Steve Lindsley
1 Corinthians 13: 1-13
He was a prophet from the sticks. Not like Isaiah and Jeremiah and those big-city preachers. They got most of the press time and eventually lengthier books in the Bible. Micah was from the country outside of Jerusalem and was called by God to call out the wealthy landowners who mistreated and took advantage of the poor farmers who worked on their land. We tend to think of prophets as those who predict the future. Prophets were actually about standing up for and speaking on behalf of those who were the victims of a society that prioritized the powerful and demeaned the powerless, warning any who would listen of the inevitable downfall of a nation and civilization that institutionalized this kind of injustice.
And as hard as he was on kings and those in power, Micah saved his most scathing criticism for his own siblings in the faith – those who had long given up their calling to care for, as a former Gilchrist speaker once said from this pulpit, the least, the lost, and otherwise left out. Those in the faith who merely went through the motions of their worship, treating the rituals as if they were the full embodiment of that faith.
This infuriated Micah to the point that he was compelled to pen the words we know well:
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow myself before God on high, the prophet asks:
Shall I come before God with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? (implied answer – NO)
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil? (say it with me – NO)
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (one more time – NO)
God has told you what is good –
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
He was writing a letter to a church. A church he founded, a church he invested so much of himself in. And Corinth was an ideal location for a church, about 50 miles west of Athens right on the Gulf of Corinth. It was a port city, which meant all kinds of people were coming and going. Lots of commerce and culture; very cosmopolitan, very wealthy. The ancient philosopher Cicero referred to Corinth as “the light of all Greece.”
A perfect place for a church to thrive. Except it wasn’t. It was struggling. Divided. Because that’s what can happen when all kinds of people are brought under one roof and folks become more focused on what separates them than what brings them together. Factions. Disagreements – over serious stuff like the wealth imbalance or inappropriate behavior; and also, silly stuff, like what to do with food offered to idols or women who – God forbid! – wear head coverings while praying. It’s never a good thing when the church mirrors the divided society of which it is part.
And so, Paul addresses each of these issues in his letter, one by one. And near the end he offers words to tie everything together, words we’re accustomed to hearing at weddings but have nothing to do with weddings, words that describe what the church of Jesus Christ must forever embrace and embody in a world of divisiveness, injustice, hate and fear:
Love is patient and kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way –
It’s not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs –
Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
He’s not sure exactly where he first found it. Maybe it was in one of those books he acquired in four years of seminary, now neatly displayed on the shelves in his study. Maybe a good friend once quoted it and he plugged what he could remember into Google. For the first few years of his time in ministry he defaulted to the benediction that his childhood pastor had given every Sunday. He loved that benediction, but he wanted to find words that was more his. Because while sermons are certainly important, the benediction is the very last thing people here before leaving the comforts of the sanctuary and going out into a world where there are no guarantees, where things can turn on a dime; a world that has forever been at odds with the life Jesus led and calls us to.
And while he’s not sure exactly when he started using it as his benediction, he is certain that it needs to be said every Sunday:
Live simply.
Love generously.
Speak truthfully.
Pray daily.
Serve faithfully.
And leave everything else to God.
And only a few years ago did he add in that last part:
It’s all that easy.
And it’s all that hard.
I’ve been thinking a lot about you all this past week. It’s what we pastors do with people we love and care about, especially when something significant happens in our collective world. Rebecca and I have heard from many of you and others over the past few days and we know the weight that some are carrying.
Like the twenty-something year old who wondered whether he’d ever want to bring a child into this world.
Like the father who is terrified for what the future holds for his trans daughter.
Like the elderly couple who question what kind of world their grandkids will grow up in.
Like the person of color who is not the least bit surprised at what happened and, frankly, is a little ticked with his white friends who are.
I’ve been thinking about you this past week and the world we find ourselves in – a world full of amazing beauty and everlasting grace and wondrous truth, and also a world of brokenness and divisiveness and discord. A world where, at the center of everything that is the worst of us, I believe, lies a single force: and that is fear. As a friend of mine once wrote and shared this past week:
Fear is the currency that drives us.
Creeping into our dreams, tinting our hopes
Coloring our desire to do good with a shade of self-doubt.
Fear is control and submission,
It is the force that
agitates
separates
frustrates
propagates
Grows inside us, the weeds among the seeds.
Fear is what the prophet Micah shone a spotlight on – the fear that comes when people of faith take the safer route and simply go through the motions of their faith – and led him to challenge the faithful to adopt a three-part antidote: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Three things. It is all that easy! And it is all that hard.
Fear is what the apostle Paul saw taking root in his beloved church – a church that had all the potential in the world but instead chose to mirror the society of which it was part – and thus compelled him to highlight the one and only thing that could ever hope to redeem it: love. Not a superficial and sentimental love, but a transformative, action-oriented, hard love. Love – it is all that easy! And it is all that hard.
And so here we are now, gathered in this place today, with a single question resting deep within our souls: What is it that God needs from us now? What does God need from us now?
I want you to know that, initially, I had a different sermon title for today. It was supposed to be “Not the absence of conflict, but the endurance of love” – this little formula that Rebecca and I created for our sermon series this month. Not the absence of conflict, but the endurance of love.
It’s a fine sermon title, but not for today. Because here’s the truth, y’all: things around us are constantly changing. That is the nature of our world. Elections and leaders come and go. Living organisms grow old. Our planet is warming. Harmful ideologies take root and grow tentacles. Friends and family impacted by those ideologies can suddenly become unrecognizable to us. So much around us is changing.
But beloved, here’s the thing – and if you don’t hear anything else I say today, please hear this: our calling as followers of Jesus Christ and as the church has not changed. And it won’t. In fact, if anything, it has grown more necessary and needed.
And that calling is the same calling that Micah once preached to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. It’s the same calling penned by Paul when he proclaimed that love really can change the world.
And it’s the same sixteen words you hear me say just about every Sunday (and say them with me now) – live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, pray daily, serve faithfully, and leave everything else to God.
People of God: if you are ever at a loss of what to do as followers of Jesus in any circumstance, whatever life might dish out, just do that. Do it when it makes sense to do it and do it when it makes no sense. Do it even if no one else is. Do it even if it might get you into a little bit of trouble. Do it when your well-being is at stake, but please, do it when someone else’s is. Do it even when you think it has zero chance of changing a thing. Do it because it is what God calls you to do.
This is how we live as faithful people in a wandering world. We know what to do. We understand the assignment. It’s all that easy. It’s all that hard.
And for that, in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, thanks be to God – and may all of God’s people say, AMEN!
* Because sermons are meant to be preached and are therefore prepared with the emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.