Short Course: Corinthians January 27, 2010

In his book, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, Jurgen Becker says that Paul wrote letters to particular churches about particular problems. He says, “Paul never took pen in hand or dictated to a scribe in order to establish matters of theological orientation that in his view should have validity for all times and all churches.” Becker says that Paul would not have considered his letters capable of influencing the whole of Christendom over the centuries.

Those of us who claim the name, “Christian” almost two thousand years after Paul know his teachings to be considered foundational to the meaning and substance of Christianity. That is because, in large part, in trying to work out the problems of local churches, Paul appealed to and in sometimes crafted theological arguments that he often had to restate or deepen as he addressed the concern at hand. Several of these can be seen in the two books (actually several letters) we call First and Second Corinthians. Here are some examples of where Paul’s thoughts in response to questions or problems reflect and/or have become basic Christian doctrine:

I Corinthians

The nature and meaning of baptism

The baptized are one church as opposed to several vying for spiritual superiority based on who baptized them or who taught them the gospel. God triumphed through weakness, that is death on a cross. Understanding the crucifixion eliminates boasting and therefore, factions

Eating of meat sacrificed to idols

Part of larger question of whether Christians had to follow Jewish rules. How is Christianity related to Judaism? Same God, same scriptures. Same rules?

Lord’s Supper

separates the sacrament from a meal simply for filling the belly. Lord’s supper is sacred--sacrament

Spiritual gifts identified by Paul as “spiritual.”

The list of “gifts” was common in other religions in the Hellenistic world. Paul tied them to the Spirit within for Christians.

The future resurrection of the dead

We see Paul having to work out the then/now ness of the Christian hope

II Corinthians

Humility of Ambassadors for Christ

Paul responds to stories about opponents wanting to be leaders in the community.

The idea of the “foolishness of Christ”

developed to counter the superlative apostles who claim greatness because of their spirituality and their works.

Some Questions for Tonight:

Where do you see these concepts in the gospels?

Is there anything here that seems out of synch with the gospel accounts?

Has Paul surprised you in any of his thinking or language? How?

What stories about Jesus do you think might have led Paul to his views?

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 4:14-21

January 24, 2010

"Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him."

As much as the story we just heard in Luke’s gospel is a story about Jesus, it is also a story about the people for whom he became the Messiah. In a way it is really more their story than his. In this story connecting Jesus with the promise envisioned by Isaiah, the gospel writer tells us something of the situation of the people who encountered Jesus and who gathered in the wake of his ministry. Luke wants us to understand that the people whose lives were changed by Jesus were people who had been waiting--hoping, wondering when and how an old promise, an old dream might be fulfilled. Jesus took the stage in a homeland occupied by foreigners where the people treasured a dream captured in ancient words of comfort, words offered by the prophet seven hundred years earlier in a time of great national despair and defeat. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news,” Jesus showed up at a time when many were waiting to hear some good news.

Today’s story of Jesus reading from the scroll in the synagogue continues the theme of Epiphany in which God is made manifest in our world. As in the first reading today from Nehemiah, God’s Spirit breaths through the written word. The books of the Law and the Prophets, both represented today in these readings, make God present in our lives and they prepare us to see the ways in which God is alive and at work in the world around us. The promise Jesus reads from the text is ancient. The one who steps into the roll it describes is new. Jesus appeared in a world that had been waiting for him, a world in touch with its need for some outside assistance. Had Jesus been born into a world that was not hungry for a savior, we probably wouldn’t be here in this place today. Part of what enabled people to see God’s presence in Jesus was that they had been waiting for God to act in their world and set things right. In those first few years around and after Jesus, the more they thought about it, the more they reflected on what Jesus had said and done in his ministry, the more they came to believe that he was God’s new act of redemption in the world.

Jesus was recognized by people who knew their need of his help. It is a simple formula that still works. We tend to see God, to notice God and want to form some connection in times when our own resources are shown to be inadequate. Recognizing and acknowledging our need for divine assistance doesn’t come easily to us. We usually do all in our power to avoid finding ourselves in a place of great need, open to the idea of a savior--and, paradoxically, we wonder sometimes why we don’t feel more deeply connected to God. We hear Jesus saying this morning that he has been sent to the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed--people who understand well that their own resources can’t bring them what they really need. The simple formula that Jesus is the answer to our need, to the world’s need has built the Church from the very beginning. And like preachers for the last two thousand years, my job today is to in some small way, help you feel your need for a savior. That too is an ancient formula. If Jesus is the answer then the preacher needs to place the congregation firmly in the middle of a problem. That shouldn’t be too hard, given the times in which we are living.

Jesus brought a light of hope into an occupied land. He referenced another prophet whose message was also for a nation struggling with forces that seemed overwhelming. If I’m to highlight problems, maybe I should start with this country of ours. Our resources certainly seem a bit stretched at the moment.

I don’t care what your politics are, if you have any political opinions these days you have had plenty of occasion to wonder lately if we don’t need a bit of divine help in figuring out the way ahead. As I understand it, in its simplest form, we have a two party political system that represents two different ideological approaches to government. The most committed on each side of the aisle are pretty sure that if the other folks would just let them run things the country would be just fine. The two ideals seem to run something like this: One group thinks that government should gather the power of the people through laws to insure that the basic needs of the many are met. That involves taking money out of the free market and creating programs to help with food, education, health care and so on. The other group believes that if the free market is just left to go about its business the people who make money will spread that money around by creating jobs and everyone will be able to afford what they need. It seems to me that either of these systems might work if it weren’t for a little problem that Isaiah’s people probably knew better than did the people Jesus encountered seven hundred years later. The people who were waiting for a savior when Jesus came on the scene mostly thought that the Romans were the problem. If they could just get rid of those pesky outsiders things would be ok. Isaiah’s audience, on the other hand, was still reeling from a long line of much-too-human leaders, some of whom are listed in the history of Israel only by name along with a note saying they did what was evil in the sight of God. Those to whom Isaiah spoke had begun to figure out the truth of what the old comic strip character Pogo used to say, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Whichever political party you might lean toward, there has been enough in the news in the last year or two to make you wonder whether we don’t all need some kind of a savior. Many of the folks who believe most strongly in free markets wince at the inclination among many financial institutions to hoard and give out huge bonuses and not share the wealth. Many of those who believe in bigger government really would rather watch sausage being made than see the torturously slow movement of the machine we call the legislature. The good intentions of people on both sides, people who dream of a better nation, are too often mired down in the basic age old human problem of too many people who ask only, what’s in it for me. We have met the problem, Jesus, and it is us.

Now I hope you don’t hear me saying that humanity, that humanness is the problem. It isn’t. All that drive to build up, the push of what seem to be great ideas, the passion of ideologies--even the what’s in-it-for-me, to some extent are all part of the human creative potential. You can find examples of all those things in Jesus’ story. They are a part of the humanity Jesus came to redeem, to make whole, to fulfill, but they are only a part of that humanity. Jesus balanced those human powers with some other human traits we don’t notice as often, like humility and a willingness to risk. Compassion costs us something, love gives other people power in our lives. Jesus gave of himself, cared about others, refused to be turned into a king. And in the end, when the story began to be told, it was of a man who chose to die so that the rest of us could have life, could live more fully, more completely.

If it is true that Jesus shows up where there is a known need for God’s help, then maybe the stories we read in the paper and see on the news are a part of the Epiphany. When we read about humanity operating at its worst, we might ask ourselves what the balance is. If we wonder how someone could accept a multi-million bonus after contributing to the bankruptcy of so many we might ask what is missing. If greed makes us wonder where the altruism and self sacrifice are in our world, maybe we will begin to see those things because we are looking for them. If we are saddened by the sense of self-righteousness we hear crafted into stinging words in the political arena, we might go looking for humility and grace, and if we do we may just begin to notice those things in more places than we might have imagined.

As I read the message this morning, part of learning to see Jesus among us involves learning to want him among us. There is so much going on these days to fuel our hunger for a savior. Maybe it will help us to remember that Jesus shows up where he is hoped for, longed for, expected. Amen.

Corinthians Class: notes from last night

Small group last night. I had heard from four who could not make it but plan to be there next week. One person last night thought Paul was very cool, another had been put off in the past by Paul's repeat-it-till-they-submit logical constructs (let's see, if the dead are not raised then what was that again?)

We talked about Paul and the contrast in content between Paul's letters and the gospels. We speculated some about those first 20 years after Jesus and what must have been the thinking about him in Jerusalem and beyond, and whether there were major differences because of location. We thought that amid the local-issues business, Paul offered some amazingly complex theology as a foundation for the basis of the church's existence.

We went home to read Corinthians and will return to look at Paul's theology of Eucharist, baptism, salvation, reconciliation and more. The plan will be to focus on a few of these in the next two weeks and look at ways in which Paul may have shaped our current theology. We will also speculate about other possible non-Pauline theological positions on the same subjects that might be inferred from sayings of Jesus as recorded in the gospels. Which means, of course, that it might not be a bad idea to do a bit of reading in the gospels as well as in Corinthians.

Happy reading. Hope to see you next week or read your comments on these posts. JB

Wednesday Evening Courses at St. Aidan’s

The Church at Corinth: Paul and the Shape of Christianity

January 20, 2010

So the question I am asking myself tonight is what have I gotten myself into?

I plan these Wednesday evening classes by thinking of a subject into which I would like to do a bit more digging, I put them on the calendar, and then I sit down to see what we will do when class begins. I have been reading all week and am more aware than usual that I could read for a year and still not have begun to scratch the surface of the subject. So, my plan today is to back up and try to say a few things about why I chose Corinthians and Paul.

First, I took a course on Corinthians in seminary 15 years ago and I had some books I wanted to read again.

Second, I am very much a modern in my approach to and understanding of scripture. On the clergy deployment form that sorts clergy by attitudes and preferences, there is a question in which we are asked to place our attitude on a scale that ranges between “regards the Bible literally” and “regards the Bible as am interpretation of God’s dealings with humanity.” The second one is still a bit traditional for me, but it will do. I do not feel compelled to take Christianity or its scriptures at face value, so I end up asking a lot of questions, sometimes about aspects of the faith that seem basic to it.

One of the questions asked in more modern times about Paul and his influence on Christianity has to do with whether Paul shaped the response to Jesus, which became the Christianity we are familiar with, into something Jesus never intended. The short version of that discussion notes that while Jesus spoke a lot about the kingdom of God, Paul spoke instead about Jesus. I wanted to spend some time with that question and thought revisiting Corinthians might be a way to go about it.

The other reason I thought of Corinthians is that one of the passages of scripture that has returned in my life in all its seasons is an appeal by Paul in Second Corinthians that seems, as I look at it now, to speak more in the voice attributed to Jesus in the question I just cited.

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." II Cor. 16-20

In their Introduction to The New Testament, Harcourt, 1982, Perrin and Duling describe Jesus this way. "Jesus of Nazareth was an itinerant, charismatic prophet of Aramaic-speaking, rural Galilee. He was a man who proclaimed to his people that the coming Kingdom of God was already present in his ministry of preaching and healing. He was crucified by the Romans as a potentially dangerous Zealot type revolutionary. Within a short time groups of itinerant preachers were scattered about villages of Syria-Palestine perpetuating his teaching and proclaiming that the end was near. Other were soon proclaiming in cities of the Roman Empire." 71-72

Soon people all over the Greco-Roman world were hearing that Jesus was the messiah and that the way to salvation was through Jesus. Jesus was the pivotal beginning of a new era in salvation history.

The gospels telling the story of Jesus were not written until at least forty years after he was gone. It is generally accepted these days that Mark’s gospel was written first and the Matthew and Luke both used Mark’s material and added other material, much of which they shared in common. It is assumed that they had another source of sayings of Jesus known simply as Q, for the German word for source. Matthew, Mark and Luke focused primarily on what Jesus said. It must be assumed that sayings of Jesus were considered important and were preserved in memory and in oral tradition and that the earliest written lists were preserved at least with some accuracy in the gospels. The earliest Christians held the sayings of Jesus in high esteem.

Paul, on the other hand, never quotes Jesus. Paul, who speaks of other teachers and of being one of the earliest followers of Jesus, who claims to have seen the risen Lord, would have been a part of that early tradition that valued Jesus’ words, but he does not quote Jesus in his letters which were written some 10-20 year before the first gospel. Instead, Paul speaks about Jesus, about the meaning of his death and resurrection, and about the meaning of our participation in the life of Jesus.

Somewhere between that wandering, charismatic prophet and the developed theological work that is the gospel of Luke, written around the year 90 ad. or the even more theologically nuanced gospel of John written a few years later, came Paul. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians were written around 55-57 ad. and in those letters we hear the Christianity of the later gospels being considered, thought through, shaped in ways that have been with us for almost two thousand years.

Some suggestions for reading Corinthians for this course.

Paul has taken a lot of flack for some of his views, especially on women’s roles and rights. Try to remember that he was writing in another era, and ask yourself how well your opinions on some issues of the day might hold up a thousand years down the road.

Try to focus on what Paul is saying about Jesus and ask yourself how he came to such conclusions as his masterful parallel between Adam in the garden of Eden and Jesus as the second Adam who redeems us all from The Fall by living his life well. If you get tired of hearing him go on about sexual morality try hearing the difference between his words about the situation in Corinth (which was a seaport and known widely as a brothel town) and his theological views on Jesus. Granted, they are often fit together, as in his discussion of the Lord’s Supper, but as the old saying goes, don’t worry about taking what you need and leaving the rest for another time. What doesn’t speak to you now may in another time or setting.

Note also that what we now have as I and II Corinthians is at least three letters, one of which makes reference to a fourth which we do not have. Some scholars think there were several more. Most seem to think that First Corinthians hold together and mentions the earlier letter. Second Corinthians speaks of a harsh letter, which may be the last four chapters of what is now Second corinthians. If that is true, then It might help to read chapters 10-13 before 1-9.

I invite you to read, Corinthians, and return with comments and questions which we will explore together. For those of you who are joining us on line, I will try to post comments from the session tonight.

John B

Sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 3:15-17,21-22

January 10, 2010

I’ve been thinking this week about a guy I met who was standing in my service line one morning over thirty years ago when I was in the car business. He was a great guy. I don’t even remember his name, but I liked him a lot.

When I met him I had recently become the service manager of a large car dealership. After years of working in the service department in various jobs, the service manager had moved on and the owners tapped me, a young, green-about-the-ways-of-the-world kid for the job. It was a stretch.

One of the things I learned very quickly was that the service manager was responsible for buying all the chemicals and cleaners used at the dealership. We bought degreaser and detergent in 55 gallon drums, and the dealership’s account was big enough that within a week of my taking the job I began to hear from a lot of salesmen.

It seemed like a bit of a feeding frenzy. The word was apparently out that there was a new guy in charge and this was the time, if you happened to be in the auto chemical business, to get your foot in the door. It was pretty bad. The phone rang a lot. It seemed the owner of every chemical company in town was having some sort of big celebration and had therefore authorized the salesman to give people like me anything from watches to pots and pans just for signing an initial order. Lots of salesmen wanted to be my friend and several of them were just plain pushy. By the time I met the guy I’m thinking about I had been interrupted, sideswiped and even lied to by more salesmen than I ever realized were out there. It had been a long couple of weeks.

Then one morning I was standing at the check-in desk at 7:30 working a line of maybe ten folks who wanted to drop off their cars for the day. One tall guy at the back of the line had a friendly patient smile and he conversed in a friendly way with others in line as he gradually made his way to the desk. When it was finally his turn, he said he didn’t have a car to drop off. Instead, he handed me his card and said he was in the chemical business, he had been around the shop and had checked out what we needed. His prices, he said were on the back of the card. “Give me a call if I can be of any help.” Not only did we do business, we had many great conversations over coffee during my tenure as service manager.

I thought of this guy when I noticed something a little different in Luke’s version of the story of Jesus’ baptism. It is a small detail, but it is one that stands out because it doesn’t appear in any of the other gospels. The baptism of Jesus is one of the stories we celebrate during Epiphany, and it is the central story of the Epiphany in the Eastern Church. Epiphany of course, means “manifestation” and we understand the feast of Epiphany and the season of Epiphany to be about the ways in which God is revealed to be present with us in the person of Jesus. The baptism stories in Matthew, Mark and Luke all end with the dove descending and a voice form heaven saying “this is my son my beloved in whom I am well pleased.” The story comes at the beginning of Jesus‘ ministry as he takes center stage and the spotlight falls upon him.

In Matthew and Mark the only person we hear about being baptized is Jesus. The story is about him and him alone. Luke, though, takes it in a little different direction. Luke says, “now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized.” In this tiny detail, Luke shows us a Jesus who is with the people who came out to see John, with them not as the star of the show, but as one of them. Jesus was baptized, not alone, but as one of the many. I have this image of Jesus waiting in line, not concerned about getting to John, trusting that his turn will come. It seems important that Luke would want this part of Jesus’ life, his being among us as one of us, held up as a way in which God is made manifest in our world.

Luke shows us Jesus willing to stand alongside us in the mundane and the not so mundane, a companion in the everyday business of life. We do a lot of waiting in this life, and because of this little addition in Luke’s version of the story, we have this morning the the strong suggestion that we never wait alone. Whether we are waiting at the social security office, waiting at the DMV office, waiting for news from Iraq, from the doctor….waiting for a child to get a handle on life and take hold of their future in such a way that you can sleep at night. Luke today gives us a Jesus who has time to wait with us. Who has time for us!

Luke gives us in this little detail, a glimpse into his theology. He shows us a Jesus who lives not above us or over us or out ahead of us, but beside us, even if we are slow about figuring out where it is we are trying to go. Jesus who lives with us walks with us on our schedules. Jesus who says by joining our lives in that way that his focus is not on some destination to which he would lead us, but on us. We are worth his time--his living. In Jesus God chooses to join us where we are. Luke’s Jesus--whose baptism doesn’t stop the show, who is baptized in the company of all who have come out to see John--Luke’s Jesus has time to wait for us, with us. He’s not anxious about selling what he has come to bring us. He simply enters the story, speaks clearly and honestly about who he is, goes out and meets people where they are, and treats well and with great respect those who are used to being treated badly. With an approach like that, the people who encounter him naturally become interested in what he might have to offer.

I was a harried, overwhelmed new service manager when that guy took the time to wait in my service line. What sold me was his understanding and respect for my situation and his confidence in his product. He didn’t need tricks to convince people. Anyone who gave him a little of their time would see that what he was selling was a good deal, and he began the exchange by giving of his time first.

The people who went out to see John that day were all looking for something. They wanted cleansing, renewal, strength, forgiveness. Jesus didn’t move to the head of the line to make his pitch. Instead he joined them like that guy in my line that day. I’m guessing he heard their stories, listened, and left them believing they had been in the presence of someone who was willing to spend a little life with them in the waiting. It was quite an approach, very effective, for here we all are.

And we still bring our children, the vessels of our greatest hopes to the waters of baptism. We come ourselves, looking for something we can’t always name, trusting that there is something in this Rite that will make our lives--their lives--different, new, more solid.

In just a moment we will ask questions, make introductions, tell stories and talk for a while about what it is we seek in the baptismal waters. All this we will do before we make the journey to the font. And as we tell our stories and ask our questions, we will know that Jesus isn’t in the water, but with us as we make our way to the water, caring, listening, loving each of us every step of the way. Amen