Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the 7th chapter:
This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Paul is right. The appointed time has grown very short. Though, not really as short as Paul thought it was going to be. You see, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, teaching in the 30s through the early 60s, over 1900 years ago, thought that Jesus was coming back very soon. He, and nearly almost every Christian since Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, has thought that Jesus was coming back soon.
This is all because of the interpretation of the signs. You know the signs, right? The signs that Jesus gives that show that Jesus’ return is coming very quickly. There are going to be false prophets, wars, rumors of wars. Nations and kingdoms will fight. Earthquakes and famines will occur all over. This is the beginning of the end. And all of these signs were accomplished on the very day that Jesus ascended into heaven. The Christians were expecting Jesus to return any day now.
And they waited. Paul was waiting even through the moment that he was executed by the axe in Rome. Roman Christians were waiting even as they were thrown to the lions. African Christians were waiting as they watched as Rome was sacked by the Vandals from the north and the Roman Empire began to fall. Turkish Christians were waiting even as the Islamic hordes overran their cities.
Christians have waited through all kinds of persecution. In fact, it seems, just as an aside, that when persecution stops or slows, Christians lose their focus on Christ’s return. They lose their focus on the Resurrection. And maybe that’s why we have such a decadent, loosey-goosey Christian church here in America today. Maybe that’s why the so-called pastors who teach health and wealth, who teach an anything-goes mentality, who teach nothing but schlock, maybe that’s why they’re famous. Maybe that’s why they’re popular. There isn’t the same persecution here in America for Christians, and we lose our vision of the Resurrection and focus on the present form of this world.
You see, the Resurrection, that’s what Paul is really talking about here. I know, we hear this passage and start freaking out about marriage, and if we’re married how that’s a bad thing. But, hear what Paul says right before this passage. Paul says, “I think that in view of the present distress (meaning probably persecution and the end of time) it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.”
Paul here isn’t saying marriage is bad. That would contradict the entirety of Scripture, including many of Paul’s own writings. Marriage is very, very good. And so is singlehood. But, what he’s saying is that the time is short, and there is much work to do. Stay married. If you can be single, stay single. Earlier in this chapter, Paul says to the single that they should marry if they cannot exercise self-control; it is better to marry than burn with the passion of lust. And that’s true.
This is Paul’s approach: the time is short, there is lots of work to do, certain vocations may get in the way, but if you have a vocation from God, do that vocation. Does that make sense? Jesus is coming back soon. There is a lot of work to do, especially evangelically, before He returns. We desire that all men would see the Day of the Lord and rejoice, not weep.
And while you go into the world in your vocations, making disciples by baptizing and teaching, as our Lord says to do in Matthew 28, those same vocations, husband, father, employer, mother, wife, daughter, son, employee, dog walker, those vocations may get in the way of you telling a person of the Good News in Jesus Christ. We tend to put our earthly vocations ahead of preaching the kingdom of Jesus. That’s why Paul says that those who have wives should live as though they had none and so on. It’s not because he wants Christians to leave their wives. He doesn’t want husbands to abandon their vocations towards their wives.
What he is saying is essentially this: because Jesus is coming back soon, if you see a person who is of the world and does not belong to Christ, that should be to you the dearest thing in your heart. Don’t let your interests be divided here. Minister to the one who does not know Christ, because the Church’s goal is to bring as many people as possible into her so that as many people as possible would be saved.
Now, this is a harsh word, still, is it not? How many of us have done this thing? How many of us have been able to forsake our loved ones for the sake of Jesus and expanding His kingdom through the work of the Holy Spirit? Certainly not me. I’m awful at this. A pastor, a husband, a father, a friend, a son. I can barely balance those vocations on a good day. And then, if you were to throw someone who needed the Good News that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on human flesh to bear our sin and be our Savior, dying in my place for my sins to win for me eternal life, if they needed that, and I see them, and I give clearance first to my other vocations… I’m really bad at this, guys. We all are.
But just because we’re bad, that doesn’t excuse us from Paul’s admonition here. But, what it does is it shows us our true hearts. It shows us our true idols. We have a tendency to put the things we love up on a pedestal, so that we may admire it and worship it. It may be our spouse, our kids, our time, our possessions. It might be our lust, our gossip, or really any sin. Whatever it is, we all, we ALL, have idols that take the place of our God. And our God demands that we worship Him, and Him alone, by fearing, loving, and trusting in Him above all things. And we don’t. We fear, love, and trust other things more than we ever could or would fear, love, and trust Him.
So, when we see these idols reigning in our hearts, reigning in the place of God, we should repent, and we have today, and be forgiven, and look to what it is that our God says. Jesus Christ, again, told us, right before He bodily left this earth, that we were to go and make disciples. So, let’s do that. Let’s take our divided loyalties, and use our vocations for good. Let’s look at this in the case of parents. We bring the children to the Baptismal font, making them a disciple of Jesus. We teach them the truth of God and Scripture, leading to Catechism instruction, making them a disciple of Jesus. We teach them how they need the Lord’s Supper for there they receive the true body and blood of our Lord, making them a disciple of Jesus. We teach our kids these things. We should and can teach others, too.
An employer can show the love of Christ to her employees, not shoving Jesus down their throats, but being patient and kind, understanding and loving. A teacher can show this same love toward his students, giving them help and support. A custodian can do this by loving and serving in such a way to show that his charge to do his duty is fulfilled by keeping things neat and orderly, caring about the kind of job that is done. And a child can do this to their siblings, by helping them, loving them, being kind to them, and reminding them of Jesus’ love for each other. And perhaps, perhaps, the day, and I’m sure you all, especially as adults, have encountered this, the day will come that someone asks you about your faith, about your Jesus, about your hope, about why it is that you are so good, and kind, and patient, and loving. And you will tell them the Good News. You will tell them of your Jesus, the Son of God, who died in your place upon the cross because He loves you, to save you from your sin, to free you, and to bring you to Himself for all of eternity, and who will raise you from the dead. That is our Good News, and it is the world’s Good News.
But, let’s get this straight. Being a good person, being loving, being patient, being kind, isn’t going to save you. You really should be doing these things because you are a Christian, but they’re going to save you. Jesus did that. That’s a free gift. You can’t work for that. We may respond to that free gift, but everything Jesus does is to give us hope, not because we could achieve it, but because He has already won that hope for us.
And that hope is the one and only reason we do all of these things. What is that hope? It’s the hope of the Resurrection. It’s the hope, that, as Paul says today, the present form of this world is passing away. This is THE hope of the Christian life: the Resurrection. Without the Resurrection, everything else means nothing. Our hope is not to be better people. Our hope even is not to make a million disciples for Jesus. Those things will fail you every time, 100% of the time. Our hope is in the only sure and certain thing: the promise of Christ’s return and our bodily resurrection from the grave.
This is our joy. This is why we do everything. How do we reconcile that with what Paul is saying? How do we have joy in the Resurrection but not feel guilty about what we enjoy here in this world? Marriage, tears, joys, purchasing, really the entire world of these earthly things that we love and enjoy, we can have all of them, use all of them. And how? It’s because our Lord God has given them to us for now, for a time, because they belong to this life, this present form of the world.
When we exceed the limits of these things, when we make them our idols, when we set them before the gifts of Christ and His Church, when they come before Word and Sacrament, when they come even before the sake of Christ and His good kingdom, they become false powers for us and they lead us away from the Resurrection. That is why we must hold onto the hope that Jesus gives to us.
When our eyes are on the Resurrection, we need have no fear. All things fall into their proper place in light of what is to come. Do you mourn? This, too, shall pass. Do you rejoice? So, too, do the angels with you. Are you married? The Church is betrothed to her groom, Jesus Christ. Do you have possessions? They will be burned up in the world to come.
We don’t hold these things dear because they will pass away. We hold the promise of the Resurrection close for it is the only eternal thing we take from this life and into the next. You see, this is our hope. The key to all of this is that the present form of this world is passing away. The appointed time has grown short. Christ is coming back soon. Believe this, because it is true. Either Christ will return for all, or He will return for you to take you to Himself on the day that you die. For every Christian, Christ is returning. He is our hope, our joy, and our salvation. He is coming for you because you are His, and because you were discipled. He loves you and is coming for you, because the time is short and this world is passing away. Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
Been praying about what to say on this one.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting that your qualifications (Paul didn't understand God's timetable, Paul was speaking to a specific culture and place so the difficult portions of the message are less applicable to later periods, and it's the general principle rather than the unacceptable specifics (vocation is nowhere mentioned in the text) that matter) are 3/4 of the exegetical devices I was taught in the ELCA to skirt around Paul's teachings on homosexuality as well as Paul's teachings about female pastors. (The missing quarter, thankfully missing, is to openly accuse Paul of some sort of internal psychology such as mysogyny or repressed homosexuality.) While I agree strongly with much of your point on vocation, citing a single verse about the end times as the broader context in the midst of two chapters, 6 and 7 explicitly and repeatedly dealing with sexual and marital ethics seems a bit... misleading. I get that the church is very Focus on the Family and taking this passage at face value is a good way to get lynched, but using the methods that we decry in others for passages we don't like undermines our ability to condemn. If Paul who makes explicit claim to divine revelation for his knowledge of God as an apostle, didn't understand God's timing, what else might he be wrong in? If this is a message aimed at the persecution of his age and not the broader text, how can we tell the ELCA and others that women pastors and other extra-biblical passages are not ideas whose time had not yet come and are now all right?
Hey Bruce, thanks for your thoughts. Check out the rest of 1 Corinthians 7. Paul IS talking about all this in light of the Resurrection, and he just got done talking about all various kinds of vocation. I understand your concern about taking passages out of context, but I don't think that's what the sermon does. There are many who take anything out of context to suit their purposes, as you said, but many fathers have said these same things (I try to never innovate on the Scriptures). Specifically, in this sermon, instead of preaching grammatically, I preached the context. I understand this might be a hot button issue, so, if you've further questions, why don't you come in and talk? That would be nice.
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