1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Faithful Remembering
James Sledge January
19, 2014
As
a pastor, I have lots of “friends” on Facebook who are also pastors. The same
goes for people I follow on Twitter. Some of these folks are always posting
effusive, over-the-top praise of the churches they pastor, the committees they
serve, and so on. “First Presbyterian’s Christian Education Committee rocks!!!”
“So and so presbytery’s Committee on Ministry Committee is the best committee
ever!” “I’m so incredibly lucky and blessed to serve here!”
Maybe
it’s just my age or where I grew up, or maybe I’m just weird, but such praise sometimes
feels a little bit much to me. I like an “Atta boy” as much as the next person,
but when it goes way beyond that or goes on and on, I get a tad uncomfortable.
Of
course it could be that these Facebook friends are actually serving in the best
church that ever existed, where every member tithes or more, and every member volunteers
in some ministry activity at least once a week. Maybe they are serving on a
committee that puts every other committee in every other presbytery to shame.
Who knows?
Speaking
of over the top praise, if all I knew about the church that the apostle Paul
founded in Corinth came from the verses we heard this morning, I might think Paul
is a bit like some of my Facebook “friends.”
He gives thanks to God always for these folks who are not lacking in any
knowledge or spiritual gift. He speaks of them as being “sanctified,” in other
words, “made holy,” and of how they are called as “saints.” Wow, this must be
some congregation. Either that or Paul is getting a little over the top with
his praise.
But
as it turns out, I’ve read the rest of Paul’s letter, and I know he doesn’t
think they are the best congregation out there. Quite the opposite. He is upset
and angry with them. He will call them immature, unspiritual, and still caught
up “in the flesh.” In short, the church we meet in Paul’s letter looks like a
total disaster with all sorts of divisions, arguments, fights, and messed up
theology. Paul warns them they had better straighten up before he returns to
deal with them. And yet, Paul opens his letter with these words about being
made holy, called to be saints, given every necessary spiritual gift and all
wisdom.
Maybe
Paul is just following social convention and opening his letter with the
expected pleasantries, but I don’t think so. Not only do we have another letter
of Paul where he dispenses with such pleasantries, but there is something more.
All of those wonderful things about being made holy and called to be saints are
not specific to the Corinthian Christians. Rather, they express Paul’s
understanding of what it means to be “in Christ.” It is not praise for anything
they have done. It is their identity, who they are, the new thing they become
through the grace of God in Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, even if they are
currently living in ways that obscure their true identity.
That
means that Paul could have written these words to describe any congregation
anywhere, both the one where the pastor says on Facebook, “I am so lucky and
blessed to be here,” and where the pastor confides to colleagues, “I cannot
wait to get out of this awful place.” To be baptized into Christ is to have
acquired a new identity as part of a community set apart, sanctified, called as
saints, and given every grace and spiritual gift necessary to be the body of
Christ in and to the world.
Paul
could have written to us, whether he was deliriously happy with us or terribly
upset and said, To the church of God that is in Falls Church, to those who are
sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints… I give thanks to my God always
for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,
for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of
every kind… that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the
revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is who we are, whether we realize
it and live like it or not. It is our identity, our calling, our true nature,
because we have been joined to Christ in our baptisms.
__________________________________________________________________________
One of my favorite scenes in the Disney
movie, The Lion King, is the one
where Simba is urged to come back and take his place as king. A lot of you are
probably familiar with the movie, but if you've not seen it, the story revolves
around Simba, the cub of the lion king, Mufasa. Simba is heir to the
throne, but Mufasa's brother Scar, the villain in the story, hatches a plot
where Mufasa is killed and Simba is convinced that he’s to blame. Racked
with guilt, Simba runs away, leaving the pride to the destructive rule of
Scar.
At
one point, Simba’s old girlfriend comes to plead with him to return, to
overthrow Scar and take his place as on the throne before it is too
late. Simba resists, but with help from Rafiki, a mandrill who is a kind
of priest, prophet, and wise sage, he has a vision of his father. Magnificently
voiced by James Earl Jones, Mufasa tells his son, "You have forgotten who
you are, and so you have forgotten me... Remember who you are."
“Remember who you are.” Simba cannot be
who he is supposed to be or do what he is supposed to do if he has forgotten who
he truly is. And only an act of faithful remembering will allow Simba and the
pride be saved. “Remember who you are.”
__________________________________________________________________________
Brian
McLaren, whose words we will use momentarily in our profession of faith, says
that one of the greatest challenges facing the Christian faith is the desperate
need for what he calls “a strong-benevolent, Christian identity.” Unfortunately,
strong identity is often hostile while benevolent identity is often weak. Typically,
he writes, “The stronger our Christian commitment, the stronger our aversion or
opposition to other religions. The stronger our Christian commitment, the more
we emphasize our differences with other faiths and the more we frame those
differences in terms of good/ evil, right/ wrong, and better/ worse.”[1]
However,
Mainline, progressive, and liberal Christians tend in the other direction. “We
never proselytize. We always show respect for other religions and their
adherents. We always minimize differences and maximize commonalities. But we
typically achieve coexistence by weakening our Christian identity. We make it
matter less that they are Muslim or Hindu by making it matter less that we are
Christian.”[2]
To
my ear, this describes a forgetting who we are in a well-intentioned project
meant to heal some of the divisions that wrack our world. Problem is, we forget
our true identity. We forget that we are joined to Christ, sanctified and
called to be saints. But we have to have some identity, and so we drift into
others that are available. We are consumers, liberals, libertarians, conservatives,
millennials, baby-boomers, capitalists, socialists, Democrats, Republicans.
Trouble is, these identities often foster the same sort of hostilities and
divisions we had hoped to eliminate by weakening or forgetting our Christian
identity. Meanwhile faith becomes disconnected from much our lives.
But
this morning, Paul reminds us who we are, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called to be saints… because of the grace of God that has been given you in
Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and
knowledge of every kind… so that you are
not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
“Remember
who you are.” As with the lion cub Simba, we cannot be who we are supposed to
be or do what we are supposed to do if we have forgotten who we truly are. And
only an act of faithful remembering will allow us, and all the world, to be
saved. “Remember who you are.”
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