Measured by the Cross: Community

Preached on Sunday, August 11, 2013 (a Communion Sunday)

Scripture readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 & 11:17-34



Summer Vacation June 2013:
Scenes along the Feather River, East of Live Oak, CA

More than one hundred and fifty years ago there was a pioneer of modern nursing named Florence Nightingale who went to organize the medical care of the British troops who were fighting around the Black Sea in the Crimean War. The story goes that, one day, when she was spending some time carefully washing the wounds of a gravely injured soldier, that soldier looked up at her and said, “You are Christ to me.”



Imagine simply looking at another person (a perfectly ordinary person, just like you and me), and seeing Christ. As Christians, we ought to be amazed at being able, in the best of times, to do exactly this with each other. As Christians, we ought to be amazed to look at someone we don’t even know (someone who walks through these doors and sits with us in this room) and be able to see that they are Christ to us. We should find ourselves living every day being amazed (or at least deeply puzzled) by this.

What would you do if you saw this; if you saw Christ in others? How would you welcome them here, and anywhere? How would you welcome a stranger who might turn out to be Christ to you?

Jeremiah in his prophecy and Paul in his letter to the Christians in Corinth shed light on this experience. They tell us how we should find ourselves and our church being changed by seeing God, by seeing Christ, in others.

Jeremiah told of a time when a whole new relationship would be possible between God and human beings. It would be a relationship that changed people inside and out: a new mind, a new heart; a new life. “No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:34)

Something makes us hesitate to say, “I know God. I know the Lord. I know Jesus.” And our hesitation may come from the fact that we don’t, or not very well.

But there may be other reasons. When you say that you know something that other people may not know, you may feel that you are claiming to be smarter than they are: at least about that one thing. Even if we want to be smarter than others, we also want to appear to be polite. Or you might seem to be claiming special privileges for yourself. This also does not seem polite.

Knowing God doesn’t have much to do with being smart, but it ought to be a very humbling sort of special privilege. It is the knowledge that comes from special privilege that husbands and wives learn from each other. It’s the special knowledge shared by parents that kids learn about when they try to play mom and dad against each other. In a healthy marriage you see this special knowledge (this privileged knowledge) when you mention something about a wife to her husband; or about a husband to his wife.

The Old Testament teaches us that the knowledge that counts is the knowledge of relationship. In the older translations of the Bible, the first time we meet the knowledge that comes from the privilege of a special relationship is in Genesis.

It’s in the relationship between Adam and Eve. “Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived, and bore Cain.” (Genesis 4:1) That is a privileged experience of knowing someone in a way that makes a real difference.

From that time forth, I am sure that they were very different together, and they would have acquired a certain look about them that they had never had before. It was a look that anyone would have noticed, if there had been anyone else around to notice!

 Jeremiah said that there would come a time when this sort of privileged knowledge of God would become the common knowledge. Every one of God’s people would have this kind of knowledge of God based on relationship.

It wouldn’t be the knowledge of something written on stone, or in a book. It would be the knowledge of God and his ways written on their own hearts and minds.

It wouldn’t be found written in a special chapter of its own. You wouldn’t have to search for it in the index. It would be the whole story of the book of your life. There would be no sentence in your story that didn’t have God written in it.

Anyone who wanted you to know what they knew about God would begin to tell you, and then they would stop; because they would see that look. They would remember that they had just the same look that you have. Their own life was simply another telling of the same story of God in Christ.

When I was a child, I sometimes tried to pull something over on my mom. She would see what I was doing, and then she would repeat this very scary saying. She would say, “I can read you like a book.” But Jeremiah tells us of a time when we will look at the cover of any person’s life, and we will see a story that we know and share.

This new covenant, the new relationship that every person of God will share, is the story of Jesus, the story of the gospel (the good news of Jesus). It is the story of a life and death through which we die and live. Jesus died for our sins and so, in his death, we die to ourselves. In his resurrection from the dead he defeated every kind of death, and so (in him) we rise to a new life.

If anyone belongs to Jesus, the same story is retold in each and every one of us. Paul tells us the outline of the story in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

So any Christian can look any other Christian in the face and say, “You are Christ to me.” This is a kind of knowing and recognition that comes from God working in Jesus Christ. It is written in each and every one of us in the flesh and blood of a God who became a baby in Bethlehem, and a carpenter in Nazareth, and a victim of injustice on the cross. It is written in the flesh and blood of a God who died and rose from the dead; the flesh and blood of a God who still wears the scars and sits on the throne of the universe in heaven.

It is a story written in the biggest letters in the world, in our hearts and minds. How can anyone who has that story written upon them miss it in others?

But Paul says that the Christians who were living in Corinth were doing exactly that. They were all sharers in the body and blood of Christ, and yet they didn’t treat each other that way. In the Lord’s Supper, they all relived that story in the book where it is written in bread and wine, yet they skimmed over the place that says who the supper is for.

When they sat down to eat and drink the story, so many of them did it as individuals. They each did it as a party of one. They did not look at each other and see the same story written in the body and the blood, in the bread and the wine.

Paul seems to start out by complaining about divisions in the church, and we jump to the conclusion that these must be divisions of doctrine and teaching, but Paul makes it clear that the division was a failure of practice. They were divided because they were not including each other. They were living together, apart.

Well, the rich in the church were a little club unto themselves. Sunday was a work day in the ancient world of the New Testament; but not everyone had to work.

The Lord’s Supper was part of a larger meal that was served in a house that was big enough to hold a whole congregation. These big houses were the homes of the rich where they often entertained their wealthy friends. The well-off Christians could come early to these homes where they were often guests for social occasions.

They forgot, on Sundays, that these homes were also houses of worship where the body of Christ was to be found. They forgot that the body of Christ was bigger and more inclusive than the body of their special set of friends.

Other people had to work for bosses who kept track of their hours. They couldn’t come as early as the well-to-do. They came to the body of Christ and found a table of crumbs. They found the holy meal was shared without them.

In the history of the church, one reason why we have just a taste of bread and a sip of wine is to keep everyone on the same page in the same story. We are partners in the body and blood of Christ.

There are no divisions in this partnership. We are never to see anyone as having more or having less at this table. We are never even to think it. We are definitely never to treat others this way, as if they had less or more of the meal of Jesus, or as if anyone was entitled to less or more.

Modern people are so mental about remembering. We think that remembering has something to do with our brains; especially these days, when life spans have gotten so long that we all feel at risk for dementia. Remembering, in the Bible, has very little to do with the brain. It has to do with the heart. When our brains stop working our memories are hidden in a spiritual heart that defines who we are.

If we only read our heart instead of our brain we would know this. Our truest memories are not things that we think about. They are things we relive. We laugh again. We cry again. Our blood pressure goes up.

Real memories are the stuff our lives are made of. At least one purpose for our life is to live for the creation of real memories.

In the Lord’s Supper, we sit together (with a sampling of every Christian in the world) at the table of Jesus. We hear him talk about his death and our forgiveness. We hear him talk about washing each others’ feet.

We find ourselves at the foot of the cross and we watch him bleed and die. We come to the garden tomb weeping, and we find it empty. Jesus comes to us alive again. We see him disappear into heaven and we find ourselves watching and praying for him to come back.

It is our story because we know it by relationship. We live it every day.

Or we think we do. But, maybe we only think it. Maybe we don’t see it because we do not find ourselves saying to each and every Christian that we meet, “You are Christ to me.”

We are disciples, and disciples are learners. We are still learning. Do we really show signs that we are still learning?

Paul says that we need to discern or “recognize the body of the Lord” when we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper. He means that we need to see the story that makes us all one. We need to see the oneness that makes us one; that makes us partners who need each other in some high, and deep, and mysterious way. We do not come to the Lord’s Table as a party of one, or as a party of a certain set of people.

It’s always something. If it isn’t a matter of the rich and poor, it is always something. In small towns it is often a matter of being old timers and new comers. Or it’s the matter of a personal history that too many people know about, or have opinions about.

It’s always something. Something makes us a clique. Something makes us self-absorbed, and it makes others simply invisible.

We meet our friends, and it may not be hard to say to our friends, “You are Christ to me.” But what if we meet someone we don’t know here, in this place?  Christ comes through these doors, or we go out and meet Christ there.

They are Christ to us, but we don’t act like it. They are someone who is Christ to us in a new way, with a brand new face, and we are not excited or amazed. We ought, at least, to be puzzled.

The divisions that Paul saw were the divisions created by people who saw some people as “Christ to them” and overlooked the rest. The issue of what division had received God’s approval wasn’t an issue of who God smiled at because they believed correctly. It was the issue of Christians believing without passing the test of believing.

The word Paul uses to mean approval is a word that means passing a test. This word was used for a positive result when you tested a rock to see if it was gold or silver ore.

Approval came when the test would show that the story of Jesus was written, deep upon their hearts, in letters of the finest gold and silver. The silver and the gold would pass the test in the quality of their waiting for each other, or in their patience with each other, and in their gracious hospitality to each other.

Precious ore, containing gold and silver, was pounded and crushed to a powder, and melted down with fragments of lead to a point where the lead caught the impurities and then oxidized, like a scum on the surface and could be scraped or poured away.

Reading the story of Jesus in the lives of people you don’t know means getting to know them, and this can be like going through hammers and fire. We like the people we already like because we have learned all about them from experience. We may have argued and fought with them and gotten over that.

We forget that this is work. It is work to see Christ in others (and maybe it can even be painful), the way the wounded soldier saw Christ in his nurse.

There is more to welcoming Christ as he comes to us in others than by shaking hands and smiling. It means being willing to come, and meet, and see, and listen, and learn.

Part of remembering the body and blood of Jesus was remembering the obligation of gracious hospitality; remembering that the meal was for everyone, and especially for anyone who knows they are in some essential way, a stranger and an outcast. Remembering the body and blood means that you have a commitment of welcoming and being a good host to everyone who comes to you, whoever they are.

The Lord’s Supper is the Table of Love. Just as we are each a little Christ, walking around, we are also a little Lord’s Supper for those who need it most to “taste and see that the Lord is good.)  (Psalm 34:8) There should never be any delay in our passing the test of love, like the test of gold and silver.

Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Christian minister and writer in the sixteen hundreds. He wrote this about the story of the grace of Christ in his life:  “Oh, what I owe to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus, who hath now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goes through His mill, and His oven, to be made bread for His own table.”

The truth is we all must go through the furnace and the mill to be Christ for others and to see Christ in others. In Christ, we have the knowledge of the Lord written on our minds and hearts. We meet the same story and the same knowledge in each and every one of his people.

The Lord’s Supper is a gift to teach us that we are all, one and the same, the objects of God’s amazing and gracious hospitality, and we are called to live together accordingly. Go and be Christ for others. Go and see Christ in them.

Measured by the Cross: Emancipation

Preached on Sunday August 4, 2013

Scripture readings: Isaiah 51:1-3; 1 Corinthians 7:17-24

We will all admit that life can be “messy”. But it can still get so awkward when another person (even someone we trust and love) takes it upon themselves to talk to us about the messiness of our lives, and what we ought to do about it.



Summer Vacation 2013:
Some Sights along an Irrigation Canal

The Apostle Paul has gotten into a lot of trouble with Christians, over the years, because he was not only asked to deal with some big messes in the lives of the Christians in Corinth, but he actually dared to say something definite about them. As nearly as we can tell, the people who asked Paul for his advice didn’t like what they heard.

The church in Corinth asked Paul some controversial and sensitive questions about singleness, and sex, and marriage, and divorce, and the aftermath of divorce. I think Paul realized how deep a hole he was digging for himself, and so interrupted what he was trying to say, right in the middle of it all. He backed up and wrote the passage we have just read. It has nothing to do with singleness, and sex, and marriage, and divorce, and the aftermath of divorce. But it has to do with a principle.

Here is the principle. “Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.” (1 Corinthians 7:20)

This means that, whatever your lot in life was when the Lord drew you to himself; that is where you should stay. You should be content with that.

We have to realize that this advice is more controversial and outrageous than anything Paul might have said about marriage. But there is a principle here underlying everything else that Paul wanted us to know.

Your lot in life, when the Lord called you, or drew you to himself, is not an accident. It is not a mistake. It is the training that the Lord has given you for your mission in life. It is his special calling to you for where and how to begin to follow Jesus.

This principle might seem like an actual barrier to what you think your life should be. It might seem like an obstacle to your happiness and your freedom. It might seem, in your better moments like the most absurd joke in the world.

It, also, might very well have absolutely nothing to do with where the Lord will lead you. It simply tells you where and how to begin. Your lot in life, at the time of the Lord’s calling to you, is somehow holy, and you should give this your trust.

It is somehow essential to your mission assignment. It is the beachhead from which you mount your campaign through the rest of your life. It is your primary base of operations as the unique and special servant of Jesus that you are.

Paul was just as strict on our beginning well as he was on our finishing well. This is why he insisted on so many other outrageous assumptions; like the rule of chastity in singleness and the rule faithfulness in marriage. That is how he builds his vision of the Christian life.

We won’t understand any of this unless we also understand another part of the most basic teaching of Paul. In Galatians (probably the earliest of Paul’s letters that we have) he wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  (Galatians 5:1)

Learning how and why to stay put and to stand pat is the way you learn to have a freedom that has meaning. It gives you a freedom with backbone. This is why he gave this advice to the Christians in Corinth: stay in your marriage, stay in your singleness. Paul knew that what he was saying was not simple to understand and that it was not simple to do.

We also will not understand what Paul says unless we realize that Paul did not intend what he wrote here to be used for detecting sin and labeling people as sinners. If we use these instructions for the purpose of sin detection then we are misunderstanding and misusing the word of God. And yet God’s people have made this exact mistake over, and over, and over again.

There is the saying, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” The grazing cow always thinks that getting to the grass on the other side of the fence is what freedom is all about. Paul wrote these instructions about not changing your lot in order to put a stop to that kind of thinking.

There are people who are always fretting over the situations they are in. They think their lives would be better if only that could make a certain change.

They make that change. They seem very happy for a while. Then they find new reasons to be unhappy.

I know someone who has lived in a dozen places and can find nothing good to say about any of them. When I was serving the church in Othello, this particular someone that I know stopped by to visit me, on their way to somewhere else. We sat down in the living room of the manse and he said, “This place is really ugly.” They didn’t mean the house. They didn’t mean my housekeeping. They meant the place.

I was totally shocked by that. I don’t believe I have ever lived in a place I would call ugly; not even when I lived in a town surrounded by oilfields. I have never lived in a place that didn’t have value. The grace of God was always evident in some way, even in the look of a place. There was always something to love and give thanks for.

Some people find what Paul said about marriage and divorce to be frustrating. I find that what Paul said about staying single is frustrating. I have felt this way for almost forty years.

I have never been happy with it. It is true that I really don’t know any better and, maybe, actually, that is of some help. I also find that, if I take it one day at a time, being single is do-able. But, every day of my life, there seem to be at least five or ten minutes of that day when I am not able to take it one day at a time.

What Paul is right about is that my life is not about being single. My life is about a lot of things. Most of all it is about being married to the Lord.

I wouldn’t mind committing the bigamy of being married both to the Lord, and having a wife and family. Paul says that this, too, is a perfectly good thing.

Just like any married person, I have the calling to extend the grace of God in Jesus Christ to those around me. My single life is my base of operations for that mission. If I were married, my wife and family would be my base of operations in extending the grace of God to others, and my first campaign of sharing that grace would rightfully be to my wife and family. Then my campaign of grace would reach beyond them, and through them, to others.

If I had been married in an enduring marriage from before I ever became a pastor, I would never have served any of the churches that I have served. All my options and choices for service would have led me somewhere else.

And so I would never have come here. Being here is one of the blessings of being single. Then I honestly ask my self: is it worth being single to have spent twenty years here? But I would rather not think of it that way!

I think that Paul’s dealing with a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever helps us understand almost everything that Paul says about singleness, and sex, and marriage, and divorce, and the aftermath of divorce. It has to do with the capacity, the calling, the gift that a believer has to extend the grace of God to others.

Paul said that, “The unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:14) Paul doesn’t mean that the unbelieving spouse will automatically come to know Jesus. Paul does mean that the unbelieving spouse becomes one with a person who is one with Jesus. They are resident aliens within the boundaries of the kingdom of God. They live in a place where the love of God in Jesus lives and works. They benefit from the grace of God in their spouse.

But not everyone wants grace, just as not everyone wants to be happy. The Christian is living presence of grace personified. This is the principle of Christ being in you. In marriage, if grace is rejected, so is the spouse, so is the marriage itself. It is not a marriage except in the sense of being a rejected marriage. The grace that you extend is not loved. It is not wanted.

Paul knows this. Paul allows for it. He says so. Through Paul’s word, the word of God allows for this. When your mission to extend the grace of God is rejected, God generally calls you elsewhere. You have a new calling.

Even though Christians are the hands, the feet, and the voice of Christ only Christ is fully and truly Christ. We are not in charge. We can’t save anyone by our own power or by our concentration of will. Only Christ can. If you are to recognize what you can’t do, and that Christ alone must take hold of it, then your faith and obedience requires you to let it go.

We cannot make another person receive the grace of Jesus through us. Only Jesus can win them by showing himself to them, in his own way and his own time.

Even Christians can behave like unbelievers. They can reject and invalidate the bond, the promises, the covenant, the relationship that brings them grace.

Even though you have promised to share God’s grace with them, when they show by their words, or by their actions, that they are saying “no”, then, perhaps, you are being called elsewhere. You are being called to another base of the operation of God’s grace.

Paul said to not seek to change your lot, but God called Paul to change his lot. Paul was moving all the time. You might never willingly change your calling, but God does change it.

God has designed time itself to change your calling. God leads us through changes of his own choosing all the time, but those changes that are brought by God do not end the mission of holiness, to live at one with Jesus, and to extend his grace to others.

Paul wanted us to see that following Jesus doesn’t make us so spiritual that our actual, nitty-gritty circumstances become unimportant. Believing in a real God of grace means that our actual, nitty-gritty circumstances and relationships are places where we can find the God of grace. They are not obstacles to the grace, and power, and love of God.

Even if you have been sent elsewhere to be a grace giver, there is no place, no set of circumstances, no situation where the grace of God cannot come. That is how we are to live. That is the meaning of living by faith, and hope, and love.

Your marriage, your role as parents and children, your family, your church, your community, your nation are always holy in the sense that God’s callings are always solid things. If anything is real, it matters.

God blessed and confirmed the holiness of real and solid things by becoming a solid part of our world. He became a baby and there are few realities more demanding than a baby. God became a member of a family, and took his responsibility for his family seriously when Joseph died. He became the carpenters son and the man of the house for his mother. He became the member of a nation (the occupied nation of Israel) and he was faithful to that nation, to the death, on a cross. He was misunderstood, underestimated, and rejected, and yet he gave more and more grace than ever.

In the end, he gave to this world that killed him the grace of becoming a new world in the kingdom of God. He gave to a human race that killed him the grace of becoming the children of God, in the kingdom of God, for ever and ever.

This happened because God himself took stubborn, worldly reality seriously. He made real circumstances and real relationships his base of operations in the giving of his grace.

So we come around, again, to the cross. We have callings in this world that are not of our own choosing. In each of those places, in each set of circumstances, we are to look exactly there for grace.

We are to extend that grace wherever God may call us. We must be prepared to stay if we are called to stay. We must be prepared to go, if God calls us to go. God chose for himself a passionate calling to us; to identify with us so completely that he could look at us and see his grace in our circumstances.

It is human nature to run away from the cost and the consequences of belonging to the Lord, but his cross (which is the physical proof of his infinite love) cries out to us. The Christ of the wounds claims us. Paul said it. “You were bought with a price.” (1 Corinthians 7:23)

That is where we must begin, in order to begin well. That is the kind of grace where true freedom begins.

Measured by the Cross: Holiness

 Preached on Sunday, July 28, 2013

Scripture readings: Isaiah 49:8-16; I Corinthians 5:1-23



Vacation: June 2013
Walking East of Live Oak, CA

There is a glaring example of sin in the fifth chapter of First Corinthians. It really seems too horrible to talk about it and so I am not going to do it. I am not going to speak of it. Yet the presence of a glaring sin in that church in Corinth, and knowing how to deal with it, is at the heart of what it means for us to be the people of Jesus and his body at work.

The normal Greek word for sin is an archery word that essentially means missing the mark. It can mean overshooting, or undershooting, or going wide of the mark to either side.

The sin in the church at Corinth was so glaring that it would be like an outrageous act at an archery competition. Imagine that the presenter of the gold medal is the little daughter of one of the officials. Imagine that one of the archers comes up and (instead of shooting across the field at the bull’s eye) he turns toward the officials’ podium and shoots the little girl.

The glaring sin in the church in Corinth seems like a sin on that outrageous order. Yet Paul compares this glaring sin to some other sins, like greed, and lying, and cheating, and drunkenness. (1 Corinthians 5:10-11)

Actually Paul calls the lies something like slander; and he calls the cheating something like swindling; but is there really any difference? And how can lying (or slander) and cheating (or swindling) compare with the truly outrageous?

Have you ever told a lie?  I have. How do you know that you never will lie again; ever? Or, have you ever allowed anyone to remain seriously uninformed? I have. Can you guarantee that you will never do that again? And yet think of all the trouble it may cause if you don’t quietly leave that person uninformed.

And what can you say about the condition of truth in a world where everyone finds a socially compelling reason to tell a small lie every now and then? And, then, who has any right to complain about the condition of truth in our world? Who has the right to blame anyone?

I have no stomach to talk about the glaring sin in the church at Corinth. Instead, here I am, talking about such a common thing as a petty lie.

I guess I could change the subject and talk about greed and selfishness. But I wouldn’t be changing the subject. I would still be talking about sin. Sin is sin.

On one hand, it seems to be so pessimistic, so gloomy, so negative to lump such little sins together with such a glaring sin. Yet, if we thought that all sin, by its very nature, was serious, then lumping them together would be necessary.

We do this with other serious things. We do this with cancer. There are big cancers and little cancers. There are cancers with good odds of treatment, and cancers with less good odds of treatment.

When we’ve been around that kind of thing much, I think we learn, as Christians, to deal with reports of cancer, or reports of the possibility of cancer, carefully. We give it a balance of encouragement founded in faith and concern founded in faith. We treat the big and the little with careful seriousness.

I had a small growth on my neck and my doctor said she didn’t like the look of it, so she cut it out (a couple weeks ago) and sent it in for a biopsy. The results turned out negative (which means no cancer). Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, I dealt with my waiting period carefully and seriously. I had about a week of wondering if my life was about to change, and just how much. I wondered what I would be willing to do about it. I wondered if I would take it seriously enough. Sure, I would take the treatments, but would I be willing to change my daily life forever in order to deal with it?

Paul was surprised that the people of Jesus who formed the church at Corinth could be proud. (1 Corinthians 5:2) Paul’s letter is clear. They were proud of their maturity, their wisdom, and their spirituality as a church.

I can never read about this pride without being curious about it. Were they ignoring the glaring sin in their church? Were they like ostriches hiding their heads in the sand? Were they thinking how modern and accepting they were?

They were certainly living as if they were “not under the law, but under grace”, which was the kind of thing that Paul often spoke about. (Romans 6:14) By being proud they could claim that they were only following the advice of Paul, himself. But Paul saw nothing of this in them.

Paul could see that they didn’t understand sin, or God’s law, or God’s grace because they didn’t understand God’s holiness. They didn’t understand what it meant to be holy. “Holy” isn’t a word that Paul used in the verses we have just read; but it is in his letters to the church in Corinth.

In the next chapter (the sixth chapter of this letter) Paul gave us a picture of holiness. He wrote: “He who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:17)

Sometimes holiness sort of means “being different”. It doesn’t mean being strange, but different in a way that may not be very well understood. It means crossing a boundary into a whole different way of life that you could never have imagined before.

“He who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” This represents a huge step in the direction of not being single: holiness means being in a relationship. Holiness is a partnership. It is being a member of a team because of love.

Holiness is like marriage, in which you become a new person because you are joined, in the core of your being, to another person. Holiness is the highest marriage, because it is like being married to God. The Church, in fact, is called “the bride of Christ”. (Ephesians 5:16-18; 2 Corinthians 11:2-3; Revelations 21:2)

In the spirit of marriage, everything else falls into a new place; or else the marriage doesn’t work because you, or your spouse, are not diving into it. Someone has not completely surrendered to it.

I am not married in the conventional sense of the word; but I am married to Christ, and I am (in some way) married to the church. My marriage to Christ makes my life follow a different set of rules.

My being a Christian and my calling as a pastor to the people of Jesus require that I relate to others, and even to myself, in a way might not be very clearly understood by those who do not know Jesus, or what Jesus may ask of those who have positions of responsibility in his church. But this is true of every Christian.

The word “holiness” can make us think of a life regulated by a lot of rules, and commandments, and expectations; but the rules are really only the shape of the marriage without the spark of the marriage. Holiness doesn’t even mean always being in harmony and total agreement with God. Holiness means having in your relationship that you would never part with: having something that just clicks and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Holiness means having the instinct, or the motivation, or the love that is required to be “one with the Lord in spirit”.

The glaring sin in the church at Corinth could have seemed like love. The people who were involved would have pleaded for love as their defense.

We don’t know, for sure, if both the parties were Christian. It seems clear that one of them was Christian. I simply think that the one who was a Christian was held in a higher marriage to Jesus, and that marriage that should have prevented that glaring sin.

I believe that we do not always listen to the spirit of our marriage to Jesus in our other relationships. I believe that I can be very superficial and shallow in my marriage to Jesus, and that is where I, and my marriage, can certainly turn ugly. I make this beautiful thing, the good news of Jesus, ugly, when I don’t live completely in the spirit of my marriage wit him.

But that is not Paul’s greatest problem with the church in Corinth. Strange as it sounds, Paul was not nearly as mad at the glaring sin in the church as he was at the people who were ignoring it or taking pride in it. Strange as it sounds, Paul’s main goal was not for the church to punish the man. His goal was for them to love the man sufficiently. They did not love him nearly enough.

Even when Paul said to “expel” the man, it was not for the purpose of getting rid of the man. It was for the purpose of getting him back. In fact, the story of the glaring sin runs on into Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth. In the second chapter of the second letter the church turns out to have listened to Paul, and expelled the man in question, and now Paul was pleading with them to do something for the man they had expelled. Paul wanted them to take him back: to comfort him, and to forgive him.

The problem is, how do you help someone who is messing up their marriage to Jesus; this beautiful and holy thing? How do you make them better?

In the world of the ancient church there was no other place to find the people of Jesus but in the church. In the world of the ancient church, going it alone was not an option. If you were married to Jesus, and even if that marriage was messed up, you need the protection of the friends of Jesus around you. You would miss the family of Jesus even if they were giving you a time out.

The expulsion was nothing more than that. Even the talk about delivering the man over to Satan doesn’t have to mean anything more than what it is like to not have the protection of holy friendships.

A family can be like a little castle with walls and towers, and so can the church, at its best. The only problem comes when the castle’s safety tempts us to stay inside our walls. We are tempted to forget God’s love for the whole world that he has made. We are tempted to forget his purpose in Christ to reach out to the world he loves so much. The church at Corinth forgot that it was the purpose of Jesus to reach out to the man they had expelled.

At first, the church at Corinth didn’t love its people enough even to notice, or to care, when they were going wrong. Then the church at Corinth didn’t love its own people enough to comfort them and nurture them when they were ready to change. They didn’t love them into holiness. They didn’t love them into growth. Paul got very frustrated with his friends, in Corinth in both of his letters to them.

When going it alone was not an option, expelling people was the best way to love them when they were going wrong. It was, as I said, like a time out. There was no real alternative.

There may be different ways today to effectively love the people of Jesus when they are drifting into trouble, or into absence. Ignoring them, or taking pride in ourselves, or not forgiving or comforting them is no good solution. Holiness has rules, but true holiness also has a spark. It has fire. It has a passion and a love that cannot turn the other way.

Paul doesn’t tell us who to judge and how to punish them. That is not his purpose. He tells us to love them enough to find a way to reach them and bring them back. If we don’t see this then we are very much in danger of being like the church in Corinth that was so frustrating to Paul.

If we are holy, if we are married to Jesus, we need to remember the wedding ring of Jesus (which is not a ring, but a mark on his hands). It is like the mark of God when he talks about being like a mother to us. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)

I hate to say it (because I don’t like tattoos), but it is as if the Lord has a tattoo on his hands, and it bears the name of every soul and every life he loves. It is a pretty big tattoo, but God is infinite in his love. Jesus is God, coming into the world with a compassion that will not forget even one person that he loves. On the cross, with the points of nails, the hands of God were marked with his love and compassion for us.

This is the mark of our marriage covenant to Jesus. And the Lord says, “I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people….to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!” (Isaiah 49:8-9)

No one knows how to take sin seriously until they know how to love seriously. Paul said, “Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief?” (1 Corinthians 5:2) Paul really meant the grief you feel in response to a death.

A long time ago in my ministry, I began to notice the comforters who would come up to a person who had lost a loved one. The best comforters were the people who knew a similar grief, a similar loss, of their own.

They almost didn’t need to say anything. Their presence was healing.

But I saw that, in comforting others, they were reliving their own grief in their own quiet way. Time had given them perspective in their loss and sorrow, but time did not give them forgetfulness. Time had brought more of Jesus to them, but it was the Jesus of the cross and the resurrection, and not a Jesus without wounds. But that is where healing and salvation get their power and become, living things.

It’s the same with the seriousness of sin. Our effective and loving grief for the sins of others can only come from our own experience of our own sins, and the wounding, and the dying, and the rising of Jesus for each of us.

Without that genuine grief and the love that comes from it, we are dangerous. Without that grief and love, we are more dangerous as people of faith than we would be without our faith. But, with the holiness that is built upon love, when we are one with Jesus in spirit, we can find the best and clearest way to say, “Come out! Be free!”

Measured by the Cross: Identity

Preached on Sunday, July 21, 2013

Scripture readings: Isaiah 44:1-5; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23



Photos Taken June 2013:
In and around Living Memorial Sculpture Garden;
Near Weed, CA

A Presbyterian preacher got a call from a lady who was grieving over the death of her cat Homer. She wanted the minister to conduct Homer’s funeral.

The minister explained that animal funerals were just out of his line so he recommended that she call the Methodist preacher. Later he learned that his Methodist friend had referred her to the Baptists, who had referred her to the Pentecostals.

The next day, the woman called the Presbyterian back and she was at her wits end, because none of the preachers in the area would conduct Homer’s services. She was even willing to donate $5,000 to the church of the minister who did the funeral.

It only took a moment for the preacher to make up his mind. “Well, why didn’t you tell me, in the first place, that Homer was a Presbyterian cat? Of course I’ll do his funeral” (James A. Lang, The Pastor’s Story File, Nov. ’84)

 I’ve never done a cat funeral. If I did one, I would never ask for money. And it would have to be a very simple funeral. Also, if I did a cat funeral, I would never do it in the church because I think that most cats, like so many people I know, wouldn’t be want to be caught dead in a church.

So, if the story about the cat funeral were true, I would see it as an example of all the divisions in the people of Jesus only serving as an excuse to keep from being what Jesus called his people to be. And that is exactly what the divisions in the church were doing in Paul’s time.




Photos Taken June of 2013:
In and around Living Memorial Sculpture Garden
Weed, CA

In Paul’s time there were no divisions that we would call denominations. Technically, no one would have claimed to be separating from the other Christians. They knew that would be a sin unless, maybe, the other Christians were trying to kill them. But that wasn’t happening.

Toward the beginning of his letter, Paul mentions these divisions, and he asks, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13) That would shut them up! At least it would keep them from talking back to Paul, if Paul were there.

They weren’t dividing the body of Christ. They were only saying that they liked so-and-so best.

“I like Paul best!”

“You’re kidding! I like Apollos best! He a better speaker by far! At least you can follow his sermons. You can tell he’s got an outline; and it’s the easiest thing in the world to take notes when he preaches. ”

“Apollos! That philosopher! What an egg-head! He’s way too intellectual! I like Cephas best. Good old Peter: there’s no one more down to earth than that old fisherman. And, beside, he’s the genuine article. He really knew Jesus, and I feel like I’m right there with Jesus when I hear him talk. He makes it all so real.”

The church of Paul’s time was not divided. There were only cliques. The church was a lot like being in high school, at least when high school is big enough to have cliques. Paul actually says that thinking like that is for babies.

I was in a clique in high school. Once a week, during lunch, I went to Chess Club. I hated chess, and I refused to play, but I hung out there because that’s where my friends were, and we nodded our heads when our science teacher complained about all the money spent on the footfall program. “They ought to abolish football and spend it on science,” he would say.

And so the business of liking so-and-so best becomes the easiest way to think that you are better than other people. In the church it means thinking you are better than other Christians.

My first church, after I was ordained, was on the Oregon coast where we had a lot of summer people. Of the summer people, one elderly couple was a retired Methodist minister and his wife. They came every summer for a couple weeks. They worshipped with us (even though we weren’t Methodist); probably because we weren’t Pentecostal or Southern Baptist.

One Sunday, after worship, the Methodist minister’s wife was talking to me about churches and she told me about whom she liked best. She said, “I’m so proud to be a Methodist, we are thinking Christians.”

It made me wonder if she thought that we Presbyterians were not thinkers. It also reminded me that Presbyterians would have turned the expression around. I had always thought that it was the Presbyterians who claimed to be the thinking Christians, as opposed to the ones who didn’t think.

 Paul believed that such cliques were sins. Such cliques kept Christians from being all that they could be. They always ended up defining themselves by whom and what they were against just as much as by whom and what they were for.

Paul saw that wherever there was the spirit of “I like so-and-so best” there was usually a deficiency in the Holy Spirit. Paul saw that this thinking sucked Christians into “jealousy and quarreling”. (1 Corinthians 3:3) It was not of the Holy Spirit.

You can see this in congregations. You can see it when new people come into a congregation and the established people want the new people to take their side and join their click.

You can see this in denominational conflicts. Every denomination has its cliques, and the cliques draw the lines for denominational battles.

You can see this in how different denominations see each other. Some stand up for the mind against the spirit. Others stand up for the spirit against the mind. Or, if it isn’t the mind versus the spirit, the cliques are about something else.

You can see this in the people who are so proud to be nondenominational. Even the anti-clique is a clique.

I’m not proud of being a Presbyterian, because I know what’s wrong with them. So I think I enjoy the safety of being in a clique I am not proud of.

All I know is that I’m glad I’m not a Methodist! But then, knowing how easy it is to be blind to our own sins, there is probably a lot of Methodism in me. After all, I was born one, as the saying goes.

Paul saw the cliques in the Body of Christ as a form of self-righteousness, and as a way to prove that they were smarter or more spiritual than the others. Paul says, “Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise.” (1 Corinthians 3:18)

In the next chapter of his letter, Paul wrote how the people in the cliques were congratulating themselves on how good it was to be them. “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich!” “We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” (1 Corinthians 4:8, 10)

A strange process was going on, where the people in most of the cliques looked at Paul, and Paul’s best friends, and saw that they were always in some kind of trouble. The conventional wisdom told them that if Paul had all that trouble and struggle, then he wasn’t a success, and God wasn’t blessing him, and they would do well to like the other leaders best. Listening to Paul might very well put them in the same boat as Paul.

Paul told them to expect his friend Timothy to arrive soon. “He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” (1 Corinthians 4:17) Paul claimed to hold the patent to the anti-clique formula

Paul’s “way of life in Christ Jesus” was the way Paul followed the one who died for his sins on the cross. Paul’s identity was that of a person who had been “bought at a price” and no longer owned himself.

Does it sound odd to say this, when we think about the importance of making choices about our life? Paul knew Christians who created an identity for themselves by choosing who they would be and what they liked best, and he also knew that they were (at the very same time) choosing a way of life that wasn’t really “in Christ” at all.

A way that was not the “way of life in Christ” had crept into their choosing who and what they liked best. That was the reason why they were doing so well. That was why everyone approved of them. They liked so-and-so best, and not Christ, and so they were living long, and prospering, and keeping out of trouble. They were not choosing Christ alone, or Christ above all else.

The so-and-so we like best, the so-and-so that defines who we are, may not be a person or an organization at all. It might be about being smart, or being spiritual, or being biblical, or being a survivor, or (in our case, in Washtucna and Kahlotus, up to this time) being the only church. There are ways in which we can make these into the center of our circle; and Christ who takes away the sins of the world is not at the center of that circle.

The so-and-so we like best might be what some of the people in Corinth were proud of. They liked looking good, being liked, being respected, being important, having what others were most likely to want. In a completely different way, the so-and-so we like best might be the chip on our shoulder that says “like it or lump it”.

Paul’s invitation to be a fool really tells us to stop thinking about themselves as a clique, or falling in love with the idea of creating a new identity of our very own. Later in this letter, Paul will say, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) In Christ, our identity is not a matter of who we are, but whose we are.

A clique may be our version of “whose we are”. Our clique, our people, may claim to own us, but only Jesus has actually bought us. Jesus is the infinite God who paid an infinite price for us on the cross. When you consider Jesus (when you truly see his wounds and scars) no one else can truly own you.

Paul will ask, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7) Paul wants his people to be thankful for being invited and made into something much bigger (and yet much humbler) than a clique. “You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9)

Paul told his people that it might not be the “so-and-so” you like best that is responsible for working on you. God did the choosing.

For years, when I was a kid, I had a minister who hardly believed in anything. He didn’t really believe that Jesus was the Son of God, or that Jesus died for our sins, or that Jesus rose from the dead.

I was eighteen before I really came to my senses about this. Then I complained to the Lord about it, and the Lord told me that I should listen anyway and there would always be something in what he said that was the Lord’s message to me.

This goes way beyond whoever might be a leader or a preacher. Just say that you are a fellow worker in God’s field and God’s house; and God’s truth is that you are called to work on others, and they are called to work on you. Pretend that all of you are entrusted with “the secret things of God” for each other. (1 Corinthians 4:1)

In one way “the secret things of God” are simply the great things of the cross that seem so foolish to so many people. They are only secret things for those who have not met the Jesus of the cross. In another way the secret things of God are the way God takes his most important things and works them out in ways we cannot imagine.

In the secret things of God, how do you even know what you are supposed to get out of anything? And if you don’t know what you are supposed to get out of anything, then how do you know who it is that will be the one to make it happen?

You are God’s field. You are God’s house. You and I are like stalks of wheat, or stacks of lumber, or piles of stone; and just what do we know about what God may be up to, and what people God may choose as the ones he works through in our lives?

God’s gift to you may very well be the last person you want to listen to, the last person you want to see; because this has so much to do with pride and ego, and because God has so much to say about pride and ego, and their danger.

Why not just know that you and I are fools? Let’s wait and see what we will learn and how we will grow until God’s time for us comes.

Paul wrote, “I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.” (1 Corinthians 4:3-5)

Who will teach us, who will build us, who will make us grow? Really, in the end, it will be God working through the foolishness of Jesus and his cross.

Only then will we even know who and what we are. In the mystery of the gospel, the truth is that none of us truly knows who and what we are.

God knows. And so our assumed identity, the very thing we are most sensitive about (and value the most) is not the most valuable thing about us at all. Our identity is not who we want to be. Our identity is not who we think we are, but whose we are. And this is all wrapped up in the mystery of Christ. We all belong to the hidden things of Christ who has been crucified for us. We are Christ’s, “and Christ is God’s”.