Sermon: Remember Me

First Presbyterian Church

April 2, 2026, Maundy Thursday A

Matthew 26:26-30; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

 

Remember Me

 

 

I have very distinct memories of the Lord’s Supper, when I was a child, looking for all the world like a funeral service. Table (and all the elements on it) covered in a shroud, the church’s deacons (no elders in that denomination), all male, dressed in black and looking exactly like pallbearers at a funeral…the only reason I didn’t immediately think of it this way was because, at that young an age, I hadn’t been to enough funerals to know. When I finally did see a couple of funerals and then saw the Lord’s Supper in church on a Sunday looking pretty much the same, I honestly think I was scarred just a little bit. It might have been worse if we’d had it more than four times a year.

Since then I have studied enough history to know that such presentation of the Lord’s Supper was not only common, it even came with official backing in at least one of the ancestor denominations to the PC(USA); its Book of Order described and prescribed exactly that kind of setup for the table, even to the point of how the shroud was to be folded when removed, and how it was to be replaced over the elements when the Supper was done. This was as far back, if I remember correctly, as 1796. There is a long history of treating the Lord’s Supper primarily as a memorial.

At this point in my life and ministry I can no longer believe that’s precisely what Jesus was going for here, as recounted by Paul in what we now know as the Words of Institution.

As Paul describes the scene (in what is our earliest written account of it), Jesus performs the acts we know – breaking the bread, filling the cup – and marks each one with the appropriate theological significance – “my body that is for you,” “the new covenant in my blood.” But then what does he say? “Do this in remembrance of my sacrifice”? “Do this in remembrance of my death”? “Do this in remembrance of what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

No. “Do this in remembrance of me.”

“Do this in remembrance of me.” Remember me. Remember the one who journeyed with you all around Galilee and Judea. Remember the one who taught you, who sent you out to preach and teach and heal. Remember me, the one with whom you shared so many meals at so many tables. The one who lived with you all these years.

Later in this same letter Paul will take issue with some in the Corinthian church who somehow doubt that Christ was ever raised from the dead.  It is one of the most impassioned parts of this epistle, and in the end Paul finally goes so far as to declare that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (15:17), and even further, “if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (15:19).  But then the good news: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (15:20).

Even back in our words of institution, Jesus instructs his disciples that in the sharing of this bread and cup, we do “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (11:26). If all we have to show here is Jesus’s funeral, if what happened in this meal and then in the garden and finally on Golgotha is all there is to the story, then we really are kinda hopeless, aren’t we?

Do this in remembrance of me. Remember me.

The animated film Coco understands what power memory has. The young boy at the center of the story, who accidentally journeys into the Land of the Dead of Mexican folklore, is in the end rushing back from that land to be at the side of his "mama Coco"; as she is slowly fading, her memories slipping away, the boy sings to her a song that her own father had sung to her as a young child, before leaving the family to try to provide for them as a musician - a journey on which he ends up being murdered, unbeknownst to his family. That song had been made famous by the man who murdered her father and stole the song, presenting it as his own and becoming famous. But in these final moments, as the boy sings her father’s song haltingly to his mama Coco, the first sparks of life come to her face. (Any good music therapist will tell you that music can sometimes do this.) Her fingers begin to move, almost imperceptibly; her eyes open, ever so slowly; in the end, her own halting voice joins with the boy’s to finish the song, as she smiles for possibly the first time in years:

Remember me, though I have to travel far
Remember me, each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be
Until you’re in my arms again
Remember me

 

In this supper, in this bread and this cup passed among us, broken however imperfectly and maybe spilled a little bit, we remember Jesus, the whole life, the whole word, and in that remembering we are brought to new life, given a song to sing, a smile amid the tears of the everyday; we live in this testimony of the Christ who is coming again, and in whose life is our life.

Do this and remember.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Sermon: The Inevitable, Necessary Stewardship Sermon

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

October 19, 2025; Ordinary 

2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Mark 12:38-44

 

The Inevitable, Necessary Stewardship Sermon

 

It is one of those things for a new pastor. You know it’s coming. It’s inevitable. It doesn’t quite fall into the category of “things they didn’t teach you in seminary,” but it’s close. 

It’s stewardship time! Woohoo!

In all seriousness, this is nobody’s idea of fun. Nobody, except possibly certain folks who gravitate to public radio or television, likes to ask for money. I certainly don’t. I’m quite sure the Finance Commission folks would rather not have to go through this. We’d really rather be able to go on about things and not have to go through the whole business of pledge cards and all that. 

I’d certainly rather not have to conjure up a “stewardship sermon” out of scripture that really doesn’t want to be used that way. While in the Old Testament, or at least much of it, the people of Israel did have an established Temple that certainly required financial maintenance, in the New Testament there wasn’t really a “church” out there that needed a financial plan. By the time Paul and his contemporaries are helping the body of Christ spread across Asia Minor and into southeastern Europe, there are handfuls of “house churches,” meeting primarily in the homes of some of its members, without the overhead of a modern church building. When money was required, for care for the poor or sometimes for taking care of a visiting teacher like Paul or others, it was collected, essentially by passing the hat. 

That’s the kind of collection going on as Paul writes to the Christ-following community in Corinth in today’s epistle reading. Paul is trying to gather up funds for the believers at Jerusalem (who had fallen on hard times), and he begins the chapter by telling the Corinthians about the generosity of the Christians in Macedonia, who despite their own hardships had given with great generosity towards this collection. We do that kind of special collection on occasion.

But as far as regular budgets go, that’s obviously not how this church, and most modern churches in the US, work. We have a building. It’s a good building, even if all these stairs challenge me on some days. There are some repairs needed. There are regular expenses for things like electricity and water, keeping the grass from getting too long, having materials for study, and so forth. The choir needs music. Commissions need funds to varying degrees to carry out their work. Staff people need to be paid, even me, not to mention that manse next door being ready to receive your next pastor. And to be certain that we can meet those obligations, we ask that our members commit to giving as we are able to do.

Paul’s verses sound quite uplifiting; “God loves a cheerful giver” … “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance” …  “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity” … really, some great stuff there. And Jesus’s comments about the widow also are pretty effective at encouraging us, those of us who are not blessed with great material wealth, that our generosity matters, and that our generosity will be rewarded.

It all sounds so good, doesn’t it?

But there’s also a very disturbing and dismaying aspect to verses and stories like these, of which we are reminded in the verses before Jesus points out the widow to us. Teaching in the Temple, during the last week of his life, Jesus calls his disciples’ attentions to the scribes. It’s pretty unlikely that Jesus means to sweep every single scribe into this condemnation, as only a few verses before he has had a much more encouraging encounter with one of their number, but he’s had enough bad experiences with the scribes that he’s drawn some sharp and critical observations about them. 

One of the behaviors Jesus calls out involves the very kind of people he observes in the later verses of our reading today. First of all, Jesus disdains their propensity for seeking attention and flattery, for claiming the best seats at the table and generally being quite impressed with their own authority and power. But amidst this is an accusation that might catch us off guard: “They devour widows’ houses…”.  We don’t have an absolute fix on just what kind of action Jesus is condemning here; it might be the practice of “Corban” that was mentioned earlier in this gospel (declaring resources that might support such a person as “dedicated to God”), or it might be the exploitation of widows by traveling teachers who make themselves guests in those widows’ homes and consume their limited resources. Whatever it is, Jesus calls it out and puts forward the declaration that for their excesses “They will receive the greater condemnation.”

It’s not hard to find modern descendents of those scribes – in fact, if you’re of my generation it’s hard not to. It’s pretty easy to draw a line between these scribes and their modern descendents, if you’ve grown up in and lived in the age of the televangelist. I know some of you, maybe a lot of you, remember the likes of the Bakkers, the Swaggarts, and so many more who became infamous for extracting sums of money from the widows of our own day, persons on fixed incomes giving large chunks of those fixed incomes to those televised preachers. Frankly, any preacher of my generation trembles at preaching from these verses just because of that ugly abuse for which they’ve been used before.

So to some degree a stewardship drive, in which we ask you at least in part for your money, needs to be accompanied by a pledge by those charged to lead the church – from me and other staff members through the session and commission moderators – that we will not be exploiters of what you pledge and give. We must commit to you that what you give will be used wisely, prayerfully, and with no other goal than the support of this church in its ongoing call to do Christ’s work in God’s world. 

Still, even with this past hanging over today’s scripture, we can’t just dismiss the widow in the Temple as some kind of dupe. We don’t know her individual story; were it not for Jesus’s description we wouldn’t necessarily even know that she was giving everything she had. We’ve never heard of her before, and we never hear of her again.

But for all of the mystery about this woman, one thing we can know is that she is the opposite of the protagonist of an earlier story, the so-called “rich young ruler,” who came asking Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life only to go away sorrowing because Jesus told him to sell it all and follow? He was too attached to his possessions to follow. He was plenty willing to give his actions – remember how he declared he had kept the law since his youth? His wealth, though…another matter entirely. He had to hold on, to keep control of his stuff. And yes, this does sound a lot like those possessed by the greed that came up in a sermon a few weeks ago.

Our widow, though? No such fear. To borrow a slang term from poker, the widow has chosen to go “all in.” A player whose chips are limited might choose to push them “all in” when a hand demands it. The widow has little else to fall back on; she chooses to commit it all in the Temple.

We do not ask for all your money. We do, however, ask for all of you. We need not just your money – though we do need that – but we do need your time. We need your gifts of talent, your ability to teach or sing or give or lead or anything you can do. We need you, and we need all that you have to offer. There are lists in the fellowship room across the hall that give you some examples of that need.

Yes, fill out those pledge cards and turn them in next Sunday. But that’s only a start.

For commitments large and small, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #714 God of the Fertile Fields #716, God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending; #708, We Give Thee But Thine Own

Sermon: In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

First Presbyterian Church

April 17, 2025, Maundy Thursday C

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 22:17-34

 

In the Presence of the Betrayer(s)

 

 

In hearing the reading from Paul's letter to Corinth, we are reminded of those words we typically hear as part of what is liturgically called the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, words that typically precede the breaking of the bread in the sacrament of communion. Paul felt it necessary to write those words to the Corinthians because their practices at the meal had degenerated badly, more closely resembling the reckless practices of the Greco-Roman world around them than Jesus's last meal with his disciples, the one which church's meal was meant to remember.

Paul's letter was written well before Luke's gospel (Paul was dead by the time Luke wrote it), and his bare essentials account differs dramatically from Luke's fraught description of Jesus's meal with his disciples. While not quite to the degree that the Corinthians' meal went far off track, it seems that the disciples weren't on their best behavior as they shared this final meal before his crucifixion. Indeed, one can spot three distinct hints of betrayal.

We do hear in Luke's storythe familiar words we continue to associate with the Lord's Supper - "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." He starts to speak the words about the cup but can't even get to the "do this in remembrance of me" part before he breaks down, with the chilling announcement that "the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table." After another moment he again sounds like someone who knows what is coming but concludes with "woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" 

No surprise that the disciples are alarmed by this and start wondering who among themselves could do such a thing. But if we read only within the framework of this passage, we share their uncertainty. Who could do such a thing, indeed?

So who at this table with Jesus - one of whom Jesus says "his hand is on the table" - is the betrayer? This is where we have to both look backward and forward, and when we do that, we are almost compelled to ask "who is not the betrayer?"

Let's take the obvious answer first. Back in verse 3 of this chapter we are told that "Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot" and that he sought out the authorities who had wanted Jesus dead. All he needs now is the opportunity to give Jesus up to them. The betrayal is already set in motion. That's the technically correct answer, but maybe not the only answer.

By verse 31 we know something is up with Simon Peter. Jesus calls him out seemingly without provocation, as if to charge Peter with encouraging his colleagues when all this is over. Peter has glorious martyrdom on his mind, though, saying (probably quite loudly) "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Jesus's response is almost cutting, telling Peter that he'll swear he doesn't even know Jesus - not just once, but three times before sunrise. Of course, as we continue to read Luke's account, it really does happen just as Jesus describes, even before we move on to chapter 23. Peter is left weeping at his own failure.

But is that all? Right there in verse 24 we read: "A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest." Really, right after Jesus has announced that someone would betray him, after Jesus has been talking about how he's never going to eat or drink of these things again "until the kingdom of God comes," you start arguing about who is greatest among you? Has anybody been paying attention to Jesus? Has anybody really been faithful at this point? 

That table was not the place for the disciples to try to show off their greatness or their superior faithfulness. It isn't that place for us either. At this table Jesus calls on his disciples to take on the humility of servants. And Jesus makes this call in the very presence of the one who would betray him (or should that be the ones who would betray him?). We don't come here to show off how righteous we are, how much more faithful than someone else we are, anything like that. We come as servants, as Jesus came to the table as a servant; we are served so that we might serve. We come to follow only Jesus, and only to follow Jesus, no matter what others at the table or other tables around the world on this night might do. We come knowing our own weaknesses, our own faults, and our own small betrayals, and Christ serves us, and we go serve.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon: In the Blinking of an Eye

First Presbyterian Church

February 23, 2025, Epiphany 7C

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

 

In the Blinking of an Eye

 

 

Before we get into this final message from Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth, in which the apostle has by turns chided, rebuked, encouraged, and sometimes rhetorically shaken his head at the Corinthians and their missteps of word and deed, I have a confession to make. There are times when I can, if not necessarily agree with the missteps of those followers, at least understand where they come from, and even on some occasions find some measure of sympathy for them and their processes of thought and feeling by which those missteps come.

Honestly, one such experience frequently comes to mind.

Most of you here probably know the experience of which I speak. A day of "preparation" that involves drinking the foulest concoction imaginable, followed by a particular variation of "emptying yourself" that is not at all the type contemplated in scripture or theology. Then you go to your local medical facility and get sedated while they stick cameras in you to see if anything bad is happening in your intestines. Some of you know.

I've had more than my share of those.

When I have a week like that, I can understand why the Corinthians would be icked out by the idea of our physical bodies being resurrected.

Paul's continuing instruction on resurrection probably wasn't inspired by any particular physical experience, but one could see the dissatisfaction with our physical bodies resonating with what Paul offers up here. The intervening material since last week's reading speaks of our physical bodies with such descriptions as "perishable" (v.42), "dishonor" (43), and "weakness" (43). At last in verse 50 Paul summarizes this rather convoluted discussion with the assertion that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." This would, on the surface, seem to present a problem for Paul's whole claim of resurrection for us because of Christ's resurrection.

Of course, Paul knows that and knows what he's about to add. With a bit of dramatic flourish - "Listen, I tell you a mystery!" -- Paul makes clear that the body that rises won't remain in this precarious physical state. Perishability will be wrapped up in imperishability; mortal will be clothed in immortal. Paul even gets a little rhapsodic, borrowing from Isaiah and Hosea to celebrate how "death has been swallowed up in victory," and taunting with "Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?"

Again, some of the in-between material is helpful here. In verses 36-38 Paul summoned up the highly apt image of sowing seeds and reaping, well, something other than seeds. The seed that is planted in the ground looks nothing like what grows out of the ground. And we expect this when we are planting and harvesting or designing a garden. We'd be mighty disappointed if we planted seed and later harvested ... nothing but more seed. That wouldn't make much of a garden either.

So as that seed is greatly transformed as it germinates in the earth, the "seed" of the physical body is greatly transformed in the moment of what the old spiritual called "that great gettin'-up morning."

All of this is quite poetic in its way, and the passage has gained a great deal of popularity as a text for funeral services (or Services of Witness to the Resurrection, to be all Presbyterian about it). But for all of this effect, for all of this sense of comfort or reassurance, this is not really Paul's point to this whole discussion stretching across this whole fifteenth chapter. Paul saves that last point for the final verse. You can guess that Paul's big statement is coming when he breaks out the Greek word Ωστε (oste), which we generally translate as "therefore."

And what's the big "therefore" point? It's pretty simple:

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (NRSV)

 

"Be steadfast." Stand strong. Hang on. Keep at it. Keep doing the work. And that last encouragement - "you know that in the Lord your work is not in vain." It echoes quite nicely the words from the first verse of this chapter.

All of this talk of resurrection and eternal union with God in Christ and transformed bodies and all of this isn't about what is yet to come; it's about what we do now with the lives we are given to live here on earth, in union with one another in the body of Christ, in obedience to our God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It's about not giving up, not deciding it's pointless or hopeless, not falling away or giving up or wavering, but keeping on and going about the work and remaining resolute about doing that work.  

Sometimes it helps for some people to peek ahead to the end of a particularly intense novel, just to be reassured that there's a good ending ahead. (I'd never do that, but I'm told some folks do.) That's kinda what Paul has given the Corinthians here: a peek ahead, something to hold on to in the face of seeming hopelessness or pointlessness. 

We don't lose hope because of the opposition of sworn enemies of God, or the opposition of God's most zealous defenders (and these days it's hard to tell the difference between the two). We don't get resigned to the ways of this world because of, well, the ways of this world. We don't despair in the face of bleak hopelessness all around or in what seems like a complete lack of progress. We don't even despair over our own broken-down, impossible-to-maintain physical bodies that find new ways to betray us every week. We remain steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, our work is not in vain. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #369, Blessing and Honor; #---, Thanks Be to God; #846. Fight the Good Fight.

Sermon: ...if Christ has not been raised...

First Presbyterian Church

February 16, 2022, Epiphany 6C

1 Corinthians 15:12-26

 

...if Christ has not been raised...

 

 

To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

--Shakespeare, Hamlet, III:1

 

 

These words from Hamlet's famous "to be, or not to be" soliloquy, are of course broadly famous as a key moment of that character's struggle with what to do in what he increasingly sees as a hopeless situation. So burdened is he that he is contemplating suicide. 

This particular portion of the soliloquy contains a particular phrase that has taken on a life well beyond what Shakespeare might have imagined. The phrase "shuffle off this mortal coil" has become a commonplace slang reference to death, and especially death as a leaving behind of the physical life. Note that the soliloquy contemplates "what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil"; while the body is dead, evidently the spirit is still kicking, at least enough to be tormented by dreams. 

Based on today's reading from 1 Corinthians, we'd have to guess that the Apostle Paul would get pretty frustrated with this soliloquy, maybe even jumping up and exiting the theater in a huff. If anything is made clear in today's verses, it is that resurrection is real, and it is not merely spiritual. If you were wondering after last week's reading why Paul was so adamant about providing that whole list of witnesses to the resurrected Christ, you now have your answer. 

It seems that there were some among the Corinthian fellowship who were perhaps still (as they were in so many things) under the influence of certain Greco-Roman ways of thinking about the relationship between the soul and the body. In much philosophy, particularly following Plato, soul and body were separate things. In short, much of that thought saw the body as a thing to be escaped; let the cludgy old flesh die and the spirit be set free upon death. Not all Greco-Roman thought accepted this - the Epicureans and Stoics were two such examples - but a good bit of such thought held that death was the chance for the soul to be free of the body, fulfilled at last. 

It should be noted that such a philosophical bent doesn't necessarily result in an outright skeptical or denialist position about physical life after death. It isn't as if Corinthian objectors were necessarily getting all riled up about this talk of resurrection because it offended them intellectually; it's also quite possible that they were offended emotionally by the whole idea. In other words, such an objection might be framed not as "that's impossible" or "that's ridiculous"; it might as easily have been framed as "oh, gross" or "why would you want that?" When one is conditioned intellectually or emotionally to see the body as an encumbrance, being taught that your body is part of the whole resurrection package can be a shock to the system.

It might be easy for us moderns to scoff at such thoughts or fears, but let's check ourselves: are we that far from such attitudes about body and soul, really?

That line from Hamlet's soliloquy, for example, and the evolved interpretation of it as being freed from the body, seems pretty Corinthian in some ways. Are our old gospel hymns and songs completely free from the whole idea of, say, our disembodied souls floating off to Heaven while our bodies remain in the grave or in whatever state they have been treated after death? Or take the whole idea of ghosts, for example - what is that spirit doing floating around all un-embodied? If we're not making popular-culture fun with ghosts as disembodied spirits, we're making horror movies about "dis-emspirited" bodies, or zombies. For what it's worth, that image of a body in, shall we say, really rough condition, wandering the earth creating terror, is probably not that far off from what those Corinthians might have thought about resurrected bodies. 

There's another way that the whole "being rid of the body" idea becomes particularly alluring: when those bodies suffer illness or pain. I know that many of you here in this sanctuary, and likely many of you on the live stream as well, have experienced that struggle, either for yourself or for a loved one or friend; I know I have. We even acknowledge this struggle in the liturgy for the Service of Witness to the Resurrection, when we offer our thanks to God that for the deceased, "death is past and pain ended." Being ready to be rid of the physical stuff is not uncommon, when we think about it.

However we frame it, Paul is having none of it. And the biggest reason for Paul's agitation is not any particular concern about disembodied spirits or dis-emspirited bodies or anything like that. No, for the apostle, horrible thing about denying resurrection is that if you say there is no resurrection of the dead, then you are saying that Christ was not resurrected from the dead. And that Paul cannot accept.

"If Christ has not been raised," all of Paul's work is in vain.

"If Christ has not been raised," the faith of the Corinthians (such as it is), or of any of those to whom Paul has ministered, is in vain.

"If Christ has not been raised," Paul and his fellow laborers are liars. If the dead are not raised, somehow, some way, some time, then Christ is not raised. Paul and his fellow laborers have done all this work in proclaiming Christ raised from the dead, which can't be so if the dead are not raised, he says. 

"If Christ has not been raised," the faith of the Corinthians, and for that matter your own faith, are not only in vain, but futile, even pointless. You are hopelessly mired in sin with no redemption coming.

"If Christ has not been raised," the dead in Christ are not even that - not even "in Christ"; they're just dead.

"If Christ has not been raised," if our hope in Christ was only about this walking-around human life, then (in one of the most heart-wrenching lines of all scripture) "we of all people are most to be pitied." 

But! "But", as Paul reminds his readers, that's not the case. But, as Paul reminds his readers, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead." Here he comes up with the evocative phrase "the first fruits of those who have died" to describe Christ. And of course, if Christ is only the "first fruits," we are led to believe there are more "fruits" to come. In case it's not clear, that would be us, when our time comes. 

Again, you have to tune in for one more week to get how Paul envisions all this working out. Verses 21-23 give some description: 

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being. For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

 

We get just a little tease there of Paul's "big finish," speaking of the return of Christ and where we fit into it. But for this point, we are reminded that as Christ was raised from the dead, the same will be true for those who die in Christ. It's worth remembering that for readers of Paul's own time, Christ's death was in living memory. 

It's a different challenge for us, nearly two thousand years after the fact, to hold on to that hope, and clearly many today who call themselves "Christians" have none of that hope, but have placed all their hope on power in this world. But Paul is insistent that this is our hope. We don't live hopeless lives. We don't live in vain. We are not cast off by God to be forgotten or to disappear into oblivion. Our future is with God. We have a future, and our future is with God. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #35, Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty; #246, Christ Is Alive!; #250, In the Bulb There Is a Flower

Sermon: The Basics

First Presbyterian Church

February 9, 2022, Epiphany 5C

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

 

The Basics

 

 

 

"Let's get back to basics here..."

"OK, back to square one..."

"Remember how all this started..."

"Remember your fundamentals..."

"In a nutshell..."

We have a lot of ways to talk about the need, every now and then, to return to those things in our work or our family life or our life in general that are most basic, perhaps most foundational, to how we operate or how we live together or even to how we exist as a human being. It's not uncommon to get so caught up or maybe bogged down in the day-to-day details of that activity that we forget why we're doing that thing in the first place. Sometimes we really do need to get back to basics, or remember how we started, or to sum it all up "in a nutshell." 

As the Apostle Paul draws to the conclusion of his letter to the church in Corinth, after pages upon pages of instruction and correction and chastisement and sometimes downright frustration, he apparently decides that the Corinthians need to get back to the basics and remember why they're even a church in the first place. Today's reading constitutes those "basics," at least as Paul understood them; the rest of the chapter, which we will attend to on upcoming Sundays, describes how Paul concludes the Corinthians got off-track.

In this case, these "basics" are cast as the message Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians. Paul makes no claim that the message is in any way unique to his ministry; as we will see, he is quick to acknowledge that others proclaim this same basic account, and some of those have even borne their witness to the Corinthians themselves. But notice how carefully Paul casts this message before he even gets around to repeating it:

Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you-unless you have come to believe in vain.

 

That's kind of a mouthful, but Paul is taking pains to stress just how basic this message was to the Corinthians' (or snyone's) very existence as part of the body of Christ. He then reiterates again that what he has taught them he taught "as of first importance," as if he hasn't stressed this point enough already. 

But then, Paul probably had reason to be so precise about his proclamation. There were plenty of examples of churches in Paul's travels that had decided, on their own or through the influence of bad teachers, that other, nonessential or even non-justifiable thoughts needed to be elevated to primary or indispensable status. Perhaps the most notorious example is found in his letter to the church of Galatia, the one where Paul writes "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting..." almost immediately in the letter (1:6), and later is moved to exclaim "You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?" (3:1). 

What had the Galatians done to provoke such ire from Paul? They had, under the influence of those "bad teachers," decided that, for example, male Gentile converts to this community of believers should be required to undergo the rite of circumcision according to Jewish practice; in short, they had to become Jewish to become Christian. Galatia wasn't the only place where Paul ran into this obstacle to faith - those bad teachers traveled almost as well as Paul did - but his literary outburst in that letter is perhaps most striking. Indeed, Paul had reason to be very precise and direct about taking the Corinthians back to square one.

The gospel in a nutshell, as Paul puts it?

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures...

 

There it is. The basics. The gospel in a nutshell. 

The self-described "lectionary comic strip" Agnus Day takes on this passage in a humorous exchange between its two characters, sheep named Ted and Rick. Ted remarks of this passage that "there it is, the whole gospel in a handful of verses," to which Rick, the wiser sheep, responds that "Paul doesn't want them to forget the basics of the faith." Then the punchline, from Ted: "Makes me wonder why I'm carrying around the rest of this Bible...". 

No, this passage is not an invitation to toss out the rest of the Bible - there's a lot more to be said about how this gospel came to be and what it means for us. As far as the most basic element of why we are what we are, though, it's hard to add to this. We echo this in our Lord's Supper responses: Christ has died. Christ is risen. (Paul will get to the "Christ will come again" part later in this chapter.)

With this basic gospel stated, Paul then engages in some "human bibliography" - being careful to cite sources for this gospel, in particular the part about Christ being raised. (Yes, this might serve as a clue to what is to come later in the chapter.) He does this by rattling off a pretty impressive list of witnesses to the risen Christ. There might be an inclination to panic over the fact that this list doesn't necessarily correlate to any particular account of resurrection appearances in any of the gospels. Don't panic. Remember that Mark's gospel includes no such appearances, Matthew barely gets in any, and John flatly admits that there's a whole lot more he could have included in his gospel but didn't. Also, those gospels hadn't even been written at the time Paul is writing to the Corinthians to boot. Nothing in the gospels gives us any reason to question what Paul has received and passed on.

Of course, the last witness Paul lists is Paul himself, referring to his dramatic conversion recorded in Acts 9. Paul is quick to acknowledge his own dark past as one who "persecuted the church of God," but uses that failure of his past to illuminate the grace of God that made him into what he now was, even if he can't stop himself from going on about how hard he's had to work at this before acknowledging God's grace again. 

In short, here's the point, so far: Christ died and was buried, Christ was raised again (this is all consistent with scripture, Paul points out), and we have a lot of witnesses to the risen Christ, some of whom you know (it seems that Cephas, whom we know as Peter, might have visited Corinth at some point). That, Paul tells his readers, is the most basic foundation of your faith, of your being what you are. 

This is a challenging topic to translate into our own modern context. Those eyewitnesses are no longer with us, after all, and the church has blundered through nearly two millennia of trying, with intent good or ill, claiming all manner of other doctrinal assertions as "fundamentals" of the faith. This has inevitably done incredible damage to the church's witness, not to mention to those who are victimized by such assertions. 

No, none of that: the fundamental of the faith, Paul would say, is this: 

...that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures...

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #485, We Know That Christ Is Raised; #441, Hear the Good News of Salvation; #649, Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound

 

 

Sermon: The More Excellent Way

First Presbyterian Church

February 2, 2025, Epiphany 4C

1 Corinthians 13:1-14:1

 

The More Excellent Way

 

 

One of the challenges of preaching a text like this one, which has gained tremendous familiarity over time due to its popularity as a text for weddings, is that we forget that it is not a free-standing, isolated poem unrelated to anything but itself. Even in the act of preaching outside of a marriage ceremony, seldom does all of this other stuff in Paul's letter to Corinth get looked over and considered. We might even forget, after a fashion, that Paul didn't write his letters in chapters - these divisions were created much later, mostly for reading convenience. There are probably quite a few churches where this text is being heard today, in isolation, after weeks of sermons from Luke's gospel, where folks switched over for today because this is such a popular text while the reading from Luke, where the people of Jesus's hometown get so mad at his sermon that they try to kill him, is less appealing. What gets missed in that case is all the connections between this chapter and what has come before in Paul's letter.

To take one example, consider the very first verse of chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians. It would seem to be a strange place to look, given that its first words are "Now about food sacrificed to idols...", which doesn't seem like the introduction to a statement on the importance of love. Nonetheless, before we can even get away from verse 1, Paul has reminded his readers and hearers that "knowledge puffs up while love builds up." He goes on to add that whatever anyone knows (or thinks they know), it's not sufficient, but one who loves God is fully and completely known to God. 

Additionally, a number of other passages earlier in the letter lay a foundation for this discourse on love by pointing to God and our utter reliance on God. It is because of God that "you are in Christ Jesus" (1:30); God is "the one who makes things grow" no matter who planted or watered the seed of the gospel (3:7); God is the one "through whom all things came and through whom we live" (8:6). The God who is this foundation and source and root and all is the one who is the source and direction of our living, and that is found in the love God loves for us, which we then are directed to love towards one another. 

For that matter, other portions of chapter 13 are also echoes of earlier discussions in this letter. Take a look at the list of characteristics of love in verses 4-7:

o   "Love ... does not envy" (4), but the Corinthians are apparently full of "jealousy and quarreling" (3:3); 

o   "Love ... does not boast" (4), but the Corinthians do (4:7, 5:6, where Paul flat-out says that their boasting "not good"); 

o   "Love is not ... proud" (4), but the Corinthians are often described as arrogant or "puffed up" (4:6, 18-19; 5:2, and 8:1); 

o   "Love does not delight in evil" (6), but some of the Corinthians have engaged in taking advantage of unjust courts to exploit others (6:7-8).

Paul has been building the case against the Corinthians throughout the gospel, and far from being cut off from that case, this chapter is very directly addressing their condition. All of these faults that have been noted in this letter point to a decided lack of love in the community.

There is something else to note about this list in verses 4-7. While those in verses 5-6 are more regularly translated actively - " rejoices..." "bears ... believes ... hopes" - some get translated in such a way that we probably don't notice that Paul is using his verbs here. If we were to diagram the phrases "love is patient" or "love is kind," for example, we would place "love" as the subject, "is" as the verb, and "patient" or "kind" as the "object," an adjective modifying "love." That's not how the Greek in which Paul writes works, though. What we translate as "is patient" or "is kind" is the verb of Paul's statement; we might come closer to catching the force of his instruction if we rendered those clauses "love acts patiently" or "love does kindness," representing how these traits are not passive feelings but actions, or even more ways of behavior rather than only of thought or emotion.

This brings us to perhaps the biggest challenge to our knowledge of this chapter, the part that tends to get most buried in marriage-service renderings: love is action. Love is not a thing that is felt; love is a thing that is done, no matter whether the feelings or emotions are there. That is indeed the animating principle behind this whole chapter, and again what the Corinthians seem to be sorely lacking, for all their other spiritual gifts they so liked to boast in.

I've no doubt that we can all come up with times and occasions in which we have witnessed the very people who talked the good game about loving turn around and engage in the most hateful and destructive actions imaginable, maybe even claiming to do so in the name of love. Paul isn't having it; "knowledge puffs up while love builds up."

It is also this understanding that makes all those other spiritual gifts marked by Paul in chapter 12 so utterly dependent on love. While addressing multiple of those gifts, it becomes clear quickly that the business of speaking in tongues was a particular source of boasting among the Corinthians when Paul takes it on first and most elaborately in verse 1. To speak in "the tongues of mortals or of angels" without love is not merely "nothing," as later phrases will conclude; it is the equivalent of "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." Here the reference seems to be to the practices of some of the temples devoted to Greek and/or Roman gods in Corinth, whose observances were sometimes marked by the regular and prominent sounding of exactly those loud percussion instruments. It's almost as if Paul is saying when you go off on your ecstatic utterances just for your own elevation, with no care or love or concern for your fellow followers of Christ, you're acting exactly like the lost souls you used to be - remembering that before being added to the church many of the Corinthians had been participants in those temple rituals to those Greek and Roman idols. 

The point of this section, which gets elaborated in chapter 14, is not to dismiss those spiritual gifts; the point is that none of those gifts - not prophecy or knowledge or faith to do great things or those tongues - are of any use when not practiced in love, the love that forms the body of Christ and in which that body both lives together and lives toward the world around it. It's even possible that such gifts practiced not in love are more harmful than good. If you can't do it in love, honestly, you're better off keeping it to yourself. Love is the reason any of those spiritual gifts have any value. Love, that divine love infused into human existence, is why any of those works matter.

All of this is part of why Paul could refer to love as "the most excellent way" back at the end of chapter 12, but we shouldn't leave out the end of this chapter in that respect, either. Of all the gifts or behaviors or traits of the life of the body of Christ, love is the one that is eternal. Prophecies will end; when at last we live in eternal union with God, what is the need for prophecy? The gift of tongues, or ecstatic utterances believed to be given by God, seems rather superfluous when in God's eternal presence, yes? Our partial and unfinished knowledge will, at minimum, be finished in the presence of God. 

Even faith and hope, as Paul describes in this famous chapter’s final and most famous verse, are secondary to love in this way. Faith and hope are beautiful. They are amazing gifts of the Spirit. But like the others Paul describes, they are finite gifts to help sustain us through this in-between time. If faith is, as the author of Hebrews describes, “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” then what is the point of faith when we are in the very presence of God, seeing God face to face? What is the point of hope, or what is the need for hope, when God is unmistakably and unshakably in the midst of us, for all to see? The partial things, as Paul says in verse 10, come to an end.

But love never ends. Love is as eternal as God is eternal. 

Love. Never. Ends.

Though it is technically not part of today’s lectionary reading, the first verse of chapter 14 is useful, or even needful, to place chapter 13 into proper relationship with chapter 12: “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the spirit.” 

Not either/or, both/and. 

Paul’s instruction does not mean that the Corinthians, or we, should somehow deny the gifts we have been given by the Spirit – and remember from back in 12:3 (a couple of weeks ago) that anyone who truly confesses that “Jesus is Lord” is gifted by the Holy Spirit. Rather, Paul needs the Corinthians, and us, to understand that the care and feeding and usage of our spiritual gifts within the body of Christ and out in the larger world only works in the context of love – the love that God has shown us so that we might show love for one another and for all of God’s creation. 

Our stories of love will not necessarily be showy or dramatic. They will be heartbreaking at times. They will try our patience or our virtue. We may stumble in grief and leap for joy at the same time because of that love. But if we dare to call ourselves followers of Christ, we will love, without reservation and without qualification.

We will love because God is love, eternal and unending. We will love because God loves. We will love because Christ loves. And we will love because that’s what the body of Christ does.

For love, eternal and unending, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #14, For the Beauty of the Earth; #525, Let Us Break Bread Together; #693, Though I May Speak (The Gift of Love)