THE WAY THE CHURCH LIVES
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
I Corinthians 16:13-24
Stephen A. Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin February 21, 2010
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Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. Pretty much sums it up, right? And nothing to it. It is the apostle Paul’s prescription for a contentious young church, first of all, and for its individual members. He goes on to name several people as examples, and then bring greetings from a distance, all to build up love in the community of Jesus. Start to finish, this letter to the Corinthians lifts up love in community as the ideal for followers of Jesus. He keeps pressing the theme, because love is hard work, and the Corinthians need some encouragement. Even when people are deeply committed to each other, building and maintaining community takes work.
Keep alert. Keep alert. At the end of a long letter about various arguments and distractions in the church, the first word of encouragement is “Keep alert.” Pay attention to whatever is happening around you, especially as it relates to the community. Be aware of distractions that might draw people away. Think about the way controversy over small matters can spoil the atmosphere, and cause people to lose interest. We do not want to ignore honest disagreements—indeed, we need to get them out in the open, because small issues can ferment and explode if they are bottled up too long. Don’t get distracted, either, by influences or choices that do not relate to the core mission of the community. For example, several years ago this congregation elected not to be officially listed as part of the historic preservation district, partly because that might have taken resources away from our main activities, and mostly because it might limit future choices about how best to use this beautiful facility to build up the community of love. Most of all, to keep alert means not to get on autopilot. Don’t get so settled into a routine way of being Christians together that you miss opportunities to reach out and grow. Even little steps can make a huge difference. If you see someone you don’t know, go over and introduce yourself. If your memory is bad, make an excuse and just keep doing it! And make it easier for everyone else by wearing your name tag when you are here. If you see someone standing alone at coffee hour or after worship in this room, go over and say hello. These sound like small things, but like telling your partner “I love you,” they can make a huge difference in building up the community of love in Jesus. Pay attention to those opportunities. Stay alert.
Stand firm in your faith. That’s the next instruction. Stand firm in your faith. It might be better to say stay firm, because throughout the New Testament the word “faith” is very dynamic. Faith is not a set of propositional truths to memorize and recite. Faith is your active response to God’s movement in the world. It is trust that what you do with good intentions will actually turn out to be good for others. There is some content to faith, of course. We follow Jesus because we believe that he shows us the model of true community. Jesus served people of every economic class, social standing, different ethnic groups, and different religions, and because He did that, we believe it is right for us to do so, as well. You don’t need to know the difference between justification and sanctification to pack bags for the food pantry. At the same time, it is important to know the story of our faith, the story reported in Scripture, because that shows us not only Jesus, but all the people of God, with all kinds of hesitation and character flaws, learning the way of community and service. We want the voice of the prophets and Jesus Himself echoing through our thoughts, because in those voices we are reminded constantly of our own mission, to lift up the poor, care for the lonely and sick, seek justice, root out hypocrisy, and practice peace. When our first mission group to New Orleans came home, I remember them saying that they were surrounded by Methodists, Baptists and other Presbyterians, and all week they never heard a word about who could or couldn’t be ordained. Faith is not doctrine. Faith is not being on the right side of church politics. Faith is action. Faith is helping neighbors. Stay firm.
We need courage. To be firm in faith, we need courage and strength. It isn’t easy, living the way of Jesus in the world. Jesus is about community and caring for neighbors. The world is about dividing us up into individual consumers who always want more, and will go to great lengths to protect it. My rights, my freedom, my security, mine, mine, mine! It takes great stamina of spirit to swim against that current. It takes courage to reach out, not only to those with different skin color or economic standing, but even to people relatively like us. We are so polarized at every level of our culture that certain groups automatically distrust each other, not only in state and national politics, but in every area of life, including the church. We confuse disagreement with dislike and even dishonesty. We need courage to risk conversations across such lines, and strength to endure criticism from those who accuse us of encouraging enemies and abandoning truth. Another church here in Wausau has recently torn itself apart because the factions could not stand to listen to each other any longer about national level decisions allowing ordination of lesbians and gays. A community needs strength and courage to work through such disputes. Love is hard when people disagree over deep-seated ideals. Many congregations these days need strength and courage to weather financial storms. With continuing uncertainty about the economy, we have to endure a certain level of risk just to keep current activities going, and we need courage to envision other possibilities, whether larger, smaller, or different. To show our love for the world where Jesus sends us to serve, we need both courage and strength.
We need leaders, too. Even with the right spirit and stamina, we need leaders. Paul names the family of Stephanas as local examples of how to serve. They were the first Christians in the area, and they model service. The Greek word translated as service is diakonai, the origin of our English word “deacon.” They have it figured out. “I urge you” Paul writes, “to be subject to such people;” put yourselves under their guidance and direction. Your faith will grow as you serve. We can’t tell exactly what Stephanas and his companions did for Paul that the Corinthians had neglected, but it seems clear enough that it has to do with a personal commitment to Paul’s well-being. They got involved. They got their hands dirty. They got it done. They probably did not take much time debating the theological significance of their work; they understood the need, and they took action. It is very likely that much of their work had to do with caring for prisoners and the sick. Early Christians became known for taking care of people everyone else ignored. In those days, the government did not feed jail inmates, so unless a prisoner had someone to bring food in and provide medical care, every sentence of any length was potentially a death sentence. The seriously ill were often in similar circumstances. Christians who took the teaching of Jesus to heart made it their special business to go to these places of shame and abandonment to take care of hidden needs. This is what our Deacon visitors do. It is what our treatment instead of prison advocates are trying to do. It is the work that our food pantry and community supper volunteers do. Get involved. Get it done. Make a difference to people in the name of Jesus. See who is already living out that kind of faith, and follow. We need leaders.
Most of all, we need love. Leaders, courage, strength, alertness—whatever other tools and traits we must have, we need love most of all. The people in Corinth drive Paul to distraction with their doctrinal squabbles and holier-than-thou spirituality, but he still loves them. It’s obvious. He keeps writing, probably at least four letters, and maybe more. He travels to Corinth, twice that we know of, when travel made our airport security scenes look like a picnic. He sends greetings from far away, to remind the Corinth church that they are not doing this alone; they have other friends and supporters who love them and want their community to succeed. Paul also insists on their love for the Jesus. There is a puzzling sentence here: “Let anyone be accursed who has no love for the Lord.” Part of the puzzle is that in this sentence Paul uses the weakest Greek word for love, philein, which he does only one other place. There is also a lot of confusion about the next short sentence: “Our Lord, come!” from an Aramaic expression, marana tha, that can be properly translated at least four different ways, including past tense. Given Paul’s own history and theology, these words are probably not a demand for Christian exclusivism, with a hateful condemnation of non-believers. Instead, we can read a descriptive statement that those who do not recognize that Jesus has come and cannot muster even a family kind of appreciation for Him are cutting themselves off from God’s love. It may point at those people back in chapter 12 who think that the earthly Jesus isn’t very important, and prefer to focus on an otherworldly Christ. No, writes Paul, our Lord has come, and comes again and again, and the grace of the Lord Jesus—not Christ, in this phrase—the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Paul ends by sending his own love in Christ Jesus. This is the only place he sends such a personal greeting, and the reason seems clear: whatever else the Corinthians have, they need love first of all. That’s true for all of us: to give meaning to everything else, we need love.
Care for the sick and prisoners, take care of the poor, widen the circle of love: none of this is news to Christians. The good news is that we know what to do, because Jesus has been among us to show what really matters. His Spirit still comes among us. So, we can dig in. Be alert for distractions as well as opportunities for growth. Stick with the purpose of serving others. Be courageous and strong in the face of obstacles and opposition. Most of all, do everything in love: the love we see in Jesus that inspires love for others. Love is why we are here.