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Sunday July 5, 2009 "Prove It" 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 7/15/2009 11:56 AM | Paul is certainly an interesting character.
Oh, the Bible is full of interesting characters, but none of them are quite so fascinating as Paul. Moses is interesting in his way: a man of quick temper and strong faith. Job perseveres like no one I have ever encountered. Jonah is about as stubborn as anyone could be. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the obedient servant who bears her burden with grace and dignity. Jesus is a fascinating study of what humanity is at its best. But Paul…well, the complexity of the man is almost overwhelming.
Remember Paul’s story: he was born Saul, a devout Jew who made a career out of putting down and shutting up those who would challenge the Jewish leaders, those whose blasphemy could not be tolerated. He had been especially effective at rooting out the followers of Jesus, those people who had the audacity to declare that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead, the messiah come to save Israel.
Saul came by his beliefs naturally. He was raised the son of devout Jews and had been educated at the feet of holy men. His faith was strong and his willingness to do what needed to be done in the name of his faith was enormous.
Then came that fateful day on the road to Damascus when he was struck blind and the voice of Jesus asked him, “Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Thus began the conversion of Saul. He took the Roman name Paul and instead of working diligently to eradicate the followers of Jesus, he turned his attention to just as diligently build up the church of Jesus Christ and became the greatest evangelist the church has ever known.
Many in the Christian movement suspected that Paul was not who he claimed to be. They worried that his infiltration into their circles was a trick to root out leadership and destroy the followers of Christ. Still, Paul continued his ministry, starting new churches, dealing with the doubts of those who knew him as Saul the persecutor, doing his best to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We have evidence of so much of his work in his correspondence to various churches and individuals. In these letters we see a man who endures suffering and prison in the name of Christ. He shows himself to be a master politician in dealing with the different new church starts. He weaves his way through many difficult situations of doctrine and tradition by doing his best to help the churches move forward and continually falls back on his bedrock: what matters is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Doctrine and tradition are developed by humanity and must be secondary to the simple truth: Jesus lived and died for our sins and provides a way to salvation for everyone. Over and over again Paul seeks to deal with the questions of the new churches, and over and over again, Paul seeks to make sure that the message of Jesus shines through.
One of the interesting things about Paul’s correspondence is that we only have Paul’s correspondence. Clearly some of his letters are responses to questions and concerns that others have posed to him. But we don’t know exactly who those people are and we don’t know precisely what their questions ad concerns are.
2 Corinthians is such a letter. What we know is that Paul founded the church in Corinth but over time, tensions between Paul and the Corinthian church grew. Here is what we can piece together through a reading of scripture:
After Paul founded the church in Corinth and left on his missionary travels, the congregation wrote to him at least once, presumably with questions. Paul wrote back, and though this letter has been lost, it is mentioned in 1st Corinthians. Then Paul wrote them a letter of advice and encouragement while he was in Ephesus.
Some time later, Paul sent Timothy to Corinth as his personal emissary. Timothy returned to Paul with reports that a new group of Jewish-Christian missionaries had come to Corinth and were undermining Paul’s teaching, and more importantly, Paul’s authority as an Apostle of Jesus Christ.
Paul termed these missionaries “false apostles” or in a more biting tone, “super apostles”.
Another visit to Corinth ended badly for Paul as many had begun to doubt Paul’s credentials as an apostle and the “super apostles” seemed to hold more and more sway over the church at Corinth.
There follows a series of exchanges and most scholars believe 2nd Corinthians is a collection of letters that Paul sent to Corinth to encourage, and most importantly, to rail against the super apostles who had taken up residence in Corinth. His railing is part of what we heard this morning.
Think about this for a minute: Paul has had the experience of all experiences. He has been confronted by the risen Christ. He felt the full weight of Christ’s presence and turned his entire life around to make up for past wrongs and to further the spread of the gospel in the world. Yet, he is threatened by missionaries who claim to have the true word of God.
There is no doubt that Paul is a special person, even a super achiever. I bet we have all known some people like this. People who accomplish great things, who don’t do anything half-way, people who are a bit larger than life, people who sometimes can be quite self-absorbed and boastful. Over and over again when Paul is challenged we see him get his hackles up. Apparently, in his visit to Corinth, or somewhere in lost correspondence, somebody confronted Paul with a statement that was sure to aggravate him. “If you are so sure you are right, then prove it.” And in response, Paul all but hisses, “How dare you question me! I am Paul, Apostle of Christ, the one whom Christ himself chose on the road to Damascus. That experience and my work are all the credentials I need!”
This is where our scripture lesson this morning begins. Paul is trying to defend himself, yet also trying to make sure that the super apostles are discredited, too.
He wants to shout about his experience, but if he does that, he will sound exactly like the people who oppose him. You see, one of the things that seems to have captured the attention of the people of Corinth is that the super apostles have claimed their authority based on their religious experiences and have set up their ministries by putting themselves at the center of attention, by showing that they are special, they are chosen by God as special emissaries.
But Paul surely can trump that, can’t he? Of course he can, but if you look through the letters that we know Paul wrote, only once does he reference the road to Damascus experience. In Galatians Paul wrote that he first heard the proclamation of the Gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ. There is no involved story of the blindness and the voice of Jesus or the visitor that came with a separate message from God. It is simple, unadorned, and to the point.
But when we read Paul’s words here in 2 Corinthians, he is fairly jumping out of his skin to assert his own credentials based on his experiences! He knows that one way to fight these opponents would be to top them, one-up them, speak about his bigger, better, more fantastic religious experiences. He begins to tell a story about someone he knew who had a particularly amazing experience. But who could this man be? Scholars believe it is Paul himself.
There is never any other mention of the experience that Paul describes. He describes a man who somehow was taken up into heaven, who saw things that no other mortal had seen, who wasn’t even sure if he was bodily taken up or spiritually. If someone came into this sanctuary this morning and began to tell a story of being taken up into heaven and began to describe what they saw, we’d take note, wouldn’t we? Oh, there might be some skepticism, but we would listen, wouldn’t we? We would be fascinated, wouldn’t we? We might pay attention to other things they said, too.
So, why doesn’t Paul seize the moment and exert his own authority by claiming this story as his own, as scholars believe it to be? Why doesn’t he tell his conversion story in every wonderful detail so people will understand the importance of his message?
Paul doesn’t want to go there precisely because he wants the message of Jesus Christ to be the important part of his story, not his experience.
And so, he begins to tell this story of someone he knew. He says he will boast on their behalf, but not on his own. Why? Why doesn’t he just stand up and shout, “You want special? Let me tell you about my encounters with God!”
He doesn’t because he knows that by doing that he will be doing exactly what the super apostles are doing: making their experiences more important than the gospel message. He believe that those who boast of their experiences and seek to use the power of those experiences to build their ministries run the risk of setting themselves up as more important than the message of Jesus Christ.
The great theologian Karl Barth wrote that had Paul succumbed to promoting his own experience, he would have sent the message that human experience is more important than the gospel message. Barth went on to write that he believed that the church had fallen prey to this thinking too often in its history. The building of ornate cathedrals and the institution of regal pomp and tradition and the veneration of the priesthood was exactly what Paul wanted to avoid. Paul simply wanted to build the Body of Christ.
And so, as he fights his own desire to one-up the super apostles, Paul teaches us an important lesson: it’s not about us, it’s not about who we claim to be, it’s not about building the most powerful ministry, or the biggest mega church. It’s about declaring the Good News of Jesus Christ, first, last and always.
It’s about welcoming children into our fellowship, like we did last week with Sophie helping to nurture her toward a life of grace and love. It’s about opening our doors and welcoming in all who come to find peace and sanctuary. It’s about reaching beyond these walls and letting others know that we are here to help in any way we can.
Paul knew that if he became too caught up in self-aggrandizement, he would forget the reason he was there. He knew that in his humanness he might easily fall victim to the super apostle thinking and begin to carry out his ministry based on his experiences and his desires rather than on what Jesus can offer the world.
That is still the issue we face today. We cannot get so caught up in being “the church” that that we forget the message we are called to give. And that message is what Jesus himself declared at the beginning of the ministry: hope for the hopeless, release for the captives, comfort for the afflicted. We are well grounded here at Brookhaven to understand that we serve God through serving others. We open our doors and welcome people to worship and fellowship with us. We seek to be good stewards of all we have been given by providing pleasing space for fellowship and education and worship. And, we must always remember that some of the most important work we do is not in this building, not within these walls. It is work that will not assure us rapid growth or increased contributions. It is work that that is done without drawing attention to BCC or to ourselves. It is simply going out and serving God’s people.
Service to God’s people has always been a part of who we are, but in the times in which we live, it is even more important that we seek to serve as Jesus served: to feed the hungry, to comfort the lonely, to befriend the friendless. Which is why we need to continue to commit ourselves to continually increase our role in community service, continually work to find ways to step outside our comfort zone and help those who need help.
That is the essence of what Paul is struggling with in this passage. He knows that he could build an incredible ministry if he built the church around him, but he also knew that it would get in the way of what he was trying to do.
Paul went on in the passage to say that he had a “thorn” that was given him by Satan, a thorn that actually turned out to be useful because it kept him from getting too full of himself. It kept him focused on the fact that he was human, with frailties and faults and imperfections. It kept him remembering that God is in charge and that God’s message is the important thing to remember.
I do not read this to mean that our physical limitations and ailments are “gifts from God” but rather it is a way to remember that in our weakness, God can still be glorified and the gospel can still ring true.
I also read it with an understanding that there are a lot of people out there with thorns. People who are hurting, people who need what the gospel can offer. People who we can help.
It is a simple message, but one we must never, ever lose sight of: it’s not about us. It’s not about what we say. It’s not about what we can prove. It’s about what we do. It’s about who we help. It’s about where our hearts are. It’s about continuing to expand our ministry both inside these walls and outside these walls because there are needs in both places. It’s about declaring the Good News of Jesus Christ. First, last and always.
God has used so many people for so many purposes. Different gifts, different styles, different personalities. Only thing is constant in Moses and Job and Jonah and Mary and Jesus and Paul: they have nothing to prove…but they have plenty to do: all in God’s name. May it be so, for you and for me and for the Brookhaven Christian Church.
Let us pray: Lord, we are comfortable in this sanctuary. Let us not become too comfortable. Let us not become too enamored of what we have done, lest we forget that what’s most important is what you have done and what you continue to do. Help us to remember that we are here because of you and help us to recommit our efforts to serving your people wherever we meet them, so that they too, might find comfort in your presence. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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