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Saturday 20 January 2018

forgive generously, love extravagantly, live abundantly








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.


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