SERMON PREACHED AT NAPIER CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH
COMBINED CHURCHES SERVICE INCORPORATING:
Congregational Christian Church in Samoa, Napier
South Napier Parish of the Diocese of Waiapu
Napier Central Baptist Church
Te Pou Herenga Waka o Te Whakapono o te
Pīhopatanga o Te Tairāwhiti
Reading: 1 Corinthians
12:27-31
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of
it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second
prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of
assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29 Are
all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30
Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all
interpret? 31 But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you
a still more excellent way.
When invited to preach at
this service today I wondered how the Spirit might speak to a neighbourly group
of Christians. For we see too little of each other yet we all but border one
another’s properties. We are a group of Christians could all but spit in one another’s lawns,
were we so inclined.
I figured honesty is the
best policy.
The writings of Paul are
probably my speciality, and I believe they are increasingly critical in the
world in which we find ourselves today. As we watch the crumbling, spluttering
end of another great empire, as we watch seats of power change across the face
of the globe, as we watch disturbing signs of ecological and economic stress,
that feisty, sometimes annoying saint who declared that he came “preaching
Christ and him crucified” takes us closer and closer to the rock on whom we
must continuously build our faith.
Paul wrote for varied
Christian groups in troubled times, and wrote always to sandpaper away
unnecessary and phoney accretions around Christian faith, wrote always to drive
us back to the centre who is Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul was writing for
troubled Christians in troubled times. For too long his words, often taken
wildly out of context, have been used by complacent Christians in comfortable
times, and sometimes by exploitative, anti-Christ Christians in hate-filled
times and contexts. We are watching the God-given, God-allowed reformation, the
death-throes of Christendom, the end of Americanised, nationalistic
Christianity. Americanised Christianity is a disease in which nationalistic,
jingoistic “greatness” is put far ahead of brokenness and compassionate service
to the broken. Americanised Christianity is the last successor to the false, Europeanized
Christianities that put national gods ahead of the God of the Cross in the lead
up to two Great wars.
Now though, in this time
of crumbling US Imperialism, we are seeing the birth of opportunity for new,
energized authentic bearers of the Cross of Christ to emerge.
That Christianity will emerge
first and foremost amongst the dispossessed: those who face rising oceans,
those who face once more the threat of nuclear winter, those for whom health
and housing is a constant battle. It is to them that Jesus primarily addressed his words of hope. When we read
Corinthians closely it is very clear that Paul was close indeed to the Spirit
of his Lord’s teachings.
At Corinth Paul finds that
the Christian community have twisted the good news of Jesus into a programme of
self-advancement. Look at me: look at my holiness. Look at the degree to which
I can outdo other religious people, Christian or unchristian, in the service of
my new-found God. Look at the way I give of my best to God, unlike the poor
people who must wait their turn.
Hidden away in Paul’s
letters are clear indications that some – not all – Christians had turned the
Gospel of Jesus into the Gospel of Self. They dare to boast of their own
greatness, their own or their chosen supposed leader’s importance, and fail
over and again to turn back and boast only of the Christ who has infiltrated
and redeemed their lives. Over an undiscernible period, but maybe two or three
years, Paul becomes increasingly frustrated with the mockery they make of the
gospel. The passage we have read, that we have today is only the start – or
near the start – of that growing relationship of frustration.
Links with our own world
are endless. Christians and others of right- and left-wing politics alike make
a mockery of the centrality of Jesus the Christ of the Cross. In the USA he is
made to be a standard bearer of make America Great Again politics. The current
president’s deep flaws are ignored, the Jesus observation “by their fruits
shall you know them” are found not to apply to US politicians. Rising oceans, international
aid, and human compassion are set aside as leaders attempt to proclaim white
American isolationist purity. In Corinthian terms they seize the best seats at
the table, they claim to be the exemplary followers of Jesus, and they leave
those around them to sink or swim, sometimes literally. They harass sexual
minorities, while often turning a blind eye to wanton and repeated sexual
exploitation perpetrated by the men they champion as moral heroes. Interestingly
they establish abortion in particular as the central issue on which political
decisions are based, while ignoring the sexual exploits of leaders and the
power imbalances that are often precisely the social agar jar, the unhappy
environment in which desperate cries for abortion are sounded.
I have seen
the hypocrisy of left-wing Christians too, and doubt that kind of sacred cow is
any more pleasing to the prickly servant of Jesus who wrote to Corinth. I have
seen those who proclaim justice for the poor but who turn the needy from the
doors of their churches because they are not middle class or erudite or
educated enough. I have seen the intellectual Christians who mock those who
hold tenaciously to the simple truths of Jesus’ death and resurrection. There
are no wings in the love of God.
In addressing the issues
Paul asks the Corinthians to look deep within themselves. Who and what are they
without the Lordship of Christ, of Jesus invading their lives. Did the Jesus
who bestowed gifts on them do so in order that they would appear important,
powerful, strong, or holier than thou? Paul is adamant: the Spirit of God
bestows gifts to each believer, and by extension to each family of believers –
like the four gathered here today – so that we can better point to the Cross of
Jesus Christ, better proclaim the resurrection, better bring hope and justice
and compassion into the world God calls us to live in.
And so he turns after a
long passage (Chapter 12) reminding the Corinthians that their only status,
their only meaning to life is what they have in Christ, and moves on in our
passage asks them to consider the gifts they have. Had we time we might well
workshop these very questions: what might we learn from one another? What are
our strengths, and what are our weaknesses? More even than that, how might we utilise
our gifts, our strengths and strangely even our weakness in order to proclaim
the Christ of Easter in this community?
For Paul the litmus test and
indeed the prism through which all action by Christ-bearers is evaluated is
that of love. Though Paul had no access to the writings of John he would have
whispered his “amen” to the belief that God is love and love is God … or is, we
should say, when the love is proper love. Is it exploitative, abusive,
self-seeking? Then it is not love. Does it seek to advance the giver at the
expense of the receiver, and therefore become narcissistic? Then it is not
love. Do we build up or tear down? Do we create a better world for others,
living simply so that others may simply live, or do we build walls and barriers
and barricades so that others may simply die? Do we try to build a better world
for our tamariki and our mokopuna, or grasp its riches and
opportunities to ourselves? Do we advance health, education, economic
opportunity and environmental well-being, or exploit Papatuanuku and her children for us
and our immediate surrounds only?
So Paul proclaims what
scholars now call the Hymn to Love. Let me show you a more excellent way:
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. 2 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. 3
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.
4 Love is patient; love is
kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it
does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in part,
and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the
partial will come to an end. 11 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. 12
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. 13 And now faith, hope, and
love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Paul knows only too well that we can
abuse the Spirit of Christ, deadening her voice, suppressing her urges. We can
mute the voice of conscience, turn our backs on the needs of others, we can
gossip, as James warns us, tear others down, take advantage of our roles and
positions, exploit, create and nurture factions, and generate an endless list
of sin in our lives. We can even abuse the central Christian gift of
forgiveness.
The Corinthians did it all. In the end though we are warned that
we live and we die in the searing light of Jesus. He asks but never forces us
to have integrity, authenticity, honesty, and all the hallmarks or love. With
Jesus his Lord he reminds us that we must live for others, as Samaritans who
cross the road, with tax collectors who know their own sin, with humble
servants who take not the glamour seats at the table or the positions of power
in society but the seats amongst the rough and the hurting. He challenges us to
welcome and include the stranger, never to push them away.
I believe the Spirit is calling
Christians at this time to give up power plays in the plush corridors of society,
to give up manipulating and brow-beating the world around us. We are being
called to exemplify love, to accept the push to the margins of society and
there to love and care for the broken neighbours that we meet, that God gives
us. The Spirit is calling us to learn to love again, to learn to welcome the
sojourner, bind up the broken and the broken hearted, and only as we learn to
do that again will we bear witness to the resurrection hope, bearing witness
from that powerless place of love, that place of miraculous faith on the
fringes of society.
He calls us to love and live for
others, loving recklessly, extravagantly, selflessly. As the people of God in
different churches, with different gifts, that
is what we are called to exemplify, however great the cost.
God who has called you is faithful …
Go into the world with joy,
forgive generously,
love extravagantly, live abundantly,
and the blessing of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-bearer, Giver of
life
be with you and those you love, always.
