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Sunday, January 11, 2015

Love Builds Up

A Sermon Based Upon 1 Corinthians 3: 10-17
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Baptism of Jesus, Year (B),   January 11th, 2015

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? (1Co 3:16 NRS)

As we continue our study of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we need to be reminded that we are studying how to be a loving church and a loving people.   When we study how to love, we should also be learning how to be the kind of people who build each other up so each and every one of us can be the people we are meant to be.   Why should we build each other up, rather than tear each other down?   The answer, says Paul, comes in understanding who we are:  “We are God’s temple,” Paul says.  But what does that mean?

There aremany ways to try to understand what it means for a human being to be a ‘temple’ or ‘sanctuary’ where God’s Spirit dwells, but I don’t think there any way better way to begin to grasp it than when I first heard Chuck Swindoll quote Margery Williams’ classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit:   “Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse (to the Velveteen Rabbit).  'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
        'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
        'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
        'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
        'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.   But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”   (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1602074-the-velveteen-rabbit).

Today we have a lesson on how to become the ‘real’ people God has created us to become.
Our focus will be on this text from 1 Corinthians 3: 10-17, but our goal is to learn what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 8.1, when he says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  Today we want to learn more fully what it means to be built up so that we all can be living sanctuaries that reveal and display God’s instructive and constructive love.

LOVE BUILDS UP….   ACCORDING TO THE GRACE OF GOD 
The very first lesson Paul has for us is that our temple, the real me and the real you, where God dwells in us, is a sanctuary or temple that is built ‘according to the grace of God that is given…” (3:10).   This means that the way God builds his house is not the way we might build one.   When Paul says we are built ‘according to grace’, he refers to everything he has just said.   He has said that he did not come ‘proclaiming the mystery of God with lofty words or wisdom’  (2.1).   He said, he ‘decided to know nothing... except Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (2.2).   He said, …. we do not speak....with a wisdom of this age….but we are…taught by the Spirit…” (2.6,13).   The love that builds us up,  is a love that is  ‘beyond’ the normal or natural capacity.    The ‘Spirit’ that builds us up in love, rather than puffing us up like a hot air balloon, deflates us in order to make us real Christians as it makes us real people.  

When we encounter God’s Spirit which is expressed in unconditional love, we also encounter the potential to be challenged and to be changed.   It is this very love, a love that is ‘according to grace’, apart from the law (even God’s law, as Paul made clear in Romans 3.21),  is the kind of love that builds us up.   This does not mean that there are no laws worth living, or that God’s moral laws have become null and void through grace, but it means that only a love that goes straight to the heart, based on the heart of God that is for, not against us, is the kind of love that can transform us into the people we are meant to be.

Christians legalists, just like the Jewish legalists, Paul confronted in Romans 2 and 3, cannot build each other up nor can they built any kind of lasting ‘temple’ or people, who will be able to withstand the evils of this world.   Even when the legalists are right, they still lack the one thing God uses to build us up:  love.   We can only become God’s temple, God’s eternal sanctuary, when we base our lives upon the unlimited gifts of God’s love and grace.  

In an recent article about the signs of our times, Biblical Recorder editor Alan Blume and others were reacting to a troubling decision made by Houston courts on October 15th of last year, when a Houston attorney issued subpoenas demanding certain pastor’s turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or with the city’s first openly lesbian mayor, Annise Parker.   (Biblical Recorder, October 25, 2014, p. 2).    In response, Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission,  rightly said that ‘a government has no business…bullying the preaching of any church, any synagogue, any mosque, or any other place of worship’ unless that place of worship intends to bring bodily hurt and harm.   “Houston, We Have A Constitution!”  Moore wrote.    The article went on to advise Christians and pastors to launch into full-fledged political mode, using all the political power they could muster, to vote out all the evil doers, as if Christians, by being salt and light, could achieve the moral salvation of our country. 

I agree much of this analysis of America’s moral problems, and I am concerned about them too.   But it is what this encouragement to join a strong-handed political approach leaves out that bothers me.   A couple of years ago, another North Carolina Baptist State Convention consultant visited our Pastor’s conference and he reminded us, that people who are struggling need our love, compassion, and understanding rather than our condemnation, our denunciation, or hate.  He rightly said our major battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, and against matters of the heart and Spirit, which cannot be defeated with mere political strategies or organized votes.   I think there is some great wisdom here which the church needs in these days of moral decline and decay.

The way I see it, as Christians, we are not called to be custodians of the state’s morality, which is a kingdom of this world that we cannot save, but we are called to be stewards of the gospel, which is a kingdom that is eternal and belongs only to God.   Salvation is something only God can give to people or to a nation.  And it is a salvation that can only be won through the truth that comes from God’s forgiving love and grace.  

While I believe it is important for Christians to be good citizens, and that we should express and vote our moral conviction at the ballot box, we must also remember the church’s business not to win votes, but to continue to do God’s business the same way Jesus did God’s business.    This means that we must not ‘fight’ in the same way the world puts up a fight.   If we only draw lines in the sand, define our enemies, and then go after and attack them in hopes us being winners and them being losers, we will not win.   

I once lived a while in Europe where 95 percent of the people still do not go to church.   I know what it is to live in a culture where the church has very little, if any earthly, political power.    I know what happened when the church tried to fight Nazism or Communism and or any other –ism and does not win.   If we only fight to win, we end up exactly where we have always been---being a nation, a people, who remain unchanged sinners and losers.   But if we will dare to live like Jesus, to intentionally lose by turning the other cheek, by resisting the ways of the world, not only with the power of our conviction, but also with power of our compassion,  we can fight the good fight with hope----that in a world that still sins and in a world where Christians also must admit that they are still sinners too, we can have still have the hope of creating an atmosphere where people can still be transformed by God’s love and by God’s grace---no matter what happens.   

LOVE BUILDS UP….   WHEN WE BUILD ON THE RIGHT FOUNDATION
I don’t mean to be become political, but the truth is, when you follow Jesus you can’t help but become political.   But this means becoming political in a completely different way than we normally see modeled in human politics as usual.  

As Paul reminds us, the kind of foundation we built upon is not a mere  ‘human foundation’, where people tear at each other, struggling to defeat and conquer an opponent.   But the foundation the Christian builds upon is a foundation that cannot be defeated, no matter who wins or loses.  Is this kind of politic possible in our dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all world?   It is, if you truly believe in the Jesus who still works miracles, and gives eternal life to those who will trust and follow him in the work for justice, for morality, and for the sake of righteousness.  

But again, can building upon the foundation of God’s love really change the world or change our situation?   It can, but will not always turn out like we think.  
When 4 Navy Seals set out to secretly capture or kill the notorious Taliban leader, Amad Shah, their hiding place was tragically discovered by 3 goat herders.   But instead of killing the goat herders, the Seal’s decided to let them go.   It wasn’t so much an act of love, as much as, they were afraid that killing them would appear all over the media.   So, they let them go.   Then, it wasn’t long after the goat herder were released, that the Seals came under attack, were quickly outnumbered, and even their rescue helicopter was shot down.    There was only a “lone survivor” in the battle,  First Class Corpsman, Marcus Lutrell, who, though seriously injured, managed to escape by crawling 7 miles to a neighboring village.  

When he arrived at the village, this one surviving Navy Seal was taken in, hidden, and protected by an Afghan man, who because of a sacred tradition of showing hospitality to strangers, put his own life and his own village at risk, even putting at risk his own child, in order to help and hide the American solider until the US Military could be informed.    If it had not been for the sacred tradition of showing compassion, and the desire of that Afghani man to go against the politics of hate, this American solider, Marcus Lutrell, would not have had a chance to survive.  But he did survive.  He survived because of one Afghan man’s willingness to lead his village to go against the evil and to courageously risk a sacred, if not ‘foolish’ act of compassion. (http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/lone-survivor.php).

When I first learned of this tragic, but heroic story, at first, I thought how foolish it also was that those Navy Seals released those 3 goat herders after they had captured them.   If they had killed them instead, they might not have been discovered, and many American soldiers lives could have been spared   But there is something else.  If they had not acted with compassion for those 3 goat herders, the whole ordeal, as tragic and terrible as it was, would not have been a story worth telling.   It is the story of love, a story of love about people giving their lives for others that brings meaning in life and makes our lives worth living---even if it kills us in the process.   When we have compassion and love for others, even if they are different,  even if we disagree with them, or even when they are our enemies, we build on a foundation that has a power to both transform and even change the world,  even when it sometimes kills us in the process.    This is what love does, no matter what.   This is, as Paul says, a ‘foundation that no other person has laid” other than the one that was laid by Jesus Christ.    

How did Jesus first show this very different foundation based upon the power of God’s love?   We all know that Jesus did not resist the Jewish leaders who arrested him, but he was willing to die for them.   We also know that Jesus did not overthrow the Roman powers, but he submitted, even though, as Scripture says, he could have called his own legion of angels to his rescue.   Why did Jesus submit?   Why did Jesus die?  It wasn’t because Jesus was weak, nor was it because he agreed with the ways of Judaism in his day.   We know he didn’t agree with them because he outwardly challenged their hypocrisy and cold heartedness.   We also know that Jesus did not believe Rome had the final authority either.   He believed that one day Rome itself would see the Son of Man coming in glory and would finally submit to God’s authority.   But instead of fighting these evils straight on, Jesus was willing to wait on God, and even to suffer and die to establish a whole new way of confronting evils of his world and ours.  Jesus died so that his sacrifice would transform and redeem not just our enemy, but also would transform and save us.  Politics as usual seldom saves anyone, but the politics of love has the potential to save everyone---if we will join in with the story of God’s love.

LOVE BUILDS UP….   WHEN WE BELONG TO JESUS CHRIST
Is this story of love---a love really worth finding, a love worth living into, and a love worth giving our lives for?   Will we join with Jesus by taking up our own cross in order to build upon the foundation only he has established, so that we can challenge the world in a very different way?   It’s certainly not easy, and it will certainly cost us.   Who would want to risk love like those Seals did?  Who would want to risk love like that Afghan tribesman did?   Why would we take such risks and partake in such ‘foolishness’, as Paul himself named this very strange way to save the world---to save it by building on the foundation of sacrificing love?   Who would we ever attempt something like this?  

God did.  And that is what makes the gospel good news---instead of bad news.  
Instead of returning evil with evil, God returned evil with good.   It is this kind of ‘good’ that God provides to us as a witness to His love so that we too, can we have something to build our lives upon, so that our lives become the very sanctuary of God’s Spirit.   Because Jesus has already overcome the world with God’s love, God’s love can find its way into us.  

But how will we receive this great love into ourselves?   How will this kind of love become foundational for living our own lives?   We live in a world where there are so many other options, and there are still many obstacles to prevent us from wholeheartedly diving into a life based upon God’s love and grace.    How can live on this foundation no man has laid?   
You cannot and you will not try to live the basis of love, until you know you are loved.   You will not try to live like Jesus, until you know Jesus for yourself.   And you cannot and will not give up everything or anything, until you realize that you already have everything worth having, when you have love.  

And this is exactly what Paul means that we have when he says:  “All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belong to God”  (3: 21-23).    When you and I belong to Christ, “all things (already) belong to us. “ Do you get what Paul means?   It all goes back to what he said before,  when he says that one day ‘the work of each builder will become visiblefor the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done” (3: 13).   That which has built on the foundation, will survive, Paul says.   But even if the work does not survive, and even if the builder has suffered loss, because the builder has built on the right foundation,  the foundation of love, that builder will be saved, even if it is through the fire. (3:14-15).   

What is most reassuring about all this, is to God what matters most is not the things we accomplish in life, but when we accomplish love in our life it is this desire to love that guarantees our destiny in God.


What are you building your life upon?   Will it last?  Will you be saved?  It all depends even more on who you are than what you’ve done,  says Paul.    Those who build on the right foundation will survive the fire.   You can survive the coming fire too, when your life does not belong to you, but you belong Christ.    Nothing and no one will be loss in him.   You are God’s temple, and no one can destroy the place where God lives---no one.     Is that who you are?   Do you not know that you too are a sanctuary of the God who wants to build us all up in his love?   You are his temple, aren’t you?  You are building on His foundation of love, aren’t you?   There is no other foundation that will last.    There is no other foundation that is worth having or wroth lasting---this is the foundation that Jesus Christ has laid, and he laid it in love.    What other true foundation is there?   We must be ‘careful’ which foundation we choose.    We are God’s field.  We re God’s building.  We are God’s temple and sanctuary.  We are also God’s builders, who are to work together and have only one foundation to build upon---and that is to build each other up in love.  Amen.

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