The text this morning is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the 14th chapter:
…strive to excel in building up the church. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Jesus tells the apostles today that they will become fishers of men instead of fishermen. Oh, dear Lord, forgive us for the laziness that comes from us when we hear this. When I think of fishing, I know it’s work, but I see myself sitting on the shore, getting the worm on the hook, throwing a line into the water, and sitting there until something else happens. Fishing, at least, I think, the way most people do it, is just kind of a lazy, relaxing way to bring a little food into your home. Or catch and release. Either way.
This is not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson today. Fishing for these men is hard. It’s taxing and time-consuming. If it’s not done, no one eats, not them, not their families, not their employees. Fishing takes all night. You move heavy stuff. You face huge storms. Fishing is hard work. And so, when Jesus says they’ll fish for men, there’s a ton of hard work involved there. The apostles were under no delusions they would be working for their lives.
Paul is no different. Paul know that he should be doing something, and that something is what we all should do, which is to strive to excel in building up the Church. That doesn’t just mean growing in numbers, though that could be part of it, but it means to build up, to edify, to add structure and balance and strength to the Church. Everything we do should be for the sake of those who are around us.
Thus, if one has one of the spiritual gifts that we’ve mentioned over the past few weeks, it should be in service to the Church. Paul talks about the gift of tongues. Again, this gift wasn’t given to everyone, but only a few. It was a gift that the Spirit gave to a person that a person in their presence would hear the Gospel put into their own language; the person speaking that language had never really spoken it before or studied it, but the Spirit gave utterance to the person for the sake of saving one. Paul talks about praying to the Lord in such a tongue, presumably, then, that a person gathered might hear it. If I were to say,
“Πάτερ ἡμῶν,You would have no idea what I said. That’s the Lord’s Prayer in Greek, by the way. But let’s say I never studied Greek, and I was praying the Lord’s Prayer and that’s what came out, presumably someone gathered around us spoke that and it gave them great hope that their Lord was for them, too, even the Greek speaker. It’s a good thing.
ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς,
ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου,
ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου,
γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου,
ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.
Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον,
δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον,
καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,
ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν,
καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,
ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.
̓Αμήν.”
But, if I’m praying that prayer, and I just don’t care, if I’m not thinking about the idea that God is our Father who gives us every good thing, who is holy, whose kingdom is coming, who forgives us, who guards us against evil, and I’m just going through the motions, then I’m unfruitful. It’s not a good work. It’s not even God-pleasing.
God doesn’t care about your lip service. He doesn’t care that “at least you showed up.” Isaiah tells us that God looks at the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at His word. The psalmist says that God desires a broken and contrite heart. We’re also told that God despises ritual without thought, religion without heart, sacrifices without repentance. God, in His great wisdom, sees exactly who you are as you come to worship Him and knows exactly the condition of your heart, whether it is turned toward Him or towards other things. You cannot fool God.
Even Paul knew that God would do this, and he knew how fruitless it was to try to enter into God’s presence by turning off your brain (and yes, this even is Paul who preached so deeply and so long he killed a boy of boredom–Paul expected everyone gathered to hear the Word of God to engage with it). Paul prayed with his lips, but he prayed with his mind, too. Paul sang with his spirit, but he sang with his mind, he paid attention to the words, he meditated on them. Oh, you who complain that Pastor picks unfamiliar hymns, do you not know that I pick them all for a purpose? The words and poetry of the hymn is there for a reason–I don’t just do it to trip you up–I do it to teach you through the hymns of the church. You’ll never learn if you sing the same eight songs over and over again. Quit complaining.
The major problem Paul sees is that when we disengage our minds from our Christian worship, it all becomes babble. How could any of you have said amen to the Greek I said before. You didn’t know if was the Lord’s Prayer. Maybe it said Hail Satan! If it’s all gobbledygook, it doesn’t build up, it breaks down, it destroys. It causes people to leave the Church. It causes people to stop trusting the pastor. It causes them to lose their focus. It causes them to focus on themselves. It causes them to see their own ways, and not the ways of God and the traditions of the Church.
Being a Christian is hard work, hard work indeed. There is a lot of work. I wish all of you would come to the Bible Study after the church service. It’s a good study, to hear the Word of God from the Proverbs. You would grow in your Christian maturity. You must grow in your Christian maturity. I don’t care if you’re 90 years old, you still have maturing to do. As you mature, you continue to leave behind your childish things, your childish thoughts. I don’t play with Legos nearly as often today as an almost-40 year old, because I have matured since I was 12. In our Christian lives, we leave behind the childish thoughts of selfishness, or inconvenience, of pastor-kept-us-over-an-hour-today, and start maturing into the knowledge and wisdom of Christ.
When we are mature, and as we become mature (because we’re never really going to be there in this life), then we begin to build up the Church. We edify it, adding to its structure. We build one another up. We encourage one another, we strengthen one another, we support one another. And you might think you can do this just on your own, where you are right now, but, boy, wouldn’t it make a difference if you were able to speak Scripture into the hearts of those who were hurting? You can only do that if you know how to properly apply the words that you have so diligently heard. And you can only know how to support the brothers and sisters in the Church if you hear of their problems because you’re actually present to be hearing their problems.
It’s a lot of work. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work to care for others. But that is what we’re called to do. Our Lord does not leave us as children, but helps to mature in Him that we might be strengthened and found faithful even upon the Last Day. If you are being challenged in this, this is good for it means that you are one for whom the Lord died. If He died for you, and you have received His forgiveness, you know that the will go God is for you to believe in Him and be found faithful until the end. If this is His will for you, and He is growing you, challenging you, strengthening you, then He cares for you and His desire for you to do so will not just not happen. You cannot stop Him from caring for you, and because of that, you also cannot stop caring for others.
God has put people in your path to love and serve, and he has made you a fisher of men. He has put you in a place that you can work and toil and struggle, and finally, with great might, pull them into the boar of the Church. We are all called to this. We do not have the call of an apostle, but we have the call to live out our vocations for the sake of those around us, that, for the sake of love, we serve them with all we have that they may be open to hearing the Good News of the Gospel.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. I’m not saying it should be easy. But, if you are called to tell others about Jesus, and, as long as your heart is beating, you are, then please do take confidence in this: God equips those whom He calls, and if He has called you, He has saved you, forgiven you, promised you the resurrection. If He has called you, the He has given to you every good gift and will continue to do so. You are the redeemed of Christ, and He shall bring you to maturity in Him that you might live confidently under the banner of His cross, using your mind, helping to make yourself mature. Be not confirmed to the laziness of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may use them in service to draw others to your beloved Jesus, that they would live with you for eternity. 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.
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