Epiphany 3A
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:10-17
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
January 26, 2020
Invest
Here in the season of Epiphany we are reading sequentially from St. Paul’s first letter to the ancient church at Corinth. It is Paul’s great address concerning the nature and the prospect of the church. Yeah, we who have accepted Christ are living in a whole new world, St. Paul has shown us, but it’s also true that we’re living surrounded by the old world. We are surrounded by “this age” is the term he uses, and we know the worldly power of the “rulers of this age,” as he calls them. What is the nature of the church community in circumstances like these, and what is the prospect for us? That question, and St. Paul’s answer to it, is good material for a Faith Lutheran Church that faces so many challenges and opportunities. In a world like the one in which we live today, what is the nature of church community, and what is our prospect going forward?
Paul opens the letter this morning with some memories of those who started the church at Corinth: Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and that lot. Do you know anything much about how Faith was started? In the early 1950’s a handful of households, Lutheran Christians, decided to establish a new Lutheran church in the quickly-developing suburban community of Homewood to which they had recently moved. They went door-to-door, asking what church denomination people were. If they discovered Lutherans, they invited them to come build the community that has now come down to us as Faith Lutheran Church.
There is something so inspiring about that story. They decided God wanted a new church here, so they just went out and they did it. But there is something so quaint about that story, too. Can you imagine doing it that way today? How many people in Homewood today would even know what a denomination is? I’d guess not many, and I’d guess that even fewer would know what a Lutheran is. The world has changed since then, the age all around us, to use Paul’s term, has changed.
But the present rulers of this age are out there, all right, in the form of cosmic forces, large and powerful world-systems that are arrayed against the proclamation of our message. We come up against them every day in the course of our ministry at Faith. I spent some time this week thinking about them, thinking about what we at Faith are up against.
For one thing, we’re up against a new and virulent individualism. If I’m going to be religious, or spiritual, why would I need a community for that? Think of the diminishing, disappearing trust all around in community institutions, everything from the government to local communities like the VFW. Well, the church, too. The church, too.
The second thing we’re up against is like the first: we’re up against a deep-seated consumer mentality, both all around us, and this one also has crept inside the church. I am the arbiter of all things, and my choice is king. The consumer question about worship, for example, is, does it do anything for me? Does this worship do anything, for me?
Third, we’re up against socio-economic disinvestment on a large scale. When the community of Faith was founded, as those folks went door-to-door, this area was booming economically and financially. Now the steel mills are virtually gone, the railroads and manufacturing are nowhere near what they once were, the city is exporting poverty to the south suburbs, and as I’m sure you saw in the Tribune this week, the map of where home prices are falling in the metropolitan area shows a wave of red washing over our communities. Yeah, the rulers of this age have made some socio-economic decisions that are just murdering us.
Finally, there is race. If it’s the South Side of Chicago, and if it’s the United States of America, then finally there is race. I preached a sermon here a year ago in which I described the old dance that the rulers of this age have choreographed for us South Siders. You have a so-called white neighborhood. Black people start to move in. White people move out. Now there’s black people, so commercial interests and public resources start to back away, because heaven knows you wouldn’t want to invest the same kind of school money, for example, or health resources, in an area that as we say is “going black.” That’s the old dance, and the rulers of this age play that music and bid us step to that tune, over and over again.
So how you feeling at this point about the prospect of Faith Lutheran Church? You feeling a little weak? Kinda scared for our community? Your knees knockin’ in the pew there, as you think about what we’re up against? Are you believin’ that the victory belongs to the rulers of this age?
Well, wait a minute: weak; scared; trembling? Where have I heard that language before? Well, whaddya know; that’s language could be right out of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, says St. Paul, I … decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And, he says, I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. Well, look at that! St. Paul in exactly the same place we’re at! My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom – nothing about all those scary things posed by the rulers of this age; our faith does not rest on any such thing as human wisdom – but rather on the power of God.
Now let me ask you again, after you’ve heard St. Paul’s words there: Do you believe that the victory belongs to the rulers of this age? I don’t. I believe that the victory belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, and him crucified, and my faith rests not on any human wisdom, but firmly on my belief in the power of God. You think I don’t know what we’re up against here? I know what we’re up against. I come to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling; you better believe it! But I bet my life, and I’m still betting my life, that the victory belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, and him crucified. We can’t build a church here the same way they did when founding Faith back in the 50’s, I know that, but we’re gonna build a church in a new way, and here’s how we’re gonna do it:
Where the rulers of this age blast us apart and atomize us into mere individuals, we’re gonna stand and say we’re together in this. Amy put it so well in a sermon here some weeks ago: we belong! As the people of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are the people who belong. I belong to you, and you to me. Don’t you be threatening to quit and go off by yourself, for the victory belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, and it’s Jesus who has said, you belong here.
When the rulers of this age beguile you with consumer mentality, suck you in with tales of how you are the master of your fate and that it’s your choice that is king, we’re gonna de-throne ourselves, we’re gonna lean way back into a word called humility, and we’re gonna live not as if we are king but as if we are obedient to God. Then the worship question becomes, not does worship do anything for me?, but rather, Did I offer thanks and praise to God today?
When the rulers of this age disinvest in us, economically, or any which way, well, we’re just going to invest, then. We’re gonna invest in one another, we’re gonna invest in this community of faith, and we’re gonna invest, do ministry, in our wider community. Last week I was involved in all kinds of conversations about the Monday night shelter ministry here, and I kept turning up one person or another at Faith who’s become involved, helping out in one way or another. I mentioned this to one of our neighbors, somebody who lives up the block; he was curious about this and I told him that’s just our people working their ministry. “Reverend, I’m a Catholic,” he said. “That working the ministry, is that a Lutheran thing?” And, of all things, I started to tell him no, it didn’t have anything to do specifically with being a Lutheran, and then I thought, WHAT AM I SAYING? And then I thought, here’s the answer to that problem that nobody in the community knows what the heck is a Lutheran! If nobody knows what a Lutheran is, then we can make it mean whatever we want. Let’s make “Lutheran” mean someone who is passionately interested in the community, deeply invested in justice and the welfare of all God’s people. You see someone there working tirelessly for the public good? “Oh, look, must be one of them Lutherans! They’re always up in everybody’s stuff; that’s how they do.”
And, finally, race. When the rulers of this age crank up the sick old music for that old South Side race dance we do, we’re gonna say no. What would the communities of Homewood and Flossmoor and environs look like – what would Faith Lutheran Church look like – if we took seriously what Jesus says about these matters, and when the old, sin-laden, broken old scripted dance music began to run one more time, we simply said, no. No – instead, we will be white people and black people together, holding on to one another and fighting for a community that we share. We know the old dance, we would say – been there and done that – and we know it well enough to say, “No to that. Praised be God, who has given us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Enough. Bottom line: I know that according to the wisdom of this age our prospects at Faith Lutheran Church are challenging. I come to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling; I told you. But the truth is, the victory does not belong to the things of this age at all; the victory here at Faith Lutheran Church belongs to Jesus Christ, and to him crucified. I’m coming to you here this morning because if I’ve got a few years or so of my career left, well, I want to invest my life into a vision that’s worth it. The vision that Jesus has given us here at Faith, the things that I have described here as our response back to the rulers of this age, that vision is worth investing every last bit of my life. Let’s invest our lives here, together.