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May 08, 2005
Jesus Arose As the Bible Said
Psalm 16 / Isaiah 53: 10-12
I Corinthians 15: 3-4
May 8th, 2005
Today is Mother’s Day. Few ideals can touch the heart like “mother.” I wonder how many soldiers have had “MOM” tattooed on their arms when far from home. They look down and see those three letters and think of the one who holds them in her heart no matter what.
How did Mother’s Day get started? In the 17th century in England the practice began of keeping the fourth Sunday in Lent as “Mothering Sunday.” The working poor folk who lived away from home serving in the homes of the wealthy got to return home for Mothering Sunday.
In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” helped organize Mother’s Day meetings in Boston. Thirty-five years later, Ann Jarvis from Philadelphia persuaded her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother’s Day on the second anniversary of her mother’s death, which happened to fall on the second Sunday in May. She began writing to pastors, legislators, governors, and to others who could spread the idea. It caught on.
By 1911, Mother’s Day was an established day in most of our states. Three years later President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May national Mother’s Day. We bless you mothers who gave us life! Bless you all who were born to mothers. You reflect not only the features you inherited from your parents. You are made in the image of God.
This Mother’s Day our theme is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter and Mother’s Day have this in common that they both call our attention to a burst of new life. You came from your mother a baby human being. You will rise from the grave a new being never to die again.
The reason I draw Easter into our thoughts this morning is because you may remember the Nicene Creed is guiding our thoughts. We have come to the phrase in the Nicene Creed, “The third day he arose according to the Scriptures.”
It is a nearly exact quote from part of the passage in I Corinthians we just heard. Paul wrote, “I delivered to you of first importance, and that I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
The whole Gospel is summed up here. It is the primary interest of every Christian. It is the bond and glue that holds us together. Here is the look to the past that gives us hope for the future. It is no wonder that Paul wrote, “I delivered to you what is of first importance,” because the church to which he wrote was being torn apart by matters that were not of first importance. These words leaped out at me. It was and intentional emphasis.
The chapter just before this contains the most Presbyterian verse in the Bible. In the last verse Paul tells us, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” He wrote this because of two matters that had gotten out of hand. Both of these things have modern counterparts. The first was speaking in tongues, something not too many Presbyterians do, but which a lot of Christians do in some sectors of the Church. The second matter had to do with the role of women in the Church.
Speaking in tongues became a very important part of early Christian experience after Pentecost. Before that, in the fifty days since Jesus was crucified, the only issue was that Jesus died and rose again. These two concluding events in Jesus’ ministry were the glue that held His followers together. Jesus insured they would actually stay together by telling them to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of the Father. They didn’t know what that meant, but they found out in no uncertain terms.
On Pentecost morning the room in which they were together was filled with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. The usual word “wind” and the word “Spirit” are the same in the language of the New Testament. But here we find a different word for “wind” (biaios) which means a strong or violent wind, not just a breath-like wind, which is the word used for the Holy Spirit.
Looking around then each saw what looked like fire on each other’s heads. They burst from that room into the streets of Jerusalem speaking the Gospel in languages they’d never even heard. Some people in the city thought they were drunk when they heard language not their own. They were, in a sense--drunk with the Holy Spirit. How their hearts must have burst with this new wine, this Divine energy surging in them!
It is no wonder that after this ecstatic speaking should have found some place in the church. The speaking in tongues that happened on Pentecost was the speaking of actual languages. But these languages came with feelings of great enthusiasm as people spoke. The church grew in a huge thrust. Three thousand people in Jerusalem were baptized that first Pentecost.
But as often happens among people, some got side-tracked and thought of the tongues-speaking, the ecstatic speech, as the thing of importance. So speaking in tongues became a problem. It got out of hand. Speaking in tongues became a sort of test of spirituality. If I can do it and you can’t, guess who’s the better Christian? Not everyone could speak in tongues. In I Corinthians 14 Paul set down rules for speaking in tongues during church. There has to be an interpreter or it would only sound like gibberish to the rest. One should speak at a time (14: 27) and only two or three at most should do it during a service. Just because it got out of hand, let no one for that reason forbid it in the church.
Speaking in tongues was dividing the Church instead of building it up. Paul needed to remind them what was of first importance.
We don’t understand what Paul was getting at when he wrote that women should keep silence in the churches. In other places in the New Testament women had speaking roles. He must have been addressing a particular problem at Corinth.
In 14: 36 he asks some women who were causing difficulty, “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?” Sometimes when people have a moving experience they are so fascinated with their experience that they impose it on others, expecting them to see right away how specially anointed by God they are. When others don’t recognize this immediately, things can get sticky.
Both of these issues could have risen to the top of the heap, making Corinth a seething church, seething not with the power of the Holy Spirit but with tension and division. So Paul wrote, “Here is the Gospel in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—I delivered to you as of first importance—Christ died, was buried and was raised on the third day all according to the Scriptures.”
This church, so important to the spread of the Gospel, so privileged to receive some of the most basic ideas of the Christian faith, fought a lot. This is one of the great puzzles of early Christianity. They had received so much. They were squandering their good fortune by divisiveness. Each said the other was the reason.
Internal strife was the first problem Paul addressed in this church. Why speak to the problem of strife, which is only natural when people have different points of view? Because if Jesus taught anything that should characterize His followers it was this, that they should be known by their love for each other. Continuing to love doesn’t happen easily. If anything makes this teaching of Jesus seem out of place, we have a problem.
Jesus prayed to the Father that we would be one even as He was one with the Father. Jesus prayed this referring to those who were yet to come, that is to you and me, and not only with regard to His twelve disciples—one of whom would betray Him.
So Paul appealed to these folk, “I appeal to you brothers and sisters by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same judgment (1: 10).” It seems an unreasonable expectation. How is it possible to get people with different and very earnest points of view to agree.
“OK,” some seem to have said, “We’ll all agree so long as we follow Peter.” Peter was one of the twelve. Paul was not. Perhaps Peter had come to Corinth too and impressed some of the folk who had become Christians more than they were impressed with Paul. Paul probably rubbed some people the wrong way. So they went to hear a “real apostle” speak when Paul was speaking in another assembly in the city. They liked him better. “Peter’s the one,” they said. Others disagreed. They would follow Paul. He was the one who got the whole thing going. He was their spiritual father. Besides, Peter had botched things pretty badly when Jesus needed him most.
Still others said, “No, do you not see that we’ve been blessed with this great orator from Alexandria, Egypt—Apollos? He is God’s fresh gift to us. Paul and Peter are of the old school. Apollos has the fresh anointing of God’s Spirit. When he speaks the air is alive. People could not help but call out “Amen, brother!” when he spoke. They would break out in applause, interrupting his eloquent message. They went home feeling electrified after church. No one ever felt like that when Paul spoke.
Perhaps the most divisive of all were those who said, “Jesus only.” They were impossible. They wouldn’t listen to anyone, only their own fertile imaginations as they thought of Jesus. All who fostered strife in the church in Corinth had a spiritual reason for doing it.
In the second chapter we discover that the church had become sophisticated. The city of Corinth had inherited the wisdom of the great Greek philosophers. Greek paideia, the educational system that formed the character of every well-established Greek person, rubbed against the simplicity of the Gospel.
I remember in seminary trying to figure out how to apply Whitehead’s idea of “process in history” to the Gospel as was popular in those days of Process Theology. I remember trying to get the hang of Paul Tillich’s existential theology. Karl Barth’s very appealing theology of crisis seemed to collide with the commonsense, logic-based ideas about the Bible that dominated in the surging evangelical community. And thus the church stumbled over its own cleverness during the years I was in seminary. We were lured into identifying ourselves by which school of theology we agreed with.
This is how it was in Corinth. So Paul, though highly educated, poured out his soul. “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
It is quite something to imagine this courageous man who could stand up to Roman authorities fearlessly, now tongue-tied before the people in Corinth to whom he had introduced the Gospel. “I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom.” This hardly sounds like the Paul we have in mind. It can be very odd to try to preach the Gospel into strife. I have sometimes found that nothing is quite so inhospitably received as the clearest things Jesus taught, when this message collides with a different spirit at work in the church. This was Paul’s experience long before me.
What did he mean when he spoke of his message being reduced to “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power?” He had been like the birth-mother of this church. Perhaps in his quietness, his tongue-tied silence, it was evident that what surged in his heart was authentic, and the tense lines of controversy in the church could then appear as simply human contentiousness.
It seems that a significant number of those at Corinth must have recognized their problem. They saw themselves as others saw them and were alarmed with themselves more than with others. They were again hungry for the truth that was at the heart of their faith. And thus this letter which Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth came to be a treasure to share. They did not tear it up and throw it away. They preserved it so that every church afterward that faced the problems that had rendered their fellowship and worship sterile could find an antidote and get back on track.
I hear very often these days about the problem in our denomination. People are transferring to non-Presbyterian churches in bunches. Our rolls dwindle every year. Why, our leaders ask? We think of this or that remedy. Let’s go modern. Drums and guitars will replace the classic organ. Our songs will be like the songs popular in secular culture, only with Christian words. We’ll cut out the formality. We must appeal to the youth. They are our future. So many answers address particular problems.
But the secret to our success, the secret to the success of the Body of Christ in this tormented world, is for us to remember what is of first importance. So long as anything but what is of first importance is at the focus of our attention, we will be focusing on what is secondary or maybe even not important to the cause of Christ at all. For sure, the moment humility and a contrite heart evaporate, God does not find us a homey place to be.
When what is of first importance grabs our hearts, we are filled with gratitude. Gratitude is a wonderful stimulus to a kind of life that cannot be planned. Gratitude incites to a kind of action that no program can bring. Gratitude is very liberating. It moves the imagination. We love to sing, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s a grateful song. Sometimes I freshly encounter a person whose life seems to be moved by gratitude and it is beautiful.
Last Sunday I helped to ordain three deacons at the Korean Presbyterian Church. One of these I have had occasion to watch for quite a while. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and has done first-rate research. But I didn’t learn this of her right away, and it was clearly not important to her. She is happiest when doing what you and I would consider menial service in the church. I felt so privileged to take part in her ordination, to preach and then to lay my hand on her head as Pastor Kim prayed.
I met her one day down on the floor laying tile in the bathrooms of their new facility. I’ll not soon forget that picture in my mind. She had such a radiant face. She bursts with kindness. She is happiest, her pastor told me, when doing something for someone. She is first on the doorstep when someone is ill and needs a meal. She delivers it giving the sense that she is lucky to get to do this. Why? Somehow I hope you may come to know this remarkable, simple lady. There seethes in her heart a spirit of gratitude to God. This is the real thing. It is so beautiful.
Paul wrote, “I have delivered to you what is of first importance, which I have received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Because of this you and I have hope in this life. And we know that when we trust in Jesus, when we die we will go to heaven. And that’s a pretty good deal—“Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s a happy song.
Charles Wesley put it equally touchingly: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood? Died He for me who caused His pain? Amazing love! How can it be that Thou my God should’st die for me.” A pretty good deal, I’d say.
My people, my friends, my fellow Christians, this is of first importance.
Let us pray: O Lord God, heavenly Father, thank you that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at May 8, 2005 09:30 AM