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March 3, 2013

Facing Our Worldliness

Preacher: Pastor Braun Campbell Series: Lent & Holy Week 2013: Facing the Cross Category: Biblical Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:1–10:13

Third Sunday in Lent
St. John's Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA
1 Corinthians 10:1-13

“Facing the Cross: Facing Our Worldliness”

Sometimes it seems like the rules of the world just get in our way.

In the years that I’ve been at St. John’s, you’ve probably heard that I’m a gamer – I enjoy playing a wide number of video games. It’s something that I’ve grown up with, even back from the early days of the Atari 2600 console that I played at my friend’s house. Video games have come a long way since then. Last year, the Smithsonian even debuted an exhibition called “The Art of Video Games.” Throughout their existence, video games have challenged players with rules. Rules shape a game. They can even be what leads to you really enjoying a game as you overcome the challenge that its rules put in front of you. You might have to go for a high score while jumping over barrels. You may find yourself trying to survive wave after wave of enemy forces that are coming down on your position. Or you might just have to slingshot a bird into a bunch of green pigs. But whether you’re a gamer like I am or you’ve never picked up a game controller or played Angry Birds on your smartphone, you’ve certainly had to play according to rules. Bridge, checkers, hide-and-seek, football, tennis: the rules of the game provide a framework for you, whether you’re playing with others or against yourself. The rules of some games say that there are winners and losers, while others just exist to guide you as you play. That’s how the games work.

If you’ve figured out the rules by which the world says how life should be played, let me know! To a certain extent, each of us has had to try to figure that out from the earliest days of our lives, working to piece together the rules of language and relationships in homes and families. But once you’re exposed to the wider world, it’s like the game changes – and keeps changing. And while the specific goals might shift from one thing to the next from time to time, there do seem to be a few rules that you’ve probably got down. “Be kind to other people, and they’re more likely to be kind to you.” “Keep up with your work, and you’ll make progress.” “Get as much money and stuff as possible, and you’ll be happy!” “Bad things don’t happen to good people.” You might not agree with those rules. In fact, you might have firsthand experience that life doesn’t work out that way. But the world still might have you thinking that, maybe, if you just keep playing by the rules that society offers, things will be okay. If you’re nice enough, or if you live the right way, you’ll win. Or at least, you won’t lose.

Today we heard Jesus respond to two separate incidents that were in the news of that day. From the sound of it, the people back then thought a lot like people today. They wondered if those Galileans who were killed were worse than other people, if they got what was coming to them on the divine scale, as it were. It’s like that’s an implicit rule of the world, that bad people should have bad things happen to them, and good things, to good people. At least, we’d like that to be the rule. Problem is, there are no good people – or rather, there’s no one good enough to deserve good things, because everyone has made mistakes. You have. I have. And when it comes to our standing in how we play by the real rules of life, God’s instruction, any imperfection is enough to take us directly to the “Game Over” screen! But Jesus hasn’t come to cut you off and drive you to give up. Instead, he calls you to turn from the rules of the world so that you can really live.

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes to show the Christians in Corinth that they are in danger of repeating the past. They’re not the first of God’s people to buy into the rules that the world offers. They’re following in the steps of ancient Israel. Paul’s callback to the people who God rescued from Egypt serves as a reminder that worldliness is a danger throughout the ages. When he notes that “with most of them God was not pleased,” he’s making an epic understatement. Out of all the adult men who saw God’s miraculous work in bringing Israel out from Egypt and through the years in the wilderness, only Joshua and Caleb – the spies who trusted in the Lord – only those two would enter into the Promised Land. The people of Israel, ancestors in faith both for the Corinthians and for us, repeatedly rejected God’s instruction and lost out on life as a result.

Paul points to five problems that the church in Corinth shared with the people of Moses’ time. The first one he points out is the craving and covetousness that Israel demonstrated. Even though God had quenched their thirst with miraculous, refreshing water from a rock and with divine food in the form of the manna that He spread on the ground, the people looked back with wistful and rosy recollections of the meat and drink that they’d had as slaves in Egypt. They wanted something different to fill their bellies, even if it came from keeping company with false gods. The same thing was going on in Corinth. The believers there thought they could keep on going to the pagan temples to join in on the feasts to the various deities. When your appetite leads your actions, it sets the rules as it goes. The second problem that Paul highlights is related to the first. Israel kept turning from God to follow after the idols of the other nations they encountered. Even after everything that they’d seen the Lord do, they made a calf out of gold to be their object of worship. They fail to live up the First Commandment, living in idolatry, and that leads them into further trouble. Foreign people worshiped fertility gods by indulging in fornication, the third timeless problem that connected Israel to Corinth. When the people pursued sexual sins, the rules they thought would bring them pleasure brought only disaster. Later on, while Israel journeyed through the wilderness, the continually put God to the test with their impatience and quarreling, another set of attributes that sadly spans the centuries. Paul’s concluding point should also be familiar to our modern ears: grumbling. The discontentment that the people demonstrated reflected a lack of appreciation for everything that the Lord was doing (and does) for His people. All five of these problems lead to the same conclusion: bad stuff hurts you! God’s people can’t be a part of the community that He calls together and then continue in the life of sin that sets up goals that lead you away from the Lord.

Summarizing the prophet Ezekiel’s message from today’s Old Testament text, you could say that the world’s expectations are different from God’s. Again, you might think that living a good life, being righteous, would be a great goal – one, which if achieved, should be all that you’d need to do to be right with God. But what happens when a righteous person turns to do bad stuff, or just makes poor choices? We hear that not even their righteous living could save them. That’s the thing: righteous living isn’t (ever) enough. God’s instruction, the rules for real living, require perfection, something that neither Israel nor the Corinthians nor you nor I could ever hope to deliver. But by contrast, God says through Ezekiel that if the wicked were to turn from their way to righteousness, they would live! If righteous living isn’t enough in itself, the faith through which the Lord makes such living possible makes all the difference. God in His mercy and love gives faith to turn us all from living by the world’s ever-changing, ever-disappointing rules.

Faith is foundational. Your life as God’s own people isn’t meant to be compartmentalized, with your faith over in one corner and your work, school, play, and family kept apart. The faith that God gives, the faith lives in people who face the cross, is holistic. It’s meant to be a central part of your identity, that which informs and shapes everything else about you. You’re called to live by the rule of faith because God is faithful, even giving Himself so that you could have real life. Jesus is the fulfillment of the faith of the Church: the people of Israel, the Corinthians, and us today. Facing the cross, you will see that the rules of the world can’t give you what God offers because only God can give you Himself.

Paul makes another connection between ancient Israel and his audience in Corinth, a connection which applies to us, too. In those days long past, God rescued the people through the water of the Red Sea, but in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit delivers us through the water of Baptism. In the wilderness, the Lord provided miraculous food and drink through manna from heaven and water from the rock. We, like the Corinthian congregation, share in the meal that God provides in Holy Communion where we eat and drink from our Rock, Jesus. He’s where you can find hope in a world where the rules are constantly changing.

The spirit of the age pushes people – you and me included – towards something we could call “personal privilege.” Like a game whose rules only exist to guide you as you play, the rule of personal privilege says that you can make it all up as you go along, going after whatever passing things you feel you need to in order to reach your goals. That’s worldliness. That rule won’t help you to overcome the challenges of life. As a person who has Jesus for your Rock, live instead a life that renounces personal privilege. Turning from that focus on self, you can live in the life of love toward God and love toward your fellow human beings that finds hope in the cross and empty tomb of the Savior who serves his people.

Thanks be to God that our hope doesn’t depend on the rules of this world, which just get in our way. Facing the cross, turning from worldliness, we live by the rule of faith. Depending on Jesus instead of chasing after the goals that the world puts before us, you’ll make it through the challenges of life, a greater accomplishment than any high score.

Amen.

other sermons in this series

Mar 31

2013

Mar 28

2013

Facing Denial

Preacher: Rev. Jack Meehan Scripture: John 13:1-17–13:31b-35 Series: Lent & Holy Week 2013: Facing the Cross

Mar 24

2013

Facing the Road

Preacher: Rev. Jack Meehan Scripture: Luke 23:1–23:56 Series: Lent & Holy Week 2013: Facing the Cross