1 Corinthians 13 May 18, 2008
One Step At a Time, Part 5
What Should be the Motive of a Christian?
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
We are in the fifth of a series of six sermons that are taking us back to the basics of faith. We started with “What is a Christian,” then moved to “What Does a Christian Do,” then on to “How (not what) Should a Christian Think?” and finally last week we looked at the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 12 to answer the question, “What is the Church?” Here is the compact answer to the question, “What is the Church?”: The Church is a group of diverse people, who confess Jesus as LORD, who are gathered together by the one Holy Spirit, who work together for the common good, and who enjoy drinking of the Spirit together! The emphasis for the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 is on the importance of every person in the Body. Those who are able, should use whatever gifts God has given them to do their part in the Body, and when we get to a place in our lives when we are not able (due to weakness of body, mind, or spirit), our part changes, but we still have an important part. Paul wrote that the weaker parts of the body should be shown the greatest honor, and when our focus is on honoring those with the greatest needs around us by ministering to them, there is no dissension within the body. Why? Because the focus is off of our own wants and needs, and on the wants and needs of others! This is the driver behind this whole construction project to my right: to minister to the needs of others! Is everyone going to benefit? Absolutely! But that’s because we serve such an efficient, loving God, who clearly tells us that when we do things his way for the sake of love, it’s a win-win situation! In Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12, he tells us that for the church to live out God’s beautiful intention, everyone should work together for the common good of building up the community of Christ.
It’s important for us to know that Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth because he had received some communications from the people in the church indicating a great concern over how things were going. There was much arguing, griping, and groaning rising up in the church. Paul, who founded the church in Corinth, who was most likely in Ephesus at the time, read their letters, and then in approximately 53 A.D. sent a letter back to them in response to their concerns. I think this letter would have been received and read with great excitement. Finally, the big kahuna is going to tell us who’s right and who’s wrong! Finally, we can get on with ministering in the name of Jesus! I can picture 2 scenarios: I can picture the people crowded around the letter when it first arrived, with everyone trying to read it at once; or, I can picture the one person who received it on behalf of the congregation, sitting by the side of the road, reading, weeping, and trying to decide what to do with it. But it is probably a 3rd scenario that actually occurred.
In those days, letters were meant to be heard, not merely read in privacy. A writer wrote a letter to be delivered, like a preacher delivers a sermon (remember how Frank Runyeon delivered the Gospel of Mark?). Paul would have chosen a trusted follower of Christ to deliver his message. Once the messenger arrived in Corinth, the church would have been called together to hear Paul’s words as one body. When you read the first 12 chapters of 1 Corinthians, you can almost envision one side of the church getting puffed up when Paul seems to indicate that their side was the right side; and then another issue addressed might have puffed up the other side for a time. It’s our sinful nature that wants to be “right.” “See, I told you so.” “I told you, didn’t I tell you, it was going to happen this way?” In our sinful nature, we like to be right, and we want everyone else to know it and tell us how right we are.
I found the following letter from a teacher to a parent (the real names have been withheld):
Dear Mrs. ______,
You may already know this, but in case Alex has neglected to tell you, I am assigning him to detention for one hour this Friday, April 22nd. The reason is as follows:
Alex consistently defied me. During class he contradicted me numerous times when I insisted that the length of one kilometer was greater than that of one mile. Every other student in class accepted my lesson without argument, but your son refused to believe what I told him, offering such rebuttals as, “You’re lying to the class,” and commanding other students to challenge my curriculum.
Although he was correct, Alex’s actions show a blatant disregard for authority, and a complete lack of respect for his school. In the future, Alex would be better off simply accepting my teachings without resistance.
Please see to it that your son understands this.
Regards,
Adam __________
The kid was put into one hour of detention for being right? No. He was put into detention for being disrespectful. We can cause a lot of heartache for ourselves and others when all we can focus on, is our side of something. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t right answers to things, and that we shouldn’t speak to someone if they have led others to a wrong answer. But what I am saying, is that there is a way to respectfully get to the right place without tearing others down.
The Apostle Paul spent 12 chapters getting the people in Corinth ready to hear the truth. He had them on the edge of their seats, ready to jump up and point to the others saying gleefully, “See, see, we are right and you’re wrong!” And then, Paul clears the table. He takes everything that was on the table and makes a clean sweep. One thing, and one thing only is the right way to being the Body of Christ: It is the way of LOVE.
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
When Jesus was asked by the religious leaders of the day, “what is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered by saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”(Matthew 22:37)
Love God. Love others. Love God. Love others. I have here a candelabra that holds 2 candles. I’m saying that loving God is this candle, and loving others is this candle. Love God. Love others. This should be the light that shines out from our lives: Loving God, loving others. This should represent the motive behind everything that we do: Love.
I heard someone say on the radio a few weeks ago, “What you feed, grows. What you starve, dies.”
I’ve decided to start at the beginning and work my way through God’s list that describes what real love is. Love is patient. God is patient. Love is patient – so I’ve been working on starving my impatience. Actually, God is helping me – because over and over again I get behind someone going from Path Valley all the way to Chambersburg who doesn’t have a vehicle that can go the speed limit (especially over the mountain) – Big trucks, vans, older cars that cough their way up the hills... So, I’ve been working on starving my impatience. I made a CD that I played for the Maundy Thursday service, using songs from some other CD’s I have. It is a very lovely, peaceful combination of songs. When I start feeling impatient in the car, I put that CD in. Instead of looking, looking, looking for a place to pass, I’ve been trying to listen and relax. Instead of taking a shortcut to try to get by someone, I am actively working on starving my impatience. I’m trying to leave early enough to get somewhere, so that I don’t have to feel the pressure and hurry so much. What you feed, grows; what you starve, dies. I’m trying to starve my impatience. I’m doing this because when I have a person in front of me who needs patience, not impatience, hopefully my patience is growing because I’ve been feeding it. Love is patient. I want to be more patient, because I want to love people more, and I want to love people more, because loving people more, is an act of loving God more – because all people are made in the image of God! Loving you more is loving God more! It’s the light shining in the darkness.
The motive behind everything we do, should be love. We think of love as merely an emotion – a feeling. But real love of the kind that the Apostle Paul is teaching about, is an act of the will, is something we determine to do for the sake of others, and for the pleasure of God. We should all get into the habit of asking ourselves this question, “Is what I am doing or saying motivated by love for God and others, or is it motivated by some sinful, selfish need within me?” Mother Teresa said, “Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand."
Jeff & Dawn are bringing Jack today to receive the sacrament of baptism. This sacrament is not just some ritual or tradition we go through in order to do things “right.” We bring ourselves and our children to the font of baptism as an act of love for God, as an act of love for the one being baptized, and as an act of love to the congregation.
In baptism, we say to God, “I believe you. I believe in you. I trust your words to show me the way, and I trust your love to protect and guide me so that your will comes forth in my life. Baptism is an act of faith and obedience to Jesus’ command to “go and baptize.” Baptism is an expression of love for God.”
In baptism, in this case with little Jack Beaumont, Dawn and Jeff are saying to him, “We love you, and we want you to receive this gift from God, that will open your spirit in a mysterious way, to the grace of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”
In baptism, the one being baptized (if older), or the parents on behalf of the child, says to the congregation, “We love you, and we trust ourselves and our child to you for spiritual care and nurture.”
Baptism is a wonderful expression of love. God worked it out that this message and this sacrament intersected today. But, let me say this: if we are alert to it, we will see how everything we do and everything we say can and should intersect with the words of God, written by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. The choir sang, “How Long Has it Been?” Well, if it’s been a while, I’m suggesting that the way to get back, is to focus on loving God and loving others – and it won’t be long before our hearts find rest in Him.
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
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.
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.
When I was an infant, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
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!
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.” (The Message)
Amen.
One Step At a Time, Part 5
What Should be the Motive of a Christian?
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
We are in the fifth of a series of six sermons that are taking us back to the basics of faith. We started with “What is a Christian,” then moved to “What Does a Christian Do,” then on to “How (not what) Should a Christian Think?” and finally last week we looked at the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 12 to answer the question, “What is the Church?” Here is the compact answer to the question, “What is the Church?”: The Church is a group of diverse people, who confess Jesus as LORD, who are gathered together by the one Holy Spirit, who work together for the common good, and who enjoy drinking of the Spirit together! The emphasis for the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 is on the importance of every person in the Body. Those who are able, should use whatever gifts God has given them to do their part in the Body, and when we get to a place in our lives when we are not able (due to weakness of body, mind, or spirit), our part changes, but we still have an important part. Paul wrote that the weaker parts of the body should be shown the greatest honor, and when our focus is on honoring those with the greatest needs around us by ministering to them, there is no dissension within the body. Why? Because the focus is off of our own wants and needs, and on the wants and needs of others! This is the driver behind this whole construction project to my right: to minister to the needs of others! Is everyone going to benefit? Absolutely! But that’s because we serve such an efficient, loving God, who clearly tells us that when we do things his way for the sake of love, it’s a win-win situation! In Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12, he tells us that for the church to live out God’s beautiful intention, everyone should work together for the common good of building up the community of Christ.
It’s important for us to know that Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth because he had received some communications from the people in the church indicating a great concern over how things were going. There was much arguing, griping, and groaning rising up in the church. Paul, who founded the church in Corinth, who was most likely in Ephesus at the time, read their letters, and then in approximately 53 A.D. sent a letter back to them in response to their concerns. I think this letter would have been received and read with great excitement. Finally, the big kahuna is going to tell us who’s right and who’s wrong! Finally, we can get on with ministering in the name of Jesus! I can picture 2 scenarios: I can picture the people crowded around the letter when it first arrived, with everyone trying to read it at once; or, I can picture the one person who received it on behalf of the congregation, sitting by the side of the road, reading, weeping, and trying to decide what to do with it. But it is probably a 3rd scenario that actually occurred.
In those days, letters were meant to be heard, not merely read in privacy. A writer wrote a letter to be delivered, like a preacher delivers a sermon (remember how Frank Runyeon delivered the Gospel of Mark?). Paul would have chosen a trusted follower of Christ to deliver his message. Once the messenger arrived in Corinth, the church would have been called together to hear Paul’s words as one body. When you read the first 12 chapters of 1 Corinthians, you can almost envision one side of the church getting puffed up when Paul seems to indicate that their side was the right side; and then another issue addressed might have puffed up the other side for a time. It’s our sinful nature that wants to be “right.” “See, I told you so.” “I told you, didn’t I tell you, it was going to happen this way?” In our sinful nature, we like to be right, and we want everyone else to know it and tell us how right we are.
I found the following letter from a teacher to a parent (the real names have been withheld):
Dear Mrs. ______,
You may already know this, but in case Alex has neglected to tell you, I am assigning him to detention for one hour this Friday, April 22nd. The reason is as follows:
Alex consistently defied me. During class he contradicted me numerous times when I insisted that the length of one kilometer was greater than that of one mile. Every other student in class accepted my lesson without argument, but your son refused to believe what I told him, offering such rebuttals as, “You’re lying to the class,” and commanding other students to challenge my curriculum.
Although he was correct, Alex’s actions show a blatant disregard for authority, and a complete lack of respect for his school. In the future, Alex would be better off simply accepting my teachings without resistance.
Please see to it that your son understands this.
Regards,
Adam __________
The kid was put into one hour of detention for being right? No. He was put into detention for being disrespectful. We can cause a lot of heartache for ourselves and others when all we can focus on, is our side of something. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t right answers to things, and that we shouldn’t speak to someone if they have led others to a wrong answer. But what I am saying, is that there is a way to respectfully get to the right place without tearing others down.
The Apostle Paul spent 12 chapters getting the people in Corinth ready to hear the truth. He had them on the edge of their seats, ready to jump up and point to the others saying gleefully, “See, see, we are right and you’re wrong!” And then, Paul clears the table. He takes everything that was on the table and makes a clean sweep. One thing, and one thing only is the right way to being the Body of Christ: It is the way of LOVE.
“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
When Jesus was asked by the religious leaders of the day, “what is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered by saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”(Matthew 22:37)
Love God. Love others. Love God. Love others. I have here a candelabra that holds 2 candles. I’m saying that loving God is this candle, and loving others is this candle. Love God. Love others. This should be the light that shines out from our lives: Loving God, loving others. This should represent the motive behind everything that we do: Love.
I heard someone say on the radio a few weeks ago, “What you feed, grows. What you starve, dies.”
I’ve decided to start at the beginning and work my way through God’s list that describes what real love is. Love is patient. God is patient. Love is patient – so I’ve been working on starving my impatience. Actually, God is helping me – because over and over again I get behind someone going from Path Valley all the way to Chambersburg who doesn’t have a vehicle that can go the speed limit (especially over the mountain) – Big trucks, vans, older cars that cough their way up the hills... So, I’ve been working on starving my impatience. I made a CD that I played for the Maundy Thursday service, using songs from some other CD’s I have. It is a very lovely, peaceful combination of songs. When I start feeling impatient in the car, I put that CD in. Instead of looking, looking, looking for a place to pass, I’ve been trying to listen and relax. Instead of taking a shortcut to try to get by someone, I am actively working on starving my impatience. I’m trying to leave early enough to get somewhere, so that I don’t have to feel the pressure and hurry so much. What you feed, grows; what you starve, dies. I’m trying to starve my impatience. I’m doing this because when I have a person in front of me who needs patience, not impatience, hopefully my patience is growing because I’ve been feeding it. Love is patient. I want to be more patient, because I want to love people more, and I want to love people more, because loving people more, is an act of loving God more – because all people are made in the image of God! Loving you more is loving God more! It’s the light shining in the darkness.
The motive behind everything we do, should be love. We think of love as merely an emotion – a feeling. But real love of the kind that the Apostle Paul is teaching about, is an act of the will, is something we determine to do for the sake of others, and for the pleasure of God. We should all get into the habit of asking ourselves this question, “Is what I am doing or saying motivated by love for God and others, or is it motivated by some sinful, selfish need within me?” Mother Teresa said, “Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand."
Jeff & Dawn are bringing Jack today to receive the sacrament of baptism. This sacrament is not just some ritual or tradition we go through in order to do things “right.” We bring ourselves and our children to the font of baptism as an act of love for God, as an act of love for the one being baptized, and as an act of love to the congregation.
In baptism, we say to God, “I believe you. I believe in you. I trust your words to show me the way, and I trust your love to protect and guide me so that your will comes forth in my life. Baptism is an act of faith and obedience to Jesus’ command to “go and baptize.” Baptism is an expression of love for God.”
In baptism, in this case with little Jack Beaumont, Dawn and Jeff are saying to him, “We love you, and we want you to receive this gift from God, that will open your spirit in a mysterious way, to the grace of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”
In baptism, the one being baptized (if older), or the parents on behalf of the child, says to the congregation, “We love you, and we trust ourselves and our child to you for spiritual care and nurture.”
Baptism is a wonderful expression of love. God worked it out that this message and this sacrament intersected today. But, let me say this: if we are alert to it, we will see how everything we do and everything we say can and should intersect with the words of God, written by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. The choir sang, “How Long Has it Been?” Well, if it’s been a while, I’m suggesting that the way to get back, is to focus on loving God and loving others – and it won’t be long before our hearts find rest in Him.
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
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.
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.
When I was an infant, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
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!
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.” (The Message)
Amen.
