Communion – An order of life and love not service

 

Imagine this – instead of having communion in the context of a church service, we had communion at the conclusion, or end, of one of our shared meals. Imagine having communion after a culture night, when we celebrated the differences which contribute to the oneness of who we are as a church. Our tables would still be filled with the dishes of the meals shared and prepared, dirty plates and half-filled glasses – there would be nothing clean about it and then someone would say:

‘Now that we have finished feasting for our bodies, let us remember the one who gave his body for us so that we could have complete wholeness. Now that we all have had enough to drink, let us raise our glasses in remembrance of the one who spilled his blood for us as a living redeeming sacrifice.’

How easy would it be for each of us to take communion out of the cleanness of the church service, the lace cover cloth, the communion trays and pre-cut bread, and have it as one the final course of a full-blown meal? How comfortable would we feel in this context? And what would it reveal about ourselves, and our church and the way we do life together?

I want to suggest that over time, communion has become more and more sanitized. Jesus never said, have a ritual set apart in a church service called communion. He did call us to a ritual of communion, but he demonstrated, and the Corinthian Church demonstrated, that ritual would be ingrained in everyday life and love. Let’s look at the context of the first communion.

What we do know is that the first communion between Jesus and the disciples did not happen in a church or in a synagogue. In fact, it was honoured at a traditional time – the feast of the Passover. And the Passover feast always happened in the order of life and love not the order of service. The Passover meal was one that happened within families and between families, in people’s home. And this was the case with the first communion.

Mathew 26 and Luke 22 have the disciples asking Jesus – “where do you want us to make preparations for the Passover?” Jesus responds, go ahead into the city to a certain man (a man who is unnamed, a random man of history an unnamed significant man). Jesus says – go to this random but significant man’s house and tell him – we will be sitting at your table this Passover.

It was during this time, a time of seven days, and at the conclusion of a meal – the Passover meal, when the table would still have the remits of Passover – the bones and head of a roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs, along with glasses of wine in front of each of the disciples. From this table, not a clean table, Jesus would pick up a piece of unleavened bread, bread that we learn in Deuteronomy 16:6 symbolised the affliction of the Israelites as they fled Egypt.

Jesus would pick up the bread of affliction, he would proclaim in the breaking of the bread that he would carry the affliction of brokenness for all of us and he shared it, each disciple breaking off a piece. He would pick up a glass of wine from that same table and speak into it, this wine, an added addition to the Passover meal would now carry the symbolism of blood and a new covenant. 

The first communion was an order of life and love. Communion was more than something to be built into an order of service for Sunday worship, but into a love for our God and each other – a remembrance event to be had at the table, not the alter.

It is important to remember this as we approach today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, because these verses will make so much more meaning and sense if we read them in the context of the church Paul was writing to – not the church today.

1 Corinthians 11: 17-34. From the Passion Translation

Now, on this next matter, I wish I could commend you, but I cannot, because when you meet together as a church family it is doing more harm than good!

I’ve been told many times that when you meet as a congregation, divisions and cliques emerge—and to some extent, this doesn’t surprise me. Differences of opinion are unavoidable, yet they will reveal which ones among you truly have God’s approval.

When all of you gather as one church family, you are not really properly celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

For when it comes time to eat, some gobble down their food before anything is given to others – one is left hungry while others become drunk! Don’t you all have homes where you can eat and drink?

Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?

Are you trying to show contempt for God’s beloved church?

How should I address this appropriately? If you’re looking for my approval, you won’t find it! I have handed down to you what came to me by direct revelation from the Lord himself.

The same night in which he was handed over, he took bread and gave thanks. Then he distributed it to the disciples and said, “Take it and eat your fill. It is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.” He did the same with the cup of wine after supper and said, “This cup seals the new covenant with my blood. Drink it — and whenever you drink this, do it to remember me.” Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are retelling the story, proclaiming our Lord’s death until he comes.

For this reason, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in the wrong spirit will be guilty of dishonoring the body and blood of the Lord.

So let each individual first evaluate his own attitude and only then eat the bread and drink the cup. For continually eating and drinking with a wrong spirit will bring judgment upon yourself by not recognizing the body. This insensitivity is why many of you are weak, chronically ill, and some even dying.

If we have examined ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, it is the Lord’s training so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my fellow believers, when you assemble as one to share a meal, show respect for one another and wait for all to be served. If you are that hungry, eat at home first, so that when you gather together you will not bring judgment upon yourself. When I come to you, I will answer the other questions you asked me in your letter.

Let’s put these verses into context, with the understanding that Paul is talking about communion as an order of life and love, not an order of service. If we try to relate these verses to our ritual of communion today – they just don’t seem to fit, and to be perfectly honest can lead to some, like me, misunderstanding the purpose of these verses.

So, let’s break this passage down; in short there are three sections: the first section deals with the church at Corinth as it prepares for Communion, the second focuses on Communion itself and the third is about the needed response in preparation. Now I want to suggest that many of us read these verses with a focus on Communion and our Response, we don’t focus on the Preparation verses. There is a very simple reason for this, the preparation verses clearly position the Lord’s table in a different way than we are used to.

It is clear that Communion is more than what we are used to here – there is no way in our church that there is going to be those who miss out of bread, because others are taking their fill first, and there is certainly no way that some are getting drunk on the Ribena Juice while other miss out.

Reading these verses in their fullness suggests, that Communion happened during a much bigger meal. A sharing of people coming together to share food and take communion together. Paul makes it clear, it is no ordinary meal, if it was you could have it in your home, it was a communal meal.

Commentaries would tell us that a common practice of the early church was something called a love feast. This is a time for the church to come together in brotherly love to celebrate differences and the fact that the cross brings unity and healing. Bread would be broken and wine drunk – but not to exclude others or in an act of drunkenness but in an act of understanding that Christ’s body had become the bread of affliction and his blood, the new Covenant. The church became one with Christ at the cross in all its diversity.

But Paul was dismayed at the Corinthian church; instead of coming together in love, they had allowed the divisions that divided them to come to the Lord’s table. And we know from the beginning of the letter that these divisions were real – some said they followed the ways of Paul, others the ways of Apollos, some said that sexual indulgence in the church was normal and okay, some accused others of having debt against them, others refused to lower themselves and their beliefs because those who were young in their faith.

These differences do not appear at our communion table today, because we separate it from a meal and have it as an order of service not of life and love. We also do communion very privately, even if we take the elements together, we really don’t engage in testimony and discussion over the elements.

But this doesn’t mean we are any better; that the human condition today has improved since the time Paul wrote this letter, just look at our children and shared lunches. Back in the day, when I was growing up in state housing in Westport. Mum would always make the best cinnamon buns complete with fresh whipped cream or whitebait fritters made to Grandad’s secret recipe. When we took our plate to school we had strict instructions that the food was not ours, it was food to be shared first and foremost.

Other kids would bring a variety of dishes, but three things were apparent:

1) The most popular kids always got the first choice and their fill, while the poorest and most rejected kids were lucky to get something at all;

2) Some families would bring the best plate possible to school, but as soon as the lunch started, they would quickly grab their plate and hide it to take home complete with food still on it;

3)  Shared lunches did not foster unity but showed where divisions of power and inequity existed.

We could take from this that the church at Corinth was no better than a contemporary classroom of kids; but I want to suggest that both demonstrate two very real issues with our broken human condition – the first being a sense of entitlement. There are times in which some feel entitled to be first at the table, entitled to be seen above others and entitled to be acknowledged. The other issue with our broken human condition that leads to division at moments of shared communion is the flipside of entitlement, and that is a blindness to inequity. When you feel entitled to something, and you use that argument you are more likely to be, in that moment, blind to inequity. Blind to those less fortunate or different to who you are.

This is exactly what was happening in the preparedness of the love feast, at the Lord’s table of the Corinthian church – division meant that some felt more entitled to a place at the table and the food  and drink being served. This entitlement led to inequity and some missing out because of the conditions set by the entitled.

Paul would say “Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?” If you want a table of entitlement – set it up in your own homes, because at the Lord’s table there is a seat for everyone. And, if everyone is treated as equal then gluttony and drunkenness would be non-existent because everyone would be sharing. After all, reading Luke 22, Jesus even broke bread and shared communion with Judas.

I would suggest that we cannot judge ourselves better or worse than the Corinthian church as we prepare for the table of Communion. But I would say that any divisions that exist in our church and we do have division and difference, then the way we manage these conditions don’t happen in the order of a church service, where we are all nice to each other, the way we manage division and difference happens in the order of life and love.

So, do we do life and love together?

Thankfully, we are not working with the tricky verses of last week, verses about gender, worship, the head and whether I should have long or short hair. Thankfully, these verses make plan simple sense when it comes to a common sacrament of the church yesterday and today. Thankfully, we can forget about context and just focus on content. Thankfully, communion is something we have never had doctrinal arguments about.

Hmmm, realistically just as communion divided the church in Corinth, over the centuries the church has become more divided over communion. My father got to have his first communion at the age of 12 in a denomination which believed that children should not have communion until they understood it and that the bread became the body and the wine became the blood.

My very first experience of a church as a child was a denomination which refused to have communion. Not because it disagreed with communion but because it was a denomination which drew in the broken often those who had been once part of other churches. It order to reduce arguments about difference, leadership made the decision that it was best to focus on unity than doctrines which caused disunity.

I can’t help but think that the way we do communion in our own church, and in others, has been a direct response to issues such as how do you ensure that everyone is able to take part, you cut the bread up, how do you ensure no-one gets drunk, you use Ribena juice, how do you ensure that there are no arguments, you restrict those who speak and predominately do communion in silence.

Now, I am not saying that the way we do communion today is wrong, but I am saying that if Paul was picking up on anything in the Corinthian church, it was often that the practices of worship – starting with communion have the risk of dividing us – and showing a deep human scar that exists in the brokenness of our being: “Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?”

A few months ago, I suggested that the whole of the letter of 1 Corinthians was a call for love. A deep love. An agape love – a love that demonstrates the compassion and deepness of the love of God for his creation. When I put communion into the context of the church of Corinth, I suggested that this occurred in a time of shared feasting. A common feast and act of worship called the Love Feast, the Agape Feast.

Today, we do communion very differently, and one suggestion that I have made is that we have potentially made communion too white, and too pure. I have also suggested that we do tend to be inward in communion. In the last communion, Lisa reminded us that communion was a call to common unity. I want to suggest that the only way we can achieve common unity is through deep and intentional acts of life and love and getting to know each other.

I want to finish with a hint I made when I started, and that for decades, I have misread these verses because I focused on content. These are the verses I have for too long misread:

So let each individual first evaluate his own attitude and only then eat the bread and drink the cup. For continually eating and drinking with a wrong spirit will bring judgment upon yourself by not recognizing the body. This insensitivity is why many of you are weak, chronically ill, and some even dying.

You see when I have read these verses I have focused only on one relationship, that of myself with God. There have been many times that I have not had communion because I have not been in a good place with God. But if I read these verses in the context of this chapter, in the context of this letter – the attitude Paul is asking us to evaluate is the attitude that we may have towards each other. Attitudes of entitlement, attitudes of selfishness and attitudes of being blind to the inequities in our church. Attitudes of judgement and bias.

Paul calls the Church to Corinth back to the first principles of life and love – to come to the communion table, whether it be at a feast, or with little square bits of bread, to come to the table when there is division only leads to our church being sick both spiritually and physically. The call to life and love is real – but are you, are we, ready to walk in the way of love. 1 Corinthians 13 is harder than we think.

No reira tena tatou, tena tatou, tena tatou katoa.

 

 

What's Love Got To Do With It?

 

You must understand, though the touch of your hand makes my pulse react
That it’s only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract
It’s physical
Only logical
You must try to ignore that it means more than that

Oh, oh, oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it?
What’s love, but a second-hand emotion.
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken.

These are the words sung by Tina Turner in 1984 as she spoke into a world where hearts are broken and love had become an emotion, not an action. It’s a world very similar to that of Paul’s. And, when it comes to love, I want to suggest that the whole letter of Paul is a call to love in the purest sense. That the full letter is about understanding that love is more than a feeling. It was more than eros, the Greek word for passionate love, and it was more than philia, the Greek word for affectionate love, it was also more than philautia, the word for self love and it was more than mania, the Greek word for obsessive love. I want to suggest that Paul is calling the Corinthian church away from love as a feeling to love as a verb; to a love that represents the cross, agape, the Greek word for selfless/universal love and pragma, the Greek word for enduring love.

But before you say it is all Greek to me, lets return to the scriptures and, instead of reading them in the Greek of Paul, we will read them in the New Living Translation. 1 Cor 6:12-20.

You say, "I am allowed to do anything"—but not everything is good for you. And even though "I am allowed to do anything," I must not become a slave to anything.

You say, "Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food." (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.)

But you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.

Don't you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?

Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!

And don't you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, "The two are united into one." But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Run from sexual sin!

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.

(1Co 6:12-20)

When Royce first asked me to preach on this passage, my response was two-fold. First, I find it hard to preach on hot topics which can tend to sway people into religious/ritual-bound practices or complete liberalism.  Second, I warned Royce that I could not preach on these passages without mentioning the French philosopher Foucault. When it comes to philosophers, Foucault is not on the top ten list for Christian thinkers. But, he can help us get a bit of understanding of classical Greek and Roman culture. Especially, around the time of the church in Corinth.

You see there is a fascination today with the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. One that tends to paint them as the clean, pure and the white of the marble statues left behind today erected to honour the Gods and heroes of Ancient Greece and Rome. We don’t see the mess of this world, the mess that the church of Corinth was up against. One that Foucault would write about in his book: The History of Sexuality.

In the ancient world, Corinth was to Athens what Auckland is to Wellington. While Athens and Wellington are seen as capital cities, both Corinth and Auckland are, let’s face it, more important. They the true capitals of commerce, trade and travel. Corinth separated Sparta from the main body of Greece; all transport, north and south, had to pass through Corinth. And it had massive seaports to which sailors flocked.

It is said that the Greek goddess of love, beauty and pleasure, Aphrodite was born near Corinth. Aphrodite’s temple in Corinth had over 1000 prostitutes donated by the citizens of Corinth, men and women, to serve Aphrodite through erotic acts of lust, sex and sexual pleasure 24/7.  It was thought that by having sex with one of Aphrodite’s prostitutes you would be serving the goddess herself and having sex with her.

The Greek geographer Strabo writing about 20AD talked about how the wealth of Corinth was built on sex, lust and prostitution. He describes streets filled with sailors lusting for sex and states a common proverb of the Greek world “The voyage to Corinth isn’t for just any man.”

In a more contemporary source, Dave Stotts in Drive Thru History points out that a common adjective of the Greek world was to “Corinthinese.” To Corinthinese meant to fornicate. So, if we haven’t got the point now, sexual indulgence was a reality of the Greek world. Sexual indulgence was the norm of the Corinthian world.

And in this world was a church – a church made of real people trying to escape the corruption of their own culture.

We know from Chapter 5, that this is not the first time that Paul has written to the Corinthian church about sexual immorality. He tells us in verse 9 of Chapter 5 that he had previously told them to not associate with people who indulge in sexual sin.

We also know that Paul is not telling them to not associate with the culture outside of the church. Again, he says in Chapter 5 that he wasn’t writing about non-believers and if he was then they “would have to leave this world to avoid people like that.”

Paul is writing about the sexual immorality that is occurring within the church. Paul is writing about love playing out in the church in all the wrongs ways.

You say, "I am allowed to do anything”, “All things are lawful for me” was a popular Corinthian proverb. In the Romo-Greek world, it singled that one’s body was one’s own possession.  It was not owned by Caesar or any Parthenon God. It was your’s for your shaping and for your pleasure.

So, at this point, what has love got to do with it? This saying ‘I am allowed to do anything’ is simply referring to Philautia, self-love, I am allowed to love myself. I am allowed to satisfy myself. I am allowed to feel good.

It is then not by chance that Paul would then say “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food”. He was referring to the pleasure element of the culture of the time – food gave pleasure, sex gives pleasure. We satisfy the appetite of the stomach with food; and sex in Corinth is treated in the same way – as satisfying an appetite of sorts.

And, at this point, what’s love but a second hand emotion? These are the feeling loves of eros (lust), philia (affection) and mania (obsession). They all feed our own feelings, our own desires. They give us pleasure. They are emotions, they are feelings.

And then Paul comes out of left field and goes straight to the point – you have been called to a different kind of love; why? Well logically our bodies are no longer our own.

They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.

Don't you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?

Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!

This is deep. It reminds us about a different freedom, the freedom that is found at the Cross and the resurrection moment. And just as God raised Christ from the dead, he is resurrecting us and will raise us in turn not as spiritual beings but as a completely physical creation in which his spirt will dwell because our bodies are the temple of his Holy Spirit. We don’t have to have sex with one of Aphrodite’s prostitutes in order to be joined to God, our bodies were made for God, as temples where his spirit dwells.

This is big – remember, Paul starts off “I’m allowed to do anything”. I could reinterpret that as “I am free to do anything”. And in that, Paul is saying, in pursuing a freedom of love of self and feeling love, you have become a salve to yourselves. You have taken on the shackles of slavery again. Tina Turner was so right “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken”. Because the type of heart she is referring to is one in which love is a feeling – whether it be in self love or passionate love. And when we restrict love to the feeling words, we shackle ourselves to the world again and that old saying is so, so wrong, while sticks and stones break our bones, the words of others and ourselves in our doubts do so much damage. Love, as a feeling, as an emotion cannot be sustained.

What’s love got to do with it? Everything Tina. The reality is, sexual immorality is not confined to the Corinthian church alone. I started this sermon with a reflection on the variety of Greek words for love, many of them have connections to words today in English. Our English words whakapapa back to the Greek – erotic, affection, mania all have direct connections to Greek words, others such as lucidity, pragmatic and friend also link back to the Greek words for love. But as I suggested at the beginning of this sermon – there are two kinds of love – love as a feeling and love as a verb.

When I look at our culture today, what I notice more and more is a focus on the feeling of love rather than the action of love. I think we are no different than the Corinthian church in that we frame sex, and I am being frank here, but not frankie (who has been fixed), we frame sex as something to first and foremost give us pleasure. And we frame even our marriages around the feeling of love, not the verb of love.

What does this do? I would like to suggest that cultures that frame intimate relationships around feelings of love are gardens of risk. Why, because it is so easy, just as it was in the Corinthian church, to pick up the adage that “I’m allowed to do anything” and enter into relationships of sexual immorality. It is so easy to, and it’s allowed, its legal, it is so easy to choose to lie with a prostitute so that we get that feeling back, that arousal back. It is so easy today to enter into affairs. It is permissible to satisfy ones own sexual appetite – after all, if your partner’s not giving it to you, you can look elsewhere. 

Paul would go on to say:

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.

These verses that are so often miss-interpreted as framing sex as a dirty and wrong. But we have to read these closely and in the context of Chapter 5, Paul is saying that sexual immorality is a sin, not sex. And most importantly Paul has the mirror on the church, not on the citizens of Corinth.

These verses are not to be picked up to judge those outside of the church but to reflect on ourselves, our behaviours and our indulges. Paul is so deeply reminding the Corinthian church, that Christianity is more than just spiritual. It is more than a religion of rituals. Christianity is deeply physical. Hear me here, Christianity is deeply physical.

In the beginning, God created physically the earth and everything on it. God created man and woman; God created the bodies of Adam and Eve. And then, to show his deep deep love for us, God physically came to us through his son Jesus. Even the deepest of Atheists agree that Jesus is a true physical human of history, they just disagree that he was the son of God. Then, a display of his deepest agape, compassionate love, Jesus died physically for us on the cross. And to top it off, Jesus the son of God, resurrected from the dead, came physically back to the disciples and held out his hands to doubting Thomas so that Thomas would know that this was Christ in the flesh.  

All of these acts, point to a faith that is just as much physical as it is spiritual. Paul is reminding the Church at Corinth – God bought all of you – the physical and the spiritual at the cross. God bought all of you. So, realise “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.”

We have to realise that the Church of Corinth was a church of real people trying to escape the corruption of the world they lived in. We have to realise that the culture of Corinth was corrupt even by today’s standards, but it would not have seemed corrupt by the Corinthians at the time. It would have been seen as normal. This is the way we live in Corinth: “I am allowed to do anything.”

And when I remind myself of that very reality, that the people of Corinth saw their culture as normal for them. The church of Corinth was made up of Corinthian people who would have come out of the culture of Corinth. It is so easy to understand how sexual immorality would have slipped into the church and how the church would have accepted it. Paul’s challenge to them is to not make love a second-hand emotion, understand that God has bought all of you, he dwells within you. Focus on the actions of love you demonstrate to each other as the body of Christ, not on the emotion of love.

When I remind myself of this reality, I can’t help but think, what would Paul’s letter to us be? Not the church of Corinth, but the church of Wainuiomata? We too have been called to escape the corruption of the world that we live in. We too have been called to not put love as a feeling first, we too have been called physically and spiritually to united first with God. We too have been called to demonstrate within our own valley, a church built on agape love – love as a verb, a selfless, compassionate love. Yet, we too like the church at Corinth will find ourselves craving to satisfy our own love of self and the love of appetite whether it be sexual or just winning the fight against the person who wrongs us.

But just how well we do this, well God will be the judge of that? In the meantime, let us strive to live the answer to the ultimate question – what has love got to do with it? Everything, we respond, everything, in our comings and goings, in our interactions and thoughts, at all times and in every way.

I want to finish with a true story, retold in the movie ‘The End of a Spear’. In this movie Nat Saint and his fellow missionaries were killed by Waodani indigenous peoples in a misunderstanding of welcome ceremonies. Decades later Nat’s son Steve would find himself being a missionary with the Waodani in a desire to help them see freedom in Christ and their own culture and not be dependent on Western model of Christianity. In a very true, and moving moment, the leader of the Waodoni says to Steve that he can’t accept Christ, he is the one that killed Steve’s father.

At that moment, Steve picks up a spear, he wants to set right the death of the father, he wants to heal the pain inside of a father lost. He wants to satisfy the appetite of passionate revenge. And then Steve realises deeply and says aloud “My father’s life wasn’t taken, he gave his life.” It is similar to another gospel story, one we all agree with:

Koia anō te aroha o te Atua ki te ao, hōmai ana e ia tāna Tama kotahi, kia kāhore ai e ngaro te tangata e whakapono ana ki a ia, engari kia whiwhi ai ki te ora tonu.

For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

 

A Divided World Doesn't Need a Divided Church

 

I don’t know about you, but every three years an event happens in our country that I just can’t wait to be over. It starts with an announcement – on this day, this year, New Zealanders will be able to choose who represents them – who has the interests of our country at heart. And then it starts, first it a few announcements, but it is not long before it dominates everyday discussion; it is not long before people enter into arguments about who we should follow. We are all picking sides, going round saying ‘I’m on Winnie’s side’, ‘I’m for Luxon’, ‘Hipkins is my man.’ And the pious and religious of us take an upper hand – ‘I’m in the Messiah Group.”

Okay, I am bringing the example of our election to demonstrate just how divided we can be at times in the pursuit of following a leader. But it happens in the church as well and I want to suggest that in a divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

But the reality is the church is divided. There is a reason why we have so many dominations in the world – disagreement and the pursuit of the leader for the moment has led to Christ’s church fracturing into ‘I follow this doctrine and this leader.’

In all of this, I wonder how Paul would have responded given his message to the Corinth. A member of Chloe’s family had alerted to him to the same divisions happening in the church of Corinth. We don’t get to read Chloe’s letter so we have to infer from Paul’s letter that the church in Corinth was messed up. Chloe’s letter must have said early on, that members were taking sides and people were looking for leaders who personally reflected them and their opinions rather than coming together in diversity and unity with the understanding that it is the one Christ which brings us all together.  

To give these verses a bit of a contemporary feel we are reading today from The Message, 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 verse 10-25

I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I'll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common. I bring this up because some from Chloe's family brought a most disturbing report to my attention – that you're fighting among yourselves! I'll tell you exactly what I was told: You're all picking sides, going around saying, "I'm on Paul's side," or "I'm for Apollos," or "Peter is my man," or "I'm in the Messiah group."

I ask you, "Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul's name?" I was not involved with any of your baptisms – except for Crispus and Gaius – and on getting this report, I'm sure glad I wasn't. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas's family, but as far as I can recall, that's it.)

God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center – Christ on the Cross – be trivialized into mere words.

The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written, I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb – preaching, of all things! – to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle – and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself – both Jews and Greeks – Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."

(1Co 1:10-25)

Just reading these verses, I feel that Paul would be in tears at the contemporary church, we are so divided; we are messed up and we are driven by personalities. And if history tells us something, we have a duty in this church to not let our opinions and feelings come in the way of the power of the cross for reconciliation. We have an obligation to, using the words on Paul, “learn to be considerate of one another.”

You see the Bible tells two stories – the first story is the story of ourselves – God’s creation. This is story repeats itself over and over across the pages of the Bible. This is a story of a people who repeatedly bite the bait of the accuser and enter into division. We see this in the garden where Adam and Eve separated themselves from the creator, we see it with the brothers Cain and Abel and later Ishmael (from which the nation of Palestine will come) and Isaac (who would later have his name changed to Israel). We see the story of division occurring pretty much in every chapter of Judges, and later, in the splitting of the nation of Judah from the nation of Israel. We see division in amongst the sects of Israel at the time of Jesus – the Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees. We see it here in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and we see it in the world today.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

The second story of the Bible is one of reconciliation through covenant promises by a Creator God to his Creation. This message of reconciliation is finally realised at the Cross. This is a simple truth. But it is hard to accept – just as Paul points out some demand miraculous demonstrations and others philosophical wisdom. It just doesn’t have the wow factor. The wow factor that comes often with celebrity and fancy leaders.

It is so easy to be swayed to leaders who reflect our individual differences. If one of us happens to be given the gift of healing, it is so easy for those of us who find power in miracles to see their gifting in place of the cross. If one of us can give a good reason for why we should do what we do, it is so easy for those of us who find power in the intellectual to focus in on their teaching, rather than seeing the way of the cross is simple if we set our eyes upon Jesus.

You see while the church in Corinth was spilt into those who followed Paul, those who followed the Greek Apollos and those who followed Peter, the disciple that walked with Jesus. Paul, Apollos and Peter all shared the gospel Truth of Jesus. The problem was the people of Corinth had begun to follow the personalities, styles and opinions that reflected their own differences.  

And, this is the message that Paul was giving the church in Corinth. He wanted to encourage them to focus in on the gospel that brought them together in the first place. Now hear me here ‘brought them together’. You see the church at Corinth was different to the church we read about in Acts. The church in Acts, was very much a Jewish church. Yes, the message had begun to be preached out to the ends of the earth; but the church we read about in Acts, is one that started first within the territories of Judah and Samaria.

Paul, was not called to share the gospel with his own people. Paul tells us directly that God called him to preach the good news to the Gentiles – to the Greeks, Romans and all other outsiders. The church at Corinth reflected his calling. It was a mix of cultures – Jew and Gentile.  When Paul says:

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle – and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself – both Jews and Greeks – Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.

When Paul says this, he is not giving a metaphor of division. He is saying while the Jews among you seek miracles, and the Greeks among you look for philosophical wisdom, while the Jews among you see the cross as an anti-miracle and the Greeks as illogical, the reality is God has called you together. God has called you together to be as one. Paul is talking to two different cultures who wouldn’t really be together because of their differences and Paul is directly addressing the cultural aspects that make these people different – when it comes to practicing religion, Jews are distinctly spiritual while Greeks are distinctly intellectual. Paul is saying – put aside your cultural difference and come together at the cross.

And in churches today, God is calling for diversity and he is also calling for unity. He is calling us to be “learn to be considerate of each other, cultivating a life in common.” He is calling us to be as one.

Now it is important here to realise that when God calls us to be as one. He is calling us to be as one mind but not one opinion. This is important to realise. There are so many churches today who have harmony in opinion, and as such, would claim to be in unity because everyone gets along and agrees with each other. But this is often because the types of Christians going to these churches are the same – same culture, same socio-economic conditions, same political party affiliations.

Like the church at Corinth, we are not one of these churches. We are a church of diversity with a lot of differences – cultural, economic, political, the list goes on. But this will mean that we will become more prone to what Paul is talking about in his letter to Corinth; as a Church we are prone to having differing views about how church should happen and what the church should stand for.  This can put us at risk of siding with groups and opinions that reflect our differences and allow division to creep in.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

So how do we do this; how do we avoid division? I want to remind us first and foremost that one mind does not mean one opinion. God is not telling us that we should all have the same opinion. But to be of one mind is to meet each other at the cross – not in the argument and not in the miracle.

To meet at the cross means coming together in the middle. This is not an act of compromise, it is an act of active listing and compassion. It is the first step we need to take to be considerate of each other. It is actively acknowledging in yourself, that in the conversations that we have with each other, your mind needs to be open to the thoughts of others.

This is incredibly hard for the typical Christian. For many of us, because we know the answer lies at the cross, we think that everything else we believe must also be true. Instead of active listening with the heart, we have a sense of spiritual constipation, we sit there listening, nodding and giving the occasion ‘yes’, but we are busting inside, waiting for the person to finish in order to talk over their truth with our own. In my book, that act in itself is not one of consideration.

If we want to live in diversity and unity, we need to demonstrate the heart of Jesus, the heart of compassion. We need to remember that the simple truth of the cross is the one thing that unites us with each other and living in diversity is acknowledging and celebrating our differences rather than trying to make each other in our own image.

Now I want to remind us, that we don’t have the opportunity to read Chloe’s letter but we know that one core issue concerned leadership and who was following who. But we also pressure leaders to be like us, and I wonder whether this was happening in Corinth as well. You see, how we position our leaders and the expectations we have of leaders to be our spokespeople can also bring in division and split people. When you want a leader to share your opinion, and you then ask the leader to proclaim your opinion as the opinion that a congregation should take, then issues creep in. I think this must have been happening in Corinth – just look at the mess of this church, issues like sexual immorality, ill treatment of the poor and the suing of each other would not have occurred in silence. 

In our world today, the last three years globally have been a real test for Christ’s church. In amongst the pandemic, we have seen at a global scale the fracturing and division of Christ’s church over the truth of Covid-19, the politics of Covid-19 and the reaction to Covid-19.

I want to suggest that our church, in particular, has been through a testing time. Particularly because of the diversity in our church. Remember diversity will mean that a variety of opinions exist. And, just because the cross united us, it doesn’t mean we all had the same opinions and beliefs on Covid-19 and the response taken. In amongst this, I am aware that some of us wanted our leadership to take a very firm position, which thankfully they didn’t. They walked the middle ground, this is not a luke-warm ground but a ground that allows diversity to have a place. It’s a ground that in our contemporary world is missing from so many issues.  

On this middle ground, we need to be openly talking about these issues together, learning to be considerate of each other, not aiming to be of one opinion but of one mind. We need to know that our unity comes in Christ alone, not in ideas or personalities.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

I want to give a practical, and personal illustration on how the church can inadvertently take a position which diverts the world from understanding that the Christ is the cornerstone and, in fact, the reason for the Christ. And I will hopefully show you exactly what I mean when it comes to the church, unity, division and the reality that our unity should come at the cross.

In 2007, there was a change to the Crimes Act. The change was intended to protect children and give the state the power to intervene when there was concern for a child’s welfare. This change was given a different and politically loaded name by a Christian Lobby Group called Family First. It was called the ‘Anti-Smacking’ Act. Family First started a massive campaign both in the national media and in churches. And the church was spilt into two groups, possibility three – one group was ‘I follow Mike McCrossen’, the Family First CEO, the other was ‘I don’t follow Mike’ and there was, no doubtedly a ‘I follow Christ’ group as well.

I will be honest with you – I was in the I don’t follow Mike group. But I happened to be in a church that was very much preaching from the pulpit that we should all follow Mike. Why, because according to the Mike, and therefore the church (you see the I don’t follow Mike group was tiny), it is a fundamental right that parents must be able to smack their children.

This was not my perspective, due to my own childhood. I stood for the children who were experiencing physical abuse daily. Near the end of the campaign, churches in Aotearoa NZ marched on parliament grounds. At this point, I realised that only one church in the Wellington region that was open to me even expressing my opinion was St Andrews on the Terrace – the most liberal church in Wellington. This moment in our history, didn’t have me questioning my faith, but did have me contemplate doing my faith alone and disengaging from the churches around me.

All I wanted to know was if the church would protest to protect the children of Aotearoa; I still don’t have an answer here – but I don’t think the answer is found in a protest. Now I realise that while leaders spoke in support of Mike in front of congregations, that not all Christians marched on parliament that day; there were Christians who just kept their opinions to themselves because they didn’t feel that they had a voice.

And all I ask, is what message did the church give New Zealand and the children of Aotearoa in that protest, was it about Jesus, the one person who unites us? And that maybe instead of taking sides the church should have reconciled within itself. There are a lot of survivors of abuse in churches, including our church, imagine if instead of a protest and taking the side of a leader and spokesperson, we actively sought to meet each other at the cross and listen with our hearts. Imagine the reaction that would have come out of that action – a protest or a hug in amongst the tears of hearing each other’s testimony. Hugs bring healing in ways that a protest can never achieve.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

We are blessed. We have a very diverse church. We haven’t always been as diverse as we are today, but we are diverse. And even though I couldn’t go, I want us to remember the table that Glory set for us a few weeks ago on our Culture Night. The diversity in our church is real. Let’s continue to celebrate it, and what better place to celebrate our diversity than at a table, in a feast of diversity and unity. Let us not pursue the road to one opinion, but let us become of one mind and learn to be considerate of each other, cultivating a life in common. Let us work together, in likeness of Christ – who died for us in our diversity to fulfil the promise made to Abraham that all people will come together in unity because of God’s covenant; God’s promise.

Let us demonstrate to this world a different way of living. After all, a divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

 

Getting Under the Surface of the Incarnational Church

Quick question – what makes a Baptist Church so different to others?

Well according to Adrian Plass to be Baptist is to belong to a “denomination in which one senses that there is as awful lot going on under the surface".

Let’s get serious now.  

Over the last few weeks, some of us have been working through Brant Hansen’s teaching on ‘Offendable.’  Brant’s key point is that Christians should not be offendable. As Phil pointed out last week, most of what Brant was saying is that we should not let anger consume us and drive us. But as we finished Brant’s teaching, I began to think there must be something much deeper than ‘anger’ to this concept of ‘offendable.’ Surely, it is not just anger that causes us to take ‘offence’ at others? Sometimes it’s our broken human nature.  

There have been times in my life where I have been ‘offended’ but not drawn to anger and there are times that I see the church take offence but this offence does not seem to come from anger alone; at times, we, as Christians, are offended simply because we do not understand someone or something that seems very different to who we are.   And I am not meaning all Christians alone, all churches are made of people, all churches have their own flavour and culture and when one person or a group comes in and disrupts the culture of a church then the reaction of offence is much deeper than anger. To say it again, it’s our broken human nature. And, the Bible is clear on this, put aside your brokenness and become more Christ-like.  

And I want to give you the key point of this sermon up front: to be truly unoffendable involves us accepting each other and accepting strangers who are different to us. When we do this, we can reach out to the world with compassion, not offence; with love, not hate.  But we must get it right with ourselves first.  

You see, a church’s reputation is not just forged through our outer works – it is also shaped by our inner behaviours – how we treat and walk with each other.  In a weird way, there is a difference to being a member of a church to being a member of a crafts, reading, board game or sports club. In a club, you are still an individual. You can lock your life away and keep it separate to the club.  

But, in a church, you are a member of a family, you are engaged in relationship with others. We speak it a lot in words, but it needs to be a reality – we are all part of the body of Christ – an arm cannot function by itself, it must be connected to the rest of the body. As the church we are not individuals – we stand together in a state of communion with Christ. 

So, today, I would like to talk to you about the incarnational church. And I want to ask the question: If we are the incarnational church, what does that mean for the way that we journey with each other? 

Let’s open God’s word to Ephesians 1, starting at verse 19: 

I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe Him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms.  

Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made Him head over all things for the benefit of the church.  

And the church is His body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with Himself.  

(Eph 1:19-23 NLT) 

I don’t know about you, but for me, one of the most complex and profound illustrations in the Bible is that of the church being the ‘body of Christ.’ I simply don’t get it most of the time. I read these verses in Ephesians and in Paul’s other letters and find myself asking – is this a metaphor; an illustration of sorts? Or is it a reality?  

And, as I read, I realise it can’t be a metaphor if it is so integral to Paul’s writings. His letters are permeated with these words “Body of Christ.” It may not seem a big deal, but Paul refers to us, the church, as the body of Christ 11 times his 13 letters.  So, in some way, we are the body of Christ today – but what does that really mean? 

To understand that we are the body of Christ requires us to understand the Church through the incarnation of Christ. 

We often don’t use this word ‘incarnation’ in church and when we do, it tends to be limited to Christmas. Incarnation comes from two Latin words ‘in’ which, in English, means much the same and ‘carō’ which in English means flesh. Carō is where we get the word carnivorous (meat-eating) and carnal (a word that has changed over time but once meant ‘of the physical flesh’ or ‘same blood’).  

Incarnation simply means – in the flesh, in the physical flesh. We use it as a concept word to understand that Christ is God ‘in the flesh.’ So, the incarnation is when God became one of us to suffer with us and then offer himself in our place as the perfect sacrifice.  

It is through the death of Christ on the Cross and His resurrection that we become one with him. His presence enters our being through the Holy Spirit and in a cosmic sense we enter His incarnation. We become one with Him and He becomes one with us. His presence is in us and, in that sense, the church is incarnational. 

The church was not created by a guy or girl with an idea. It was created by God. The church is not one individual but a community of people who relate and journey with each other. And, added to all this, within each of us, Christ dwells through the Holy Spirit. This makes as, as one community, a new creation in God. Not as individuals all saved through the gospel but as a people called together to serve God and each other.  

We don’t come to church, to this building, to ‘experience’ God. This would be an oxymoron to all of Paul’s teaching regarding God’s presence within us. Paul clearly tells us in 1 Cor 6:17-19 that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit – not a physical church building.  

However, we do gather, and we do gather for a very real purpose. We gather to worship and to make God’s presence, that presence that is in each of us, known both inside and outside the physical walls of this building.  

When it comes to the incarnational church, I know that it is easy to think that making God’s presence known is simply an outward gesture to our community. However, there is more to the incarnational church than the way we are seen on the outside. You see, I believe that to be incarnational in the community our church requires three internal unoffendable attitudes and behaviours: Relationship, Acceptance, Love 

And, while we can show these traits or virtues to our community of Wainuiomata, it is imperative that we first demonstrate to each other the desire to create a relationship, to accept our brokenness or broken times and forge ourselves together through love. This involves journeying with each other, getting to know others and learning how to demonstrate love to others. We get to get it right in here first so that when we do it out there, we do get it right. 

Let me use a parable of sorts.  

Most of us, read parables today with the idea that they were serious mini sermons given by Christ to get a point across; however, there is more to parables which our definition has lost in translation. Parables were stories with key points, but they were often humorous and seemed to come to contradictory conclusions. For example, let’s take the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Jesus’ time, Samaritans were never described as good and would never be used to illustrate a neighbour. But when Jesus did it – he made people think about themselves and the relationship they had with their God and each other by picking out the outsiders in their society. A person that could offend anyone. 

So, what would Relationship, Acceptance and Love look like in an incarnational church?  

Well, I would like to introduce you to an individual - Lars 

Lars is a bit of a loner, an outsider. He is living with brother’s family in the shed of their childhood home. Lars has no close friends, but he is connected to his local church and works with blokes that enjoy watching porn. Lars is soon to become an uncle and his brother is concerned that Lars will never develop any close relationships at all. And then this happens: 

So, imagine this, you are part of Lars’ church community – you are an elder of sorts. After Lars’ brother finds out that Lars has purchased an anatomically correct doll from the Internet for a ‘relationship’, he visits his local doctor. The doctor tells him that Lars must be dealing with some stuff and that he should just treat the doll as human until Lars gets over it.  

The brother is desperate – he knows that something is wrong and that he can’t support Lars – so he comes to you and asks for support and help as a church. So, after hearing the brother’s plea for help what would you do? To be honest, what would you initially think about Lars and what would you want the church to do – given that the church is a community of families including children and elderly? This is how Lars’ church responded: 

Well, the church, and in fact the whole community, decide to accept Lars and his doll. To be honest they go beyond accepting to relating to both Lars and his doll with love. We learn that this acceptance is because the church had journeyed with Lars. It wasn’t an easy decision; it never is and never will be even in our church today; but they had begun a journey before the doll and when the doll arrived, they decided they needed to finish it to help Lars find healing.  

To finish this story, Lars finds out what his problem is – a deep fear of touch and an inner emotional scar of a father that hurt had him. Bicana the doll gets sick and is rushed to hospital. She evidentially passes away and the church holds a funeral for her. It is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie because it shows that a church’s ability to accept Lars and journey with him in love overflows into other outsider groups in the community.  

This church did not do any major ministry, it just walked with Lars in a time of emotional need. The impact of this walk saw the congregation of this church exponentially grow. A church of a few families ended up attracting bikies, hobos and just people looking for love. The tears shed at the funeral were real – this church had finally found out what it was like to be Christ in this world – to accept each other, to relate to each other and to walk with each other in love. 

I don’t know about you, but when I watch a story like Lars, I realise that I would jump to judgement rather than love first; I would have been offended. I would assume that Lars had purchased the doll for sexual gratification and as such I would put conditions on my relationship with him. I would no doubt be the one that would go home at lunchtime and talk to Eric about the bizarre choices of our leaders allowing an adult to bring a doll to church … with all the children … what sort of example would they be setting.  

And, then I realise as a person, a person sharing with you today, that I, like others, do engage in behaviours of conditional love, when I inadvertently hold back from developing a relationship with someone that is not like me or even engage in negative talk (gossip) in my church family.  None of you bring a doll to church, but I could have it a guess that most of us come to church with rubbish in our lives – I know that I do. 

And, when I think about this, I also realise that there are times that I am afraid to expose the rubbish in my life because I fear that others would develop a relationship of conditional love around me.   

And, when I watched the story of Lars, I found myself challenged – would you really accept Lars Fiona? No, possibly not. I would think that things aren’t all right in his head and I would be scared to relate to him. Would you love Lars Fiona? Yes, of course, the Bible tells me to love everyone even those who offend me. But that’s okay, I don’t have to talk to Lars, and there are plenty of seats, so I can avoid him. And because I know that truth is buried in me, I am also scared to tell others about my own vulnerabilities in case I offend others by exposing my inner self. 

You see at the end of the day – our church will be known by its changed heart which bring about actions leading to transformation in our own lives and in our community. Our church will be known to our God by what is going on under the surface. Our church will be known by our love and generosity to each other. It is not that we must accept everyone as a blank slate, but we must be prepared to journey with each person in love. The first step in this journey is relationship but, if we don’t, we have missed an opportunity. 

And it is so important that we get it right with each other here first. There are broken and lost people in the world that so need God. There are people in the world that cause us offence but God has called us to walk with them but it is so hard when these people just might offend us.  

This week we experienced a tragedy in Wellington with the Loafers Lodge fire. The Lodge was home, if you can call it that, to some of the most vulnerable people in Wellington, addicts, deportees from Australia (known as 501s), ex-prisoners on parole, the homeless and others. In response to that fire The Mayor of Wellington, Tory Whanau said: “We’ve failed a sector of our community. We’ve let some people down. We’ve let our vulnerable community down. And it shouldn’t take an accident of this nature to do that.” 

And Jesus our saviour said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” 

I want to say that the incarnational church, is unoffendable, because deep in the core of the incarnational church is acceptance and love. This is demonstrated through the relationships we have with each other first, the ways we respond to each other in times of disagreement, the way in which we allow for diversity in our relationships and the way that we respond to the big issues in the world today. An incarnational church is a group of diverse people who can live life together and not be offended by each other and the world. 

Let us be a church that is truly incarnational, not plastic, a church where there is so much happening under our surface because Christ is at work in us, and we are not afraid to open our hearts deeply to him and most of all to each other. 

A Fake Gospel: When the Truth becomes the truth

 

Acts 14:8-19 MSG

Gods or Men?

There was a man in Lystra who couldn't walk. He sat there, crippled since the day of his birth. He heard Paul talking, and Paul, looking him in the eye, saw that he was ripe for God's work, ready to believe. So he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "Up on your feet!" The man was up in a flash - jumped up and walked around as if he'd been walking all his life.

When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they went wild, calling out in their Lyconian dialect, "The gods have come down! These men are gods!" They called Barnabas "Zeus" and Paul "Hermes" (since Paul did most of the speaking). The priest of the local Zeus shrine got up a parade-bulls and banners and people lined right up to the gates, ready for the ritual of sacrifice.

When Barnabas and Paul finally realized what was going on, they stopped them. Waving their arms, they interrupted the parade, calling out, "What do you think you're doing! We're not gods! We are men just like you, and we're here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don't make God; he makes us, and all of this-sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.

"In the generations before us, God let all the different nations go their own way. But even then he didn't leave them without a clue, for he made a good creation, poured down rain and gave bumper crops. When your bellies were full and your hearts happy, there was evidence of good beyond your doing." Talking fast and hard like this, they prevented them from carrying out the sacrifice that would have honored them as gods-but just barely.

Then some Jews from Antioch and Iconium caught up with them and turned the fickle crowd against them. They beat Paul unconscious, dragged him outside the town and left him for dead. But as the disciples gathered around him, he came to and got up. He went back into town and the next day left with Barnabas for Derbe.

What if we are the Lyconians? What if we have started to misinterpret the gospel by adding our own manmade interpretations?

The Bible is filled with stories about them. Them, the people who are not us; them the people who are so much foolish than us; them, the stiff-necked Jews; them, the hypocritical Pharisees; them, the foolish disciples; them, the Lyconians who mistook the gospel Truth with a capital T with the manmade truth of the Greek Parthenon with a very small t.

What if we are the Lyconians?  

If we, us, you, I lived back then we would be so much better. We, us, you and I would see the redemption of Yahweh in the desert; we, us, you and I would never build a golden calf because of our doubt; we, us, you and I would understand the message of grace and not be bound in the laws like the Pharisees were; we, us, you and I would see Jesus in the flesh, in the miracles and on the cross, not like the disciples failed to do at times; we, us, you and I would hear the Truth of the gospel with a capital T rather than appropriate it into our own understanding and realities with a small t; we, you and I would never celebrate a miracle of the Spirit with a parade to Zeus which included calves and bulls.

What if we are the Lyconians?

Ok, I know that we are a holy people; we are so that holy most of us would already admit that we are humble enough to always acknowledge that there are times that we are stiff-necked, hypocritical, foolish and misled.

And that’s okay. But I want to suggest that there are times that we impose our own truth with a small t on the gospel Truth with a capital T without realising it. We are prone to shape the image we have of our God with the world that we live in. And, when we do this, we then have to be careful that we do not taint the gospel that we share with our own ideas and desires.

Here in Acts 14 we have a very simple story. Paul and Barnabas rock up to Lystra. Seeing a person in need, they proclaim the good news, the man receives healing and the people are amazed. They, seeing the miracle healing, are quick to frame it with their own worldview. They live in a Greek world which spirituality is dominated by the Greek Parthenon of gods. The healing, therefore, could only come from the gods and Paul being the spokesperson must be Hermes, the herald and messenger of Mount Olympus while Barnabas was the ultimate god – the mighty Zeus – the sky and thunder god and the king of Olympus.

Paul’s response is brilliant: "What do you think you're doing! We're not gods! We are men just like you, and we're here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God himself, the living God. We don't make God; he makes us, and all of this-sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.”

I don’t know about you – but I love this particular phrasing of what Paul is saying here from the Message:

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

I personally think that this phrase means the same now as it did then. The Parthenon of Greek gods was not a God-made reality. As Paul says: for many years, God let the nations go their own way.

In going their own way, different nations had to make meaning of the world. People had to make meaning of the supernatural and of the ultimate question – what is the meaning of life.

In Greece, the meaning of life was found in conflict, power and downright drama. I have said it before – Greece was the Game of Thrones in a different time and era. In Greece, the Parthenon of gods provided some answer to this world. But this whole concept of spirituality of gods who acted as mortals – who fought amongst themselves, procreated and created a soap opera of stories – were nothing but a creation of man. They were a manmade story.

So what does this story teach us – what does it tell us today?

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

Surely, we all here believe it the same gospel story?

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

Surely, we have never been like the Lyconians and have added our own perspective to the gospel story?

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

What if we are the Lyconians?

Years ago, Eric and I visited my father when he was teaching in China. He had been there over a decade and was in some of the most isolated regions.

Before we left New Zealand, he had given us a wish list for all the things he wanted us to bring – baby formula, blue cheese, Glenfiddich whiskey, and … wait for it … a Bible in English. Now, my father is a staunch atheist, so something was up with the request for a Bible. So, I asked – Dad – why a Bible? And Dad, have you heard of Brother Andrew – we are playing with fire here? Dad’s response was simple. No, he hadn’t heard of Brother Andrew and Christianity is allowed in China – public confession of it is not. Book shops have Bibles in China, but they are in Mandarin, not English. The Bible was for a friend, who was learning English and wanted to do so with the written scriptures.

I can tell you, while Dad hadn’t heard of Brother Andrew and why for Eric ‘the name rings a bell but I don’t know why.’ For me, taking, well smuggling, a Bible into China, was terrifying. I was shaking at Shanghai Airport fearful that this would be the first and last mission trip for me behind the Bamboo curtain. It was to my surprise, that there were no border checks. But Eric and I being honest kiwis, found a border worker and asked how to declare our goods. His response was – ‘what do you have to declare.’ I stammered – a bbibblllee, baby formula, blue cheese and whiskey. His response was ‘the cheese isn’t allowed.’ He smiled at his partner as we partered with our Kapiti Coast blue vein cheese.

My father’s response was something different. As far as he was concerned, and the Chinese travel website, cheese was allowed; the guard was just after some dairy goodness from the land downunder.

Once we were in China, and in the deep parts of China, Eric and I got to see a side of China not seen by many westerners – by the end of which, Eric was, to quote Ming Fung, our Chinese mum ‘tired of photo.’ Our very first evening in China was one of a banquet meal. During the meal, we were asked out right by the host – ‘Are you a Jesus follower?’

By this point, my stomach was churning, if I said yes would I be executed on the spot? Well, I fought back the fear and said ‘yes’. At this point, the host introduced us to Jacquie (her English name), one of his staff who was a Jesus follower as well. It was Jacquie who we bought the Bible for.

Jacquie was our tour guide in the city of Jingjong. She took us to all the historical points of interest and showed us how ‘spiritual’ the Chinese people were. She taught us how Mao set himself up as a god, with his little red book, a book that looks like the Gideon bible. She shared with us how many people in China now are coming back to faith – whether it be Buddhism , Taoism, Confucius, or Christianity.  Her own story was of turning to Buddhism and becoming lost before she found a deeper Christianity.

We asked her why this spiritual turn was occurring in China and she replied that while it looked super spiritual on the outside, even the turn to Christianity was fake and that this was her own story until recently.

Jacquie shared with us how years of poverty and exploitation of the people by the government, saw many Chinese look to the west and particularly America. For them, the answer out of poverty was not a faith but rather money. The meaning of life in China, was found in money. For Jacquie the public display of any faith or religion in China was a testimony to the promise of wealth. If you followed this spiritual way, you would become financially rich. So, the gospel, the good news, was to follow Christ is to find, the true meaning of life, financial wealth.

For Jacquie, a committed Christian who went to ‘church’ (well to the homes of other Christians), to read scriptures and learn about God, the gospel of Christianity had been tainted with this false gospel. For Jacquie, the gospel she believed in was one of a restored relationship with a Creator God, a son who came and turned the world upside down and demonstrated that those that follow him should be prepared to live upside down lives – to love ones enemies, put your neighbour first and despise injustice. To know that God loves both the rich and the poor, and his son dwelled with the poor, not to promise wealth but to affirm that at the father’s table was a seat for them.

So, China, had imposed its own meaning of life on the gospel. A meaning that came out of the brokenness of Communism and exploitation. A meaning that came from looking at what appeared to make the world go around in countries like America.

What if we are the Lyconians?

Later we would go to Inner Mongolia. By this stage, Eric and I were used to being asked the ‘Are you a Jesus follower’ question. We were also use to the conversation that followed – it would either be one about our own personal wealth or one about our relationship with God. In Inner Mongolia we met a number of Americans who had come to China to teach, well that was what was on their Visa. But they had not just come to teach, they were missionaries, and their gospel was one about the wealth that can be found when you become a Jesus follower. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a wealth in spirit but financial wealth. It appeared to me there, that just as the Lyconians mistook the gospel for the gods of their time, even Christians today, mistake the promise of the gospel with the financial gods of our world. This made me deeply reflect on where the gospel, the good news, of financial wealth was coming from; a reflection reinforced by the Chinese Christians I met who were so upset at this tainted gospel story. Are there moments that we are the Lyconians, moments where we turn the capital T of Truth into a small t?

And I think there are. I think there are times that we try to fit God into boxes of manmade truths in order to make sense of the radical things he does in our lives. And when we do this, I think the result of this is very simple – we limit God, we limit others and we impose our own expectations of God on him. We attempt to make God in our image. This is what happened here in Acts 14, and it is what Jacquie observed in her own communities in China. It is something that happens everywhere.

You know, over the last couple of years, there has been one consistent message from our pastors. Each of us has our own truths and interpretations of the world. And because of this, we need to show each other grace. Now me, being a scholar from the postmodern tradition just responds to this message – I told you so. You see, postmodernism argues that there is no one truth, instead there are many truths – each of which is manmade.

What if we are the Lyconians?

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

This argument of many manmade truths is actually really helpful – why? Well it can help us understand why truths at times harm others, and why truths at times get disproved.  And often we find ourselves getting into debates with each other about these truths – whether it be God loves a certain political party, God has a position on the Covid-19, God hates a particular group of people, when we attempt to push our opinion into the God-made gospel truth of love, justice, sacrifice and compassion, we limit God, we limit the gospel, and we bring division into our community.

But as a Christian postmodern scholar, I would also argue that “We don’t make God; he makes us.” While there is no manmade truth that makes God. The Truth of God – the Truth with a capital T stands outside of manmade truths. And our quest to know God will only bring us closer to the Truth and each other – it will not divide.

Now hear me here. Remember – I have asked if there are times that we add our own interpretation to the gospel story and I have said that I believe that we too can be like the Lyconians. I think we find it in the ways that we frame the purpose and intention of our holy scriptures in which the Gospel story arises. Each of these ways forces God’s Truth in our own manmade truths.

·         Reading the Bible as an instruction manual

·         Reading the Bible as a self-help text

·         Reading the Bible as a science text

Believe it or not, the Bible is not an instruction manual. It is not a formula to how to live a good life, if it was it would stop after the books of Moses. It is call to relationship and a revelation of God. The Bible is not a self-help text. It is not written as a book with a verse for every occasion. While verses can be added to every occasion, the Bible was written to, and for, a community of people. The Bible is not a science text. It does not give a physical and material explanation of the world that we live in. It does not apply the scientific method to understanding the world. Forcing God’s stories into our ideas of truth is just so wrong.

The reality is, both psychology and science are manmade knowledge systems which we have made over time, disproved, proved and built upon to understand our world. And quite often, just like the Lyconians, we want to interpret what God is doing through a knowledge we make like psychology and a science; when we don’t realise that our many knowledge systems, including science, is a manmade attempt at answering the big questions like – why are we here? And what is the meaning of life?

As Christians, we often try to fit God into our knowledge, we try to justify the Bible through science, we try to present the Bible as a solution to a person’s individual problems, and present the Bible as a way to live the good life – when the Bible is so so much bigger and should not be forced into our boxes.

When we try to fit God into our world, we limit him and we limit the purpose of his story. You see the gospel story – the Good News shared by the early church was deeply radical. It wasn’t an instruction manual, a self-help text, or science text. It was a simple message.

For God loved the world [Jew, Samaritan, Greek, Gentile, you and I] so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its savior.

John 3:16-17 GNT

The challenge for us Church is to realise “We don’t make God; he makes us, and all of this-sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.” For us it is vitally important in our lives, and in our witness, that we do not reduce a gospel framed around restoration, relationship, justice, equity and an upside down concept of living into the ‘right way’ round world of brokenness, injustice and inequity. God is much bigger than you think church. He is not restricted to the truths of science, prosperity and our many manmade knowledge systems. He is the creator, he is our father and the good new is – he is here to restore, he is here to counsel and he is here to enable the extraordinary to occur in our every day ordinary

What if we are the Lyconians?

“We don’t make God; he makes us.”

We don't make God; he makes us, and all of this-sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.

No rei ra.

Let’s not limit God, force the gospel into our own truths and desires. Let us be free to be limitless in God’s Truth so that he can through us reveal his love, his justice, his grace and his mercy.