Stronger than a city wall

7/14 October                    1 Corinthians 13

I wonder what St Paul would think if he knew that the main occasion for listening to and preaching on his great hymn to love was at weddings. Perhaps he’d be happy, but I suspect that he’d be concerned at taking the passage out of context. Standing alone and treated as a reflection on the love between two people, however lovely the chapter is, it misses the point. In the letter, chapters 12 to 14 are one argument. Paul is writing about the use of spiritual gifts in the Corinthian church. He’d been told that the some people were using spiritual gifts to make themselves look and feel powerful or important within the church, and in particular the gift of tongues was being seen as a sign of superior faith, and effectively excluding others from worship and a sense of belonging. Spiritual gifts, Paul wrote are given to build up the whole church. We are given them not for our own benefit but for service to others. And the greatest gift of all is the one that enables all the other gifts to be used in service. Love.

If you love, and you use your gifts in the spirit of love, then your gifts, whatever they are, will help others and make an impact. But if your starting point is not love, then any other gift is a waste of time. Prophetic words become background noise, the gift of tongues an annoying jangle, because the gifts are not benefiting others if they are not used out of a base of love.

To make sure that the Corinthians understood the point, Paul set out a description of what love is like. Now, since we have one overused word for love in English, and Paul had a choice of words in Greek, we should understand that the great gift underlying all things is αγαπε (agape). This is a strong word. It doesn’t describe romantic love or the relationship between two people (that is ερως – a word that does not appear in the Bible), although of course two people might have a relationship defined by αγαπε. The Greek concept of αγαπε is of a powerful unconditional love, and refers to the love that God has for humanity. It would be the closest word Paul could find to parallel the Hebrew concept of אַהֲבָה  ‘Ahava’ comes from the Hebrew verb ‘hav’ – to give. It demonstrates the character of a love which is about giving, not receiving. It is not a passive love. Ahava requires action, making a choice to behave towards others in a generous way. When Jesus said: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13.35 NIV), he didn’t mean that the disciples felt nice about each other, but that they actively worked for each other’s wellbeing, seeking good for each other, serving each other– using their God-given gifts for each other’s benefit. This is ahava and it is what Paul looks for as he uses the nearest Greek equivalent. We’ll see the point again in the verse that almost sums up the whole letter, 1 Corinthians 16.14: ‘Let all that you do be done in love’ (NRSV).

Paul knew that it wasn’t enough to tell the Corinthians to love. He spelled out what love looks like, and what their behaviour towards each other should therefore look like: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13.4-7 NRSV) So the question we ask ourselves is, does this describe us? Could we replace the word αγαπε (love) with the name of our church community, and see a true description of who we are and how we behave towards one another?

The real challenge is when we look to the source of all love, to God, to see what love looks like in action. We see God’s love in action through Jesus Christ. Which means that as we look at Christ’s example we learn that love is the wisdom of the cross. ‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another’ (1 John 3.16 NRSV). Love, according to the wisdom of the cross, gives until it hurts, and then keeps on giving.

That’s a far cry from the behaviour of the Corinthians, showing off their gifts in front of each other, failing to share their food at the Lord’s supper and railing at Paul for pointing out their failings.

Paul calls love an ‘excellent way’ (1 Corinthians 12.31). And it should be exactly that. A way of life. 1 Corinthians 13.4-7 could be taken as a rule of life, a discipline. When we catch ourselves behaving towards others in a way that is outside that rule, we need to stop, and ask the help of the Holy Spirit to live out the gift of love in the generous and courageous way that Paul suggests. Looking at Paul’s description of love and thinking that it would be nice to be like that, or sighing and saying, ‘yes, but I’m not a naturally patient person, so…’ – well that sort of attitude isn’t good enough for Paul, and so it shouldn’t be good enough for any of us.

St John Chrysostom, writing about this chapter, said: ‘Love is stronger than a city wall; it is harder than steel. And even if you should think of some material stronger than these, love’s strength exceeds them all’. That strength of love comes from its source, God, who is love and whose love undergirds all things. If we live by a rule of active, not passive, αγαπε love, then we will be protected by that strength, and we will become sources of strength for others in our own right.

When I preach on this passage at a wedding, I want this kind of giving, active, sacrificial love to be the underlying strength that binds the two people in front of me. Perhaps it is easier to preach that message to them if what they see in the church they are standing in is a building full of people who live out God’s love for one another. A building full of people rich in the gifts of the spirit, and using them to benefit one another, because we are living out Jesus’ command: ‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13.34-35 NIV).

Rivers of living water

1 Corinthians 12

Living Brook benefice takes its name from two important ideas. It comes from a brook – or a collection of connected brooks – that are the only shared geographical feature between our parishes. It winds between the villages, finally emptying into the Nene in Hardingstone. But that inspires a more important connection. Living Brook reminds us of the living water that Jesus offers a Samaritan woman in John 4, and of the image of water representing the holy spirit which runs through the whole of scripture. Think of the water flowing from the rock in the wilderness, or the promise of water to bring life to the desert. The river Jordan, divided by God to allow Joshua to lead his people into the promised land, became the place of baptism for John, the water representing the life that comes to us when we receive the spirit: life in all its fullness (John 10.10). Jesus said that ‘out if the of believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (John7.38). John explains (John 7.39) that this water is a reference to the Holy Spirit, and to what would come after the day of Pentecost. Today, the waters of baptism continue to signify that life given by the spirit to the baptised, and offered, through every baptised person, to the rest of the world. That abundant life is more than we need. It flows from us to others, being shared with the rest of the church and flowing from the church to those beyond the church who are thirsty and need to drink.

We plunge into the depths of the spirit in baptism, and on other occasions when the spirit moves in power. But daily we return to the Holy Spirit as we pray, as we share in communion, as we read the bible or other spiritual books with hearts listening to God. St Paul says that we are all one body and we are all made to drink of one Spirit – and we drink daily, and receive, and share, daily.

That daily renewal is important. Recently, I led a quiet day in Piddington church. During the morning, I went for a walk in one direction from the church and passed a place where I often stop to look at the brook and to reflect on Living Brook. It is a place where usually the brook is wide, and runs fairly rapidly. It can be quite impressive there. But on that day there was no water at all. That’s hardly surprising, given the very dry summer that we’ve had. It reminded me that the same can be true in a Christian community too. The living water can stop flowing out of the mouths of believers, if the believers start to take God for granted; if the believers stop regularly asking the holy spirit to come. We each need to be praying, every day, for the Holy Spirit to be with us. If we don’t ask the spirit to come, we might find that the brook begins to dry up, and we find ourselves thirsty, and unable to properly support each other. The brook might run dry because instead of concentrating on living as God would have us live, in love and unity, we have allowed ourselves to be distracted by our own concerns. We come to church thinking about the state of the building, or whether we are personally receiving enough attention, or whether that person we don’t get on with is going to be there and spoil the morning for us. We forget that we are one body, and that as one body we are more than a group of humans, but the body of Christ. We look at ourselves, and at each other, but don’t look hard enough at Jesus, and when that happens, the brook can run dry. We were all made to drink of one Spirit, without any difference of rank or status or race or anything else. And we must do what we were made to do. So every day, pray ‘come, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit.’

Later in the day I went for another walk in a different direction, and came across another branch of the stream. I heard it before I saw it – indeed I didn’t see it at all, because the water I could hear was running too far below the level of the path, and was shielded from sight by many lovely waterside plants. Although I couldn’t see the water, the signs of its presence were many and lovely. After the experience of the morning, I thanked God gratefully for showing me another picture of Living Brook – not just quietly sitting, but flowing noisily and bringing life and colour, through the power of the holy spirit.

And when we are full of the life of the spirit, that life flowing from us to others can be seen, not in colourful plant life – unless your spiritual gift is flower arranging or plantsmanship – but through the spiritual gifts. What we need to remember about those gifts is that they are not for us as individuals. The gifts of the spirit are given for all to share – for service to the church and to those who are thirsty. This means that I can benefit from the gift of hospitality, or of helping, or of organising events, even though I may not have those gifts myself. Because those people who do have them use them for the benefit of all. And I should use the gifts I have for the benefit of all.

Paul went to some trouble to emphasise this through the way he took a popular analogy of people coming together as a body, and changed it to remind people that the body is not about a hierarchy or status (which was how the image was used in classical teaching) but that everyone is valued and important. He had heard reports that in Corinth gifts were being used to benefit people personally, sometimes at the detriment of the whole church. The fashionable gift was speaking in tongues, and that was especially problematic, because unless there is someone to interpret, the only beneficiary of tongues is the speaker. Everyone else is left wondering what is going on. There’s nothing wrong with the gift of tongues, but like any gift it is only valuable in so far as it benefits everyone, the whole church. So Paul wanted the Corinthians to think more widely about what gifts they asked God for, and to value more gifts. And he wanted the Corinthians to always use their gifts in the context of prioritising love for one another. Having a gift is all very well, but if you don’t love one another, and you don’t use your gifts to benefit one another, then you my as well not have them. Our gifts must be used to build up the church, to benefit the whole.

Paul gave lists of gifts, and never gave the same list twice. He didn’t want people to think that his lists were definitive. We sometimes behave as though they are – that unless something is on one of Paul’s lists, it isn’t a gift. I don’t think Paul saw it that way. He gave examples, trying to be relevant to those receiving his letters, but he wasn’t seeking to limit the holy spirit. There are gifts that are obviously and always gifts of the spirit – prophecy is the obvious example, and is the only example that always appeared in Paul’s lists. Paul did think some gifts more important than others – again, he valued prophecy above all other gifts. But that should not devalue the other gifts. The risk of thinking some gifts greater than others is that a church community can assume that if you have a ‘greater gift’ you are more important than the other members, or that you must be in a position of status in order to have that gift. ‘I never went to Oxford or Cambridge, I’m not a senior cleric’; ‘I’m not the vicar, I didn’t go to university’… ‘so I can’t have a gift like prophecy’. That’s not true, and Paul wants us to get away from that idea. Every one of us, Jew or Greek, slave or free, drinks of the Holy Spirit, he says. Every one of us can be equally blessed by any gift of the spirit. We just have to ask. Come Holy Spirit. Please give me the gift of… whatever gift you would like the Spirit to bless you with. Please bless me with the gift of prophecy. Why not? Whoever I am, whatever my role in church, Paul tells us to ask for the greater gifts. We need the lesser ones too.

The greatest gift of all, the one we must ask for, every single one of us, no matter what else we ask of God, is love. Without love, the church ceases to be one, united body. Without love we stop reflecting God, who is one, spirit, Lord and God. Without love, anything else we do stops reflecting God and only reflects ourselves. Without love, the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit, the brook dries up and becomes as unpleasant and full of rubbish as the stream bed that saddened me on my morning walk. So let us ask the Holy Spirit to pour into us life and love, and whatever other gifts that we need. Let us ask the holy spirit to unite us as one church. And when we do, listen out for the living water that flows from our hearts to bring that life and love to all.

Blessed be God

5/12 Aug                    1 Corinthians 10

Food, glorious food… If we hold a celebration, we provide special food. At a funeral we provide special food. Indeed, in my family, there seems to be a belief that if I recommend a nice pub I’ve been to, I will have been at a funeral wake there. That’s probably right too. Most of us have memories connected with family food rituals, whether it is fish and chips on Saturday nights, or jelly and ice cream at children’s parties, or mum’s Yorkshire pudding with Sunday lunch, or – well, I’m sure that you are thinking of those happy – or not so happy – food memories now.

In chapter 10, Paul is back to the theme of food, and to considering what to do when offered food sacrificed to idols. If you went to a party held by a local friend, the meat being served would have been dedicated to Athene or Apollo or some other deity before the meal began. They’re not real of course, so such a dedication is meaningless. Which meant that Paul could reason that eating the food was fine. There was no reason to offend your hosts or miss out on the best part of the meal. Unless there was another Christian there who really did have a problem, who didn’t agree with that line of reasoning. For some, to eat food dedicated to another deity was to be disloyal to Jesus, to suggest that the other deity was real. If that Christian is going to be distressed by you eating the meant, then don’t eat it, Paul advised. Being thoughtful towards your brother or sister in Christ is more important than getting a plateful of meat.

That thoughtfulness towards fellow Christians is bound up in our own particular experience of sharing food. We make a point of sharing bread and wine together and when we do that we remember one particular special meal. We remember Jesus telling his friends that when they eat the bread and drink the wine together remembering him, the bread becomes his body, the wine his blood. And sharing it strengthens our unity as his body on earth – the bread is his body, and so are we.

As Paul considered this, he used words that were so helpful we repeat them regularly. In Living Brook benefice, almost every communion service includes a phrase that paraphrases Paul’s words:

          We break this bread

          to share in the body of Christ.

          Though we are many, we are one body,

          because we all share in one bread.

We are one, and called to prioritise doing the things that make us one. To prioritise living loving lives, being thoughtful towards each other, putting ourselves second. As in this case, when the strong believer sets aside her sense of rightness in order to spare the weak believer from distress at the dining table.

What made the meat ultimately acceptable for Paul was more than just his sense that the dedication to idols was irrelevant. There was something else that Paul did. At public meals he may have done it silently, in his head, but he certainly did it, and he mentions it here. Paul made the meat acceptable by doing what every good Jew did before eating anything, what every Jewish and Gentile follower of Jesus did before sharing bread and wine together. And what I hope that you do before you eat – I’m sure you do. He gave thanks to God, dedicating the food to God. When Paul ate meat at a public event, he was eating meat which was dedicated to the Lord our God.

In Judaism today, the words of blessing are closely related to the ones Paul would have known. Orthodox Jews learn different prayers to use according to the kind of food that is being consumed, and say them in a particular order, beginning with the most important staple food that always links us to God: bread. From the manna in the wilderness to the bread always kept at the temple, bread is a sacred food for Jews. When Jesus called himself the bread of life, he was connecting himself to the most precious foodstuff, as well as the most basic. For us as Christians, our recollection that bread connects us so intimately to Jesus makes it even more precious. The Jewish blessing on bread can be translated:

          Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe,  

          who brings forth bread from the earth.

The prayer Paul would have said quietly before he consumed meat may have been like the one used today:

          Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe,  

          by whose Word all things came to be.

The Word in the prayer refers to the logos, the life-giving Holy Spirit of God, present at creation and breathing life into the world. Christians associate the Word with Jesus through the opening words of John’s gospel: ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God’. Blessing God in this way makes any food in front of us a reminder of all that God has done for us.

Have you noticed that these prayers are familiar? Because these ancient Jewish prayers, still everyday prayers for so many Jews today, are also entwined into our communion liturgy, in an adapted form. They are optional, but we use them on most Sundays here in Living Brook benefice, using a slightly different translation.

          Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation:

          through your goodness we have this bread to set before you,

          which earth has given and human hands have made.

          It will become for us the bread of life.              

When we use these words we connect to our Jewish heritage, and to the way that Paul saw food: something precious to be eaten in grateful thanks to God for all that he has given us. We bless God for our food.

When Joanna and Kate were growing up, Paul and I insisted on giving thanks – or saying grace – before meals. We’d make up words of thanks on the spot, or use words from one of their prayer books. A particular favourite was

         

          God is great, God is good,

          Thank you God for all our food.

We bought a cube with six different prayers on it, and sometimes rolled it like a die, saying whichever prayer was face up. The important thing was, we always gave thanks, and we still do. We – like most of you, I’m sure – would be the ones who had no problem with saying grace in a restaurant. And like Paul, in those situations where giving thanks to God out loud really isn’t possible, we still do it, quietly. God hears us, and we ourselves know that the meal becomes a reminder of God’s bountiful goodness to us.

In a time when others are hungry, reminding ourselves of God’s goodness every time we eat should also be a reminder to share our portion of his bountiful gifts with others. In Northampton, hundreds of children are fed in school every day because they wouldn’t get to eat properly at home. During the school holiday, churches in different parts of the town are supporting projects to ensure that children still get to have at least one decent meal every day during the school holidays. Last Sunday our CHAT teams highlighted this for us and invited people to make a pledge to support the foodbank as a sign of our commitment to help those who would otherwise go hungry. You can make a donation of food, or of money – if you would like us to pass on a monetary donation for you, please make sure that it is labelled as being for the food bank, and we’ll make sure it gets there.

If you are reading this on the blog, www.restorenorthampton.org.uk/ will take you to the website of the foodbank regularly supported by our benefice collections.

If we take seriously Paul’s connection between what we eat when we share bread and wine together and the way we become the body of Christ as a people, then we realise that we are ourselves reminders of our creator God’s holiness. Just as saying grace – Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of all creation, by whose word all things came to be – makes our food a reminder of God’s creative power and generous gift to us, so we, as we eat it, and in our own dedication at baptism, become a truly holy people. We are the outward sign in the world of God’s holy, life giving and creative activity in the world. People will recognise that when they see us working for unity in love, and when they see us reaching out creatively, lovingly, to give life to others however we can.

Run to Win

1 Corinthians 9

There are plenty of scholars who suggest that what we call 1 Corinthians – and the same applies to 2 Corinthians - is not just one letter but a number of letters redacted together, though there is plenty of disagreement about how many. It isn’t as straightforward as chapters 1-8 forming one letter, chapters 9-12 forming another. It looks more like the result of a redactor dropping a pile of papers and not picking them up again in the right order. Take that alongside possible later additions by other redactors, and the problem that modern readers have with Paul becomes larger than the one that his original readers had, because we see letters that are longer, and that jump about thematically, in a way that Paul almost certainly didn’t. Chapter 9 is a case in point. It breaks into a discourse on food sacrificed to idols that should flow on from chapter 8 to chapter 10. Suddenly Paul is protesting about his rights as an apostle and the way that apostles are financially rewarded. This, I believe, is a section of a different letter, part of a dispute that we know Paul struggled with in his relationship with the churches of Corinth. Paul’s right to be rewarded for his work, but not to be treated as if he was a mere client accepting the usual rules of patronage. He wasn’t at the Corinthians’ beck and call, or that of certain local patrons, and if that was what they wanted then he wouldn’t take their money. The results of Paul’s thinking continue today in the acceptance that clergy are officeholders, given a stipend to free them for the work they do, and not salaried staff working for the reward of pay rather than the rewards of the kingdom of God.

That’s all very interesting, but it’s not the chosen topic for this fifth sermon, which has been developed with one of the Inspire Leaders in the benefice, Anjana Austin, and with the benefice children’s work leader, Julie Austin. The theme which Anjana has chosen is ‘Run to Win’, and it is based on the final few verses of the chapter, 24-27, which stand alone within this letter and offer a challenging message.

The people of Corinth would have been very familiar with the pan-Hellenic games, most especially the Isthmian games, which they had hosted every two years since the re-founding of the town as a Roman colony under Julius Caesar. For us, as we imagine the games, we should visualise a cross between a modern multi event sports competition and a festival. Competitions included not only sports but also arts. Competitors entered a wide variety of disciplines. A famous example is the female athlete Hedea, whose name appears on an inscription in Delphi. She competed in games across the country and won the war-chariot race at the Isthmian games, the 200m at the Nemean and the Sicyonian games and the prize for young lyre-players in Athens.

For Hedea, and athletes like her, winning mattered. She ran for glory, the only prize being a crown of celery. She ran to win because it was winners who gained the interest of patrons, who got invitations to give after dinner speeches or play their instruments at events. She ran to win because if you did not win you were a loser. There was no glory in coming second, and much less chance of winning the patronage that brought an income and the freedom to train hard and to keep on competing and winning. In that, a classical athlete was not so very different from a modern one. Hedea won glory, and that is how we come to know her story. Her hard training brought plaudits that made her worth remembering on a monument in her home town. She worked hard for it. Each day would have doubtless involved running, riding, chariot practice, lyre practise to keep her at the top of the field. And her hard work was symbolised by a circle of wilted celery.

Paul compared being a follower of Jesus to the discipline required of an athlete in the games. We need to have the same determination and dedication in honing our skills as followers. We need to be equally focussed on being the best, not settling for anything less. The prize is a much better one though: not a short-lived, wilting crown of salad, but the eternal crown of glory that is being received, forgiven, into God’s presence forever. That is a prize so much more worth training for. Paul demands that we work as hard on our spiritual disciplines as the very best athletes. We need to be as committed in our training as Mo Farah is in his, to practice as hard as Lang Lang does at the piano.

But that raises the question: what are the disciplines we are practising hard at?

Perhaps you might consider these:

• ·       prayer – in all its forms, listening hard to the Holy Spirit of God
• ·       deepening your knowledge and understanding of scripture
• ·       building up the church in unity and love
• ·       caring lovingly for each other, inside and outside the church family
• ·       telling others about Jesus
• ·       caring for creation
• ·       seeking justice and being agents of mercy, peace and reconciliation

(and if you spot the five marks of mission embedded in that list, well done).

Hedea wouldn’t have done it alone, of course. Someone taught her how to ride and to race, showed her the fingering on the lute. Someone coached her at the gym, perhaps someone else encouraged her and cheered her on, and someone else made sure that she had a good meal at the end of a training session. So what about us? We don’t train alone either. Who are our supporters?

First of all, we are members of Team Jesus. The team is owned by God, and the Holy Spirit is an active, hands on manager. God has called people to be local managers across the nations. Depending on our traditions, we might call those people bishops, archbishops, apostles, chairs, moderators, senior pastors… they are there as vision setters, teachers, example givers, supporters. They in turn encourage and enable local leaders in churches who might be compared to the coaching team. Your parish priest or church minister or pastor is joined by elders or deacons or readers or lay ministers or leaders of teams, and they are able to help with that practice that is so vital every day.

Like anyone in training, we also draw a lot of support from those training alongside us. We encourage each other, spur each other on, and perhaps shame each other into turning up for training sessions, whether that’s a cell group, prayer group, house group, team meeting or simply turning up to a church service.

We draw some help from experts in the field too. Watching films, reading books or articles, listening to podcasts, attending courses or going to events beyond our own churches – a diocesan bible day, for example – all help us to improve and grow in our discipleship. And of course, we must always pay attention to the best help God has given us that we can handle, our bibles.

So, as you reflect on your training needs if you are going to train in such a way that you run to win a lasting crown, perhaps you can prayerfully reflect on these questions:

• ·       who do you need to talk to and get help from in order to improve your training programme?
• ·       are there people you can help with their training? Who should you be praying for and/or actively helping?
• ·       who is in training alongside you? who do you pray with, study with, go out to visit with? How can you support each other?