It is good to be back with you, though I
confess some, I hope, righteous anger.
It absolutely drives me nuts when bishops do not prioritize feeding
their flocks. I have served on the Board
of Directors in a couple dioceses and have expressed that sentiment. Bluntly.
That’s part of why I am here among you today. Nathan has heard my rants, so he volunteered
me to Michelle three years ago. The rest
is, as they say, history!
If you are new or have missed the last two
years, my name is Brian McVey. Many of
you know my dad, George, whom Nathan somehow pushed to the Assembly of God
church during his discussions about Anglican and Eucharistic theology while he
was among you. It’s ok to laugh. Nathan knows I’m mostly teasing. Mostly.
Given your audible chuckling and elbows, I am certain all of you know my
oldest son, Nathan. Karen and I truly
appreciate your cross-bearing work of allowing Nathan to worship among
you. We especially appreciate that you
allowed him the freedom to worship rather than doing the whole “Hey, it’s a PK! We can put him to work!” I know Michelle did put him to work over
time, but it was with a gentle hand, and I recognize how important that was to
Nathan. It was, after all, the first
time he got to choose where he worshipped.
Usually, around this time of year, we go
to the southern Maine coast for our family vacation. Berkely Springs ends up being a good stopping
point on our travels from Nashville, where I serve as the rector of the
historic Church of the Advent. The
downside, of course, is that I have been on vacation mode for a couple weeks,
and most of my normal sermon prep materials are in Nashville. Worse, now that Nathan has moved to DC, I do
not get the stories about what is happening at St. Mark’s. So I apologize in advance if the sermon seems
a little impersonal. I can preach on the
text any given week, but I understand the need to connect the text to our
lives, both individually and communally, for preaching to be the most
powerful. Of course, if it connects, it
is a great illustration of our focus today, and that means God was truly among
us inspiring me in my ignorance and connecting His word to your lives in spite
of me.
I was drawn this week to the passage from
Second Corinthians. I’m not sure where I
would have preached from, were I back in Nashville, I think I would have leaned
into Mark, but 2 Corinthians kept occupying my thoughts and prayers with
respect to this community. On the one
hand, I know there is an emotional draw for me.
About 21 years ago, when I and my classmates gathered at seminary in
late August, we were required by our Dean President to select a class verse, a
passage of Scripture that would describe, inform, and motivate our collective
and individual ministries as we prepared to and then headed out into the fields
for ministry. To take you back in time,
the great Episcopal divorce was in its infancy.
Gene Robinson had been elected and was likely to be consecrated as
bishop. Yet we had the largest class in
Episcopal seminaries in nearly 20 years.
Virginia had been the last class, we were told, with so many incoming
students. If I had told you this then,
you would have likely thought it strange.
We were fighting like cats and dogs in the wider Episcopal Church. And we were not glorifying God in our
disputes at all. Yet God had called a
big class to Trinity when things were seeming rather bleak.
Peter Moore, our Dean President at the
time, told us we had to select a class verse.
After some discussion, we settled initially on “Jesus wept” as our first
choice. Now, y’all are rightly chuckling
again. The Episcopal church was not
glorifying God in this fight at the time at all. So, we figured God was weeping at the state
of our church. But then we also knew He
was going to have to use us to continue the church, if He intended for it to
survive the fight and the divorce. And
boy, if you knew us, you knew God was shaking His head and weeping over these
seminarians with which He was going to have to work. Michelle is laughing. She knows seminary faculties weep over the
incoming students at every seminary fall!
Lol
Peter, for his part, would not let that be
our class verse. He admonished us for
not taking our responsibility seriously.
So he made us do it again. Many
of us were mad. We had picked a verse,
and we had considered it theologically. And
now we were wasting time meeting again. But
after our grumbling, we settled on part of verse 9 from today’s reading. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power
is made perfect in weakness.” Peter was
not happy, but we were done. But it,
like the first, was a verse that was well chosen, well-considered, and shaped
the work of many of our classmates as we have served Christ as ordained
presbyters in His Church for nearly two decades now. That’s the emotional tug from this passage
for me. Let’s see if it is what God
wanted you to consider today.
If you don’t know much about Corinth, I’ll
give you a quick lesson, likely more than you ever wanted to know. Corinth was located on an isthmus, with the
Aegean Sea on the west and the Saronic Sea on the east. It was re-planted by Julius Caesar around
44BC. Julius had armies fighting his
battles and establishing him as the Emperor of Rome. I’m sure we all know enough history to
remember Marc Antony’s efforts at this time.
The danger of paid armies in the ANE was when there was no battle to
fight. Fighting men are often good at
fighting. That’s what they know. When the battles stop, what do they do to
earn money? Think of friends and family
members who served in the military among us.
Some never figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives
when their terms of service end even in modernity, right?
Well, in the ANE, as in many places, a
gathered army could tempt those with enough money to try and seize a
throne. The Game of Thrones has been
around a lot longer than Martin’s books and HBO’s series. If one is rich and wants a throne and knows
an army is assembled, all one has to do is offer more money than the current
employer. Julius had an army far from
Rome. He did not want to recall it,
because those opposed to his rule might poach it and threaten him with it. So he made the soldiers all citizens and had
them re-settle Corinth. It was
tactically brilliant. At its height of 6
million people, give or take, maybe ¼ million people were citizens. Julius offered his army citizenship, and all
the rights and responsibilities that went with it, if they would settle in
Corinth and protect the Empire from the barbarians out there. Giving them citizenship ensured their
loyalty; and there was, for a time, a well-trained fighting force who could
protect the northeast boundary of the empire.
Of course, now that they were citizens,
the former soldiers had to make new lives for themselves. Because the isthmus is only three miles or so
across, the city developed a huge business moving cargo from ships on one side
to ships on the other. Unloading and
loading cargo and transferring them by wagons saved about three weeks of time,
plus the inherent dangers, of shipping around the Greek peninsula. We understand shipping costs much better
thanks to our supply chain issues, right?
Time is money, literally, in logistics.
So we can all begin to understand the possibilities and generated
wealth.
Eventually, the business grew and became
more efficient. Some decided too much
time was wasted, and money lost, unloading and loading ships. They chose to make ship harnesses and systems
which could lift ships out to be hauled across the three miles and dropped in
the other sea. Now, money was not spent
on as many men loading and unloading.
Cha-ching!
Of course, as with any port or trading
post, other businesses cropped up.
Brothels are big in port cities, right?
Restaurants. Bars. If the ships are not sailing, the sailors
needed to be entertained, for a cost, you understand? The transport businesses had support
businesses. Wheelwrights, carpenters,
wagon-makers, blacksmiths, and the like were all needed to keep trade
flowing. Oh, and let’s not forget, the
government needed to track the taxes. I
mean, they all owed the emperor their opportunity and new standing, and they
needed to make sure he was paid what he was owed for his largesse. You laugh, but I told you Julius’ decision
was tactically brilliant. He created a
city that LIKED to pay taxes, that felt it OWED him taxes in thanksgiving for
the opportunity he gave them.
Relatively quickly, Corinth became
incredibly wealthy and incredibly dissolute.
“Corinthianize” became a verb that, well, was not necessarily a
compliment. Think of “what happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas.” Sometimes we
think of that positively; sometimes we think of that rightfully
pejoratively. Corinth, because of its
recent history, was wealthy and determined to prove the emperor proud of his
decisions on their behalf. You and I
would rightly describe Corinth as trying to out-Rome Rome in everything. That’s the city where Paul planted this
church from which we have two of his letters.
Unsurprisingly, the church in Corinth had
issues, right? To be fair, they had
subscriptions. In fact, on occasion,
Paul will chew them out and remind them that not even the Romans do some of the
things the Christians are allowing in their church, but he will chew them out
even more for just doing things like the Romans do. For example, as a sign of their wealth, they
will gather for meals and eat until they throw up, and then eat more. Eating until throwing up was a sign of
opulent wealth. Paul will fuss at them
for letting some go hungry in an effort to show off their wealth. Good.
I see nods.
Like Israel before them and us today, the
culture creeps into the people of God.
Without correction, we begin to think that God approves of what we are
doing, until someone reminds us that, you know, some of the things were are
doing actually violate the His instructions to us. Think of our self-professing “Christian” leaders who use immigration,
poverty, slavery, or anything else to divide us and motivate voters rather than
treating those impacted by the issue of the day as if they are loved by God. Unlike our politicians, God is not interested
in votes or approval. He wants us to
choose Him, but He will accomplish His purposes whether we choose Him or
no. So Paul’s admonitions and
instructions are every bit as applicable to the church in the United States
today as it was in Corinth in His day.
Human beings value and prioritize traits
and behaviors which, to be frank, are simply ungodly. We prove to ourselves time and time again
that we choose darkness rather than God.
Instead of using the power and strength and wealth and everything else
that He has given us to glorify Him in our lives, how many of us choose to
self-aggrandize ourselves? In Corinth’s
case, it was further motivated by civic pride and loyalty to the emperor. Like American Christians who think God wants
them to govern according to their desires and their wants and their needs, the
church in Corinth conflated their civic loyalties with faithfulness to
God. The results were predictable.
In this part of the letter, Paul is
confronting the effects of “super apostles,” as one commentator labelled
them. Others came along after Paul left
and claimed more authority than Paul.
Think of one of your favorite megachurch pastors who create cults rather
than churches, or think of your favorite clergy who barely labor for God
draining the resources and faith of those who hunger and thirst for God, but
try to pretend they are about holy work.
Those who came after Paul declared their importance was derived from
their gifts. They claimed to have had
mystical experiences which proved their importance, though, coincidentally, those
experiences could not be evaluated by others.
Paul, of course, understands that the
value of his work, and our work, comes from God. What makes our work important is the fact
that God gives us the work and the gifts to accomplish the work in His
Name. When we are gathered in a
community like this, as small and insignificant as a congregation might seem to
the world outside us, we know we have work to do. We know God wants us to glorify Him in this
community. And we know we have, or will
have, whatever it is that we need to glorify Him properly in our communal and
individual lives.
Paul begins with what you and I might call
a humble brag referencing a man. It
becomes clear in the pericope that the man Paul is describing is himself. We do not know when this vision was granted
to Paul, but we do know he has had mystical experiences of the Risen Jesus whom
Paul persecuted. I won’t bore you with
the vision, but the meaning would have been significant. The third heaven was as close as one could
get to God as a living, sinning human being without being destroyed. Think of the Court of Gentiles for foreigners
visiting the Temple or standing outside the Temple when the veil of the Holy of
Holies was pulled back for all to see for a couple moments on the Day of
Atonement. Paul’s claim is that he has
been granted the most mystical experience possible, and if anyone has reason to
brag and claim authority, it is him.
But Paul continues on. He reminds the Corinthians and us that he has
work to do on behalf of God. To keep him
from being too arrogant, too puffed up by the experience, he was given a thorn
in his side. We do not know what the
thorn is, but it plagued him enough that he asked God to take it away three
times. On the third ask, God tells Paul that
His power is made perfect in weakness.
Unlike those who claim to be closer to God because of their experiences,
Paul is instructed, and reminded daily by the thorn, that God works in
weakness.
You and I sitting here today may wonder at
this lesson. Why would God choose to
work in weakness? Why would God think
that Paul needs a thorn to remember it is God’s work, not Paul’s, that is at
work in the world? Part of our challenge
is that when we are powerful, when we think we are the “in” people or the
chosen of God, we tend toward hubris. We
begin to think that it is our brilliance, our hard work, our intelligence, our
practice, our whatever that causes us to be successful. The reminder of the entirety of Scripture is
that such hubris leads us from God. The
rich trust money rather than God. The “in”
people forget that God calls all of us to reach out to the margins. God’s purpose, the whole reason He chose
Abraham and his descendants, and then us who are grafted in through the Seed of
Abraham’s faith, Jesus, are done so with a purpose of drawing all others in the
world into a right relationship with the Father.
Paul was the perfect evangelist for the
church plant in Corinth. He was
well-educated; he was a Roman citizen; he was well travelled. And, yes, he had had a mystical experience on
the road to Damascus which taught him that, for all his religious fervor and
zeal for God, he had gotten it wrong. The
One who had been hung on a tree was accursed by God for Paul and all of
us. And because Jesus was faithful even
to death, He was raised on the third day, reminding us of the redemptive power
of God and His will to use that power on our behalf. But that power will not ultimately be
exercised on our behalf until we die or He returns to re-create the world. For now, our experience is one of cross
bearing. For now, we live among others,
weak like ourselves, demonstrating to them by word and action, the love of God. Paul’s thorn keeps him mindful of the
boasting upon which he should be focused.
Paul’s thorn reminds him that the beatings, the imprisonments, the persecutions,
the insults, the hardships were where God had been most active in Paul’s
work. To use the language of a pandemic,
God’s thorn in Paul was a vaccination against false pride and hubris. God’s thorn kept Paul focused on his need of
God’s grace.
How that works in our life is similar to
the way it did in Corinth at this time. We
all know churches that place their faith in something other than God,
right? They place their faith in the
attendance or the giving or the volunteering or the programs. We understand why. But we also understand why such churches are
easily turned aside. We understand how
easy it is for leaders to begin to believe the whisper of the enemy that it is
their genius, their hard work, that makes the church successful. That stumble makes them more susceptible to
temptations. But for every church we see
fall, how many labor like your own, seemingly invisible to or unnoticed by the
world. You have shared with me your
feeding ministry. Have you conquered
hunger in the world through it? No. Have you conquered food insecurity in Morgan
county? No. What have you really done? The world would say not much, but I hope you
have heard the thankfulness from those whom you have served in God’s Name. You have served the stranger or the one whom
you know hungering in your midst, very much unlike the Corinthians whom Paul
chastised, in Christ’s Name, trusting that He will give the meaning to such faithful,
intentional service. If you have
reminded just one of those whom you served of His love for them, you have done
what He asked. You, like Him, have gone
in search of the lost sheep, just as He instructed all of us, and done your
best to restore them. Who knows how many
have watched you labor? Who knows how
much dignity you have restored in conversations over a meal?
Places like St. Mark’s will be where our
wider church will need to turn as it faces its reality. Our wider church just gathered in Louisville for
General Convention to pass a bunch of resolutions. Some were telling the United States what we
thought about our policies; others were our comments on the conflict in the
Middle East; and too few, in my opinion, were dealing with the current
realities of our beloved church. Just prior
to that gathering, it was released that we are down to about 377,000 people
gathering in worship each Sunday across our church. That small number should really cause us to
focus on our priorities. If we keep
doing things and shrinking, are the things we doing truly of God? These are hard conversations and require
prayerful discernment, right? You know
this given your parish experience. But
the wider church punted for three more years.
Change, and hopefully renewal, may come, but it seems like it will only
come when we begin to realize that the UN does not care what we think about
anything, that our government does not care about any resolution that we pass,
that NYC will not miss our presence over anything, that we do not seem to be
offering anyone anything they value or even should value. Until we get back to glorifying God in our
lives, I expect our corporate experience will not be a good one. We, the church of so many of the founders of
our nation, are unknown or a byword among Christians in our country today.
Individually, of course, we all are facing
thorns. Some of you have health
struggles. Some of you may be struggling
financially. Most of us have relational
issues in need of repair. We know all
too well what happens when we human beings, and others like us, trust too much
in ourselves, right? And lingering out
there always is the reality of death. We
can eat right, exercise right, do everything the smart people tell us, but we
each live in a shadow of death. We each
understand there is an impotence that we all share. But that impotence, in that weakness, we
realize the truth of what was revealed to Paul and shared by him with us. God has promised and demonstrated to each of
us that His redemptive power and Will are unlimited. We know, because of our baptism into Jesus’
death, that we are promised a resurrection and glory that passes all
imagination. We know that even when our
weakness leads to our eventually deaths, God’s power will glorify us with His
Son our Lord! And so, reminded of His instruction;
reminded of our Lord’s shameful death, glorious Resurrection, and magnificent
Ascension; fortified by His Body and His Blood, we are sent back out there to
do the work He has given us to do, both individually and corporately. And because we know our human frailties,
because we know our weaknesses all too well, we know that we must seek Him and
the work He would have us to do, confident that in that work for which we are
ill-equipped and ill-trained and not nearly strong enough, He will be present with
us, reminding that His work in us is made perfect in our weakness, and that His
Will for us and for others will be accomplished, whether the world notices or
not. But always, there is that reminder and
promise that One Day, when He returns, those who have chosen to follow Him will
be vindicated. That when He returns the
world will have no choice to acknowledge that those who trusted their weakness,
their foolishness, in His strength and His wisdom will be the ones who chose
truly wisely, will be the ones for whom the eternal world has been prepared
since the creation of this world!
In His Peace
and His promise,
Brian+
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