SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
TEXT: 23b so that I may share in its blessings. THEME: Faithfully living Christ’s Aloha can change lives. INTRODUCTION Every so often, while driving I will run across one of those “Live Aloha” bumper sticker. The one designed by Sig Zane with the resilient Ohia Lehua blossom in the corner. It started as a campaign, in 1993, to reform government when its organizers recognized that Hawaii was losing its Aloha Spirit. So, they decided to promote living according to the depth, beauty, and wisdom of the Hawaiian people. Live Aloha means to live with a caring spirit, respect for others, respect for land and the responsibility for all that surrounds us. When we couple this with the love of Christ, living aloha, is Christ’s Aloha, and should be characterize in our lives, in the church, permeate into our community, challenge our country and bring peace to the world. This is not domination but a grace filled craftsmanship of dominion or “skilled mastery.” SCRIPTURE Sometimes when we do a Bible study we get down to the minutia of a passage, with verb parsing and etymology, but at other times we need to pull back and view the passage from afar, to get a feeling of how this truth applies to us today. As we pull our view back from this passage, we can see how it is divided into two parts. The first being that of the Apostle Paul justifying to the church in Corinth his legitimacy as a teacher about Jesus and the second part, talking about how the Good News of Jesus Christ is for all people, backgrounds, races, culture and even religions. The Gospel of Jesus is primarily about our relationship with God. It’s free, easy, not lorded over, or complicated. Simple enough, but provocative. It raises our curiosity to learn more. It has us offering the best version of ourselves to others. We can journey in relationship with God through Jesus for the rest of our lives. Not only that but this is for everybody as we journey together. So, we don’t have to make living in relationship with God harder than it has to be. God does not regulate it, we don’t have to administrate it, all have must to do is share it, and dispense it by living it. Past lives do not disqualify us from relationship with God through Jesus. We all come from someplace before we have an experience of Jesus that moves us from; unbelief to faith, to the belief that Jesus is God in flesh and blood, to a new reality of resurrection, to relationships healed through forgiveness, and the dwelling presence of God’s Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to make changes in our world for God. It is after all a new beginning. Paul is not a theological snake oil salesman, but has an experience with the risen Jesus that changed his perspective and discredited his previous presuppositions. He now believes what he thought was blasphemous and reset his course of faith. The motivation of love is not domination. It’s not a forcible take over of culture, but is; persuasive, compelling, convincing, crafting, stewardship, skilled mastery in its living and resonates through our experiences. APPLICATION We all have come to believe in Jesus as the Christ in some way. The next part is for us to live what we believe by faith. How do we live/share/dispense this Gospel knowing that it is not just for us but for everyone? In thinking about the application part of this sermon, I began to think about examples of faith I was able to copy from observing how others carried on and lived their faith. There was a couple who didn’t use their old car as a trade in but gave their old car away to someone who needed one. There was a couple, that even though well into their married years always spoke with respect, appreciation and polite manners with each other. There is a pastor who took complicated theological ideas and made them simple to understand and even explained them with humor. There are those who don’t live as if they are dying, but as those who are going to live forever, with courage, trying new things, wonder and zest. A classmate of mine and her husband chose to keep their baby even though they knew she would have birth defects. They did what they could to let their daughter have as full a life as she could and know that she was loved. Then there where those who care for love ones, that I see the example of Jesus in them. It is humbling to watch and inspires me to be a better care giver. It is through the example of these, ordinary faithful people that I have been won over to be better. Watching their examples I have been able to copy some of what they do. This is what Paul is talking about when he speaks about becoming all things to all people. It is more about a humble empathy that understand where people are coming from, so we can speak human being to human being, and see the image of God in each other. Heart to heart, fear to fear, hope to hope and love to love. I have changed my mind and behavior because of kindness I’ve witnessed by others. I have changed my mind and behavior because of the generous acts of help displayed by others. I have changed my mind and behavior because I saw those who chose to be loving instead of judgmental. I have changed my mind and my behavior because of Hospitality I have received when I was hungry, lonely, and stranger. The stories of the Bible inform me about how important good, compassionate, and just our immigration laws need to be, as the people of God continue to be aliens in a foreign land, relying on the resources of others to be generous and kind. CONCLUSION More times than not, those who have the “live Aloha” bumper stickers are the worst drivers on the road and want you to ‘aloha’ them because they are not ‘aloha-ing’ anybody. That is not how it works. Aloha is not a commodity, or a demand on anyone, it is an inspiring way that we choose to live. Love more important than power. Loving you in spite of you. At the beginning of my career, I spent most of my preaching explaining the text so we could have an insightful understanding, but what good is a minuscule insight that doesn’t make a difference in the way we live our lives. So in the latter half of my career I have spent more time trying to figure out how the truth of a passage, can change the way we live, approach life, reconcile relationships, reprioritized our lives and calm our fears about death. When we get down to it, my preaching has been about being loved by God, about relationships with God and others, about our doing our best to be loving of others, and for us to love ourselves so we can bring the best of us into any situation and to others. One last observation. We live in an anxious world. There is a tension between Paul and the Corinthians in this passage. I went to a resilience training this week that the Hawaii Conference resourced using the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team. They demonstrated different breathing techniques as way for us to feed our brains with oxygen so we can be calm and bring our best selves into a situation or relationship. When I attended the General Synod last June, they began a lot of their workshops and session with breathing. As natural as we think it is sometimes, we need to stop hyperventilating and take a few deep breaths (even before we get our blood pressure read). One tool the resilience training taught us to do was to breathe in for 4 counts, hold that breath for 8 counts and release it in 7 counts. 4-8-7 In the word Aloha, Ha means breath. This could be a way, we can allow God’s breath to help us to live ours.
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