SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
TEXT: 9God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. THEME: What we know about God shapes us to Live differently from others who have not experienced God in the same way INTRODUCTION The church in Corinth is fractured with some for Apollos, some for Paul and some for Cephas. Spiritual gifts have them competing for notoriety while others are without gifts (I assume that made them feel inferior), multi-cultured, rich and poor, these differences split this church into different camps. Paul opens his letter to them with their common identity as being sanctified in Christ, but as humans we like to regulate the movement of God and quantify spiritual things for comparisons. We want things uniformed when they don’t need to be. In this setting, the church is at odds with themselves, unable to appreciate their particularities. SCRIPTURE Paul launched into this grand address of the sacred and the sanctified. This is a good discussion for us today. We may not see ourselves like the church in Corinth but our beginnings as a church in Wailuku was by our differences and our shared sanctification. Our churches were built up as separate camps, separated from each other as Japanese, Hawaiian and Haole. All unique, special, different from each other with separate languages and cultures. Don’t get me wrong, worshipping in a language that you can understand is extremely important. Not to mention language, as being a vehicle that contains our cultural identity. Having cultural values that you can appreciate enriches our lives. But in today’s setting, our language, although important is not something that separates us as before. At the last Aha Pae’aina that was held on Maui, we were asked to bring an ethnic entree to feed the delegates on the Taste of Maui opening dinner. Wailuku Union Church couldn’t think of a particular ethnic dish that would represent our church’s culture. So, we sit in our camps, fractured by our own sacred buildings, our theologies, our own experiences with God, and our particular way of doing things, sanctified but separated from each other. As Paul’s letter comes to us today, he is asking us, How should the sanctified behave together and in the world? The words Sacred and Sanctified come from a similar root which means holy. Holy does not mean better than someone else, all it means is set apart. To be holy is to be set apart for God. What we know about God through Jesus Christ makes our experience of God different from how the rest of the world has experienced God. In this address to the church Paul calls them together by a common calling of Christ that makes them saints, apostle and gifted. A common grace that they received through Jesus and sanctifies them, into a family, as siblings of a holy parent, as a common community the Church, aka the fellowship that has a common purpose as they wait together for the Reign of Christ. APPLICATION So, sanctified by our experience of a gracious God through Jesus Christ, how do we live our new found peace with God in the world, while displaying these nuances in our livings with our siblings in Christ? In thinking about this I made two generalized lists; the first of how is the church seems to be coming across today and the second on how I want our churches to be known in our community. First, the church seems to be coming across as close minded and judgmental. Unkind and unloving, hypocritical because they don’t do what they say, mean spirited, pious, self-righteous, regulatory, homophobic, all about money and power, stingy administrators of God’s prodigal grace, backwards, old fashioned, and treats all as ‘sinners’ first so they can later come to save us. This is how the church is sometimes represented on TV, the news and in the media. The second list is how I hope the church would be known; for love, kindness, acceptance, grace, justice, respect, ecology, welcome, friendly, purposeful, generous, smart, open, engaging, provocative, wise, communal, relational, spiritual and animated following in God’s way. Certainly, these are not comprehensive lists but off of the top of my head, fodder for pondering. This goes in line with what Paul is addressing in his Corinthian letter, ‘How saints, gifted with grace are to behave; with each other, as a community, in the world and with other saint communities.’ As we chew on that, instead of taking each one of those topics and exploring their implications, I am going to make a jump to talk about our building. We are a sanctified people who worship in a sacred space. What is sacred about our sanctuary or grounds? It is the place of our religious celebration of births and solace in sorrow. This is the place where we have made the transformations of our lives known. For some this is the place of our coming home or being at home. This is the place where our community sits down for meals at Christ’s table and where we pray our toughest prayers. A thin place where the nearness of God can be felt. Could we possibly share this place with someone else who would not feel the same way about our sanctuary? What if they don’t feel the specialness of this space in the same way? Or worst does something in it that we would never do? This is a place where God has met us, for generations, over and over again. Our sanctuary does not hold God but we bring its sacredness to it. Its purpose is to house our worship and fellowship of God, but not to be the object of our mission or worship. So, imagine if we turned this around, so that our building was not a drain of our resources but by charging other groups to use our sanctuary, it could help pay for its up keep, insurance and God’s ministries through us. It would become an asset of God ministry and allow us to have more resources to create beyond what we thought was financially possible. As stewards of this gift of God we would have to draw up good legal understandings that represent our sanctuary’s sacredness and protect us, but it could be possible. Where ever we have felt a closeness to God is Holy Ground, but it does not remain Holy on its own. Maybe this is why, at the Transfiguration of Jesus, Peter was not allowed to build shelters to commemorate the event. We like to make markers as if they could hold onto our ever-moving God. CONCLUSION When God creates in Genesis, the pronouncement of what was made was ‘good’ not ‘perfect’. Being ‘good’ means we are able to change, evolve and to do better. What is good is not perfect, to be worshipped or is unchangeable. It is not the created that is to be worshipped but the Creator God. ‘Good’ reveals part of God’s mission for us as we have the opportunity to participate in creation, to build with it, to make improvements and to evolve in our own particular way causing diversity not uniformity. Hawaii Public Radio had a broadcast where they talked about Hawaii’s indigenous hibiscus and through the Hibiscus Society has created over 1,000 hybrid versions of the hibiscus. This is like the grace, gifted to the church, from Christ Jesus, enriching and gifting us to create fellowships with God and opportunities for others to discover this grace by the way we behave. Knowing God shapes what we do, nurtures our relationships and enriches our communities with diversity not divisions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Pastor robbSermons Archives
May 2024
|