Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: Freedom is for love (not
rights).
Psalm 111
Deuteronomy
18.15-20
1
Corinthians 8.1-13
Mark
1.21-28
Prayer of
Invocation
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in
heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in
our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Prayer of
Illumination
Father,
without you what are we to ourselves but guides to our own self-destruction? We
give you thanks for sending a prophet, the Lord Jesus, to deliver us from
ourselves. Empower us to hear his words, Spirit, that we may pattern our lives
after His life of love. In Jesus’ name.
Proclamation
When we
gather for worship each Sunday, one of the things that we do--whether we are
aware of it or not--is to remember who we are--individually and corporately. We
do this because often we forget; often we are told lies; often we tell lies to
ourselves about who we are. And so we also gather to remember who we are not.
To gather is an act of remembering; and embedded in that act of remembrance is
the act of repentance. For as we gather and reflect on who we are requires that
we reflect on the ways that our true identity in Christ confronts our many contradictions,
others’ notions that we have about ourselves, the ways in which we live the
false life in the midst of the true life, the ways we engage unfaithfully in
this world.
Our Old
Testament reading this morning orients us to the most basic fact about our true
selves: we are not the ultimate authority of our lives; we do not have the last
word; we are not the captains of our fate. Our world tells us that our truest,
most authentic selves are in competition with anything and anyone that would
step between us and our freedom to be and do whatever we want; that the good
life, a life of dignity, consists of conforming the world to our wants,
desires, agendas, and plans. But Deuteronomy 18.15-20 tells us
otherwise. It confronts this false life. It reminds us, as Augustine did, that
we are guides to our own self-destruction. It tells us that there is an
authority over our lives that lies outside of us: “the LORD your God will raise
up for you a prophet...it is to him you shall listen...I will put my words
in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command. And whoever will
not listen to my words...I myself will require it of him (Deut 18.15,
18-19).”
In the
transfiguration of Jesus Christ, that moment in which Christ’s glory is
revealed to his disciples, the voice of the Father declares that Jesus is this
one who has come to speak His words to us: “This is my son, My Chosen One,
listen to him (Luke 9.35). Jesus is the prophet who has called us to this God.
This is our most fundamental posture in the Christian life, a life of listening
to another, to the Lord Jesus; to listen to him as the authoritative word in
our lives, the word that trumps all other words, the word that gives us our
truest identity. To listen is to also repent, to turn from all other voices,
including our own, that seek to distract us from the true life. For this
authoritative word that is spoken to us, is a word that is given for our good;
it comes from the One who knows and loves us better than we know and love
ourselves.
Our
Gospel reading in Mark draws us into the journey of the first disciples, which
is much like our own. Jesus comes to each of us in the midst of our mundane, daily
responsibilities and obligations--whether we are fishing, or working, or
studying, or parenting, or being part of a family--and he says to each of us
“follow me” (Mark 1.17). We, like them, are called to drop our nets and follow.
And to follow is to listen, to get behind (and not in front of) Jesus.
And, as
our reading in Mark 1.21-28 reminds us, when we follow him, we follow
him to worship, to gather together with others, where we hear Jesus speak with
authority: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one
who had authority” (Mark 1.22). Our reading reminds us that as we gather and
listen to his teaching, we encounter other voices who wish to stand opposed to
what Jesus has to say: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth. Have
you come to destroy us? (Mark 1.24). If we listen carefully enough, this voice
speaks to us as well, seeking to convince us that these words of Jesus are
words that would undue us, destroy us, diminish our truest, most authentic
selves. And in one sense those voices are right. Jesus has come to destroy
us--he has come to rescue us from ourselves, to lift us from the false life,
our false identity, and to transfer us into a new mode of operation--one that
does not center around or proclivity to self-destruction. So he comes to
destroy us in order that we can be our truest selves. And so Jesus comes, and
when he speaks he silences the demons, the powers and principalities in our
lives that speak to us and tell us lies about who we are, about who He is.
In our
text from 1 Corinthians 8.1-13, we are exposed to one of the complex,
subtle, and subversive ways that our true identity is deformed. It’s bound up
in this repeated word in 1 Corinthians 8-9, “right”. Together with Bocephus, we
declare “I got rights”. And these rights guarantee us the freedom to do
what we want.
1
Corinthians, as you may know, is a letter that Paul writes in response to a
letter he received from them, the Corinthians--a church that Paul had planted.
One of the reasons he writes to them is because they want him to settle a
debate that they are having about “rights”. ‘We have a right,” they argue “to
eat meat in an idol’s temple” because we are in the know. We know that idols
are not real. We know that there is only one God. And so we want to eat this
meat. It is our right to eat this meat, knowing what we know. But some think we
shouldn’t eat in temples of idols. Those weak people tell us we are wrong to do
this. What do you think, Paul? Are we right to assert our rights?’
How often
do we go to others (and to God), in a similar fashion, demanding our rights,
justifying our actions based on what we know to be true, despising others for
not knowing what we know?
The
Corinthians, from all accounts, are people who are trying to be faithful
disciples. They are trying to orient themselves around the true life, this life
in Christ. But they have been caught up in an old way of life, the life they
learned outside of Christ, a life that is about to be confronted by the gospel,
as we will see.
The
orienting value of these Corinthians is freedom--freedom to do what they want
because it is their right to do so. In this very particular case, they had the
right to eat meat sacrificed to idols because they knew that there really aren’t
idols--there is but one God. They were orthodox in their thinking. But Paul
isn’t just concerned with orthodoxy; instead he pushes them towards
orthopraxy--right living, not just right knowing.
Paul
disorients them and this mode of operation, this “rights-based” approach to
life. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor 8.1). His point is that
our primary call is not to live out our rights, but rather to love and build
others up. And he argues that if we are truly known by God, if we have had a true
encounter with God, then we love others in return (1 Cor 8.3).
To be
known by God, reorients our foundational pattern of life. There are times, Paul
argues, when exercising our rights is not a faithful guide for how we ought to
live with one another. He reminds us that sometimes our rights might actually
become a stumbling block for others. In the specific situation at Corinth, Paul
points out that the exercising of one’s right to eat meat sacrificed to idols
might actually “encourage” some to eat meat against their own “weak conscience”
(1 Cor 8.9-12). His point is that the exercising of their rights might actually
cause others to be enticed into participating in idol worship. Paul’s point is
that this destroys your brother or sister. He calls this exercising of rights
an act of sin against them and against Christ (1 Cor 8.12). Instead, he points
us to love, our new guiding mode of operation in this new life we share in
Christ. Love does not impose rights on others. For, to love is to make others’ problems
and concerns and struggles our own. “Therefore,” he argues, “if food makes my
brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”
In 1 Cor
9, Paul shows his readers how he has modeled this kind of new life, this new
mode of operation in Christ, to them. If I may paraphrase: ‘I have rights
to,’ he says. ‘But I have not exercised these rights for your sake. As an
apostle, I have the right to bring a wife with me, like the other apostles do.
But I have not done so for your sake, for love’s sake. And I have the right to
be financially supported by you, but I have not made use of this right, but
instead have endured hardship rather than put an obstacle in the way of the
gospel (1 Cor 9.12). Three times in 1 Cor 9, Paul mentions that he has not made
use of his rights (vers. 12, 15, 18) because he feels that to exercise those
rights would be a stumbling block to the Corinthians. Instead, he says that
although he is free, he has made himself a servant to all--so that more might
come to know the true life in Jesus (1 Cor 9. 19). True freedom, Paul argues,
is using your freedom for the service of others.
Where
does Paul get this pattern of life from? It is a pattern, a mode of life that
he underscores throughout all of his letters, and a way of life that he puts
forth as the way that all Christians ought to live. As you might expect, it
comes from the pattern of life we find in Jesus. For Paul, to listen to Jesus,
the one who was commended to us by the Father in His transfiguration, is not
only to listen to his words, but to listen to his pattern of life handed to us.
This pattern of life can been described in the following formula, if you will:
: Although [x] not [y] but [z]
We see
this pattern most clearly in Philippians 2.6-8: although Jesus was in the form
of God (i.e. he had all the privileges and rights that come with this status)
[x], he did not use those privileges and rights for his own benefit or to
exploit or grasp [y] but instead emptied and humbled himself for the sake of others
[z].
In this
pattern we see that [x] states rights or privileges that Jesus has: although
[status/right/privilege]; but Jesus does not make use the right or privilege
for the sake of himself alone ([y] = does not act out of selfishness) but
instead does what would serve to benefit others [z=selfless act].
To listen
to Jesus, is to pattern our lives in this way. “For Paul, the possession of a
right to act in a certain way has an inherent, built-in mandate to exercise
truly the status that provides the right by sometimes refraining from the
exercise of that right out of love for others...Christian freedom and identity
are revealed in the performance of “not [y] but [z].”
In our
epistle reading this morning, Paul reminds us that our [x] (right, privilege,
or status) can be either exploited for selfish gain or used in service for
others in love. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. “Love is patient...it
does not boast [in its rights]...it does not insist on its own way...it bears
all things..endures all things (1 Cor 13.4,5,7).”
Eucharist
Our
culture tells us to exercise our rights, for in this way we become our truest
selves. The gospel teaches us another mode of operation: our calling is
love--courageously making other people’s problems our own, giving up our rights
for the sake of others. To be disciples of Jesus is to model this pattern of
life to one another and the world: “all people will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13.35).”
We
participate in this love each Sunday at the Table, where we see that although
Jesus had the privilege and right to demand absolute submission and honor from
others, to use his status for his own gain, instead he humbled himself to the
point of death--for our sake. This is the pattern he has given to us to follow.
When he says “follow me”, this is what it looks like to follow in his footsteps.
Benediction
Live as
people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living
as servants of God.
1 Peter 2.16
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