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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:We are at a halfway point in the beautiful body series, so let's remember what's up with those Corinthians. The apostle Paul who, in my youth group days, we nicknamed turbo god man. It's not a catchy nickname, really, but we used it because he's so amped up. And Paul is moving around the Roman empire starting churches left and right. And eventually, he gets word that the church he started in Corinth is going off the rails.
Speaker 2:So he writes them letters. And Paul's letters function as a proxy for his presence. When the church gets a letter, they get together, and they listen like he's really there in the room with them. So in the first part of the letter, Paul talks about their legal disagreements, sex controversies, and what worship has to do with food. And we talked about all of that last year in the series Make Good Choices.
Speaker 2:This year, we pick up the letter with a new thematic twist, beautiful body. It's not so much about Paul's hot body. If attraction was a part of his charisma, who knows? Maybe it was. But when I asked chat GPT if the apostle Paul was handsome, it said, there are no contemporary descriptions or images of the apostle Paul, so his physical appearance remains unknown.
Speaker 2:There you have it. AI has spoken. Now what we mean by beautiful body is this metaphor Paul invites the Corinthians into, that they form a beautiful body, different parts working together, all in Christ. So Jeremy took us through these spiritual gifts. And maybe, like me, you brought some baggage to the topic.
Speaker 2:Maybe that included these quizzes that people used to make me do that felt like they pigeonholed you or just a feeling that you don't fit into a list that includes talents like the utterance of wisdom or the working of powerful deeds. And that was never Paul's point. His point was to get the people in Corinth to notice how their differences made them beautiful. And God was never interested in ranking any of that. Then we looked at chapter 13 last week, the love chapter.
Speaker 2:And as Jeremy read the entire chapter in the sermon, I thought about what the world might look like if we read the love chapter before we left the house or, you know, posted on social media. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. Love never fails.
Speaker 2:Love, Jeremy said, is the North Star. But let's be honest. Love isn't easy, is it? And that's why the letter is not over. We're in chapter 14 today, and I'm so glad you're here for this because it is about to get a little weird.
Speaker 2:But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God, we take a moment to find our attention in our bodies. We thank you for heads and brains. We thank you for lips and ears and noses. We thank you for shoulders and arms, lungs and stomachs, hips, legs, ankles, feet.
Speaker 2:All these parts working together to form our body. So if there is tension in our shoulders or our breath is just a bit shallow. We simply breathe a little deeper into these stressed out spaces. We breathe together. For the ways we fail to care for our bodies and the bodies of others, we make space and say sorry.
Speaker 2:For the ways we deny what our bodies know and can embrace, we make space and we say sorry. For the ways we have been our own enemy and not rested or played well, we make space and say sorry. May the beauty of the Lord be upon us, establishing the work of our bodies. Amen. Alright.
Speaker 2:We are in first Corinthians chapter 14, and, yes, it is about to get weird. The chapter is about what Paul calls the gifts of the spirit that have to do with how we speak in community. And that sounds super normal. Right? But Paul's talking about prophecy and tongues.
Speaker 2:And look, for some of us, prophecy and tongues are familiar and fine. You're like, Bobby, I'm speaking in tongues right now. But for some of us, we have apprehension about how prophecy and tongues and other ecstatic spiritual experiences unfold in public settings. And for others, you're like, what are we about to get into? Look.
Speaker 2:I know how diverse commons is. I know that some of you come to church because you love a person for whom church is important, so you honor that. You show up, and anymore isn't really for you. And look, I think you could teach us a thing or two about what love looks like. But we are still gonna talk about prophecy in tongues.
Speaker 2:Like, there really could be something in this for all of us. The charismatics, the cerebral questioners, and, yeah, the strong silent types. So we're gonna talk about what's a spiritual person, the trouble with tongues, chaos and control, and speech. After Paul's love summit in first Corinthians 13, he trudges down the path toward the end of his correspondence, closing in on a problem he needs to address. Paul says, follow the way of love and eagerly desire the gifts of the spirit, especially prophecy.
Speaker 2:For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them. They utter mysteries in the spirit. But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging, and comfort. So let's get on the same page with Paul and understand what he means by prophecy and speaking in tongues.
Speaker 2:Prophecy is not fortune telling. It is the telling forth. It's the articulation of what is true in community. Where we've come from and where we're going, what it really means to be the children of God in the world. And prophecy is kinda like preaching, passions.
Speaker 2:Maybe not always under hot stage lights or gathering views on YouTube, but the kind of preaching that stretches us and sharpens us and comforts us. It lives in mouths and takes effect in the spaces between us. And tongues. Well, speaking in tongues has a bit of a different vibe. First, let me say that while Paul has a preference for prophecy here, he's not saying don't speak in tongues.
Speaker 2:He's saying, keep that one in check. But what is it? At its most basic, speaking in tongues is speaking in a language that is incomprehensible to the speaker. Another word for it is the Greek compound word glossolalia. And glossolalia simply means language or tongue, glossa, and speech, lalia.
Speaker 2:Speaking in tongues is a little bit biblical and a little bit Greco Roman. See, there was this cultural craving in the ancient world for new revelation that would pull people out of their depressing existence in the empire. People were longing for something mystical to draw them into places of meaning and inspiration. And they would trek off to oracle sites like Delphi and Dodonna and get swept up in a mantic type of prophecy that involved physical rapture and unknown utterances and even self mutilation. Biblically, we find speaking in tongues in Acts two and Acts 19.
Speaker 2:These are extraordinary experiences of the spirit at the dawn of Christianity. In the writer of Acts, it's pretty clear that in those instances, it's foreign speech intelligible to the native speakers in the region. Of course, there are other interpretations in more modern history, and we will get to that. The truth is most details about the early church are lost. We are missing so much context and so much preamble.
Speaker 2:But we know that disagreements on spiritual practices, ways to pray, who should preach, when to be quiet, how to speak up, those disagreements have built up and torn down the church from the very beginning to this day. And I agree with Paul here. We are most spiritual when we are speaking God's words to each other in ways that can be understood. But the truth, man, it can be so hard to stomach. It can rock your foundation, recalibrate your relationships, and make you examine who you are.
Speaker 2:So is it that far fetched that a community trying to stay together while being so different relied on words no one really understood to feel spiritual? I mean, don't we get consumed by things we don't fully understand so we don't have to hear the truth about what, you know, let's face it, we probably actually do know? Things like the love of God being lavished on everyone and everything. For Paul, writing to his people, how you speak to one another is what makes you spiritual. But, of course, we're just at the beginning of the chapter, and Paul gets specific about the trouble with tongues in the Corinthian community.
Speaker 2:And we are going to do three things with that trouble. We're gonna look closely at Paul's context, consider our modern historical relationship with tongues, and open our minds with current scholarship through a refreshing hot take. So Paul says, look. If I come to you and I speak in tongues, let's be honest. What good is that to you?
Speaker 2:Think about lifeless things that make sounds. Think about pipes and harps. We only really like them when they distinguish their noise with notes. So if you don't speak intelligible words with your tongue, how can anyone know what you're saying? You will just be speaking into the air.
Speaker 2:Undoubtedly, there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and the speaker is a foreigner to me. And Paul is making an argument to reverse a trend. He says, you people, you sound like you're out of your mind. And that's not good for you, and it's not good for anyone who visits your community.
Speaker 2:But there is another layer here, and it's important. Paul has an eye on an economic inequality in the church. Now look, Paul made communities out of free people and slaves, rich and poor, Jewish converts, and this melting pot of pagans. Differences don't scare Paul. They invigorate him.
Speaker 2:But what Paul will not stand is people who pull rank because they have more money or more social standing. Paul says, no. No. Thank you to that. So when the elite in the Corinthian church say, we have power on lock because we speak a super spiritual language that none of you understand.
Speaker 2:Paul's letter shows up and says, now you've taken your freedom way too far. Without love, it's just noise. Now, glossolalia or speaking in tongues exploded in our modern world in the early nineteen hundreds and picked up steam in the fifties and sixties, global Pentecostal and renewal movements. And the speech in these movements defied normal linguistic patterns. It was believed that the Holy Spirit would descend on believers just like the spirit descended on new converts on the day of Pentecost.
Speaker 2:And for a while, it was thought that these unknown languages were foreign. So missionaries took these newly anointed tongues to the mission field and believed that their mysterious languages would be understood. Guess what happened? They were not. That was a bust.
Speaker 2:But speaking in tongues as many of us know it today did not go away. It became synonymous with the kind of prayer that prays a mystery or what we would call intercession, deep prayers for others. Now I have some personal experience with this version of things. I grew up in the Prairies in the eighties and nineties, and there was a charismatic movement that swept through. And people drove long distances to pile into arenas and rallies, and they came out saved and speaking in tongues.
Speaker 2:And some of those people were my family, and I thought they were bonkers. But eventually, the movement swept me up too for a little while anyway. It's honestly not something I talk about much because it made me critical and angry. I didn't see relationships healed. I saw them splinter and fall apart.
Speaker 2:And I didn't see lives restored. I saw distractions from real problems. The thing about the charismatic movement that I encountered is that it absolutely changed people's lives, sometimes for the better, but not always. Because these evangelists who promoted the kind of charismatic gospel that made its way into my community, they did not stick around to address generational trauma or offer any help with mental health or even concern themselves with family farms going under. So sifting through first Corinthians 14 this week has been surprisingly helpful for me.
Speaker 2:Because what Paul is saying is that if you prefer spiritual experiences that leave people out or create more division or ignore the truth of our brokenness and the hard work that it takes to heal, well, friends, you are a long way from home with God and one another and being together and loving each other and healing for the long haul. And that's what really matters in Christ. Now, I am not trying to take away your charismatic experiences. I actually love weird stuff that lights up our souls. I'm just trying to do careful exegesis and to just be honest about what I bring to the text.
Speaker 2:So as I mentioned, we have one more hot take that I want us to consider. A couple of weeks ago, I leapt into a journal article by the New Testament scholar, Christy Cobb, and she wrote a piece called Entangled Tongues, a poststructuralist and postcolonial reading on Acts two one to 13, which just means a careful reading of the text through the lens of power. And in acts two, after the disciples have encountered the resurrected Jesus and he's left them, they try to figure out what to do with themselves. They wait around for some kind of promise to be fulfilled. Then, with the sudden sound of a violent wind, all heaven erupts.
Speaker 2:Disciples are filled with the spirit. They speak in other tongues. There are three verses three verses of people groups, all with different languages, that perk up their ears as they hear the message of divine deeds in their own tongue. The scene is bewildering, and Cobb reads Acts two playfully. She traces the way tongues create an unpredictable chaos that slips through structures of power and challenges divisions in an empire and makes this lesson so clear, the new faith was for everyone.
Speaker 2:God will speak to all people in their own language. But people, You take that a little further. So by the time Paul starts churches and lets them run with the gospel, some folks have gotten into some strange rituals. And Paul says, okay. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. This isn't actually that good for you anymore. You can have your mystical experience. You can pray any way you want. But when you make the circle smaller, when you say that you've tapped into a mystery that other people, let's face it, poorer people can't know, you don't love anymore.
Speaker 2:So listen. What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything must be done so the church may be built up. Or we could say, so the circle keeps expanding.
Speaker 2:Paul was a church planter. His whole MO was expansion. From chaos in acts to control in first Corinthians. Here's what I trust. If you walk with Jesus for any length of time, you too will have a diverse story to tell about what moved you and hurt you and healed you and changed you.
Speaker 2:And there will be times when you see the ways of God so clearly, and other times when you feel like all the lights have gone out. And there will be times when you have a profound experience that's hard to put into words, but there will be other times when your doubt is just so easy to name. And there will be times when all you want is clarity and control and certainty, But there will be other times when chaos, confusion, and even anxiety have something more to say to you. It all belongs. You aren't doing anything wrong.
Speaker 2:The spirit plays and surprises and organizes with one guiding principle, Love. Quiet and cacophonous, calm and rambunctious. Love. So finally, we wrap up with speech. What does it mean to speak words of life, truthful words, prophetic words to each other?
Speaker 2:Well, Paul gives the Corinthians this advice. He says, pray in a way that makes space for everyone. And it's okay to be critical when someone speaks to inspire and listen to multiple voices and take your turn. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace as in all the congregations of the Lord's people. To be prophetic isn't actually that hard.
Speaker 2:You don't have to reinvent spirituality. You have a great truth tradition at your back. Christianity has what we need. I still believe that. And still, there is room for more.
Speaker 2:More expression, more creativity, more honest conversations, more loving embrace of what's unique, more encouragement, more questions. Can you actually bring a little more of yourself to community? Can you speak truthfully about life and faith to each other? Can you practice some vulnerability right here with the people in this room? I'm not talking about your tidy story.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about the messy one that you're in right now. Could the wisdom you're looking for be in the next truthful conversation that you have? I mean, it's worth a shot. So if I may, open your mouth, trust your heart, and speak the truth that's ready to flow out. If we can do that, build community with truthful speech, well then we're the very picture of a beautiful beautiful body.
Speaker 2:Let us pray. Every one of us is spiritual. We're in relationship with mystery and awe. We're reaching for what is true. We're in need of great love.
Speaker 2:Jesus, we thank you for the room that you have in your body for us And about how we speak to each other, it can be so hard to know what to say. So God, won't you help us not to rush to fill the quiet in conversations? Help us to patiently wait for people to find their way to what's true. And also help us to speak honestly and lovingly when the time is right and it doesn't have to be perfect. Just loving.
Speaker 2:To spirit of the living God present with us now, enter the places of our honest prayers, our honest conversations, our honest inner dialogues, and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.
Speaker 3:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 3:Head to commons.church discord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.