Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
First Sunday in Advent, 2014
In 2002, Jack Whittaker won $315 million in the lottery, the largest undivided jackpot in U.S. history up to that point. This is just the sort of thing many people dream of, a solution to all the job hassles and financial pressures that can make life miserable. It’s this hope of becoming suddenly rich that drives a person who’s already struggling financially to spend $20.00 or more on lottery tickets (I’m familiar with this because many of the people I work with spend substantial amounts of money on lottery tickets even though they’re living on disability with very limited income). Jack Whittaker’s story sounds like a dream-come-true. But I read a quote from Jewel Whittaker, his wife. She said, “I wish I would have torn the ticket up.” In the two years after winning, her husband was arrested twice for drunk driving and once for assault; he was then ordered to enter into rehab. It doesn’t sound like winning the lottery was such a good thing in his life. Advent, at its most basic level, is about looking forward, anticipating a better future. But often our hopes for the future become distorted and we end up hoping for the wrong things.
We’re not very good at discerning our true needs. William Willimon, a Methodist pastor, tells of an advertisement he saw for a local church: “We’ve got just what you are looking for, come and get it.” He responds: “Perhaps it’s because I work with young adults, but I thought to myself, ‘I know what these people are looking for – some of it is both immoral and illegal! Is that church giving them that?’” (“It’s Hard to be Seeker-Sensitive When You Work for Jesus” in Circuit Rider, September/October 2003, p. 4). One of the problems with catering, as a church, to people’s “felt needs” is that we’re usually wrong about what our needs are. Very often getting what we want is the absolute worst thing that can happen to us.
Willimon goes on a little later: “Jesus is not simply about meeting my felt needs; he is also about rearranging my needs, not only about fulfilling my desires; he is also about transforming my desires. Jesus is wonderfully nonchalant about so many of my heart-felt desires. It’s amazing how many of my needs (material affluence, sexual fulfillment, happiness, etc.) appear not in the least to interest Jesus. Many of you can testify that Jesus, the better you got to know him, did not fulfil all your needs but sometimes gave you needs you did not have before you met Jesus!” (p. 5). In our market-driven culture, it’s become increasingly fashionable for churches to appeal to felt needs as a way of winning people to Christ. Many churches grow very large doing this, and it’s difficult to resist the temptation to imitate their methods. But the danger is that in catering to felt needs in this way our message becomes distorted. Willimon asks, “When... do we pull out the cross? When, as we’re touting all the benefits of choosing Jesus, do we also say to them, ‘By the way, Jesus said that anyone who bought into his message would also suffer and die’” (p. 5).
The thing that is clear in these opening verses of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is that the Church is primarily about God and His purposes. The purpose of the Church is not to minister to our felt needs. In the Church, we’re not at the center. Our desires are disordered by sin; we don’t clearly know what is best for us, and getting our own way is often the worst thing that could happen. The Church is about God and His purposes. But a surprising thing happens when we bow our stiff, proud necks, and accept this: we find that in laying aside our desires and putting Him first, our needs are rearranged and transformed. God gives us better things than what we were hoping for. But it begins by accepting the fact that we are not the ones in charge. The Church is not here to give us what we want, or even what we think we need. The Church is primarily about God (which is why our worship is structured, not to make everyone feel good, but to direct our hearts to God).
Notice, first of all, what Paul says about himself. He says he is “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Paul’s vocation, the thing that consumes his life, wasn’t his idea at all. He was going about his business, being a good Pharisee, thinking he was doing God’s will in seeking to destroy the Church. And he was good at it. He tells the Galatians: “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (1:14). He had a good career; he’d invested years in training. He was gifted and committed. But then something happened: “God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me” (vv. 15-16a). God intervened in his life and said, “I have other plans for you.” Not plans that Paul would have found appealing; God’s plans were just the opposite of what Paul had in mind. God told Ananias, a believer in Damascus, “he is an instrument who I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15-16).
That’s what Paul is saying here at the beginning of this letter. He wasn’t a Seeker; God was the one doing the seeking, and He intervened in Paul’s life at the most unexpected time. Everything Paul says in verse one puts God at the center. God was the one who did the calling. The word “apostle” means “one who is sent.” Paul was sent to deliver a message that didn’t belong to him. And, to make sure that there is no misunderstanding, he adds “by the will of God.” It wasn’t his idea. The whole thing came about because of God’s plan. This fits with another observation Willimon makes: “the Bible hardly ever, almost never depicts anybody seeking Jesus. Rather, the story is about God’s relentless seeking of us in Christ” (p. 5). Paul was “called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.”
But, of course, we’re likely to say that because Paul was an apostle his situation was exceptional. So it’s important to pay attention to what he says about the Corinthians. Remember that this church is in trouble; Paul is writing because there are serious problems and the church is in danger of splitting into several factions. So he’s not just writing to the leaders; he’s writing to the whole church: “To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours.” His description of the church is meant to remind them of who they are; he’s trying to put their priorities back in order.
First, he calls them “the church of God.” He wants to remind the Corinthians that the Church doesn’t belong to them. I’ve heard people say sometimes in business meetings of churches, “We don’t want to be that kind of church.” The proper response to that is, “the church doesn’t belong to you, so it’s not up to you to make that decision.” The place to begin is by reminding ourselves that the church is “of God.” It belongs to Him. Gordon Fee says this in his commentary on 1 Corinthians: “The church belongs to God..., not to them or to Paul (or Apollos).... Paul disallows at the outset one of their tendencies – to think too highly of themselves” (p. 31).
This is true, not only of our individual preferences, but also of our denominational tendencies. All our denominations have something of the truth, but they all have inherent weaknesses as well. The Church of Jesus Christ is larger than any of our denominations. The temptation, when we’re confronted in the church with something new that we don’t like, or something that makes us uncomfortable, is to say, “that really isn’t consistent with our identity.” Our denominational concerns, much of the time, are variations on what Paul says about the Corinthians: “one says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’” (1 Corinthians 3:4). Klaas Runia, writing on the need for reform in the Church today, said: “Our only or main motive must never be the desire to retain our own denominational identity at all costs. Such a motive is not scriptural at all. We must never forget that our denominations are not really important at all” (Reformation Today, pp. 127-28). The important thing is not that we are Lutheran or Methodist or anything else; the important thing is that we are part of the “church of God.”
Paul then goes on to describe them as those who are “sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints.” “Sanctified” means “set apart for God and His purposes.” What Paul says about himself – that God had set him apart before he was born and called him through grace – is also true of them. Here’s Gordon Fee again: “Believers are set apart for God, just as were the utensils in the Temple. But precisely because they are ‘set apart’ for God, they must also bear the character of the God who has thus set them apart” (p. 32). They’re “sanctified,” set apart, and they are also “called to be saints,” called to be holy. They’re called to live out the reality of their identity as God’s people. “I send this letter to you in God’s church at Corinth, Christians cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life” (The Message). But they don’t do that alone, isolated from other churches. Paul reminds them that they are united with “all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is preparing the Church as a bride for His Son, and He has graciously included them. It’s not just “the church of God in Corinth,” but “the church of God in Corinth... together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So then, having reminded them of who they are and what their calling is, Paul pronounces this blessing in verse 3: “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” All God’s gifts come to us by sheer grace, not because there is any worthiness in us, but because God is gracious and merciful. And what God graciously gives us is “peace,” which is a translation of the Old Testament word “shalom.” It means “well-being, wholeness, welfare” (Fee, p. 35). Here’s how verse three reads in The Message: “May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master, Jesus Christ, be yours.”
When Paul says “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” he’s saying “may the deepest longings of your hearts be fulfilled.” What people are seeking when they buy lottery tickets, hoping to become instant millionaires, is peace, or “well-being, wholeness, and welfare.” They have an aching, a longing in their hearts for something more than what they have, but then they go seeking in all the wrong places. God doesn’t address us as consumers; He doesn’t say: “I’ve got just what you are looking for, come and get it.” We feel the need, but we’re looking for the wrong things. Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
But then, when we bow before Him in repentance and follow Him in the way of the cross, we find that, while He hasn’t given us all the things we wanted, He has given us something better. He has given us Himself. Remember these words from St. Augustine: “You awake us to delight in Your praise; for You made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (The Confessions of St. Augustine; a modern English version by Hal M. Helms, p. 7). Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God; everything else will disappoint us, because we were made to find rest in God.
This is true in our personal lives, and it’s also true in the life of the Church. When we come as consumers, demanding to have our needs met, expecting the church to cater to our personal preferences, we not only harm the church, we diminish ourselves. We’re putting ourselves at the center, the very thing that is destroying the church at Corinth. The Church is not here to meet our felt needs; the Church is here to worship God and to teach us to live under His lordship. The place to begin is by putting things back in their proper perspective. When we come together in corporate worship, we’re doing something completely different from all the other things we’ve been doing throughout the week. We’re coming together as “the church of God” in State College, “those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And then, as we bow before His sovereign Lordship, remembering that the Church belongs to Him, we receive “grace and peace... from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
As we begin this Advent season, let’s remind ourselves that what we’re looking forward to, what we’re waiting for, is God Himself, who appeared in the flesh more than 2,000 years ago and who has promised to come again at the end of this age. Advent is a time to realign our dreams and expectations in the light of the great future we look forward to in Christ.
