April 26, 2009 - "Big"

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1 Corinthians 13

Christianity is a big religion … all around the world millions claim the name of Christ – in thousands of flavors and still counting … stone cathedrals in great cities and thatched-roof sheds in Haiti … high-toned sermons and street-corner preachers … charlatans fleecing the faithful and chaplains visiting the sick … Presbyterians and Quakers, Methodists and Catholics, evangelicals and liberals; progressives and conservatives … mainline, old-line and non-denominational … all rolled into an amazing conglomerate called the church of Jesus Christ.

Christianity is a big religion … with a big savior … big ideas … big dreams … and a very big love at the heart and center of it all.

For God so loved the world …

A world-sized love … and when it gets inside of us, it pushes things around, rearranges the furniture, adds a few more rooms … makes us bigger then we were yesterday.

Christianity is a big religion …

From Abraham to Anselm …
From Moses to Mother Teresa …
From Sinai to Cincinnati and all around the world …

Read the Bible – every book a voice, a voice clamoring for our attention – God is this and God is that … big ideas and big challenges …
Christ is so large it will take the rest of our life and then some to work it all out …
Time isn’t enough to serve the LORD … we’ll need eternity as well.

Christianity is big … really big.
A big Savior …
And a very big love …

Paul the Apostle writes an amazing essay on big love …
The love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD …
God’s love for us …
And our love for one another.

Please open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 13 (p.175) …

We’ll take a look at Paul’s essay in three movements … the first movement – [read vs. 1-3] …

Everything we tend to value …
Oratory …
Passion …
Faith …
Intelligence …
Sacrifice …

The great human virtues … Paul dares to suggest that all of these great and wondrous virtues can be done without love … but without love, they’re only vanity, self-serving and self-glorifying … without love, these virtues are sawdust and cobwebs.

What is love?

Here’s what love looks like … the second movement …

[read vs. 4-6] … … …

These are not easy words to read.
These verses take me to task.
They get inside of me and poke around in sensitive places.

I’d like to think I’m a loving person.
And maybe I am.
Some of the time.
But is my love big enough?

I think of the ancient Chinese practice of wrapping a little girl’s foot, deforming the foot painfully, so that it could fit into tiny little shoes … someone once said, “small feet are beautiful.” So for centuries, little girl’s feet were bound and forced to grow in upon themselves – so the woman could wear tiny shoes.
Do we do that to our soul?
Do we wrap our soul in ideas too small, too confining?
Do we totter around on small thoughts and small commitments?

I wonder about my faith … my hope … my love …
Too small?
My vision of the church?
My sense of Christ?
My willingness to go the extra mile?
Is it all too small?

Do you ever wonder about your faith, hope and love?
Are you tottering around on ideas too small?
Like J.B.Phillips asked, “Is Your God Too Small?”

Let’s read on …
Verses 8-13 …

What does it mean to love?

In my Bible study this past year, I’ve reminded my students nearly every session – love is an ethical word – not a sentiment, but a commitment … not a feeling, but a decision; an ethical word filled with action and involvement – concern and care – to do unto others as we would have them do unto us!

What does it mean to love?

We learn the ways of love from Jesus …
Love gives …
Love surrenders and serves …
Love shoulders a burden we couldn’t carry …
And when we pick up our cross, we always do it for someone else, just like Jesus did.

“God is love,” says the writer of 1 John,
“And those who abide in love
Abide in God,
And God abides in them” [1 John 4:16].

What is love?

We see it in Jesus Christ.

Jesus welcomes the children and touches the leper.
He engages people openly and honestly …
He walks away from needless conflict, but isn’t afraid of conflict when its needed.
He teaches … again and again, he teachers,
To open folks up …
A larger version of faith, hope and love.

You can be bigger than you are today.
There’s always more to faith than what you know and what you have of it today.
Don’t believe everything you think … and learn to think in new ways.
There’s no end to growing …
In this life, and for the next.

When the stone was rolled away Easter morning …
We all learned a primal truth:
Love cannot be beaten …
Nothing stands in the way of love … love bears all things, endures all things, believes all things … love never ends.
Though darkness descend and all be lost, nothing stands in the way of love.
Love always has its getting’ up morning …

We learn love in Christ …
Love rolls up it’s sleeves and goes to work …

Love collects luggage for foster children.
Love is our Board of Deacons looking after our congregation.
Love is my good friend, Ben Mathes, who goes to some of the most dangerous places in the world to bring medicine and schoolbooks and a little bit of Jesus.
Love stands behind LAX hotel workers.
Love serves tuna casserole in a soup kitchen …
Love helps hungry families at our Food Pantry …
Love fills up a cardboard fish bank for the One Great Hour of Sharing …
Love takes a neighbor to the doctor’s office …
Love reads the Bible carefully to discern the voice of Christ …
Love prays for peace in our world …
Love goes on a mission trip to Nicaragua …
Love digs water wells for thirsty people …
Love plants trees on Earth Day …
Love frees a whale trapped in fishing nets …
Love fights for clean water and clean air …

Love welcomes and affirms –
Clothed in Christ, we are one in Christ – “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female” [Galatians 3:28] …

In Christ, the usual distinctions are erased.
In Christ, there is no longer believer or non-believer, Republican or Democrat, gay or straight, rich or poor, friend or foe, legal or illegal immigrant, beautiful and not-so-beautiful.

The usual distinctions fad away in the bright light of Christ:
That’s why the world was so taken by Susan Boyle – I’m sure by now you’ve all seen her performance either on TV or on YouTube – when she stepped onto the stage, in all of her Welsh frumpiness, 47 years old and never been kissed, the judges rolled their eyes and the audience snickered … but there she was, and when she opened her mouth to sing, it was glorious … in heartbeat, the audience was overwhelmed with shame – how quickly, how easily, the book was judged by its cover – tears flowed, mouths dropped open, and when she sang the last notes of “I Dreamed a Dream,” it was a standing ovation for her.
The world learned an important lesson – those things that divide us, one from the other – the boundaries we draw, and the big deals we make of them, must be managed better … we’ve got to have better eyes and warmer hearts … and we’ve got to make sure that everyone is welcomed!

Think of our LORD's Table here … and the fuss so many churches make about who can and who can’t partake.

Why do we do that? Why a food fight at the LORD's Table, of all places?

Jesus had table fellowship with all sorts of questionable people – the down-and-outer, the irreligious and the outcast – Jesus welcomes everyone!
We are one in Christ!

Can the church of Jesus Christ be any less?

We learn love in Christ!

Now that Easter is behind us, we have some work to do.
To listen to Christ!
“This is my son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him,” says the Father to us …
Listen to him we must, and listen to him we will.
Or might I ask, to whom else are we listening, if not listening to Christ?
What are the voices and values that shape our soul?
If not Christ, who then?
If not faith, hope and love, what then?

Now that Easter is behind us,
Is Christ ahead of us?
In the light of Easter, we have to ask probing questions.
Is Christ the heart and soul of Covenant Presbyterian Church?
Is Christ my heart?
Is Christ your heart?

Now that Easter is behind us,
What’s ahead of us?
Where are we headed?
And what’s in store for us?

This much I know:
Everyone of us in this room …
Can make a fresh start of it with Christ.
Today … here and now!

Everyone of us in this room can bow our head and start all over again with Christ our LORD.
Everyone of us in this room can let a little more of Christ into our lives.
“LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, I give myself to you in faith and obedience.”

We will change.
We will grow.
That’s how love goes … a very big love, indeed!

Now … take a few moments with me please …
Bow you heads …
Quiet your thoughts …
Silence your soul …
… … … … … … receive Christ!

A very big love, indeed!

Amen and Amen!