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.
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