Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 25, 2009
I Corinthians 7:17-24; 29-31
I don't know about you, but I find this to be a rather interesting text for the Sunday after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Because for months leading up to the inauguration, on the day of the inauguration, and since the inauguration, the one constant theme, repeated in any number of ways, has been the theme of change. The election and inauguration of Barack Obama means change is coming - change we can believe in we are told. Everybody seems to want change. We are excited about change.
And yet, it would seem the Apostle Paul is taking us in the opposite direction. It would seem that he's advising the Corinthians not to make changes. "Let each of you live the life to which the Lord has assigned you. In whatever condition you find yourself, free or slave, married or unmarried, mourning or rejoicing, stay there." Can this be right? Am I hearing Paul correctly? Is he arguing against change? Is he the anti-Obama? While our new President insists, "Yes, we can," is Paul saying, "No we can't.": Or am I missing something here?
A story told by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon. "In the church where I grew up, we often had something called a 'revival.' A revival sometimes lasted a week and we had preaching every evening. At the end of every revival sermon was the 'altar call,' in which folk were asked to come down and give or rededicate their lives to Christ.
"Well, in the early 60's a prominent preacher visited our church one Sunday. He preached a strong, energetic message, something a bit stronger than we were used to on a typical Sunday morning. He preached about God's kingdom. He told us that God was looking for folks to come forward and be part of God's new order. That new order was characterized by love, by justice, and by respect for all God's children. Now understand that this was the American south of the 1960's. In my young mind, as I heard the preacher, I really didn't make a connection between the world he was talking about and the world I lived in. Preachers had a habit of talking about somewhere, someplace, that always seemed a long way from where we lived, like describing life on another planet." (Say it ain't so.)
He continues, "But then the preacher ended his sermon with an altar call. He called upon us to get up and come forward and give our lives to this new world, to dedicate ourselves to live our lives without racial prejudice, to give ourselves totally to God's standards of goodness, and to work for and witness to racial justice in the South. The organ played softly, our preacher and this visiting preacher came down front and stood, looking out toward the congregation, ready to greet those who came forward to dedicate their lives to this new order, they stood and...nobody came.
"Our pastor sort of embarrassedly ended the service, gave the benediction and we all went home to Sunday dinner. On the way out, I heard some of the church leaders muttering, 'That preacher ought never to be invited to preach here again.' But," says Willimon, "that preacher was trying to help us go and do good news." And I have to wonder if that isn't precisely what Paul is doing in this rather puzzling text. I mean, on the one hand, it does sound like he's telling us not to change - stay where you are, keep doing what you're doing. After all, we are living in the last days. God's going to come soon and put an end to all of this anyway so why bother. None of it's going to matter. Stay where you are. It's ending. It would be nice if it could happen before April 15, but who knows if that is going to be the case. This could be what Paul is telling us.
Or, could it be that he is saying just the opposite. Could he be saying go out there and dare to live your lives, dare to live the Gospel - as if...as if everything is about to change, as if everything indeed has changed...because it has. Go out there and in whatever circumstance you find yourself, slave or free, married or unmarried, Jew or Greek, live the good news...boldly, without fear.
Because, in Christ, that new world that's coming has already dawned. "People, get ready, there's a train a-comin'..." And old conditions, old points of view, old ways of doing things and treating people, no longer apply. The old has passed away - the new has come.
Now, most of the world doesn't know this, says Paul, but you know it. And so while you must live in this world, you cannot allow yourselves to be held captive or conform to the values and structures of this world. You must live as if it is all passing away...because, in fact, it already has. The new is here. The anti-Obama? Or maybe one of Obama's speech writers!
A pastor writes, "Her surgery was over. Now her cancer seemed at last to be held in abeyance. But at a great cost. Her tumor had been removed from her spine, but she was left unable to walk. She said to me, 'In just a few days, I've gone from complete independence to great dependence. So many of the things I once enjoyed doing - biking, gardening - all that seems to be taken from me. I just can't imagine my life in this way.' My heart went out to her. Could she have a new life? Out of this sad tragedy, could there be a new beginning? What she needed most was not a new attitude, but a whole new world, a world different from the old. Do you think I, as her pastor, could dare to pray for such a world?" I can't tell you how many times I leave a hospital room, or a convalescent home, or a grieving family, or yesterday, leaving my sister still hooked up to dialysis, with that question on my heart. Dare I speak of, dare I pray for, dare I put my faith in, a whole new world?
I think that's precisely what Paul did. Because he saw God's new world breaking in all around him. The future, not as our creation, but rather as God's creation, God's gift, God as the source and standard of all of our meaning and hope. And so he told the Corinthians, "No matter what your situation in life, you can dare to live out the Gospel, you can dare to believe in new life, new hope, you can live as if that new world's a-comin'...because, again, it is. And you've seen it - a world given flesh and blood, bone and purpose in the person of Jesus Christ."
It was Winston Churchill who said, "Sometimes we learn from history, But most of the time we just pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and go right on as we had before." Churches are good at that. And it can be tough to believe that newness is possible, that a new world is possible. Perhaps that is why President Obama's inaugural address, at least to me, seemed so serious, at times almost solemn - very few applause lines in that speech. Perhaps he understands just how hard it is to convince people that the new has come, that they need to live as if the new has come. You'll note he quoted the Apostle Paul. From a hospital room to the halls of Washington, to the annual meeting of the church, it can be difficult to embrace the new, to believe in it, to see it, as if it's already here.
A while back I came across these words from a Baccalaureate Address given by Mary Moschella of Harvard Divinity School. She reflected on her years of schooling as the end of one world and the beginning of another. In her words, "Last summer I was in Israel, working on an archaeological dig at the site of the ancient city of Dor. Excavating at the level of the Iron Age can be rather tedious. Only rarely did we turn up any precious small finds. Most of the time we spent staring at dirt walls and broken pottery shards. All of the brokenness appeared to me as an accurate metaphor for understanding the world. Broken and crushed, every piece of it broken with small personal pains, as well as with overwhelmingly large human struggles. Yet, as the summer went on, and I kept staring at the pottery, I slowly started to notice something more than just the brokenness. Some of the pieces of clay, however broken, were really quite beautiful.
"Later in the summer, I found out about the business of pottery mending. This tedious work goes on year-round in a cathedral-like building not far from the dig. Here ancient vessels have been slowly and carefully reconstructed. Seeing those beautifully restored vessels encouraged me to imagine perhaps that at least some of the world's brokenness could be overcome. I began to picture myself in a kind of vocation of mending, of repairing some of the world's brokenness, of mending the world. These are the tasks that I perceived the world to be demanding of me." Mending the world.
I think Paul wants us to know this is God's task - mending our world, mending our hearts - and it's a task that God never puts down, because God continues to create, continues to bring forth newness and overcome brokenness. And that is why we can be about the task of mending and repairing, of hoping for a new world. This is why we can continue to live and share this Gospel in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. Because God's ongoing creativity and newness know no bounds.
And so here, at what is still the beginning of the new year - with so much talk and hope of newness in the air - I don't know what new birth, new life, or new world you might need. Maybe you are in a situation where your world seems just to be falling apart. Maybe life has become chaotic and dark for you. Maybe the world has finally worn you down, finally convincing you that yes, there is nothing new under the sun. But then here comes Paul and he looks at us and he wants to know when was it that we decided God was finished with us? He wants to know when it was that the God who called all of this into being, who spoke a whole new world into being, who chose to come among us in a new world made flesh, when was it that this God decided to be done with creation and new life? Paul says, "No, God is never done." And so, dare to live as if God isn't done, for it is in the very nature of the Holy One to brood, to birth, and to bring forth newness. And for each of us, for our church, for our world that is very good news.