October 28, 2018 I Corinthians 13, A Guide for Life: Always

This morning we continue our series of messages from I Corinthians 13, with today’s message, titled Always. 

Always is an interesting word.  As I spend a lot of time in my car, I listen to the radio quite a bit.  There are some songs that I will always listen to, even though I have heard them many, many times.  I will always listen to Let It Be, by the Beatles, My Sweet Lord, by George Harrison, and Landslide, by Fleetwood Mac.  Those songs always move me and I never tire of listening to them.  Others, however, will always cause me to change the channel.  Freebird, by Lynyrd Skynyrd or Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin will always prompt a change of channel.  It’s not that they aren’t great songs – they are – but, for some reason, I don’t need to hear them any more.

I Corinthians 13 is a passage of Scripture that always moves me.  No matter how many times I hear it, no matter how many times I read it, it is always a welcomed experience.  I have returned to the New International Version this week, even though I said I would use a different version each week.  The NIV uses the word from which I take my title this morning – always.  I read through a lot of other versions this week and love them, but they have different ways of expressing verse 7, which says that love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  I appreciate that Paul provides a 4-point outline for my message this morning, and I appreciate that he binds those points together with the word always.  Always.  That’s a powerful word, isn’t it?  It is a reminder that love is always true and always the standard by which we are to live.  Admittedly, we don’t always follow love, however.  I know I don’t, and I’m fairly certain you don’t either.  That’s not to critique myself or anyone else; it is simply an acknowledgement of our humanity, and part of the reality of our humanity is that we do not always demonstrate love.   At times, yes, but not always.  Sometimes we are overcome by pettiness, small-mindedness, vindictiveness, and all sorts of other behaviors and attitudes that fall far short of the ideal of love.  And I sometimes wonder, in this very transient day and age in which we live, can the word always apply to much of anything?  I certainly hope so, but I fear that it is less and less true that it does.

Follow along as I read I Corinthians 13 – (New International Version).

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love Always Protects

In this dangerous, violent world, protection is something that is often on our minds, especially self-protection.  A great deal of money is spent these days on equipment we hope will provide us with a greater degree of protection.  Here at the church we have been taking steps to provide a greater protection, including a soon-to-be installed system of security cameras.  I’ll be honest with you and say this – you can’t imagine how much I would rather not install that system.  I would so much rather see that money used for ministry purposes but there are some realities that we now have to consider, and providing security for everyone who comes into our facility is one of those realities. 

Increasingly, people are taking steps to secure their safety, including carrying weapons.  My father, who was a steelworker for many years, was also a gunsmith, so I grew up with a lot of guns around our family, and when I was young I used guns for sporting purposes, such as skeet shooting and target shooting, and I own guns that were built by my father so can say that I understand the attraction of weapons as a means of protection.  My thought about any steps of protection is this, however – mostly what those steps do is give us a sense of protection, even though there is no guarantee of protecting ourselves against the dangers and violence in this world.  What the past few decades have proven, I believe, is that we live more under the illusion of protection than the guarantee of protection, and this has been reinforced by the tragedy at the synagogue in Pittsburgh yesterday and two episodes in our own area – the tragedy of two people killed at a Kroger store in Louisville and the threats of violence made against schools here in Shelby County and Anderson County.  The reality is, no security system will guarantee our protection.  No weapon will guarantee our protection.  I don’t say any of this to cause unnecessary worry and anxiety about potentialities or to play upon our fears, but to speak what I believe to be a truth with which we must grapple, and it is the truth that protection is very difficult, but we must not allow what is happening in our world to paralyze us with fear.

But there is another element to protection as well, a very important element and it is this – we are called to offer protection to those who are vulnerable and those who populate the category that Jesus describes in Matthew 25:31-46 as the least of these.  Take some time to read that passage this week, and note that Jesus reminds us – commands us, in fact – to protect those who are vulnerable and those who struggle.  (31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.)  That passage is why we feed the hungry, why we visit the sick, why we visit those in prison, why we provide clothing and do other acts of ministry. Jesus calls us to offer that protection to the many who need it because love – real love – is not one that focuses only on self.  The love of God – the agape love of which the Scriptures speak – is a love that thinks beyond self, it is not concerned only with self; it is, rather, self-sacrificing.  As Paul says of love in Philippians 2:4, love leads us to the point that we are not looking after your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.

Love Always Trusts

My phone rings off the hook many days with scam calls (well, it doesn’t actually have a hook, as it is a cell phone).  I received a call on Friday that I was going to be arrested if I didn’t pay the IRS a certain amount of money.  I transcribed the message and honestly, it’s a bit hard to trust a message like this – It’s matter is very serious emergency and time sensitive we are calling you from investigation team of IRS.  We have just received notification regarding your tax filings from the headquarters and she will get expired in the next 24 working the cars and want to get expired after that custody by the local cops at her or serious allegations pressed on your name at the moment.  We can.  Read.  You know 5.  I.  Should 6 not.  Thank you.  Well, at least they were polite enough to thank me.  Here’s a general rule for me – I don’t trust any threatening message that does not contain at least two coherent sentences.  If you are going to scam me, at least put together a minimum of two coherent sentences!

It’s hard to trust, because experience sometimes teaches us to not to be trusting.  Some years ago, in a community where I was serving, I was asked to be the judge at a baby contest at a community event.  Even in my youthful inexperience I knew that was a bad idea.  I had heard enough people complain about the judging in baby contests to know that I should absolutely not accept such an assignment.  The person in charge, however, promised me that I would remain anonymous, and against my better judgment, I accepted.  I walked carefully around the babies, trying my best to not look like a judge, and wrote down my selections for first, second, and third place.  I turned in my results and stood off to the side, feeling safe in my anonymity.  Just before the winners were announced, the MC turned, pointed to me, and said to the crowd gathered, before we announce our winners I want to thank our judge for the baby contest – Dave Charlton!  Thank you Dave!  I’m not sure of the response of the crowd, as I was running for the hills at that point.  Suffice it to say, I would never again trust anyone who promised me anonymity in exchange for judging a baby context!

Here at church we receive a lot of requests for assistance, and we are very careful to do our due diligence, because there are people who try and scam churches and we want to be as careful as possible with the resources you entrust to us.  You work hard for your money, and we do not want it to be lost to one of the scams that come our way.  It bothers me to have to have a level of suspicion about requests for assistance, but if we do not, we will sometimes get scammed.

Some things are obviously scams, but others aren’t, and the difficulty is that we become less trusting and more suspicious about everything in general.  It used to be that we lived by the maxim that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Now it seems we live by a new maxim – don’t believe anything to be true.  To be honest, I think the suspicious natures we have developed are partly necessary to help us navigate a world where there are many who seek to take advantage of us.  Jesus does say, don’t forget, that we should shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16).  At the same time, however, those suspicions and that mistrust tears at our social fabric as we become less willing to trust almost everything and everyone.

Is there any trust left these days?  Is there any trust left in our institutions?  How much trust is left in government?  How much trust is left in churches?  The financial scandals, the leadership scandals, and the abuse scandals in churches have destroyed so much of the trust that once was a given.  It is a sacred trust to receive people into our care.  It is a sacred trust to deal with children and young people.  It is a sacred trust to be given money for ministry.  What can be done to win back trust?  Well, love has a very large element of trust, and that is why that leap into love can be very difficult, because trust can be very difficult, but love cannot truly exist without trust.

Love Always Hopes

What gives you hope?  Do you ever feel hopeless about the state of the world?  What about young people today?  I think many of them feel rather hopeless about their future.  My generation and those that came before were, for the most part, very optimistic about the future.  We believed we were going to change the world!  We believed anything was possible!  The generations behind us, however, are far less hopeful.  If you have millennials in your family, you will find that they believe we have left them a world with an environment that is collapsing.  They believe they have fewer economic opportunities.  They believe their future is not as bright.  It is hard to see their sense of hopelessness, but it is a powerful force among that generation.

Things did not seem very hopeful in Paul’s day.  This is, let us not forget, someone who was martyred for his faith.  Yes, it is difficult today, but I think Paul might remind us that it was no cakewalk in his day either.  Paul writes a good deal about hope.  In Romans 8:28 he reminds us of this – we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  Even though he does not use the word hope, those words exude a sense of it.  In the beautiful letter to the Philippians he writes in 3:13-14, brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called my heavenward in Christ Jesus.  Once again, Paul does not use the word hope, but it takes hope to keep pressing on.  It takes hope to continue reaching for the prize.  It is hope that fuels us, it is hope that empowers us, it is hope that allows us to put one foot in front of the other on our most difficult of days, it is hope that reminds us that when we our overwhelmed with grief that there will one day be resurrection and reunion, it is hope that provides us with a reason to awake each day, to rise up and to have faith that we can overcome whatever comes our way.  Isaiah 40:31 is one of my absolute favorite verses, and it says those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.  Isn’t that a great promise, that we will have a renewal of strength?  Who doesn’t need more strength?  Who doesn’t feel tired and weary, worn down by life’s challenges?  Who doesn’t want to soar above all of the difficulties of life, and who doesn’t want to rise above all of the challenges and difficulties that come our way?  Wouldn’t it be great to soar above all of life’s challenges?

Henri Nouwen said that hope is to keep living amid desperation.  Hope is knowing that there is love; it is trusting in tomorrow.

Loves Always Perseveres

One of the things that makes church unique among all organizations is that we are 99% volunteer driven.  That’s amazing!  After hours of work and days of work, volunteers offer even more hours in the ministry of our church.  After hours and days of meeting deadlines and demands at work, volunteers offer more time to our church.  I know that is tiring.  I know that brings weariness.  I know that makes you sometimes feel like quitting.  How often do you feel like quitting?  How often do you feel like giving up? Over my years of ministry, on a number of Sunday evenings, evenings when I was feeling very discouraged about things, I would write letters of resignation and then file them away.  Over the years I had amassed a lot of those letters.  I never showed them to anyone, and I never intended to turn them in, but it helped me to write them.  I no longer write those letters but there are occasions when I compose one in my mind.  It is in those moments that I turn to Paul for encouragement.  Paul knew a lot about perseverance.  Paul spent a lot of his time encouraging others to continue, to not give up.  In II Corinthians 4:17-18 he writes that our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Peter knew quite a bit about perseverance as well.  In his first letter, 1:6-7 he writes in all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I want to close by sharing an illustration I heard recently, one that ties things together very well (thanks to Leigh Bond, of Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville, from whom I adapted this illustration).  I never took chemistry class.  After passing biology by a single point it didn’t seem like a good idea for me to try my hand at chemistry.  But I did receive a good chemistry/theology lesson recently, and it is about two elements, the first of which is sodium.  Sodium, by itself, is an unstable element, so when it is found naturally it is always in a combined form, bound to another element.  The second element is chloride, which is poisonous, so you do not want to ingest chloride in any form.  Most, if you not all of you, however, will do so in just a little while.  When you go to lunch, you will ingest chloride, although it will be combined with sodium, forming sodium chloride.  Do you know what sodium chloride is?  It’s salt.  It’s fascinating that two elements, when they are by themselves, are very different than when they are combined.  One, by itself, is unstable and the other, by itself, is poisonous.  Together, however, they become life-sustaining.  In a similar way, God links us together, as we are much more stable when linked to others.  This is actually the meaning of the word religion.  Religion means to bind together.  You see, when we are bound together with others, our lives are much richer.  When we are bound together with others, we are less likely to fall victim to the poisonous actions of hatred and vitriol.  I can’t tell you the chemical term for the linking of two elements I can tell you the theological term – love.  When the love of God bonds with us what does it do?  It helps us to persevere.  It gives us hope.  It helps us trust.  And it gives us protection and calls us to the protection of others.  And not just sometimes, but always.  Always!

October 21, 2018 - I Corinthians, A Guide for Life: Speaking the Same Language

You have often seen this visual illustration, but I want to use it in a different way.  Is this glass half full or half empty?  I’m not asking if you are an optimist or a pessimist (although most people saw the glass as half full, if that means anything), but to point out there is actually a rather glaring fallacy in that question, and it is this – maybe I have the wrong size glass.  I can pour the water into this smaller glass and it is completely full.  Or, I can pour it back into the larger glass and then add more water to make that glass full.  Or I can drink it down to whatever level I choose.  We are often conditioned to think in narrow categories – is the glass half full or half empty?  Is an opinion right or wrong?  Is a person good or bad?  What if, however, there are other options rather than the two we are so often presented?  What if the idea of having only two options – which is more and more the case these days – is simply not accurate?  An opinion might not be either right or wrong, but a mixture of both.  A person might not fit the category of good or bad, but might be a combination of both (which is the case of all us, I believe).  Here is the point I am trying to make – language is not always defined as much as it is assumed, and we might be assuming the wrong things because we have not adequately defined the language we use.  This is the root of many of our communication problems, as we do not all define language in the same way.  We believe we are speaking the same language when we talk to one another, but often we are not.

In a recent New York Times OpEd by Jonathan Merritt, titled It’s Getting Harder to Talk About God (October 13, 2018), he writes that in our country, we are losing our capacity to talk about God because we are losing our sense of shared language about God.  I believe this is an important point to consider.  Maybe a good many of our problems today, in terms of dealing with one another, come about because we do not speak the same language, in terms of how we define our language.  Even though we use the same words, we have very different ways of using and understanding those words. 

This morning we continue our series on I Corinthians 13, I want us to think about the ways in which we need to learn to speak the same language when we speak of love.  Love means many different things to many different people.  Even in churches, we might not all define love in the same manner.  As I read I Corinthians 13, I will read it from a translation with which you might not be familiar.  It is a translation called The Message, a translation by Eugene Peterson, a scholar and Presbyterian minister who just days ago, unfortunately, went into hospice care (he passed away on Monday).  I really like this translation, and it is one I turn to often when I need a fresh perspective on a verse or passage I’m struggling to understand.  Reading the Bible in contemporary expressions of language can help us to better understand a verse that might be otherwise difficult to understand.  As a bit of trivia, if you are familiar with the Christian band For King & Country, their song The Proof of Your Love uses this translation of I Corinthians 13 in the spoken portion of that song.

Follow along with me as I read I Corinthians 13:1-13 –

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 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 love, I’m nothing.

3-7 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.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

11 When I was an infant, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Do you like that version?  I love it.

I want to focus again this week on verses 4 – 7, where Paul gives us a language for the meaning of Christian love.  Christian love was not like the understanding of love that was common throughout the Roman Empire, so as Paul was writing to and working with new congregations all over the Empire – congregations that had people with little or not understanding of Christianity – he had to define for them the language of faith, and one of the most basic tenants of that faith was, and remains, love.  When you read I Corinthians 13 it is important to remember, then, that Paul isn’t simply writing a beautiful passage about love.  For Paul, these words were very, very practical; they were a definition of love for people who needed a definition of love.

When Paul wrote these words, one of the things he was doing was defining love so that there would be a common understanding of what, exactly, is meant by Christian love.  We need to remember that, in Paul’s day, most people who were part of the church had very little idea of what it meant to be a Christian.  We are the beneficiaries of 2,000 years of Christian teaching and Christian theology that defined language and ways of thinking, but the earliest followers of Jesus did not have that advantage, so for Paul, one of the necessities was to develop a common language for love and what it meant to love in the name of Jesus.  Now, that may seem very basic – and even unnecessary – for us, but it was very important and very necessary for Paul

But even today, we do not always speak the same language when we discuss a topic.  Love means many different things to many different people.  Would, for instance, love mean the same to a young couple who are dating as it would to a couple married for fifty years?  That is not to demean a young couple and their relationship in any way, but time and the difficulties and struggles that come over time will change how we perceive love.  It is not possible, I believe, for someone who is a teenager to conceptualize or understand love in the same way an eighty year old would know love.

It’s always easier for my brain to deal with information when I can put it in some kind of framework, such as several points to hang the information on, so in that usual fashion, I will do that this morning.

Love Is Treating People With Dignity, Respect, and Equality.

We can add a lot of other adjectives to that short list, but it would mostly be synonyms of those three.

Even in churches, amazingly enough, we do not all mean the same things when we use the same words, and love is a good example of this.  While some churches would preach that we should love everyone, they have not always done this in practical terms.  In generations past, for example, some churches would preach love but fail to condemn slavery.  Today, some churches still treat women as though they are second-class citizens, forbidding them from holding positions of leadership or teaching males above a certain age.  When Paul wrote about love, love did not mean equality for many people in the Roman Empire; indeed, it did not mean equality for most people.  Love, certainly as expressed in equality, was not for women, for the many slaves throughout the Empire, for children, and not for non-citizens.  The egalitarian nature of love, as expressed by the early church, was something very different from what was meant by love in the Roman Empire.  The equality demonstrated by the early church was offensive to many throughout the Empire and it was seen as a threat to the security and foundations of the Empire.  Treating people equally would, among other things, undermine the entire way of commerce that was a financial underpinning of the Empire.

The world was a tough place, and church became a refuge and a respite.  Everyone could belong, and they were ridiculed for that radical kind of welcome.  How often is it today, unfortunately, that some churches are known more for whom they do not welcome and are ridiculed for their lack of welcome rather than their radical welcoming?

I was at our Regional Assembly on Friday, and in the middle of the afternoon we were listening to reports, and let’s be honest, listening to a bunch of institutional reports is not the most exciting moments.  When they began, the highlight for me was looking a few rows over and seeing one of my ministerial colleagues falling fast asleep, and thinking I’m so glad it’s not me for a change!  But then it got very interesting, as they had a group of six people on stage and talking about the work of the institutions they led, especially when it came to Lexington Theological Seminary, and Charisse Gillett began to speak.  One of the things she said was this, and this is a bit of a paraphrase – Lexington Theological Seminary was founded in 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when African-Americans had not rights and many were still enslaved, and women also had very few rights.  Who could have imagined, then, that this seminary would one day have as a president an African-American woman?  That reminds us of two things – the church has not always lived up to its calling of love as expressed through equality, dignity, and respect, but that calling always calls us to put that into practice!

Some people would not associate with Jesus because he affiliated with sinners.  They were offended by the associations of Jesus.  We ought to offend people by our associations.  We ought not be afraid of criticism because of a radically, welcoming love; we ought to welcome that criticism and wear it as a badge of honor!  People often criticize churches for having hypocrites in our midst.  You know what that means?  It means we’re doing our job!  We ought to attract hypocrites, and sinners, and losers, and strugglers, and scoundrels, because that’s who Jesus attracted, and we ought to say we will treat them with the same love as anyone else!

Love Is A Choice.

How often do we “feel” like what Paul lists in verses 4 – 7?  Ever? Also while I was at the Regional Assembly on Friday, I went into the sanctuary at Beargrass Christian Church during a break, when the sanctuary was mostly empty, to sit in quiet for a few minutes.  I sat down in one of the pews and noticed there was an empty plastic container, and the label on the container was mixed nuts.  I couldn’t help but think how appropriate that was, because in some ways, that is the church – a bunch of mixed nuts!  How else would you describe a group of people who follow Jesus, who told us the first shall be last, that if you want to be great you have to be a servant, that we are to love for our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and all manner of other commands that are crazy in the eyes of the larger culture?

Love is a choice.  Love has an emotional component but if that is all there is, love will never last, and Paul says that love never fails.  I’ll tell you this – if it’s nothing but emotion it certainly will fail, because as wonderful as emotions are – especially in love – emotions ebb and flow, they cool down, they disappear for sometimes long stretches of time, and that’s when you make the choice that love will continue.

After all, who really wants to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute us?  I can answer that question for you – none of us!  Let’s be honest, do we want to do that?  If we depend upon an emotional feeling to get us to that point we are in real trouble, but we can make a choice, and that choice does not have to depend upon the whims of emotion.

Love Is Restorative.

I was reading an article recently that asked the question, what do we do with people who have had public failures?  What do we do with them?  How do we restore them.  Paul says very simply that love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others.  The Christian faith is restorative, but we live in a time and day in which people’s lives are destroyed as though it is a sport to do so and the idea that they could ever be restored is beyond comprehension.  Imagine Peter, for instance, if he were alive today, and especially if he decided to run for elected office.  Can you imagine the attack ads that would come out against him?  You can’t depend on Peter.  He failed his friend Jesus.  He denied him three times.  Do you want to elect someone who you can’t trust to stand with you when things get tough?  Is this the kind of person you want walking the halls of Congress? 

Now, it does not mean that someone who is abusive would be put into a position where they could do so again.  What restoration does mean is that we believe people are not disposable, and that everyone makes mistakes, but we work to restore them because that is a defining attribute of Christian love.

On Saturday morning I attended the board meeting of Mission Behind Bars and Beyond (MB3).  MB3 is the ministry that sponsors the church at the Diersen Center, where we lead worship several times a year, and where we will lead worship next month, if you would like to attend with us.  I am a great admirer of the work of MB3 and believe very much in their ministry, because they are doing the work of restoration.  Restoration is the heart of the gospel, as the ministry of Jesus was about restoring people and restoring our relationship with God.  We talk in those meetings a lot about how we can help bring people back into society, and that’s tough, because it’s very difficult when you have a record of incarceration.  The great part of MB3’s work is that when the individuals in the facilities where MB3 ministers, when those individuals are involved with the ministry of MB3, the recidivism rate declines dramatically, because of the work of restoration.  Here’s a problem we have as a society – we are great at punishment, but not so good at restoration.  We can lock people away very effectively, but as a society we don’t really know how to do the work of restoration, but faith does, because restoration is at the heart of what we are called to do.  Christian love is restorative.  It never says, because of what you have done you are finished.  You’re going to have to survive the best you can on your own.  From here on out you are ostracized and we are done with you.  Christian love does not do this.  Christian love says that however small is the offense or however large is the offense, the goal of love is restoration. 

This is why we must define love, because some will define love as going only so far, but Christian love does not have a limit or any lines that it will not cross.  I imagine that some of the first readers and hearers of these words that Paul wrote might have been thinking wait a minute; this is not what we were thinking.  This is really tough.  Are you sure this is what you want from us?  Yes, it is, because that’s the kind of love that God asks of us.

October 14, 2018 I Corinthians 13, A Guide for Life: On Today's To-Be List

Everywhere I go, I carry with me a rather lengthy to-do list (I think it runs about 12 pages this week).  On that list I have an overview page for upcoming events, pages for what I hope to accomplish on each day of the week, lists related to the various ministries and programs of the church, and other things I need to keep in mind.  Without that list I would be more than a bit lost.

I suspect that you have your own version of a to-do list, and it is because we are in constant need of various reminders, living as we do in a day and age that bombards us with so many requests, responsibilities, and information.  We find it hard to push back against all those things that come our way, partly I think, because we live in a culture that seems to prize busyness about most other things.  We like to have our calendars filled, we like to keep our families busy, we want a busy church calendar, we want busy, busy, busy!  What I will talk about this morning, however, is not so much what we need to do, but who we need to be.

There are a lot of tasks on my list.  There are many, many things I need to do, but interestingly, there is nothing on the list about who I should be.  Nowhere on my list does it say to be patient, or to be kind, or any of the other qualities listed in verses 4 – 7, which we will read in a few moments.  Maybe that is because we might ask, do we really need to remind ourselves of such things?  On the other hand, we can say, with good reason I think, in this day and age, yes, we do need to remind ourselves of who we are called to be.  Perhaps we need, besides a to-do list, a to-be list, which would remind us of all that we are called by God to be – people of kindness, grace, and all the other qualities that are a part of love.  Precisely because we are bombarded with so many requests, responsibilities, and information, we need to pay close attention to who we are as people.  Because it is easy to be carried along on the wave of all we have to do that we find we arrive, often unknowingly, at the point where we have forgotten – or forsaken – who we are called to be.  I say this because, it sometimes seems to me, that we put so much before the spiritual aspect of life.  Life is busy – I certainly get that – but life is so much more than simply checking off the boxes on our to-do lists.  I fear, at times, that we lose who we are called to be, because we are so busy taking care of what we need to do.

Last Sunday I mentioned that I would use a different translation each week, and that I would use the King James Version this week.  You will notice that I have used, instead of the King James Version, the New American Standard Version.  This version is more readable in verses 4 – 7, which will be my focal point on Sunday.  In the King James Version this passage is a bit awkward to read, but I will probably use the KJV at some point, just for some variety.

I Corinthians 13:1-13 NASV –

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;

10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 

11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I am going to ask three questions this morning – simple, but not easy questions. 

Question #1 – Who Am I Going To Be Today?

It’s been a long time since I was the age of making a vocational choice about life, but I vaguely remember all the questions and choices before me as I contemplated what I was going to do with my life.  For a while I wanted to be an engineer but, as I have mentioned before, I was one of history’s worst math students, which quickly ruled out a career in engineering.  When engineering didn’t pan out, I thought seriously about becoming a teacher.  I came really, really close to becoming a teacher.  In fact, for five or six years I taught a class at a school in Louisville, and was teaching the class my first few years here.  I love teaching, and I loved teaching that class.  One day I went to class so excited about the material I had to offer.  I mean I was really excited and passionate about it.  I stood in front of the class and was pouring my heart out.  I just knew that material was important to those students, and I knew they would be as passionate and excited about the material as I was.  I stood in front of the class and was absolutely caught up in the teaching moment.  This was information that not only could change their lives; I was convinced it would change their lives!  I knew they were as caught up in the material as I was and when one of the students raised their hands I knew it was to ask if they could stay longer, if I could keep teaching, and if I could offer more of those great words of wisdom, so I called on the young lady who had raised her hand and was ready to hear her say that it was life-changing material I was offering and when I said yes, what is your question she said, Dr. Charlton, do we need to know this for the test or can we just forget about it?  And right than, at that moment, a part of me died.  It was a harsh moment for me because I realized that education has become more about we learn in order to do something rather than it is learning to be something.  Now, unfortunately, it seems education is more about what we can learn in order to get a good job rather than it is about making us better people, and if it doesn’t have a practical application – such as getting us a high-paying job – then we’ll mark it off as unimportant and forget about it, because we want to do, do, do, rather than be, be, be.

I must admit, however, that when I was younger I didn’t realize that I spent a lot of time asking the questions about what I should do, but not many questions about who I should be.  What we do is a vocational question; what we are to be is a far more existential question.  One of those – what we do – is a question about how we make a living, while the other is about how we spend our lives in terms of who we will be, and they are not the same thing.  People are searching for meaning and many are searching for it in their vocations, which is fine and I hope you find meaning there, but they often do not find that to be enough, because if people found enough meaning in their vocations they wouldn’t be so anxious to retire, because so many people continue to look for that meaning when they retire.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John – as well as the rest of the disciples – believed they had the course of their lives set.  Peter, Andrew, James, and John would spend their lives as fishermen.  Matthew would spend his life as a tax collector.  And then Jesus entered into each of their lives and offered them something different, and they jumped at the chance to have what he offered, because it was more than just what they were going to do; it was who they were going to be.

Question #2 – Who Is Going To Tell Me Who To Be Today?

I received an interesting voicemail the other day.  My phone automatically does a text transcription of voice messages, and when I opened the text version imagine my surprise when I read the first line – Hi, this is from the Lord.  That surprised me because generally God sends me a text message rather than calling me.  But wouldn’t it be a great way to get a reminder when you need one.  Dave, here’s who I expect you to be today.  That would sure beat my 12-page to do list.

Very early in ministry, I preached a sermon I had titled Who’s Holding Your Cue Cards.  I don’t know if I still have a copy of that sermon, but the idea of it was to draw a comparison to actors who read from cue cards and the way in which our culture gives us cues about how we should think, how we should act, and how we should treat others.  In that sermon I was asking the question who is giving us cues about how we are to live?

It seems to me, in these contentious days, that we must be very conscious of the fact that we might be taking our cues about who to be and how to act from the larger culture in very many ways.  And if we are, that should, at times, grieve us, as we have moved into an era of such division and contentiousness.  I think we are all, at times, wondering what is happening to us?  We have entered into a time in history that I would call the great unraveling, where everything seems to be unraveling around us.  I would add that not all of it is negative, certainly, but much of what is happening is an unraveling of culture that reminds us that we do not know how to deal with our differences, so we are anxious and it seems people take out that anxiety upon one another.  For my part, however, I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone who is different from me. I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone whose politics are different from mine.  I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone whose religious beliefs are different from mine.  I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone whose ethnicity is different from mine.  I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone whose sexual orientation is different from mine.  I will not reject, diminish, and certainly not hate someone whose economic, educational, or social status is different from mine.  But I will say to those leaders – whether political or religious – who encourage me or anyone else to do so that I will neither listen to you nor do what you say.  Our cue card is in this Bible, where we are taught that every person is a precious creation of God and we are to love them, however much we might be alike or different.  Our cue card is Jesus, who tells us to love our enemies, and if we love them they are only our enemies by their choosing, not by ours.  Anything that tells us otherwise is a false cue card and we ought to tear it up and cast it out of our lives!  And if you disagree with everything I’ve said this morning, I still love you.  

Division was part of the struggle of the Corinthian church, to whom Paul wrote these words.  The church in the city of Corinth was a microcosm of our society today, as they were very fractured and awash in conflict.  They were divided into their own camps, reflecting what Paul wrote to them in I Corinthians 3:4, where he said that some of them followed after Apollos, and some after Paul, and some after Jesus.  Each person chose their own camp, their own tribe, which is what we see in our society today, and there is an ever-growing divide between those camps and we wonder if there is any way to bridge those divides.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians about love because he understood it was the solution to the problems in their church, and at the root of their problems was the failure to remember who they were called to be.  Living in a time not unlike our own, in terms of the divisive and contentious nature of society, Paul called the Corinthians to a different way of living – he called them to think not just of what they would do, but who they would be.  In our own fractious age, we would do well to hear and apply the words of Paul in this chapter, words that make for a very good to-be list.

Question #3 – How do we get to be who we are called to be?

It’s nice of Paul to give us the answer to that question.  It’s right in verse 4 – 8 –

4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails

That’s a very good prescription for becoming the people we need to be, I believe, but we must keep at it, we cannot give up.  I was in a small church recently, where our band had been asked to play.  The church reflects the decline of the neighborhood around them, as it has obviously been in a state of decline for some time.  I would imagine that at its peak, back in the 50s, 60s, and into the 70s, the congregation probably numbered around a hundred or so; now it is a few families, numbering just a handful.  It’s hard to see churches in that condition, but it was inspiring as well, because those who remain there are working very hard in the ministry of that church.  There is one person, in particular, who was obviously the heart and soul of the congregation and who was keeping things going.  I imagine there are times when she feels like giving up, and if she had given up, the church would probably have closed.  In spite of the odds against that church, she keeps pushing the congregation and inspiring the congregation.  I was very impressed by her commitment and her perseverance.  After we were finished, and were loading our gear, I talked with her son, who helped me carry my equipment to my car.  He told me of how hard his mom worked in that church and how she had brought him back to church, and at one point said I guess that might be the wrong reason to come to church, because of another person.  I told him that no, it was a great reason to come to church because of her.  It’s a great reason because that’s how faith and the church reach others.  Faith and the church reach others through our relationships, and that’s exactly how Jesus meant it to happen.  When he chose the disciples he reminded them that they were to connect with others relationally in order to bring others to him.  He told Peter and Andrew that he would make them fishers of men (Matthew 4:19), which means they were to use their relationships to reach others.

Sometimes faith seems like a fool’s game.  Sometimes we feel like quitting.  Sometimes we feel like giving up.  I wondered, as I stood in that struggling church in Louisville, if anyone had ever asked that group of people why don’t you quit?  Why don’t you give up?

I know you sometimes are discouraged; I am too, but keep going.  We are called to do ministry work, but we are mostly called to be who God has created us and called us to be.  That means success is not predicated upon what we do, but upon who we are.  Be who God has called you to be, and trust God that what needs to be done, will indeed get done.