat or water and without either food or the means to cook it. A division of Truro Presbytery got a few people together, rented a truck and put the word out. “ Bring diapers, canned goods, batteries, blankets and the like to us and we’ll get it to Montreal.” One donor was a woman on welfare whose donation was incredibly generous. We made certain that sign we pasted to the side of the truck didn’t say something stupid in French and when the truck arrived at the first highway scales in Quebec and it was discovered that the truck was grossly overweight for the much more stringent regulations in Quebec, it was that sign, that gave the truck and its volunteer driver, a smile, a nod and a thank-you, instead of a fine or the requirement to divide the load. The need was made known and the means to meet it was given and the people responded with amazing generosity. The same kind of generosity arose from the news stories of the Tsunami that devastated Indonesia and the floods in New Orleans and Mississippi. It is the kind of response that is called forth from those who worship a God of abundance and grace.

In a speech to the Massachusetts State Legislature just prior to his inauguration in 1961, President elect John F Kennedy paraphrased other words of Jesus as recorded in Luke’s gospel, saying, “For of those to whom much is given, much is required”.

We are at the wedding dance and we have just discovered the secret stash of joy and grace and love and mercy. Are we going to partake of it and respond in kind or are we going to hoard it in case it runs out? Folks, there is no danger of this kind of wine running out. We are called to enjoy it, to drink deeply, to let it fill our hearts and souls and then to go out and share it with others.

Amen!

January 21, 2007

Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a
Luke 4: 1-21

I am told it was the custom, in Jewish synagogues of the first century to ask a visiting Rabbi to read and then teach from the scriptures. It seems that Jesus had left his carpenters’ tools behind and had become involved in this kind of itinerant teaching. His reputation had preceded him by the time he reached his hometown once again. Perhaps we can assume that the people who had passed these things on spoke well of him. Who would have thought that Mary and Joseph’s boy would do so well? It would be good to go and hear him speak. Mary would be so proud!

However, after today that popularity was about to change. After today they would wish he was still drilling holes and pounding pegs into beams to build and repair the neighbours’ houses.

I don’t think that this sermon was what they had expected to hear; at least not from a hometown boy when he came to preach. From a hometown boy, a home-grown son, you’d expect some kind and pleasant words: first, a thank you to mom, dad and, the local rabbi and then, a warm, feel-good sermon from the law or the prophets - a sermon that no one could disagree with; a sermon that told them what they had always believed and what they had been trying to teach their children all of these years; a sermon that affirmed them and didn’t challenge them to change or to think about their lives. They certainly didn’t want a sermon that offended. That’s what most folks would expect.

That’s not what they heard though. They did hear a sermon based on a familiar passage from the prophet Isaiah; but it was interpreted in what seemed like a new and startling way.

For many years I have wondered why they reacted so strongly? Why didn’t they just roll their eyes and chock it up to the naivete of inexperience and beginners idealism?

Well one theory that I have is that Jesus spoke to this passage as if he were special. You see, he connected his preaching to the fulfilment of this ancient text. It’s also that he took it so seriously that he expected it to become literally true, not just spiritually true. He assumed that it could be fulfilled on earth. And as I said, he implied that HE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH ITS COMING TO PASS.

Notice that he wasn’t mis-quoting. He wasn’t saying that this passage wasn’t true. He was saying that all of this stuff about reversal was God’s intention for humanity; that God wanted it to happen in their hometown, in their homes and families. This message was real, very real.

Another way to look at it is this: It was a good old, “back to the basics” sermon. What could be more solid than the book of Isaiah? We have all heard about those who want things to “go back to the basics” and maybe we feel that way ourselves. However, then as now, care needs to be taken with such an approach because we need to be certain that we are actually going back to the original intention of things and not just the popular interpretation of it. You see, over time religious teachings tend to become synonymous with the culture and societal norms of the establishment. When that happens you can almost always assume that the “original” has been lost or watered down somewhere in the process. Jesus challenged them to take seriously what their forbears knew: that this stuff really meant something to how people lived their lives.

Yet there could be another reason they were so angry. This was a message of deep hope; a message they were supposed to believe. But it had been so long they had lost hope; they had found any message that offered hope so painful that they just didn’t want to hear it. They were the poor, they were the captive, they were the blind and lame. They were living, no really just existing, under the oppressive rule of Rome and they were tired of getting their hopes up only to have them dashed as resistence movement after resistence movement was brutally quashed and rooted out. They just weren’t going to buy into another one.

The last theory that I would like to propose is that they were angry because Jesus was saying that these promises of Isaiah; these promises of God were for all people. He was saying that God loved all people, not just Israel. He was saying that the grace shown to the widow of Zarephath and to Naaman the Syrian were not just stories of special events but rather accounts of the way God always acted. They wanted to be special. They wanted God to love them MORE than others. How dare Jesus suggest any different.

So what does this all matter to us: that Jesus is somehow connected to the fulfilment of God’s promises? What does it matter that we are called back to the basics, things we have long forgotten in our striving for success or just our day to day lives? What does it mean that the gospel speaks of hope, real hope? What does it mean that this hope and this good news is not just for us, but for everyone?

It matters because we are called to be a people who believe in the promises of God. These promises are not just about enduring the pains of this life so that we can be blessed in heaven. They are also about the life on earth; a life the prophets were very much interested in. They are about justice for all people. They are about sharing and caring, in small and large ways. They are about not giving up in futility because the problems are too large. They are about wading in where we are and saying that our ministry as an individual, as a family, as a congregation and as a denomination, really can make a difference in the world. As individuals and as families we bring food for the food bank, not to solve the poverty of the world, but so that one person, or one family, can have a good meal, on one day. If enough of us bring enough than every client of our local food bank can have a good meal. We cannot stop every heart from breaking but if we can hold one hand or give one hug and offer one listening ear we can help one person. And if enough of us can give the time, we can make a difference in the lives of many more. As a denomination, our Mission and Service dollars can go toward the kind of work which benefits entire communities and which also seeks to solve or at least challenge some of the systemic causes of suffering in our world. As a people of hope in 2007, a people who follow Jesus of Nazareth we are called to live as a people who live out the hope that life can bring blessing not only in “heaven” but on the earth that God proclaimed as GOOD each and every day of creation.

What we need to remember is that the early church never dreamed that it would be part of “mainstream culture”, but rather it was seen as a resistence movement. It was a way for them to speak the word of God to that culture, to remind it of its roots, its original purpose and to call it to faithfulness. That is a “back to the basics” way of looking at the origins of the Christian church. Our faith in the God of Jesus of Nazareth is meant to challenge our assumptions about people, about what is important in our lives in terms of goals and objectives and what and who is of value and worth. Our faith is meant to take us back to the good news, the good news for all people. The good news is hardly good if our success is contingent upon the suffering or failure of others.

The message of this passage is that what we do and say does matter. The message is that we are called to embrace a gospel which calls us to believe that the blind can see, the captives can be freed and the poor come to that place where these things no longer cause suffering.

This passage talks about the kind of world where everyone has enough and where no one has too much at the expense of another. We live in an increasingly global economy. Many manufacturing jobs in North America have been lost to the developing world. Yet, if we really look into it many of those people who get what we have long regarded as “our jobs” are often worse off than they were before as they work in horrible and unsafe conditions for the profit of multi-national corporations.

This sermon of Jesus is a call to all of us: it’s not just a call to proclaim the gospel of God’s love in words, but also in our deeds. This is a call to ensure that the poor of the world have what is necessary for life.

In June of 2005 I went to a seminar in Truro and one of the presenters was Sally McFague, theologian in residence at Vancouver School of Theology. At that seminar and in her books she argues that the Church must be involved with the three “e”s: ecology, ecumenism and economics. In many ways Jesus’ sermon talks about those three things. He talks about justice for the poor, about God’s love being visited on everyone and about the land being a blessing to all people and not just to some. (That’s the part about the year of the Lord’s favour”!) Jesus proclaimed a gospel of the whole of life, not something that affected just the strictly religious. That’s what got him to hot water and that’s what gets the church into hot water today.

At our Presbytery meeting on Wednesday I listened to a presentation on the visit to Guatemala of a delegation from the United Church. You may remember that many churches in the Presbytery helped to fund a well for the community of Labor de Falla, in the mountains of Guatemala. A congregation in the Moncton area also helped to build a school in the community of Rabinale.

No one can change the past; a past that, in their case, has seen their own government enact a policy of cultural genocide in an attempt to completely wipe out the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. Many people have been “disappeared” never to be heard from again, or murdered right in front of their families but despite their horrible treatment these people dare to have hope. They dare to plan for the future and to seek the best for their children. As Canadians we are challenged to ensure that we do not prosper alone; that we consider the lives of those who grow our coffee and other such tropical crops. Too often big business has horribly oppressed indigenous peoples in the names of profit as they seek maximum return for these export crops. Too often lives have been lost as the people got in the way.

I think that Jesus, in his sermon read today, is telling us that hope for us is tied to hope for the rest of the world. How can we prosper if our prosperity is linked to poverty and death elsewhere?

We are called to believe and to proclaim a gospel that transforms all of life; not just one or two aspects. Do we have the courage to allow that gospel to permeate our hearts and souls? Today these scriptures can be fulfilled in our hearing.

Amen.

January 28, 2007

Jeremiah 1: 4-10
Psalm 71: 1-6
1 Corinthians 13: 1-13
Luke 4: 21-30

The Toughest Job

“Love is patient and kind”. We all know that it’s often the scripture of choice for weddings and what better time to talk of love in many of its aspects. This is so much so that we tend to think of this passage only in the light of radiant, yet nervous smiles and camera flashes, of rented tuxedos and gorgeous white satin, coloured taffeta and reams of lace. We know though that weddings and the attached nerves, frills and seemingly never ending expenses are only a fraction of what makes a marriage. We know that, in marriage, is hard, as well as patient and kind. We know that love in marriage is hard work, a work of the kind that never ends.

However, I don’t really want to speak about marriage today. In fact, this passage was not originally about marriage, and to limit it to that is to miss both the promise it has for us and the call it extends to all of us who seek to belong to the body of Christ.

We must remember that this letter of Paul , as all letters of Paul, were written to address problems in the Church. If the churches which he had founded had never experienced any problems or if the letters had not been saved, we would lose half of what we often call, “the New Testament”. Unfortunately we have only his letter and not a description of “the problem”. We have to read between the lines to discern what the problem is that is being addressed in any given passage

In addition, in order to understand the original meaning of this, or any, passage it is vital to look at the passages that come both before and after it. (We must remember that the chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were not put there by the authors and are not “absolute” divisions in terms of thought and subject matter.)

It seems that these passages are about “spiritual gifts” and the problems caused by them in the church in Corinth. It seems that those with certain gifts were more highly valued than those with other gifts. In Chapter 12 Paul talks first about spiritual gifts and how, for the health of the Christian community, it is essential to have a great variety of gifts. By way of illustration or explanation, he likens the need for a variety of gifts in the Christian community to the need for all parts in a human body. In Chapter 12 he states the obvious: just as the body needs feet and hands and the five senses, and relates it then to the church. Just so, the church needs many different kinds of people who possess a variety of gifts. As we progress through the chapter, one topic flows logically into the next. The trouble is that each of these contains enough material for many sermons BUT if they are extended over several sermons we tend to lose track of the “big picture”. It’s that big picture I’d like to look at today.

After Paul talks about the body, both human and church, he talks about the importance of the love which is essential to the body of the church.

I THINK THAT THIS NEXT POINT is vital. In Paul’s way of looking at things, love is not a separate gift, given just to some, but a gift that all people need, in addition to the other gifts that the Spirit gives to the church.

Notice how the gift of love is introduced. A bit earlier in the service, you heard the passage read from the New Revised Standard Version, a translation that tries to preserve the original language and images as much as possible. It’s in the familiar cadence and easily recognizable language; it contains the familiar phrases. The Message , on the other hand, a Bible paraphrase by Eugene Peterson tries to rephrase the passage in a new and dynamic way. This is how he translates the first few lines:

 “If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  If I speak God’s word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump”, and it jumps, but I don’t 



have love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.  So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.” 

In order to fully grasp its meaning we sometimes we need to hear what is said in a different way. So, given what has come before, about the gifts of all people being essential to the church, it would seem to me that this passage is first and foremost addressed to the Christian community of Corinth. As it is regarded as Scripture, as inspired, it is addressed to us. It is addressed to those of us gathering in this building on a day with a - 30° wind-chill in the midst of a Canadian winter. It is addressed to our neighbours and friends in other churches and to all who call upon the name of Christ around the world.

This passage speaks about its life together in the Spirit; OUR life together in the Spirit. It’s not something for those who lived almost 2000 years ago! It’s not something which we can “grow out of”.

First and foremost, this “life together in the Spirit is a life of love”. Everything that is done must be done for love and in love; nothing else counts. The three following points, I found in Seasons of the Spirit, who are quoting Richard B. Hays’ commentary on 1 Corinthians from the Interpretation Series of biblical commentaries. Sadly it is one I do not own.

Scholar Richard B Hays tells us that there are three main observations about love based on this passage. It is his three points on which I would like to base the rest of my sermon.

First, as we read this passage it is clear that Paul is saying that it is love which gives life and its actions, meaning. In fact, it is only when we live in love that life has any meaning at all. The primary problem in the Corinthian Church was not that they were not serious is seeking to develop spiritual gifts; they were very serious about such gifts. The problem was not that they were not committed; the life of faith was of utmost importance to them. The problem, as Paul seemed to imply, was that they had forgotten to love.

It’s hard to love when your primary goal in life is to “win” the argument; even if you are right. It’s hard to love when your primary purpose is to be the most important. It’s hard to love when you are angry with another person, or jealous of their gifts, abilities and blessings. It’s hard to love when you are just putting in time till things change for the better.

As Paul argues, the utilization of gifts within the community of faith is not designed so that one member can control the others in any way but so that the whole group can be lifted up and enabled to make the best use of their own gifts. When we set our goals and objectives as individuals and as a church we need to ask ourselves whether or not we are doing this for love.

Second, as in order to love fully, in the way Paul speaks of it, we need to form our character with this goal in mind. Love is NOT A FEELING. It’s not the feeling we have for our favourite food, even ice cream or chocolate or a hot cheesy lasagne, or our favourite musical group or any “thing” we have; it is a way of living that orients our entire lives. AND It is not self-flagellation either; while love must be self-giving, it should never diminish us. To love is to act in such a way that the other, as well as ourselves, are given the opportunity to become fully the persons God intended us all to be.

While love is a choice and must result in actions on behalf of the other, we can’t just decide to be loving people one minute and turn into what we want to be instantly or even overnight. Hays says, “They are learned patterns of behaviour that must be cultivated over time in the context of a community that models and supports such behaviour”. As quoted in Seasons of the Spirit

However, being loving also means knowing when not to bow to “peer pressure. “ The actions of love sometimes require great courage because the community is small and the opposition is strong. Friday night I went to see Freedom Writers the new movie starring Hillary Swank. Erin Gruwell, a young teacher is given a tough assignment at Wilson High School. She is given a racially mixed class of children from poor neighbourhoods, some of whom are there as an alternative to jail; all of whom are there until they are old enough to drop out a disappear, if they live that long! And not managing to do that is a real issue for them!

A young teacher with no real experience in the classroom she has what her colleagues have lost, the hope that she can make a real difference. After a very rocky start she begins to understand the reality of their lives and she succeeds in helping them to find the common threads that united them rather than focussing on what divided them.

Working two part-time jobs to earn extra money she buys books for them when the school will not and she is able to teach them the required English curriculum while she instills in them love and respect for each other and themselves. One of the books they study is the Diary of Anne Frank (the story of a young Jewish girl who almost survived the Holocaust by hiding in an attic.) She manages to teach them that there are many similarities between their lives which are governed by race based gangs and what the Nazi’s tried to do in Europe before and during the second world war. More than one student is angry when they discover that she does not survive the Nazi peril. They manage to raise enough money to pay for the woman who hid the Frank family to come to their school and speak to them. This elderly woman tells them that she is not hero, she just did what she had to, because it was right. All of this together: the story of Anne Frank and the love that Ms Gruwell has for her students inspired them to their own personal acts of heroism. This inspired them to be loving and caring people in their own right.

Third, Paul reminds us that we only have partial knowledge, no matter how much experience we have, no matter how much education. Like Ms Gruwell, in the movie, she did not know what their lives were like, and until she found a way for them to relate to one another, the members of one group fo students did not know about the lives of the others.

Paul is telling me that I CANNOT KNOW the true motivations of another person, nor what it is truly like to be them. I may believe that one kind of spiritual gift or talent is of more value, but as Paul asserts, we don’t and can’t know everything. We are only finite humans, limited by our experience, by our education and by the times in which we live. Paul lived at a time when even the most educated thought that the earth was flat and that the sun moved from side east to west to create day and night. They knew nothing of antibiotics let alone germs and viruses and other causes of disease. I wonder how much of what we assume to be correct, in terms of science or social policy will be considered primitive in another 20 or 50 or 100 years! Yet, Paul affirms this and it cannot be emphasized enough: LOVE WILL ENDURE!

This is our wake up call. This passage calls us all to live a life of love. That is more important that anything else; and it may be harder than anything else. It may be harder, but it is the right thing. It is LOVE that has the power to move mountains and to transform hearts of ice and stone. It is love that can bring hope from despair and joy from sorrow. It is God’s greatest gift to us all.

AMEN!