Paul in Corinth, Part 3

Luke 4:21-30; I Corinthians 13:1-13; Jeremiah 1:4-10

Jeremiah 1:4-10

{4} Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, {5} “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” {6} Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” {7} But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, {8} Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” {9} Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. {10} See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

{1} If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. {2} And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. {3} If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

{4} Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant {5} or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; {6} it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. {7} It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

{8} Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. {9} For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; {10} but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. {11} When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. {12} For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. {13} And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Luke 4:21-30

{21} Then Jesus began to say to them in the synagogue, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” {22} All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph's son?”

{23} He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” {24} And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. {25} But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; {26} yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. {27} There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” {28} When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. {29} They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. {30} But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

The Sermon

Well I hope you don’t mind too much one more Sunday hearing about the church in Corinth.

We’ve had a lot of trouble.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the people with all the advantages—social, economic, and political—using those advantages to press another one: theological. They wanted everybody else in the church to bow to them, because, as they said, the fact that we have all this, and can do all this, clearly shows that the Holy Spirit has blessed us more generously than the rest of you—which means, we are being called to have a special place in the church. You, not so much.

And to prove their point, some of them started showing off spiritual gifts, one of which was speaking in tongues.

In Acts, when the Holy Spirit whooshed into the house where the disciples were sitting on the day of Pentecost, all of a sudden they were filled with the Spirit, and “tongues, as of flame” rested over each one’s head; and they went out into the street, in that mega-cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem, and they were all just showering the people with the Good News of Jesus Christ. But the kicker was, each spoke in a different tongue—get it?—and so all of those international people in the city of Jerusalem were now hearing the Word in their own languages.

And I suppose the so-called “stronger” members of our church in Corinth were familiar with that story, because just when the others of us—the so-called “weaker” members of the church—started asking questions, all of a sudden, the stronger had this new gift to unveil.

I don’t know if they realized or not that what happened to the disciples was that they could suddenly speak languages that people understood. What our friends in Corinth were doing was just making noise—inspired by the Holy Spirit, they told us, but just making noise.

It almost seemed like they were doing it just to show off, to further demonstrate their superiority over the rest of us. But of course we couldn’t say that; and even when Paul the Apostle came to visit us, and obviously was kind of “on our side,” he never went so far as to accuse them of faking it.

He was cleverer than that. Instead of making an accusation he couldn’t prove, he went even further than they did. He said, “Oh, yeah, speaking in tongues! That’s great; as a matter of fact; I speak in tongues too. In fact, I don’t think anybody speaks in tongues more than I do. Yes sir, that’s it right there, speaking in tongues. You do that, why, you got something.”

What were they going to say to that? He was making their point for them, but now it seemed like he was undercutting the very argument they were using to try to tell themselves and the rest of us that because they could do that, it was obvious that they had the greater spiritual gifts.

So once Paul said he did it so often he was probably better at it than they were, well, they couldn’t deny that it was true, because then they would be exposed for having lied themselves. And they couldn’t say Paul was beneath them (like us) and not in a position to judge, because here he was, patting them on the back for doing something which he then said he also did.

And to be honest, the rest of us were kind of wondering where exactly this was going to lead. Because if Paul was claiming to have this great spiritual gift, that may have helped his standing with the insiders, but all it did for the outsiders was to make us feel even more isolated and useless, even further outside the circle.

Here he was, siding with the people who claimed that they had all these great spiritual gifts, and now he was claiming to be one of them—that he also had the special, spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, the gift of prophetic powers and understanding.

And then he said,

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

I wonder what it must have been like for those people in the synagogue at Nazareth. I wonder if they flew into their rage because for a minute they thought they had something, and a minute later they felt like they had nothing.

They had just heard Jesus reading from the prophet Isaiah about the year of the Lord’s favor, and how the herald had been sent by God to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.

And they all spoke well of him, and they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. And they said with amazement, or approval, or just curiosity, “Isn’t that Joseph's son?”

And it must have seemed for a minute like everything was coming up roses for those lucky Nazarenes who now had one of their own come home and tell them that everything was going to be all right.

Only, he didn’t say that everything was going to be all right; at least, not yet.

He said to them, I know that when I tell you this, you’re going to tell me, “Physician, heal thyself!”

And you’ll say, “Come on, Jesus, do all that stuff here in your hometown that we’ve have heard you did at Capernaum.”

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

And sure enough, just as Jesus had predicted, they must have said, wait a minute, what are you saying?

Are you saying that sometimes when we get sick—good, faithful people of the house of God— there may not be an automatic healing? Is that how you proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor?

And for that matter, are you saying that those of us in your family of faith, Jesus, are going to have to hear about other people getting miracle cures, while we wait and wonder, just like everyone else? Is that how you plan to announce good news for the poor and release to the captives?

And they drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Some of us in Corinth remembered that story. And when it became clear that even in church there would be the same old hunger and sickness and poverty and want, the same old power games, the same frail people with fragile egos, the same occasionally spectacular lapses in morality, we started to worry a little.

Because we weren’t quite sure how to handle those kinds of things. And just like those people in Jesus’ hometown synagogue, we were scared.

How do you cope, when the most important things to you—your family, your health, your security, your self-understanding—are threatened?

Paul had come to us in Corinth with an answer. It wasn’t an easy answer, and for some it was never going to be a satisfactory answer. But for all those in the church, there is a gift available from God which is available, tangible, dependable—but only if the people of God, the body of Christ, are willing to make it so.

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.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Churches, synagogues, houses of worship and communities of believers in every time and place, Nazareth or Corinth or Carolina Beach: let us make it so.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach , NC

January 28, 2007