May 17, 2020 - God's Love Frees Us to Love - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

God’s Love Frees Us to Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Easter 6 – May 17, 2020

 

1 Corinthians 13 familiar to many, if not most, people – even people who have little to do with church or the Bible

·       Famous for its use as a reading at weddings

·       A beautiful, eloquent poem about the amazing-ness of love lived out

·       A great description of love shared – what better reading to have as 2 people are beginning their lives as a married couple?

But Paul was not writing about love to a couple in the throes of young, romantic love

·       Was writing to a whole faith community, the church in the Greek city of Corinth

And far from being a community bound in love, they were fractured and divided

·       This church was on the verge of divorce – in desperate need of relationship counseling!!

·       Talked about that a bit last week – so many conflicts in this young, diverse church, where there were rich and poor, slave and free, men and women, people of Jewish and Gentile backgrounds; differences across the board

·       In chapter 1 of this letter, Paul had reminded them that God had poured out grace upon them, enriching them in speech and knowledge; that they were not lacking in any spiritual gift

·       And here they are, a people in conflict – abusing their freedoms, refusing to share, scorning their neighbor’s spiritual gifts and bragging about their own – and on and on

And so we have this beautiful description of love – a reminder that it doesn’t matter how gifted or talented or amazing they are; if they aren’t living in love, Paul says, then all of it is nothing

·       Though they have all they need to be the community God has called them to be and to reach out to the world around them when they use their gifts together, they are falling apart, crashing into one another in their competition to be the best, the greatest, the most important and valued

 We are fractured and divided in our time too

·       Paul’s call in this letter is for followers of Jesus to love above all else

o   Love spouses or partners

o   Love children and parents

o   Love siblings and extended family

o   Love pretty much every person we encounter (and those we never will meet!)

·       Call to love is the central theme of God to God’s people – both in the Hebrew scriptures and in the words of Jesus (Mark 12:28-31 – Love God with all you are, and love your neighbor as yourself – the greatest commands)

o   Love not as a feeling, but as an action – a deliberate choosing of relationship with the other over selfishness

o   And yet we are so often divorced from one another

§  If we don’t have this damage in our close/family relationships, look at the world around us

§  Don’t listen to one another, don’t see or try to understand another POV, We judge one another, resent others, boast, envy, allow our irritation to spill over, cling to our own version of the truth, taking up our positions and refusing to budge

o   We become noisy gongs and clanging cymbals, not playing in concert with others, but seeking to drown one another out

·       We fail to live into this grand vision of love

Make no mistake – Paul has set the bar high when it comes to the topic of love and what it looks like to live that out

·       When I preach this at weddings (which I often have), I often point out that there are clearly times when we fail – we are often impatient and unkind; we do get envious and boastful and arrogant and rude; We do insist on our own way and get irritable and resentful

·        And maybe we don’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but we’ve certainly been known to say (or think!), “I told you so!”

We will inevitably fail when we try to live out this kind of active love

·       Paul does not describe a warm and fuzzy kind of love, but a fierce, dedicated, hard-working love that chooses over and over and over again to work it out, to work it through

But the good news is that even though we cannot love in this way completely quite yet, one day we will

·       Because we are already loved in this way by the God who created us, who came to be one of us, who lived and died and rose again for us

·       The love the Paul describes, the love that Paul calls us to live out toward one another – that is a love that we have already received from God in Jesus

·       It is unshakable. It is never-ending

·       Though God knows us completely, with all of our faults and failings, God loves us with a love more powerful than death!

·       Knowing that we are already loved in this way: fully, completely, with no reservation – we are freed to love one another, to be agents of God’s love in a hurting, sometimes-hard-to-love world, seeking not our own way, but God’s way so that we may be part of God’s mission to love, bless, and redeem the whole world

·       May this love overflow from our lives into our relationships and the world around us so that they too may know how much they are loved.

·       Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

September 29, 2019 - God Promises: "I Will Be with You" - Exodus 1:8-2:10, 3:1-15

God Promises, “I Will Be with You.”

Exodus 1:8-2:10, 3:1-15

Pentecost + 16 – September 29, 2019

Moses and the Burning Bush

Intro: “Speak the truth even if your voice shakes”

·     See these words of advice floating around the internet a fair amount

·     Idea that sometimes it’s a scary thing to speak up, to speak out, to share the truth with another who may have a different point of view

·     And yet – the call comes to speak the truth, even in uncomfortable situations

TT: People in the biblical story we hear this morning might have resonated with this on a deep level

·     Not just a matter of shaking voices and feeling embarrassed or causing conflict with another, creating a rift in a relationship

·     Lives were at stake here right from the opening words

·     We’ve skipped over from Jacob and his 12 sons several generations down the line – 400 years later

o  Joseph: Jacob’s favorite son; sold into slavery by jealous brothers, taken to Egypt, where eventually he became Pharaoh’s right hand man, set over all the land of Egypt – stockpiled food for the coming famine (revealed in a dream)

o  And eventually family came seeking help, ultimately there’s a revelation and reunion and the whole extended family comes to live in Egypt

o  Which is all well and good until now, where we enter the story

·     New king arose who did not know Joseph – threatened by the numbers of Israelites

o  In fear, seeks to oppress them, to consolidate his own power

o  Enslaves them, works them ruthlessly, to the point of collapse

·     That doesn’t work, so plan B: midwives to kill the boy babies

o  Imagine them shaking a bit as they choose to defy this command

o  And yet they are bold with their reason/excuse as to why

·     Moses’ mother – who does not speak, except that actions speak louder than words

o  Love for her fine baby compels her to hide him until she can’t any more

o  Places him in a basket and sets it among the reeds of the river, fingers crossed, hoping for a good ending to this traumatic story

·     Miriam, Moses’ sister – who is set to watch over her baby brother floating on the river

o  Who sees Egyptian princess discovering Moses and dares to speak out, volunteering to find her a nurse

·     Pharaoh’s own daughter – speaking out in compassion as she ultimately adopts this child her father considers one of his enemies

·     And then Moses – the beneficiary of all of these courageous women who spoke in words and deeds, even with shaking voices

o  Who grows up a Hebrew in the Pharaoh’s household

o  Who murders an Egyptian for beating an Israelite and has to flee from Pharaoh who seeks to kill him

o  Makes new life in the land far across the wilderness, marrying, becoming a shepherd

·     And there sees a bush that burns but it not consumed

·     And encounters God, who tells him that God has heard the cry of God’s people and has come down to deliver them, and that Moses will be the one to go to speak the truth to Pharaoh

·     And Moses’ voice is surely shaking! “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

TW: It is a scary thing to find yourself the one anointed to go and speak the truth, especially to power. (this is a different pharaoh, by the way, the one he grew up with has died…)

·     To speak up and tell the Pharaoh that the time of slavery and oppression is over – terrifying

·     And we can relate

o  B/c the call to followers of Jesus is to hear the cries of those around us longing for hope, desperate for justice, and to act as Christ’s body in the world

o  To work for justice, to stand at the side of the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed

o  To go and speak out on their behalf

·     And that’s not necessarily attending a march or demonstration, though it might be; could mean writing letters to govt reps, maybe even running for office!

·     It could be confronting a co-worker or boss or family member or neighbor about racism or sexism or homophobia or fear of the other

·     It might look like listening to a person express their point of view and then daring to share a different way of looking at the situation, knowing that it may cause discomfort in the relationship

·     It is not easy; sometimes even harder when it’s someone we are close to; there’s a lot at stake

·     We may ask God, “Who am I to go…?”

·     God didn’t let Moses off the hook, and God doesn’t let us off the hook either

GT: But when God sends Moses, God sends him with a promise: “I will be with you.”

·     God is sending Moses back into a fear-inspiring situation, but God doesn’t send Moses alone

·     God promises to go with Moses, just as God promised to be with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob, just as God promised to be with Joseph

·     This name for God is a reminder of the one who has stood by Moses’ ancestors, one who has a history of following through, of leading each of them through struggles and trials, never abandoning them

·     The work God gives Moses to do won’t be easy – Pharaoh doesn’t let the people go without a struggle (you remember those stories!) – But no matter how scary it gets, God stays with Moses to fulfill God’s plan to deliver the people from slavery into freedom

·     And God sends Moses with others – like his brother Aaron and sister Miriam – to help him and support him along the way

GW: The promise is for us too. When God calls us into uncomfortable situations and places when our voices shake and quake as we speak truths that are hard for others (and sometimes even ourselves!) to hear – God says, “I will be with you.”

·     We aren’t called to follow God into these places alone

·     God promises to be with us – to lead and guide, to encourage and inspire, to empower our voices when we would rather stay silent

o  Jesus final words in Matthew: “Go, make disciples… and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

·     God never sends us to do work without God’s presence right there beside us

·     And God sends us with one another to proclaim God’s love, to live out God’s mercy, to share God’s good news of a coming kingdom

·     May we speak of God’s vision of freedom and justice to those who need to hear it, even if our voices shake, knowing that God is with us, just as God promised.

·     Amen.