²³ “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. ²⁴ No one should seek their own good, but the good of others. ²⁵ Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, ²⁶ for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” ²⁷ If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. ²⁸ But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. ²⁹ I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience? ³⁰If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for? ³¹ So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ³² Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— ³³ even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. ¹ Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

–1 Corinthians 10.23-11.1 (NIV)

Pay careful attention to what Paul is writing to a church on the ground in his day because it applies equally to churches in our day. Paul has been asked by the Corinthians to weigh in on whether they are allowed to eat meat sacrificed to idols. That is the presenting issue but there are much broader principles involved, namely, how are we to use our freedom in Christ? Should we use that freedom to benefit ourselves or is there something else going on here? Paul answers, “all of the above.”

Christians are no longer slaves to the Law in the sense that their relationship with God is not contingent on how well they obey the Law. Anyone who calls himself Christian will clearly try to obey God’s Law (love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself), but that is as far as it goes. Their ultimate salvation is not contingent on this because Christians have found peace with God in the blood of Christ shed for them and nothing else. This means there is great freedom for the believer in that he or she is not simply trying to “follow the rules,” strictly defined.

But notice Paul’s focus on the effects of how we use our freedom. He reminds us that we are always to keep the welfare of our fellow believers at the forefront so that we do not express our Christian freedom in ways that are offensive to another or that will cause harm or scandal in the eyes of other believers. For example, whenever my dad would go out to dinner with his minister, he would never consume alcohol in front of the minister because most of them did not drink. Dad was not doing this because he was hypocritical; in fact, he hardly drank at all. Rather, he did it out of honor and respect for his ministers who did not drink themselves. That is what Paul is talking about here.

“But wait!” you say. “What about my rights as a believer? Don’t I have the right to express my Christian freedom in areas that are not clearly defined by Christian doctrine?” “You do,” says Paul. “But your individual rights are not nearly as important as the welfare of your fellow believer and you must respect that and act accordingly. And not only that, you need to conduct yourself in ways that are not offense to unbelievers in the hope that God will use your behaviors to turn them into believers because your actions always speak louder than your words. When you do, you have a clear conscience and do not have to defend your actions to anyone.”

This sounds foreign to our ears precisely because we have made it all about “me” in today’s society. The existence and prevalence of social media stand in massive testimony to that fact. Sure, there has always been self-centered behavior in every generation. But in today’s post-modern world, the emphasis on “me” seems to be on steroids and look at what has happened to us as a society. We have become extremely polarized and prone to demonization and name calling. This does not bode well for any society that wants to maintain its democracy because democracy cannot function like that. It requires mutual trust and respect of the other.

Moreover, this is why many mainline churches today have become irrelevant to greater society. Outsiders see Christians behaving just like everybody else, all in the name of freedom and self-rights. They see us trying to protect our turf and demonizing each other when we do not agree with each other on all sorts of things.

Shame on us, Paul would say. This is not how you witness to unbelievers. Granted, Christians will not get it right all the time. We are as broken as unbelievers. But we have a higher calling in Christ and we are called to march to a different drummer. That drummer tells us if we are to follow him, we must deny ourselves, take up our cross each day, and follow him. That starts with how we treat our fellow believers and here we see Paul giving us practical advice on how to do that. Notice that he ends this section of his letter by telling us that we are to follow his example because Paul follows Christ’s example and we immediately think of the great hymn in Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he essentially tells them the same thing that he is saying here to the Corinthians (cf. Philippians 2).

This business of honoring our fellow believers is hard work because we are by nature self-centered creatures who have been raised in a culture that celebrates rugged individualism and that has confused moral license with freedom of late. That makes it hard to behave in ways that will turn heads and make outsiders wonder what is our secret, even as they envy what we have when they see us imitating Jesus in our interactions with each other. But we have a power greater than those forces that seek to keep us marching to the tune of this world. We have Christ’s very Spirit living in us to help transform us into the humans he created us to be. And when that happens, we will discover that we also have each other to help and support us, precisely because the dynamic of our relationship is not based on self-centeredness.

Make no mistake. This is hard work and there are inevitable setbacks along the way because we are so profoundly broken. But we take heart and hope because we have seen the cross and the empty tomb, and we have experienced the fruit of the Spirit in our individual and collective lives. These are tangible reminders that we are God’s and that nothing in all creation can ever separate us from his great love for us in Jesus. Not only that, but Jesus himself has given us guidelines in how to settle disputes that arise among believers (cf. Matthew 18.15-19).

If you want to make a difference in this life, get involved with other fellow believers and become part of Christ’s Body, the Church. It won’t do for you to sit on the sideline and carp at those who are really trying to live faithful lives but who sometimes fail because they are fallible beings. Instead, you need to become part of the solution rather than be part of the problem. If you become a member of Christ’s Body, it will be the hardest and most satisfying project to which you ever commit because you will have to learn a second nature that is foreign to all of us. That nature is love as Paul explains and applies it in today’s lesson. You will have to put up with all sorts of annoying people and they will have to put up with you. But in doing so, you will learn to love and when that happens you will discover that you are living life to its fullest. When that happens, people will start to take notice and some of them will want to get in on the secret. Sweet. Evangelism at its finest. And remember this. You do not undertake this project alone. You have Jesus’ abiding help and his very word on it.

 ¹ Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. ² He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. ³ He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. ⁴He built altars in the temple of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, “My Name will remain in Jerusalem forever.” ⁵ In both courts of the temple of the LORD, he built altars to all the starry hosts. ⁶ He sacrificed his children in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, practiced divination and witchcraft, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing his anger.  ⁷ He took the image he had made and put it in God’s temple, of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. ⁸ I will not again make the feet of the Israelites leave the land I assigned to your ancestors, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them concerning all the laws, decrees and regulations given through Moses.” ⁹ But Manasseh led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed before the Israelites. ¹⁰ The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. ¹¹ So the LORD brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. ¹² In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors. ¹³ And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God.

–2 Chronicles 33.1.14 (NIV)

Imagine you enter into a solemn contract with another party. The success of your affairs depends utterly on that party upholding his part of the contract. If the other party is dishonest or fails to do what the contract specifies, you will fail and lose everything. Imagine further that the other party has a consistent pattern of breaking the terms of the contract, imperiling  you and your venture. But each time you confront the party, he apologizes and changes his ways, at least temporarily. Sadly, however, in every instance the other party reverts to his old tricks. What would you do to that party? What advice would you be getting from your trusted friends and advisors? Chances are your friends would tell you that you are a fool and that you should break that contract immediately so that you can cut your losses. And in the business of the world, this would not be bad advice. Fortunately for all of us, God’s dealing with his people is different from the business of the world.

If you will pardon the incomplete nature of the above analogy, you will start to get a picture of God’s graciousness toward his wayward people. God called Israel to bring his healing love and redemption to the nations. He called Israel from slavery out of Egypt in a mighty act of deliverance and promised to settle them in a new land where they were to be his people to help bring God’s healing to sin-sick nations. But time and again, Israel missed the mark as today’s passage from the OT illustrate. I chose the version from Chronicles instead of its actual assigned counterpart in 2 Kings 21 today because it makes the point I am trying to make more explicitly.

You can read today’s lesson in one of two ways. You can read it from a human and self-righteous perspective. In that case you are likely to read it and see an angry and vindictive God taking it out on people who are just trying to be true to themselves and follow their hearts. If you read the passage through that lens you are reading it incorrectly and missing the point completely because you fail to see what can sometimes (and often does) happen when we “follow our hearts.” You also miss the Big Picture of reality because life is not about humans per se.

Instead, try reading it from God’s perspective, at least as best as you are able. Keep in mind that you are reading another sad episode in the relationship between God and his people. From God’s perspective, his people are failing to uphold their end of the contract. This isn’t a one time occurrence. It is a pattern of stubborn rebellion. Not only are they failing to be the people God called them to be, they have become like the people God had called them to help him redeem! The doctor cannot help the patient if he or she forgets how to prescribe the proper healing.

Now we could debate the wisdom of God calling humans to help him in his redemptive work, but that too misses the point. In God’s sovereign wisdom, God has indeed chosen to call humans to help bring his healing love and redemption to the world and we humans have missed the mark more often than not.

But unlike a human response in the above scenario, God remains faithful to his covenant with his people. Yes, there is punishment for rebellion as we see in today’s story. But read the story a little closer. Despite Manasseh’s terrible wickedness, when he hit rock bottom and cried out to God in desperation, God not only listened to his prayers but answered them! Unbelievable (and sadly many people treat the story as if it really were unbelievable). God did not break his covenant with his people despite their rebellion against him and their waywardness. God punished his people but his covenantal love for them remained (and remains) to this day. In other words, God remained faithful despite his people’s stubborn refusal to uphold their end of the covenant (cf. 2 Timothy 2.11-13).

This, then, is the nature of God. It is good news for us and it is especially good news for anyone who, like Manasseh in today’s story, has hit rock bottom and is at the end of his/her rope. Even in that condition, God loves us and wants us to turn to him so that he can heal us. But he won’t do that against our wishes (cf. Isaiah 6.9-11). He generally won’t do that if we do not ask because that is not the nature of love.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done. You are not outside of God’s love for you if you will only have the good sense to get down on your knees and cry out to God in your utter helplessness and hopelessness. God does not despise a humble and contrite heart (Psalm 51.17). Neither will he despise yours.

Whether you are in the depths of despair or are searching for meaning and purpose in your life, the witness of Scripture is this. Turn to God and seek his ways. When you do, he will heal you and show you how to live so that you become truly human. If you are humble (and wise) enough to listen and obey what God is telling you, you will find healing, hope, meaning, and purpose to live life in ways that your Creator intends for you to live. There are no strings attached. You simply have to have the good sense to realize God is God and you are not and act accordingly. You have the witness of Scripture and countless Christians that verify this truth.

If you have not done so already, what are you waiting for? Submit to God and learn what real forgiveness, grace, and healing is all about.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I was a young man in college, I used to hate it when the Ten Commandments were read. They always seemed to be so demanding and I could pretty much go through them and check off which ones I had failed to keep. Covet other people’s stuff? Check. Especially my fraternity buddy’s Corvette. Stolen stuff? Check. Dabbled with that as a boy until one of my buddies got caught. Lied? Check. See the commandment about stealing. Honor your parents? Not really. In fact, I’m surprised my dad never throttled me. Remember the sabbath and keep it holy? Are you kidding me? I was usually too busy nursing a hangover from the frat party the night before. Murder? I managed to avoid that, but the day’s still young. Adultery? Hadn’t lived long enough to commit that yet. That would come later with divorce and remarriage. As Jesus reminded us, anyone who divorces without good cause and then remarries commits adultery. Great. Make idols? Well, I didn’t have idols like golden calves sitting around but I sure had some that I spent a lot of time worshiping, my newfound ego that came with losing a lot of weight and sex being among the top ones. And then there was that first commandment. I didn’t like to admit it but I was pretty sure I had at least one other god before God, and his name was me. But what the hey? God hadn’t rescued me from Egypt. Heck, I was just trying to get through college. The point is that whenever I heard the Ten Commandments being read, it reminded me of how rotten I was and I suspect I am not alone in having this reaction. Did any of you have a similar experience or are you just wondering how I ever managed to become a priest? Me too.

But interestingly, hearing the Law read can evoke the opposite reaction. Both Jesus and Paul remind us in different ways that it is quite possible to get all puffed up and proud about our ability to keep the Law. As Paul tells us in today’s epistle lesson, he was a Jew’s Jew, a man among men in his zeal for keeping the Law and in his mind that made him something special. We can assume Paul would have thought that made him special in God’s eyes as well. I bet many of you know someone like that in your life.

But then Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and everything changed. Paul saw how hopeless and futile it was to try to earn God’s favor and merit by scrupulously keeping the Law the way he had tried to do because we humans are too profoundly broken to do that. And so he gave up his pride and delusions and sense of privilege that can come from being one of God’s people. He tells the Philippians rather graphically that he considers all his efforts and qualifications as a Jew to be rubbish. The English translation of the Greek word Paul uses for rubbish is much too genteel and doesn’t do justice to how emphatic Paul was in rejecting his old lifestyle. To convey the crudity of the Greek, Paul was saying to the Philippians, “Who I was and what I was trying to do? It’s all crap” (BDAG).

And human pride was precisely the underlying problem in Jesus’ parable about the landowner (God) and the tenants (God’s people). God had called them out to be his special people to help bring his healing love to a broken and desperate world. God had given his people his Law, the Torah (of which the Ten Commandments are the foundation), to help them behave as God’s special people so that they could once again reflect God’s image that sin had defaced to those who needed to see it, namely to the pagan nations, so that God could use his people to help rescue these nations from their bondage to slavery and sin.

But God’s people were as deeply flawed as the people they were supposed to help God rescue and they became ingrown and proud. They looked to their identity as God’s people as a badge of privilege, merit, and honor rather than as a divine commission to be God’s humble servants, and Jesus reminded them that God was about to call them on that. God sent his prophets to rebuke God’s stubborn and proud people and set them straight so that they could be for God and the world the people God called them to be. Then finally God sent himself as Jesus. But most of them did not accept any of it, in part, because they were too proud and too enamored with themselves as God’s special people and it was about to blow up in their faces.

But you see, it was part of God’s eternal plan for our rescue that he knew his people would be part of the problem. And so God became human and dealt with the problems of sin and evil by dying on a cross for us so that his holy justice would be satisfied. As Paul tells us today, because Jesus was the true representative of Israel and because he was truly righteous, those who are in him, in other words, those who believe Jesus is who he claims he is and who have a real and living relationship with him, can claim Jesus’ righteousness. This is what it means to be justified by grace through faith and it takes care of the vexing problem of what happens when the unholy (that would be us) meets the holy (that would be God) so that we can have the hope and promise of being able to live directly in God’s Presence in the New Creation.

This is the only real antidote for folks like me who hated to hear God’s Law being read because it reminds us of how rotten we are. It is also the only real antidote for the sinfully proud folks like Paul once was, who try to earn their own righteousness in God’s eyes or who have the presumptuous attitude that because they are God’s called-out people they are automatically in the club of the redeemed. We have peace with God and are considered righteous in God’s eyes only by the blood of Christ shed for us. In baptism we have been buried with Christ in his death so that we can also share in his resurrection. Our faith, guided and nurtured by the Spirit living in us, will help prevent us from falling into despair or becoming too puffed up and full of ourselves because the cross of Jesus is the great leveler of the human condition.

When, by God’s grace, that happens, we will not look at God’s moral law as something to beat us down and remind us of how rotten we are. Neither will we see it as a challenge to be conquered so that we can be better in God’s eyes (and our own) than the other poor schleps who aren’t nearly as good as we are in keeping the Law. Instead, we will fall on our knees at the foot of the cross and thank God for doing the impossible for us. This necessary and healthy dose of humility will then help give us eyes to see God’s Law as guidelines to help us become truly human and Jesus’ agents of healing and New Creation in the world.

So what does that mean for us here in this room today? From what we have just said, if we are going to be true to our mission statement, Changed by God to make a difference for God, it should be obvious that there is a place for each of us in the Church, from the worst of sinners to the most proud of sinners, and each of us has work to do. God has given us an incalculable gift in Jesus that none of us can ever hope to repay and that provides us with the needed grace to raise us up or bring us down, depending on where we are. We no longer have a reason to make life about ourselves. Instead, we have every reason to make it about Jesus.

This, in turn, gives us the proper incentive to roll up our sleeves and live as Jesus’ agents of healing and New Creation. We do not have to worry about our future, which is precisely the New Creation that Jesus’ resurrection previews. God in Christ has taken care of our future for us and we can stake our very lives on it. When we are freed from the baggage of our past sin and have the power of the Spirit living in us to help us always be on guard against our human pride, we are freed to live as God’s people who are empowered by God to make a difference in this world. However, it starts first and foremost with our relationship with Jesus. If that goes south, we become nothing more than angry activists in our efforts. And if we neglect our call as God’s people to bring his healing love to the world, focusing instead only on our relationship with Jesus, we become nothing more than introverted navel gazers.

It is much more complicated than this because the human condition is infinitely complex. But it is no less than this. The point is that God is God and is able to overcome our complexity and our failures. He died for us, for heaven’s sake (pun intended). Freed from the crushing guilt that our sin can produce and from the arrogance of human pride that deludes us into thinking we are actually fit to live in God’s presence because we keep the rules so well, just as Paul once thought, we are able to look around us and bring to bear on God’s world the gifts and skills with which we have been blessed—all with the Spirit’s help.

Jesus has taken care of the sins of the world and by his Presence among us frees us to be the humble servants God calls his people to be. So we do not have to worry about producing results. We only have to worry about being faithful in our obedience to Jesus and work at imitating him. Why? because in Jesus’ example as well as the Ten Commandments we have a magnificent vision of what it is to reflect God’s glory to the world, and so we strive to make that our goal, just as Paul reminds us. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don’t. But we press on because we are people of hope.

In the meantime we do the things necessary to make sure that we are open to the Spirit’s help and Presence in our lives. We come together to worship God regularly. We feed on God’s word in Scripture and on the very body and blood of Jesus each week. We are humble enough to know that God has given us each other to help us in his call to each of us, and we love God enough to want to bring his love to bear on others, even when they sometimes do not realize what we are offering them. It is hard work but it is God’s work and in it we will find meaning, purpose, and power to live according to God’s good will and intentions for those whom he loves.

And how do we know God loves us? Because we come to the foot of his cross regularly in utter astonishment that God would die for someone as unlovable as us. Moreover, we know God is with us because he is helping us to grow in faith, hope, and love, all the while blessing us with the fruit of his Spirit living in each of us and collectively as his body, the Church. This gives us real hope, even in the face of terrible opposition, even in the face of our darkest fears and failures, and yes, even in the face of our stubborn pride. And when, by God’s grace, we become convinced of this truth (do you see the dynamics of faith, hope, and love in all of this?) it reminds us that we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

From Christianity Today online. Another thought-provoking piece from Mr. Galli.

Jesus refuses to be put in a religious box. He’s not a nice Savior, whose goal is to make us feel better about ourselves and become well-adjusted, productive members of society. All that is well and good, and it is part of our lot in life. But this is not the mission of Jesus. He’s not interested in nice, well-adjusted people, but mostly in people who forgive and love. And sometimes he has to bring a little chaos into our lives to help us become the people he’s called us to be.

Read it all and see what you think.