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Wallingford Presbyterian Church January 20, 2008 |
Rev. Ken Sunoo |
We continue our sermon series today on Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Last week, we saw that 2 Corinthians focuses on how Christians are to live in a world in crisis. Paul begins his letter by telling of the tremendous pressure he was under in the Roman province of Asia. But in the midst of all that pressure, he discovered that God was faithful, and that Jesus Christ came alongside of him and comforted him – remember his non-too-subtle 10-fold use of the word paracaleo, encouragement.
After that grand opening to his letter, we might expect that Paul would turn his attention to explaining what kind of strategy we should use to address these issues he’s facing. He does do this in later chapters (e.g., ambassador for Christ passage), but that’s not where he goes first.
Instead, in our passage from chapters 1 and 2, Paul wanders a bit with his thoughts. That’s surprising, because Paul is usually very focused in his writing. But here, his theological reflections are interspersed with small, interpersonal, almost routine matters such as his travel itinerary. Let’s take a closer look at what Paul talks about in this section.
First, Paul starts out by mentioning his travel plans, and the fact that he went back and forth in his decision to visit the Corinthians. Out of that comes the wonderful passage where he makes the claim that in Christ, it is always “Yes.” Second, he mentions the stress he feels toward the Corinthians and the real reason he didn’t come – all this stress between them.
Third, he speaks about an anonymous man who’s being disciplined by the Corinthians and urges them to restrain their discipline. And then he shares his concerns about the whereabouts of Titus. A door had been opened for Paul to proclaim the Gospel, but Paul couldn’t keep his mind on his work at Troas because he couldn’t find Titus. Finally, he describes the people of God as the aroma of Christ.
Does Paul seem a little scattered here? After his marvelous passage last week on God coming alongside of us, we get to this section about his travel plans getting interrupted, and Titus, and this immoral man, as well as the wonderful sections on the “Yes” of Christ and on how we are the aroma of Christ, the fragrance of life to those who are dying. Paul’s great theological sections are very relevant for us today, but are the other details of his life at all relevant to us here in Seattle in 2008? Should anyone care what happened to this immoral man, or what happened to Titus?
I think the answer is yes. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps us to see why.
In Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following thoughts to his parents on Reformation Day, Oct. 31, 1943 about a discussion between two professors at the Univ. of Berlin: “I remember from my student days a discussion between Holl and Harnack as to whether the great historical intellectual and spiritual movements made headway through their primary or their secondary motives. At the time I thought Holl was right in maintaining the former; now I think he was wrong.”[1]
Bonhoeffer discovered that in great movements, the means are more important than the ends. A great movement needs a great goal, but the people live out that goal in their daily events. So if you want to study a movement or an organization, you learn more by looking at how the people in that movement act in their daily lives than you do by only studying their mission statement.
Let me give you an example. There was a company whose motto prided itself on four key values, "Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence." Its "Vision and Values" mission statement declared, "We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves....We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here." Can you guess which company this is? Enron!
The world is watching how we as Christians act. As Christians, we need to practice what we preach; we need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Church (weekly attendance – 20,000), told a story once about a time he was on vacation. He stopped in a convenience store where he purchased a newspaper, got his change, and headed out the door. A little bit later, as he was putting his change into the change holder in his car, he noticed that the clerk had given him more change than he should have received.
Hybels confessed that a couple things went through his mind: “I’m on vacation…this isn’t a big deal…is it really worth the effort to go back for just this little bit of change?” Yet something inside him would not let him rest, and he knew that the right thing to do was to go back and return what wasn’t his.
So he did. He went up to the same clerk and told her that she had given him the incorrect change. The clerk responded, “I know.” Hybels was a bit puzzled. She explained that she had worshipped at his church recently, knew who he was, and just wanted to know if he really practiced what he preached.
Folks – people are watching us! And you find out a lot more about people when they’re off-camera than when they’re on-camera, when they’re living out their daily lives.
We may say we love humanity, but how do we treat the people who park our cars? Or the waitress who gets our order wrong and spills coffee on us? That will outlast any mission statement about our love for humanity. How do we treat our family, our co-workers, especially the people who are under you, who have less power and authority than you. That’s how you can tell if your means are truly important. Both means and ends are important, but the means get closer to the truth of what your true priorities in life really are.
C.S. Lewis also works on this theme. The Screwtape Letters is his marvelous little satirical book he wrote, where each chapter deals with a different subject, and you have Screwtape, a senior devil, writing to Wormwood, a junior devil, on how to win back a so-called “patient” from God.
In C. 22, the patient falls in love with a young woman. Wormwood was asleep at his job because he thought that since there was some sexual attraction, all was going well and it would help his progress toward damnation. But he made a mistake – as Screwtape notes, he should have looked up this girl’s dossier.
Screwtape tells him that he was very careless in not realizing that this girl was a very dangerous girl for that man to meet. In other words – she was very godly, dangerous to the devil. Listen to Screwtape scolding Wormwood: “Then of course, he gets to know this woman’s family and whole circle. Could you not see that the very house she lives in is one that he ought never to have entered? The whole place reeks of that deadly odour (Lewis’ biblical allusions – deadly odor is deadly to the devil, but is the living odor that we are, we are the smell of Christ). The very gardener, though he has been there only five years, is beginning to acquire it. Even guests, after a weekend visit, carry some of the smell away with them. The dog and the cat are tainted with it.”[2]
The whole house is full of an impenetrable mystery. And again, what smells bad to a devil is precisely that fragrance of grace, the aroma of life. So the gardener is smelling like that house. Even the dog and the cat smell like that. How do we know you’ve experienced the love of Jesus Christ? Lewis says that one is that you’ll treat animals more kindly. Or that you can test it by what the gardener thinks about you. You can test it by the way people think about you in daily life. That’s how you can tell.
How do we know that Paul has discovered the love of Jesus Christ? Because he’s concerned that this anonymous immoral man be restored to the community. Because he’s so easily distracted at Troas - a door has opened for him to proclaim the Gospel, but he can’t keep his mind on his great mission there because there’s a young fellow named Titus that he’s worried about, and so he leaves Troas and goes all the way to Macedonia to find him. I looked up these two areas on a map – there’s several hundred miles between Macedonia and Troas. Yet Paul makes the journey to find Titus. That’s how you can tell that Paul has experienced the love of Christ.
How will the world discover whether God’s at work in the world through us? They’re going to discover this by our checkbooks, by our calendars, by the way we act with people in the context of our daily lives. The great slogans or mission statements of our church, as important as they are, don’t give the full picture. But when we’ve experienced the love of Christ and live it out, then the world will discover that we stink up the joint with the aroma of Christ! Or to put it more delicately, that we perfume the air with the fragrance of God’s grace and love.
How did you discover God’s grace in your parents, or your grandparents, or your camp counselor, or someone who had a good influence on you and helped form your faith? You discovered it in the little ways they lived their everyday lives, and you discovered it by the way they were distracted by people.
Paul was distracted because he couldn’t find Titus – that’s the kind of man who’s experienced the grace of God. That’s the kind of person we’re called to be. We’re called to be the aroma of Christ – coming alongside people who are dying and bringing with us the fragrance of life. Amen.