[Sermon delivered at St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona (https://stmarysphoenix.org) for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 20, 2021]
✠In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
A popular meme on the Internet has, in typical pithy and over-generalized fashion, broken down St. Paul’s writings into two categories:
1. We are heirs through unfathomable grace to unimaginable glory.
2. I am as a personal favour begging you sick little freaks to act normal for five minutes.
Today’s epistle reading[1] is firmly in the vein of item number 2. After all, he is writing to the Corinthian Church, one of his favoured problem children. Corinth was an important city and had been for quite a while. It sits on the narrow strip of land that connects mainland Greece with the Peloponnesus, so there was a lot of overland traffic between the two halves of Greece. It was on the “right” side of the isthmus, so its port was both good and relatively easy to get to and somewhat sheltered. Corinth was stinking, filthy, bleeding rich, and its Church was not exactly hurting for cash either, but it had its problems. If you want a catalogue of those problems, however, please pick up your Bible at home, flip to 1 Corinthians, and have a read.
Who knows, you may recognize some of your fellow parishioners, or Heaven forefend, yourself.
Now, St. Paul’s life’s work was telling people about the grace of God. He did everything he could to get that message across. Did he stop short of making a fool of himself? By his own admission, no. Did he stop short of alienating people? He would not be St. Paul if he did. Did he present it in a way to preserve his dignity and honour? He really did not care. To St. Paul, the message that despite us being lost in our sins and dedicated enemies of God, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ suffered horribly, died dishonourably, and rose again triumphantly to break the hold of Sin and Corruption over us and to reconcile us to God and to have eternal life with Him.
Hear St. Paul’s words, “See, NOW is the acceptable time, see, NOW is the day of salvation!” He is in lock step with the Epistolographer to the Hebrews by referring to Psalm 95:7, “Oh that TODAY you would hearken to His voice!” St. Paul’s words convey a sense of urgency. For St. Paul, the Lord would come again soon, and the choice of men and women would be upon them. Also, until then, St. Paul wanted to get the news to as many people as possible before each confronted his or her own death. The news was that good and the offer was that spectacular that St. Paul knew it had to get out there. After all, eternal lives were at stake.
So, what is St. Paul’s beef with the Corinthians? Why did he enjoined them “…not to accept the grace of God in vain?” Throughout the Epistle we get a picture of the Church in Corinth being wealthy and somewhat stuck on itself, supposedly deeply spiritual but perhaps only fixated on the flash and sizzle, presuming on the grace of God but sitting on it and not sharing it. In this whole Epistle St. Paul works to turn their priorities, letting them know that while the flashy parts of Christianity may be “personally fulfilling”, they do not build up other Christians per se and they certainly do not lead people outside the Church to repentance. Consider the thirteenth chapter of this Epistle, because it hammers home the point that St. Paul thinks the Corinthians are missing, that it all must be done for LOVE.
That is St. Paul’s true motive. Salvation is great news, sharing it is a good idea, but it is love that drove him and it is love that is the greatest of all. St. John agrees with him in his first epistle, going so far to say that God Himself is LOVE, and that if we have no love for each other, God is not in us.
St. Paul also tells the Corinthians that this love is not cheap. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that true love has a high price and offered his own example. He did jail time, suffered sleep deprivation, survived riots, shipwreck, multiple bashings, loss of reputation, endured destitution, and through it all he strove still to be loving (even through his crankiness), to have patience with suffering hardship and hard people, to exhibit singleness of purpose and affection, kindness, and dedication to God, all of that so NOTHING would get in the way of his ministry.
Thus, St. Paul begs the question of the Corinthians, “So why ARE you Christians after all?”
Actually he is asking the same question of us.
Why indeed ARE we Christians?
After all, we do not HAVE to be. The legal impediments are gone. There is no real financial penalty in disavowing allegiance to God or even rejecting God’s existence (in fact, it is likely easier to amass ridiculously huge amounts of wealth keeping God out of your life). So really, why ARE we still Christian and have not fled with many others to practice some other philosophy or religion or even nothing at all?
Social scientists and psychologists have many explanations as to why people hold onto a faith or religion. Spoiler alert: I really do not disagree with many of those theories. The science explains both why many still hold on, but it also explains why so many fall away or even never embrace Christianity at all. The Church is haemorrhaging membership for many reasons. The Church suffers the reputation as a money-grubbing institution intent on the enrichment of its leaders. It is seen as a huge pyramid or Ponzi scheme. Church leaders and its rank and file have violated and abused trust by squeezing the poor, oppressing the foreigner, and victimizing vulnerable men, women, and children. Rapacious regimes have veiled themselves with the Church to exploit and stifle and enslave other lands and peoples. What would St. Paul say? This behaviour obscures the Gospel that he so fervently wishes to share with everyone. After all, St. Paul was not out to make more Anglicans, er, Jews, he was out to get the nations to receive God’s grace whatever their own contexts.
I will tell you why I am still a Christian, despite everything that has gone on in my life. There was a time I was ready to fold it in and abandon the cultural window dressing of my faith. I was depressed, despondent, and had pretty much given up. I did not quite, however, because I remembered the message that God came among us in Jesus of Nazareth, lived, taught, suffered, died, and rose again to break Satan’s hold over us and to reconcile us to God Himself and in doing so give us eternal life in Him. God went out of His way to deliver me in all my brokenness, but not just me. He also went out of His way to deliver you in whatever brokenness you have, but not just you. THAT is why I am still a Christian.
Many, Christian or not, oppose mission work like St. Paul’s, seeing it as colonization attempts and cultural assassination. And that is true, particularly how so many of us conduct it. St. Paul, however, calls for mission without enculturation. St. Gregory the Great called it baptizing a culture. Proclaiming that now is the day of salvation means that we Corinthians need to empty ourselves and our agenda. We are not to proclaim the Gospel to pacify “savages” so that we can get cheaper raw materials, more land, more cheap labour. We are to proclaim the Gospel to free humankind from slavery to Sin and Death, to frustrate Satan’s plan to drive as many of us away from God as possible.
We cannot accept this grace in vain. It is transformative. It transforms any and all who accept it. Let us each allow it to transform us. Unless we let God’s grace transform us, any attempt to share the Gospel becomes colonization. Unless we let God’s grace transform us, we turn inward and stagnate. St. Paul knows this and is begging us sick little freaks to act normal for at least five minutes and let it transform us. He gave up creature comforts, security, physical safety, his health, and eventually his life to get the message to us, so we too could hear the words of Eternal Life and in our own culture receive it and find the power to transform ourselves. That power is the love of God.
“…We urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For He says, ‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’”
✠Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
Icon of the Holy Apostle Paul, 14th Century A.D., Dionysiou Monastery, Mt. Athos
[1] 2 Cor. 6.1-13