Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Text (1 Corinthians 9:24--10:13):
Therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, send us all your Holy Spirit, and let your name be hallowed, so that your word is preached in its truth and purity, and that we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it. Help us to do this, dear Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our text today begins with these words:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Some of the young people in my parish asked me if I was going to England to watch the olympics. Even though while I'm here, I'll never get to see any of these great professional athletes, at the same time, I have been asked to preach about the olympics, and to preach to a group of Jesus Christ's own athletes!
In Australia, sport is a very strong part of our life and identity as a nation. Often people will even come to church discussing the football scores! And sometimes, as has happened with the recent olympics, Australians start to think that we are the only country in the world that plays sport. For example, in the recent weeks, the Australian swimming team recently thought that they would smash the other countries in the pool. But they forgot one thing: there actually happens to be such a thing as the rest of the world, and they forgot that this year, other countries also decided to send some swimmers to the olympics. There are other countries that know what water is after all, and so their pride was crushed!
But St Paul today calls upon us to take the example of athletes. He says: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it."
When it comes to the faith, there is no second prize. You must come first, or you will lose. There is so silver and bronze medals in the kingdom of heaven. Either you win the gold medal, or you lose. Your righteousness must exceed the scribes and the pharisees. Be faithful unto death, as it says in Revelation, and I will give you the crown of life.
Jesus Christ himself has bought you with a price. The prize worth more than any treasure buried in a field has been given to you in holy baptism. Now, we are called to run, looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, with a great cloud of witnesses in the stadium, cheering us on and encouraging us. Run! says St Paul. Run, that you may obtain it.
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
It is so important for an athlete that they are not distracted by the other competitors and they are not hindered in any way by the weakness of their flesh. Look how determined the athletes in the recent olympics are in winning. Look at all the exercises they have to perform, all the training they must endure. I saw one Jamaican runner interviewed on the TV, who said that his coach had to ring him up on Christmas Day to make sure that he wasn't training.
Christians too are doing their exercises on Christmas Day, and every Sunday and holy day. But their training consists not in doing, working, striving, achieving, but in sitting still and ceasing from their worldly affairs, so that God will perform his work on them. Our heavenly Father is the one who speaks his word to us, reminding of us our wonderful, glorious baptism, and pumping us full of the vitamins and protein of Christ's own body and blood. He comes up and pinches the fat on our hips with his holy law and says, "Too fat!" But then he gives us the encouragement of the Scriptures, so that we might have hope, and boldness and confidence and access to our Father, in order to offer our bodies as living sacrifices with all the fat portions, so that his Son Jesus Christ may run his great race and fight his great fight in us and through us to his good pleasure. What a wonderful Saviour we have who never leaves us without the encouragement, without forgiveness, who is strong for us, and faithful for us, having won the imperishable wreath in advance and ahead of time, so that the victory is always ours, and only ours through him.
St Paul says: "So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."
Here we have a wonderful encouraging verse! I do not run aimlessly. There are too many people today who drink coffee with Pontius Pilate and believe that there is no such thing as truth. Educational institutions make a lot about the process of learning, about the value of learning for its own sake. And so, essay-writing becomes an exercise in self-glorifying prose, and clever arguments. But God silences this false wisdom of the world, and instead gives to you to folly of certainty. GK Chesterton once said that "an open mind and an open mouth should be shut of something solid."
And so, St Paul writes here of the certainty of faith: "I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air." Let the clever scholars justify the own consciences with their many degrees and diplomas. They have already received their reward: they have already received the perishable wreath.
But to be a doctor of theology as Dr Martin Luther calls is to have the cross of Christ applied and sealed upon us by God himself through the folly of preaching and absolution, through the folly of water, and through the folly of bread and wine. It is this certainty of faith that Martin Luther fought so hard for at the time of the reformation, and we must also fight and box for today. And it is this certainty, this boldness and confidence, that gives birth to all sorts of other by-products in this life: love for our neighbour, patience in suffering, endurance. St Paul writes, "Since we are justified by faith (that is, since we are not running aimlessly), we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
So St Paul makes mention of here of the physical discipline of our bodies: "But I discipline my body and keep it under control." I pummel my body and subdue it. Fasting and bodily preparation are indeed fine outward training. St Paul says, "While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." Our bodies must not be so dull and useless that we become deaf to the word of God. Our bodies must not fall into despondency and numbness. God wants our leprosy to be healed. Nothing gives our concupiscence a good thrashing like the apostolic command to rejoice always, and again I say it, or Jesus' words to love the Lord with all your strength. So the body must be brought into subjection not in order to merit salvation or make preparations for salvation, but to keep our ears open and receptive. The most wonderful physical discipline, by the way, which our church offers, is to bring ourselves under subjection to God's righteous judgment upon us is in private confession. And I say this especially for pastors--if our laypeople are going to use this gift, pastors need to use it first. As the old saying goes, Qualis Rex Talis Grex (As the chief, so the flock). God does not require you to enumerate all sins, or even all mortal sins, as the Councils of Lateran IV and Trent say, but that you may confess those sins which you know and feel in your heart. This is a physical, bodily discipline, and often brings about a fair bit of squirming and writhing and uncomfortableness under God's law on our part. But in return, the words of absolution are given to you in exchange, a leiblich Wort, the gracious judgment of God is spoken to you in advance of the Last Day, and God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
And so, now St Paul gives us a series of warnings: "For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual food, and all ate the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness."
Watch out, fellow runners! Usein Bolt doesn't look around at the long-jumpers while he's trying to complete the 100 metres. Don't be overthrown in the wilderness with the people of Israel!
But St Paul gives us some really wonderful words of encouragement here about the presence of Christ throughout the history of salvation. He says the spiritual Rock was Christ. Of course, whenever we think about "the Spirit" we must always think about the "word of God".
St Paul says to the Corinthians: Listen! You have the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. But they don't work ex opere operato. God doesn't baptise people in silence, and he doesn't administer the Holy Supper to you in silence. There is always a powerful creating word, (a word of mission, a missiological word, if you like) which creates all things new, which comes together with the sacraments. Baptism and the Lord's Supper would be no use to you at all if God himself did not tell you what it is and how to use it. So there's a kind of two-fold reception of baptism: there's the reception of baptism which receives the water on the body and there's the reception that believes in the word of God that thereby trusts that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven, as St Peter says in chapter 3 of his first letter. In the Lord's Supper there's the physical reception of the bread and the physical drinking of the wine, but then there's the simultaneous and corresponding reception that believes in God's clear words that this consecrated bread is in actual fact the true body of Christ given for us, and that this cup of blessing that we bless is in actual fact the true blood of Christ, shed for us for the forgiveness of sins.
And so, St Paul says, the same goes for the ancient people in the Old Testament. They had manna and quail. They drank water from the rock. But God didn't do these things in silence. They didn't believe that Christ himself was their spiritual food, and that Christ himself was their spiritual Rock, speaking his words to them. They rejected these precious gifts, and started meditating about the leeks and onions and melons of Egypt.
At the same time, the word of God was connected to the Rock, in such a way that St Paul could say that the Rock was Christ. The word of God points to Christ truly present there before his incarnation giving them water to drink in the Rock. But also the water-emitting rock points to the word of God, the spiritual Rock through which the Holy Spirit is given and on which our faith is built.
And so St Paul says: Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.
We don't have a Rock emitting water, but we have water emitting the Holy Spirit. And baptism saves you. The water was Christ. We have the Lord's Supper, and the bread and wine was Christ. We have the words of absolution spoken through the pastor, and the mouth was Christ. The ears are Christ, the gestures are Christ. And we as pastors must always be ready and willing to hear the words of our parishioners to us: "Pastor, should I take your words as the word of God?" "Should I take your gestures, your moodiness as those of Christ himself?" And when not, we have the opportunity to model the confession of sins to them, so that they in turn will have the encouragement of our example in bringing to us their own confessions. And the ears were Christ, and the pastor's heart was Christ's dead corpse in the grave. And the absolution was Christ, and his resurrected and glorious body.
But all these things happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. All these things are to be a chastisement to our concupiscence.
And so St Paul says: "Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play."
Here have the wonderful trick of the devil exposed, which always wants to hide our sin from us. Through St Paul's words here, the Holy Spirit destroys our pretexts! "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." It is always the sign of the Old Adam trying to keep itself afloat when it says, "But God, I was only doing such and such. I was only eating what she gave me to eat." And so the people say, "We're only eating and drinking and playing! What's wrong with that?"
You hypocrite! You dare to put your eating and drinking in the same bucket as that of the poor people who humbly receive their bread with a glad and generous heart? You dare to put your "playing" in the same bucket as children playing outside in the sun at Christmas time in their little paddling pool? (That's a little southern hemisphere joke!)
You know what your eating and drinking is. You know what your playing is! You know the desires of your heart.
Pretext, pretext, pretext! We theologians must always beware that our writings and our words are not expounding of pretexts. Church leaders must beware that they don't use their church constitutions and by-laws as pretexts for disobedience of the commandments. And then the ninth and tenth commandments come firing out of eternity as twin arrows through the pretexts and smash our rocky hearts of stone in pieces!
St Paul says: "We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for instruction, on whom the end of the of the ages has come."
If only concupiscence weren't sin after all! Wouldn't it be great! If only God hadn't added the two last commandments, one for each ear! We wouldn't have even known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." We could have put our minds to rest, and been happy little hypocrites!
But our sin is only exposed by the law of God, and the flesh cannot pacify our conscience. The pummelling and subduing of our bodies cannot pacify our conscience. Our heart, our piety, our works are no use when it comes to dealing with the poisoned stream flowing from our heart.
So our pericope concludes with St Paul's words of comfort: "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able endure it."
With the law, he will also provide the gospel, so that you may be able to endure it.
With the sin, he will also provide the absolution, so that you may be able to endure it.
With the suffering, he will also provide his silver-refined word speaking to you from the other side of the grave outside of reason, that you may be able to endure it.
With the lost sheep and condemned pharisee, he will also provide you with Christ, so that you may be able to endure it.
With the sick body and the covetous heart, he will also provide the medicine of Christ's body and blood, so that you may be able to endure it.
Jesus Christ is the Truth, the Life and the Way of escape.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, our Good Shepherd, our Victory, our Crown, our Joy! Hosanna in the highest!
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, be faithful to us today! And when our last our comes, takes us from this valley of temptation and covetousness and tears to yourself in heaven, in Jesus' holy and precious name. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment