“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” I’ve always wanted to say that in a sermon; it makes me feel like St. Paul. And regardless of how you feel about the content of Paul’s canon of biblical letters—the ones he wrote and the ones attributed to him—none of us can dispute the sincerity of his call or his conviction. And, as our lesson this morning reminds us, it all begins with grace and peace.
There’s a silly theological meme about Paul’s letters. Remember that a meme is a visual artifact—something like a picture or a cartoon—that gets wide circulation on the internet. The one I am thinking of looks like a screen in a seminary classroom, and the title is “General Pauline Letter Outline.” Then the five teaching points are (1) Grace, (2) I thank God for you, (3) Hold fast to the Gospel, (4) For the love of everything holy, stop being stupid, and (5) Timothy says hi. If this joke isn’t funny to you—yet—I invite you to join our weekly Bible study on Wednesday evenings. You’ll discover that five point outline is really not a bad summary of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.
Probably you already know First Corinthians for the soaring anthem to love in Chapter 13, which is surely the most-used scripture text at weddings: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Lovely and inspiring. Ironically, however, 1 Corinthians is not really a love letter. It’s more like a scolding of a community that had lost its way: arguing and practicing tribalism, classism and hedonism. That’s the “for the love of everything holy, stop being stupid” aspect of this letter. But somehow, even in the midst of his frustration, Paul found grace and peace—and even love—to offer the wayward community of disciples.
But you may recall that love is not exactly where Paul began his journey as a Jesus follower. Rather, he was—in his own words—a persecutor of the church. But a funny thing happened on the road to Damascus. A Pharisee zealous for the law, looking to do harm to the disciples, was transformed into an evangelist zealous for love.
Which brings me to Jesus, asking John and Andrew “what are you looking for?” What a disarming question, especially if we are brave enough to answer it honestly. What are any of us looking for? I wish that I had the self-discipline to ask myself that every day; maybe even every hour. Do I want to look good in the eyes of people, have the most or nicest stuff, or be the most righteous one like Paul? I’m not judging myself for these choices, and I’m not encouraging you to judge yourself or anyone else, either.
What I do want is to encourage us all to be aware of our choices, and notice for ourselves whether they accord with our deepest desires. Conscious or unconscious, our desires shape our actions. If we don’t know what they are, we won’t know what we’re looking for or why. Paul’s story reminds us that whatever we may be looking for—whatever may be the deepest desire we’re aware of—God will transform us and our desires. You might say that Paul had been looking for love in all the wrong places, but the right love found him anyway.
“You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love” said Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1968 sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church. He had told his congregation that “I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.”
Martin Luther King, of all people, knew the dangers of shallow sentimentality. His was a fierce and uncompromising love; one that demanded the best of white supremacists as well as of oppressed people of color and poor people. His sermon and his funeral request about love were words spoken at the end of a life of great courage and integrity. But I’d like to suggest that before any of us find our true love, before we discover our most authentic calling, we have to ask questions. Like Jesus did: he is recorded as having asked 307 questions in our canonical Gospels.
I am fascinated that the disciples met Jesus’ evocative question about what they were looking for with another question of their own. “Where are you staying?” they asked. What an incarnational faith their question revealed! They believed that whatever they were looking for—or whomever they were looking for—had an actual place on earth to stay. It wasn’t some platonic or heavenly reality they desired. And given that this encounter took place in the backwater region of Galilee, we can fairly assume that the place Jesus was staying wasn’t especially fancy, either.
John tells us that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit when he met those first disciples. Willie James Jennings, an ordained Baptist minister who is also associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale, is an avid student of that Spirit. He reminds us, through studies of various accounts in the Book of Acts, that if we Christians are not led to uncomfortable places, then it’s not likely to be the Spirit of God that’s leading us. That’s not because God wants us to be uncomfortable, per se, but because God expects us to be genuinely curious about places unknown and about people who are other than us. God wants us to go to where they are staying, so to speak.
And we and our forebears in faith have responded. Jewish Peter was led to the home of the Gentile centurion Cornelius, Paul was prayed over by one of the very disciples he had come to persecute, Mother Teresa looked for God among the slum dwellers of Calcutta, John Wesley found himself converted amidst in a meeting of working class Christians at Aldersgate, and Martin Luther King Jr was led to march with sanitation workers. What about us? What are we looking for and where are we willing to be led?
I show up each Sunday at Trinity because I believe that the Spirit of Jesus leads me to this improbable multicultural urban faith community. Where confess that I am almost always uncomfortable. This is a challenging part of San Jose to be located in. We are rebuilding our community in the midst of ongoing pandemic. Most Sundays I preach and celebrate God’s sacred mysteries a second language as well as my first. Myself, I almost always have more questions than answers, which might just mean I’m in the company of Jesus.
How will we minister to this vital and changing city? I don’t yet know. How do we best serve the vulnerable people those living across the street from us? We don’t yet know. We do have a team gathering to begin the prayerful work of discerning our future, so that we can wisely and faithfully respond to God’s call. Right here in this place, right where we are staying. You’ll be hearing more about the Vital + Thriving process in the coming months, as people reach out to ask you about your deepest desires, and what you are looking for our church to be.
And guess what: his is good news, sisters and brothers! Because this lovely church, brimming with possibility, is also an uncomfortable place. And precisely because it’s not comfortable, we can trust that the Holy Spirit is surely leading us. Growing into our calling to be the body of Christ in this place will be hard work, and it will also be pure love. Go call your friends, people of God. Ask them what they are looking for. Invite them to come and see.
