2011-02-06-am Sermon 1 Corinthians 2

110206am 1 Cor 12:1-end Matthew 5:13-20

We began this year with the Wise Men, asking, are you committed to Christ? Then we heard from Acts He commanded us to preach to the people and asked, are you committed for Christ, committed to sharing the good news and helping the church to grow – our mission strategy, 3 Ps (Presence, Proclamation and Persuasion) and four Cs (Church, Cells, Courses and Children). Then we opened this letter to the Corinthians, with a definition of the church: those who are called to be holy and who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ – he calls us, we call on him. Then we had Albert Jewell from the Methodist Church reminding us that we are called together from lots of different backgrounds.

So here we are: called by Christ, committed to Christ and for Christ, in communion/community – and the basis for all this, this chapter tells us, is the Cross of Christ. And the Cross has Consequences.

There are many things that people put at the centre of their lives, many things that the world tells us are really important and make us important. As Christians we tell ourselves, the most important thing is Christ, he is at the centre. Yes, good – but even then, there are many things about Christ and Christianity that people can put at the centre, and if we get that wrong it can muddle up our thinking and therefore our lives. We can get out of balance.

For example, we might say the really important thing about Christ is Christmas, his incarnation, that he came among us as one of us. Good – but what did he do when he came among us? Was he just like a celebrity or statesman who visits a disaster zone and then goes away, or like us when we feel inadequate to help someone in trouble? And where is he now? Or we might say, the really important thing about Christ is his Counsel – his teaching. Excellent – but what if his teaching is too hard to understand, or to follow? And what if I try but fail? Others say, the really important thing about Christ is his Compassion – he comes close to me when I'm feeling rotten and helps me. Yes, essential – but what about when I'm feeling fine? And what about his judgment? Maybe the important thing is his Challenge – to go out serve the poor and change the world! Brilliant – but what about when the poor don't want you to go and change them, thank you! And actually Christ didn't give much of a detailed programme about how to change the unjust structures of society. I could go on. I wonder what is the most important thing about Christ for you?

I'm not suggesting that we have to chose between all those, they are all important, but this text tells us that one thing above all centres and focuses these. I resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. The pivot, the fulcrum, the centre of gravity, is the Cross. It's not that the cross is the only thing we should talk about – Paul talks about much more in these very letters – but it is the key that unlocks everything else. It's certainly not that we should talk about the Cross as if it's his death without his resurrection, his ascension, his sending of the Spirit, his mission, his kingdom, his coming. But the one who is alive and reigning and sending and returning is always the one who was crucified, not someone else.

And the Consequences are in who we are and how we go about what he's called us to. Paul says, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God... I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power.

The world tends to tell us that there are some people who are important, the ones we should have regard to and admire and imitate and follow. I picked up a second hand book by Sebastian Faulks, a biography of three Englishmen who had great promise but died young. They were considered 'brilliant', they really shone. One was artistically brilliant, another was a brilliant war ace, another was a brilliant intellect. This last one shone at a brilliant school, he was brilliant at Oxford, everyone's head turned when he went into a room, everyone wanted to know what he was doing and what he thought – though he knew how brilliant he was, and was immoral and obnoxious. It reminded me of that atmosphere where you can be as evil and vicious as you like so long as you are brilliant.

In other circles, you are important if you are a tough guy, if you've got the muscles to look after yourself and the scars to prove it. For others it's business skill, making money, clever investment, the millionaires and investment bankers – in Faulk's latest novel one of these people at a north London party says if you were working between 1986 and 2006 and didn't put away £10 million your children are going to ask whether you got out of bed and went to work, because it was so easy – if you didn't care about taking the winnings and shrugging off the losses because it was 'OPM' – other peoples' money.

For others it fame and celebrity – and that seems to be a prize you win not for achieving anything in particular but just for really wanting it more than the other contestants. 'It's my dream!' In more traditional communities you are important if you have so-called 'honour' (even though you protect it by some pretty dishonourable means), status, social standing, the family name. And we could go on.

Then I look at the church. Ahem! Last Sunday I went to Idle church where Robin Gamble is the vicar – as always a memorable sermon, but I was equally interested in the people. It was busy, a bit noisy, people of all ages, young people and children, LOL (by the way, lol in text speak means laugh out loud, but in church it means Little Old Ladies), special needs, the usual mix. And here's the thing – nobody important. Or to be more precise, nobody important in those ways I've been describing – or if there was, that doesn't in itself make you important in church.

[[Someone was telling me they had been pleased to hear that a friend/relative had started going to church, having moved to a village further north, but the were disappointed when they went to church with them, and this person was pointing out people in the congregation and saying, This one is a JP, and this one is head of such a company, this is the chief constable or whatever. Frankly, the days of going to church to be seen hobnobbing with important people have gone, or should have. Not a problem we face in Pudsey, anyway!]]

Now that doesn't mean that God wants us to be uneducated, foolish, naïve, ignorant, poor or inadequate. If we are, we are welcome to Christ and his church, but God also wants us to grow in wisdom and maturity – but in his kind of wisdom, not the world's. We do however speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing etc. [v.6-10]. This is what he's talking about later in ch.12 when he talks about having the spiritual gift of the word of wisdom – the ability to put into words the foolish wisdom of the cross so that people understand what is really important to God – to understand him and his Son and his Spirit, and his ways – the way he is with us and the ways he wants us to go about living. It's the simplest thing in the world, and it takes a lifetime to learn and practice – humility, patience, forgiveness, love. We have the mind of Christ (v.16) – and the church exists to be a different kind of community with different values – as he says back in 1:26 brothers, think of what you were when you were called (i.e. became Christians) not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth – if the world looks at the church today waiting to be impressed by wealth, power, money, glamour, it's looking for the wrong things! - but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

So what's important to you? And if the answer is Christ, what about Christ is important to you? It should be Jesus Christ and him crucified – everything else, yes, but not without him crucified. And the consequence is the kind of community we are called to be.