“Nanny, Nanny,…………”
January 18, 2004
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Please join me in a word of prayer. “Heavenly Father, please open our ears that we might hear, open our eyes that we might see your miracles in our life each and every day, open our hearts that we might love one another. Finally, Heavenly Father, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.”
Remember this as kids… “Nanny, nanny – sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but words can never hurt me…” This is one of those passages within the Bible, where we seem to have the church in Corinth asking some really, so Paul thinks, dumb questions in a letter they have written to him. Being the good pastor he is he answers their questions with great patience.
Paul wrote the letters to the church in Corinth to correct some misgivings and erroneous practices. Sounds like from the definitions we still need some help defining what a Christian should be.
Also, Paul was answering specific questions posed by the Corinthians in a letter they had written him. His responses start in 7:1:”Now for the matters you wrote me about….” And continues in 8:1: “Now about food sacrificed to idols…” And it concludes with the last verse of chapter 13: “And now I will show you the most excellent way…” So the people of Corinth had written Paul a letter asking him to expound upon some questions to provide insight to them. Paul is trying to set the record straight. But look at what he is addressing. He is talking in chapter 7 about marriage, chapter 8 about food and in chapter 12 about spiritual gifts. None of these have to do with the great commandment of Jesus Christ of Matthew 28: 19 where Jesus told the disciples to “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
We worry so much about the trappings of Christianity, instead of what being a Christian means.
This morning we are going to take on not only the verses in Corinthians but also some in James. Let’s now look to James 3: 13 – 4:3.
Join with me as we read.
Over the centuries we have had problems defining Christianity, and we still do for that matter. Here are some definitions I found recently:
Nobody can teach you how to be Christian – you have to learn it on the job.
A Christian is like ripening corn; the riper it grows the more lowly it bends its head.
A Christian must carry something heavier on their shoulders than chips.
Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual need of their neighbors.
Christian names are everywhere; Christian people are very rare.
If a one cannot be a Christian in the place where they are, they cannot be a Christian anywhere.
We find James trying to wrestle with some of these definitions in the passages we read. There was conflict and dissention within the church in Jerusalem, and James was addressing that issue in his letter.
As you know there are several people in the New Testament named James. Two of the most famous are James, the son of Zebedee, one of the brothers and then here we have the brother of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but this James has always had a special place for me. Being the brother of Jesus sets him apart for me, allows him to grab my heart in a special way. Now this is not necessarily Biblically based, but it for me is emotionally based. You know what I am saying, it’s like there is something more connected with the brother of Jesus.
Anyway, to keep the basics in front of us, let’s look at chapter 4 verse 1. It says the dissention without comes from false motives within. Now let me say that again… because if you take nothing else from here this morning take this… “dissention without comes from false motives within.”
What happens in our relationships – in the church, our families, at work, in the civic clubs – all comes from struggles within. Let’s again look at this together. So we understand, the writers of these letters and books, didn’t divide them into chapters and verses, that was done much later. So just because things are in different chapters of a “book” doesn’t mean they are different thoughts. Okay, let’s together read chapter 4, verse 1: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?...” In other words, there is something in you which is causing yourself to destroy relationships outside of you.
Earlier in this passage there is reference to “wisdom”…that is “wisdom” given to certain people. There was a belief that certain people had been given a certain understanding from God. That God had spoken especially to them, had revealed to them a special truth, and it was something only they could know. That somehow God had set them apart. Similar to the discussion of Paul in dealing with the importance of all the gifts each of us possess. That it takes all of us to make up the body of Christ.
Anyway, the belief was that God had somehow set them off separate and it was their job to reveal this “new” truth to everyone else, because now they were special. I know you’re saying, we don’t have that going on, that’s not what happening today.
Well, I think it comes in different ways. For some it comes with the conviction that they now have a “new” insight and a conviction that they are now right and everyone else is missing the boat and we all want everyone on the boat. They could get there if they would only listen, and more importantly listen to us.
I don’t know how many people have come to me as a result of an experience at Alpha, Disciple Bible Study, or something else in their life and say, “Now, I see! Boy, how dumb could everyone else be that they don’t see it too!”
Now, I am not saying that what God has revealed to you is not the truth. Nor is James or Paul saying that either. But what is so important here is that we sort out what is the truth and what is not the truth. James in his passage gives us a number of “tests” to us to help develop an answer to that question. I want this morning to focus on three of those tests he uses.
First, is this truth that has been revealed to you, impartial?
The meaning of impartial is the same in Greek as it is in English, it means not to divide. It doesn’t part one from another, or individuals from each other, or you from others. Paul makes it clear that we are all needed to be part of the body of Christ, and it one is missing then the body is not whole. Impartial, does not separate, does not divide.
The last year I attended Course of Study, I was most impressed with history of the church. It was one of those courses, where you had to read 1,500 years of church history in two weeks. Dr. William Jennings Bryan was the professor, now I am not that old, it was not the William Jennings Bryan of Scopes Trail fame, but was actually an interesting character from Dallas. If you have been there you might have enjoyed some of the best barbecue in the state of Texas at Sonny Bryan’s BBQ. They are all over Dallas and the Dallas Metroplex. His family runs those, as a matter of fact his wife is Chief Operating Officer of the company owned by the family.
Anyway, I regress, what really impressed me about the course, was despite all the things we learned about the great leaders of the church and the different directions they took, was one chart in particular. It had Jesus up here, and then from there the twelve disciples and then into all sort of branches and limbs. It was like an inverted tree. Down at the bottom was some six hundred twigs.
There was the United Methodist Church, then the Free Methodist Church, then there was the Freer than Free Methodist Church, then the Southern Free Methodist Church, and the Freer Than Anyone Else Methodist Church. Then over here was the Baptist, they claimed to come from the very top and their branches went all the way from here to here. Now I am not meaning to belittle the Baptist church, we are all in the same boat. But it was interesting to me how we had all divided ourselves from the beginning to where we are today. And all of us claiming to be right and to some degree all the others wrong.
But you know, when I think about it, it is not this kind of division or splintering which I think angers, or I guess I should say, disappoints God the most. I bet if God were to say it, I think what really disappoints him the most is when we separate or splinter ourselves from the person sitting in the same pew as we are. When we look and see them as different and something less than us.
I mean do you sit here on Sunday morning or Sunday night and say, “I am one of these and they are one of those.” Or, “I have really studied the Bible and know what it says, they have not.” “I am a real Christian and they are only lukewarm Christians.” Or, “They are that and I am this, and everyone knows that this is right and that is wrong!” Do you see? Do you see how we divide ourselves.
I am here to tell you, it is not only you who do this. We have within the United Methodist Church these so called movements. We have a “Good News” movement, a Liturgical movement, the Confessing Movement, the Reconciling movement, all have good points but all seem to be divisive. Movements are great in they get us fired up about something. But sometimes it sets our brothers and sisters in Christ against each other.
Yesterday, at Bethany United Methodist Church in Houston, where I attended a mandatory ministers meeting, I was talking with one of my colleagues in Christ and he made the statement, “We are going to take back our church for Christ!” I asked him the question, “Take it back from whom?” Is that sister, who is also in the ministry the enemy now? Am I the enemy? Who are we trying to take the church from and give it to whom?
So that is number one criteria which James uses to decide whether our truth, as revealed is truth or not. Does it divide or unite? We unite because we all have the same focus, this year, as so many of you know we are going to focus on God’s mission for us in his church in the world today. We are going to focus on God!
Second point is: Is it arrogant?
As many of you know I try to preach from the lectionary each week. The lectionary is a group of scriptures, as a matter of fact, four for each Sunday. You can use one or combine all four and use them. There is for each Sunday, Old Testament, Psalter, Epistle and Gospel. This Sunday, I chose the Epistle which was the passage from Corinthians, this James passage was several months ago (as a matter of fact, September 21), I had marked it and wanted to get back to it, and just now saw where we could combine it with the current lectionary passages.
As I read these passages over and over I kept noticing the word envy appear. I kept thinking envy doesn’t seem right. When I get to one of these points, down comes the commentaries and Bible dictionaries, and I find that the Greek word for envy is entirely different than the word used here.
The word used here is zealos, meaning our passions here grow from our zeal. As you all know zeal can have a positive or negative connotation depending on how it is used. It can be negative if what we think we believe and we believe it so strongly that we are the only ones right, and everyone else is wrong. If we believe that we are called into God’s service for us and to show all those others just how wrong they are.
In other words we focus not on God’s agenda, but our own.
Eric Hoffer, has written a book, True Believer, in which he outlines what causes people to become passionate about and join movements. He says it is our zeal. Our zeal divides us from one another and as a result makes us arrogant, we are right and they are wrong.
Let me give you a thought and a measure to determine what I mean about arrogance: If as I am preaching you begin to think of other people this sermon is about. That is arrogance. I am not arrogant, I am just right, but boy did old “so-and-so” need to hear this.
The best and most easily implemental cure for arrogance is listening to each other. We need to do a better job of listening to each other.
Third, and last thing, does the truth revealed to you create peace and order.
Several years ago I was in a Bible study in which we were studying the Sermon on the Mount. It was a most interesting study because of the diversity of people we had in the study. You remember that passage, “Blessed are the peace makers…”
The discussion centered on the situation in the world today. On the wars and famines, and the terrorism, the factions. Many in the group mentioned how they hoped that somehow God would work in the world today and bring about peace.
One of the ladies in the room, said something, which just grabbed me. She said, “It seems like God and Jesus Christ is calling us to be ‘peace makers’ not just ‘peace hopers.’” That’s one of those stopper questions. That is one of those statements where we all have to stop and examine what we are doing, just as James asks us to. “Is what I am doing right now, right here, in the family, in the workplace, at the church, does it make me a peace maker?”
The second part of that question is does it create order. God spent the first of the Bible, creating order from chaos. He didn’t destroy anything, but he created order from a chaotic world. Light was here, dark was there, neither was judged as good or bad, it wasn’t that type of separation, but both had their place and both contributed to the overall order of the world.
Man and woman was introduced to this whole concept and then quickly sin came into the picture and that sent the world back into chaos again.
But God wants a ordered world. I was very much of a “slob” in my teenage years. I enjoyed chaos, I don’t so much any more, between Texas A&M, the military, and soon to be 35 years with an orderly wife, I don’t enjoy chaos so much any more, and that is not all bad.
But I still have to have a place of chaos in my life, and that is my desk in my office. If you haven’t seen it lately, it is chaotic. That doesn’t mean it is not organized, I know where everything is, but it looks (and I guess on reflection) it is chaotic.
But that is not what God created, it is what I did. So we have to ask ourselves about this truth revealed to us, does it create peace and order, or does it create disorder, disunity and inflamed feelings or discord.
So at the end what do we have, we all have gifts, all of which are different, but all of which are part of the body of Christ. There are truths revealed to us by God, but those truths unite us, not separate us, they humble us, not make us arrogant, they create unity, peace and organization, not disunity, disharmony or chaos.
What is your truth?
