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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 comm.church for more information.
Speaker 2:We open the season of Eastertide with a series called make good Choices, and I love how practical we're going with this one, using Paul's letter to a Christ centered community in Corinth to examine these hot button issues and excavate wisdom. It's so practical because over the twenty three years or so that I have pastored, I have been in hundreds, hundreds of conversations where people wonder about how to make good choices. Make good choices for themselves with their faith intact and still relevant in complicated relationships and searching for meaningful work and recovery and making meaning out of tragedy. People ask, what do I do? Or how do I know?
Speaker 2:Or when will it happen? It's some of the most holy work of my life to sit together and to wonder about our decision making. So for the series, we're in first Corinthians. And while Paul tackles 10 or 11 issues, we're gonna look at four. Last week, the wisdom of interpreting.
Speaker 2:This week, messy lawsuits and disputes. Coming up, food rules and fire emoji sex. Last week, we set up the series by mapping out our connection to Paul's letters. And if you listened to Jeremy's great message, you heard him say Sosthenes nine times. Like, that is a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Sosthenes? That's a name that could trip up anyone. I don't think it ever did. So yay. Well done, Jer.
Speaker 2:Along with characters that we know next to nothing about like Sosthenes, reading Paul's letters feels like reading other people's mail because we're literally reading other people's mail. Paul had planted a church in the Roman city of Corinth and then moved on to Ephesus. Then he hears about a bunch of shady behavior back in Corinth, and he sits down with friends, puts pen to papyrus, and writes a response. So last week, we learned that even though Paul had conflicts with Peter and differences with Apollos, he's not afraid of those difference. He's he's concerned about the community's divisions.
Speaker 2:Paul has a preternatural sense of what union and bonds of love look like in the ekklesia, the Greek word for the earliest phase of Christian community taking shape around fifty CE. Union looks like bringing things out into the open. And sure, it's messy, but there is no better way forward, which is what we're going to read about today when Paul addresses problems in the Corinth community that have to do with lawsuits and disputes. But, of course, before we dive into all that, let's take a moment to pray. Loving God, every part of this past week is held by you.
Speaker 2:The joy, the laughter, the tiredness, the frustration, the grief, the challenge. And as we consider this theme of choices, won't you remind us of the nearness of spirit? Spirit in conflict, spirit in peace, spirit in learning, spirit in praying, spirit in falling down and getting back up again. So we take this moment, the little moment of stillness to maybe even scan our bodies, this bag of bones that spirit animates. And we bring our awareness to our physical sensations, places of tension, pain, longing, our breath, our heartbeat, our whirling, whirling minds.
Speaker 2:And we just notice Christ as a light, Christ as a shield, Christ beside each of us on our left and on our right. Amen. So we are in first Corinthians six one to 11. We'll talk about observations, feelings, needs. First up, observations.
Speaker 2:Again, when we read Paul's letters, it feels like we're reading other people's mail because we're reading other people's mail. A few sermons back, I talked about how much I love listening in on other people's conversations, but I'm happy to report that I don't go as far as to read other people's mail because that's illegal. But this is the bible, so you know we're just allowed. In first and second Corinthians, Paul writes to this small ecclesia, a Jesus community he started in the Roman imperial city of Corinth before he moved on to Ephesus. And one scholar describes the community as unusually diverse.
Speaker 2:It's so diverse that these Corinthians have trouble making an impact because they are just so caught up in their own drama. There are people who disdain the body and care only about these mystical ways of knowing. Jesus came in a body? Forget about it. The body is evil, they'd say.
Speaker 2:And there are people who disregard sexual ethics, putting themselves and others in danger, kind of, and I'll sleep with whomever I want, and it doesn't matter if it's my, oh, my stepmother type thing, which is a true story, first Corinthians five. And there are people trying to make Gentiles into Jews, even though those basic Gentiles, they didn't know the rules. There are women and men, there are poor people and people just getting by. There are slaves, and there are those who've been set free. So it should come as no surprise that there's a bunch of tension.
Speaker 2:I mean, I come from an extended family that fought a lot, and there were people in our community who couldn't tell my uncles apart. They were so similar. So same same, different different. It just seems that we have a hard time making choices that are right for us and right for others. We clash and we rage and we hate.
Speaker 2:Humans get in the way of equanimity. Now there's something about Paul that stands out for me here. Paul set up a community like this one in Corinth by design. It's an everyone's welcome in the big tent design. You don't agree with each other?
Speaker 2:It's fine. You don't come from the same socioeconomic class? Paul would say fabulous. You have one way of finding the sacred and you have another? Get in here.
Speaker 2:This was never meant to be a community of clones. It was meant to gather people around Christ and to change the world with an ethic of love. And what Paul is not a fan of is when people stop thinking about others. He is all about the collective, all about the bigness of the family. He's about thinking like interdependent parts of a body.
Speaker 2:So when he hears that people are mad at each other over these petty differences and that they are hauling one another off to the Roman courts, he's got something to say about it. If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord's people? Or do you not know that the Lord's people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels?
Speaker 2:How much more the things of this life? Now Paul says the courts can't make you better at loving, So he offers a practical solution while expanding the horizons of the conflict. It's a horizon that stretches all the way to the eschaton. Using these questions and contrast, Paul says, you know the saints will judge the world. Right?
Speaker 2:And I imagine they're like, yeah. Yeah. We will. And Paul's like, and that judgment is about serious stuff. It's like it's about idolatry and murder and contempt.
Speaker 2:And they're like, yeah, we know. That's bad. That's all very bad stuff. And then he's like, okay then. If you're going to sit in judgment over the destiny of the world, you need to practice before you get there.
Speaker 2:Practice on the small stuff, the everyday tensions, the money trouble, the misunderstandings. When Paul says the ungodly, he means a Roman court that preferences the wealthy. And the courts were known places for the rich to oppress the poor and to hold on to power. One social critic that wrote that the Roman laws were like these spider webs. They captured the weak, but they let the strong escape.
Speaker 2:And Paul says, don't go looking for justice in those courts. Develop your own musculature around justice. Practice on the small stuff. Turn toward each other. Sort out a resolution.
Speaker 2:Have the hard conversations. Find a better way. And Paul provokes reflection with a bunch of questions, and I love that. There are 10 questions piled up in nine verses, and then he as he flows with this rhetorical inquiry, he's elevating emotion. He wants them to feel some feelings.
Speaker 2:Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers, but instead, one brother takes another to court and this in front of unbelievers? One thing we're unpacking here is Paul's Jewishness. Paul's really good at being Jewish, and he's been planting and tending communities of people who are not Jewish.
Speaker 2:So they have a way of dealing with conflict. Get thee to court where the wealthy have an unfair advantage. And Paul has a way of dealing with conflict. Get someone you trust to help you work out your differences. In fact, Jewish communities in the ancient world did just that.
Speaker 2:They formed these semi autonomous legal bodies to adjudicate all the conflict that didn't fit into Roman law. So Paul seems to purposefully be provocative here with a pinch of sarcasm. There's not one of you? No one wise enough to bring peace in this situation? Come on.
Speaker 2:What an embarrassment. What a shame. Last week, a good friend of mine was on a layover here in Calgary, so we met up at Citizen for a drink before I dropped her back at the airport. And as we talked, Lisa, who happens to be a lawyer and a mediator, get yourself a friend like that, by the way, Lisa took in something I said that to me sounded clunky and really unfinished and, I would say, tinged with just a little bit of anger. And she reflected something back to me that I've been thinking about ever since.
Speaker 2:She said, listen to that. That's your discernment right there. She didn't barge in with a bunch of advice. She didn't say, come on, it's really not a big deal, Bobby. She said, listen.
Speaker 2:That's your discernment. And Lisa uses words like discernment with intention. Discernment draws from this contemplative practice that asks you to listen for consolation and desolation. Go ahead and write those words down in your journal if you're keeping notes. Consolation and desolation.
Speaker 2:Consolation is the comfort or the sense of aliveness you feel. And desolation is this feeling of disturbance or, like, life is kind of draining away. In the practice of discernment, you pay attention to both. One of my favorite parts about the discernment process advises you to hold off on making big decisions in a season of desolation. When you're stressed out or you're sorting out big feelings, don't move too quickly.
Speaker 2:Like Lisa said, listen. That's your discernment. And my friend Lisa has always been a friend that feels like church to me. If you don't know this yet, church can be friends and friends can be church. Lisa has reminded me how prayer can be a part of your life just like breathing, and love looks like making your friend a quilt for their birthday.
Speaker 2:And discernment is about listening, really listening to how you're feeling and what your body is telling you. Walking with Jesus is never something we're meant to do alone. Faith is interpersonal. It's collectively malleable, and it's cocreatively benevolent. Every time, every time you walk through the doors here or you jump onto Commons Discord or you show up in a small group, take it in.
Speaker 2:Like, take it in. All the differences, the beautiful awkwardness, the people who make this place work for you. And then, if I may, expect more. Expect more from church. Expect help and support and wisdom.
Speaker 2:Expect God to show up in the spaces between us. Expect the best. And you know what? While you're at it, expect the worst because it's all here. And we meet each other's very real needs when we give ourselves to an imperfect shared life.
Speaker 2:And still, when it comes to choices, we often want it to be easier than all these unknown and uncontrollable relationships. Like, we want self help books with titles like Make the Best Choices in twenty Minutes Flat or Five Rules for Getting it Right Forever. And Paul doesn't offer that. Paul could have written a rule book, but instead, he wrote letters to friends in places far away from us, at a time very different from us, to people with problems that aren't our problems. Hashtag boundaries.
Speaker 2:And still, we affirm first Corinthians as sacred text. So if rules aren't the sacred part, what is? It's the context of knowing and being known that allows Paul to adapt advice for the particular needs of a particular community. So Paul finishes the section on lawsuits and disputes saying, look, sometimes it's better to be wronged or defrauded than to embarrass yourself in a fight. And he's got a good point there.
Speaker 2:Paul says, you wanna know what really matters? I'll tell you what matters. Not behaving as people who do wrong to others. That behavior doesn't belong in the community of God. Don't kid yourself.
Speaker 2:Don't be deceived. And then we get this riff of wrongdoing. It's known as a vice list in the Greco Roman moral tradition. And in Paul's in it, Paul is going off on the kind of behavior that won't fly in a world being made right by the resurrected and reigning Christ. Now to us, the vice list sounds like some scolding.
Speaker 2:And Christians have used Paul's vice list to cancel other Christians for centuries, but that is not what Paul is doing. The form of a vice list is meant to draw people in so eventually they'll find themselves nodding along, of course. Of course, this stuff doesn't belong in our community. Paul's saying, you don't wanna be people who abuse power in sex. You don't want to love stuff that doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:You don't want to sabotage other people's family commitments. You don't want to put folks in a position where they have to sell what's so precious to them just to survive. You don't want to cause harm. You don't want to take and take and take. You don't want to lie.
Speaker 2:And after Paul is so sure that they agree, he writes. And this is what some of you were. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God.
Speaker 2:Now there's the use of passive voice here. The Greek particle alla translates, but you, indicates that the best of what Jesus has done for you, cleaned you up, made you holy, and marked you as so very good. The best of who you are already exists. You never had to earn it. It was always given.
Speaker 2:So if all of that is true, that you are holy and you are good, why is it still so hard to figure out what we need? Why is it still so hard to make good choices? Making choices forces you to face the unknown, to listen to yourself and to others and to the mystery of God's voice in your life, and then to act. There won't be a guarantee. You will need a lot of trust, and humility helps too, you know, just in case you get out there and you realize, whoopsie daisy, I was very wrong about that.
Speaker 2:Making choices involves risk. That's what it means to struggle together toward a better future. But there's something about the unknown, the friction, the aliveness between two or more choices that brings clarity and helps us to figure out what we need. So while we're finished with first Corinthians today, let's put it aside, I do have a bonus point in the outline for you. Bonus point.
Speaker 2:The bonus point is the outline. That's right, everybody. These three words, observations, feelings, needs, are tools in decision making and discernment. Now, here's how they work. Think of a situation which is asking something of you.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's a decision, an opportunity to learn, something that feels unsettling. It can be positive or negative. Then think through these three prompts. I personally, I like to write this stuff down. So look at observations.
Speaker 2:What happened? Just the facts. Not the story you tell yourself about the facts, just the facts. Write down what, who, what, where and when. Next, pay attention to those feelings.
Speaker 2:How do you feel? I am not good at this part, so I like to Google list of feelings or wheel of emotions. And then I look at it, and always, something stands out to me, and I think, that's it. That's what I'm feeling. And then check-in with your body.
Speaker 2:Last, let surface your needs. Be brave here. What matters? What matters to you? And for each emotion, ask yourself what you need to regulate that.
Speaker 2:Try to think about what you want rather than what you don't want. Now here's me practicing this, and it is a practice. In just over a week, I'm going to the Covenant Denomination Annual General Meeting in Surrey, BC. But I am heading out to spend a few days in Vancouver to see friends and to celebrate my 40 birthday. Now, thank you.
Speaker 2:I have choices. I have choices in front of me, a bunch of them, and I want to be deliberate. So I check-in with observations. I observe the last couple of trips to Vancouver. I lived there for twelve years after all.
Speaker 2:I remember from visits what I saw, where I ate, always important to me, and what didn't work out so well. Then I pay attention to what it felt like. I remember feeling exhausted from running around all weekend trying to see as many people I love as possible. And I remember feeling so tired of hearing myself say the same thing over and over and over again, those same updates. I got so tired of them.
Speaker 2:And then I asked myself, what do I need on this visit? And there it is. I am so clear about something. The truth is some friends have had a very tough couple of years, tragic ones. And I can't walk with them like I used to.
Speaker 2:But I can show up for a short visit in that week, and I need to show up for myself and for them. And I can fit in some other visits, but these friends, they're my priority. Now that I see what I need, I'm ready to make plans. What matters most about our choices is what they do in our relationships, and that includes your relationship with yourself. Paul didn't build a life or a community by starting with people who thought just like him.
Speaker 2:He knew dramatic change in his own life, and then he kept choosing people who were different, different from each other and different from him. And as far as we can tell, he didn't give up on them when they were confused about freedom or disagreeing with him or getting things wrong about Jesus. So when we read the scriptures with that kind of application of love, we will get to a better place. So come, circle around Jesus and bring what's different about your story. Bring your questions.
Speaker 2:Bring your tolerance. Bring your grace. Bring what's healed in you and bring what's broken. And know that the Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God walk with you and dance with you as you do your work to make good choices and trust that we're at our best when we're close enough to help each other make good choices too. Let us pray.
Speaker 2:Loving God, every part of the week to come is held by you. The appointments, the conversations, the goals, the mistakes, big feelings, worry, all the meals, the fights, the tensions in the world. So we consider, just in this little moment, one thing we wanna hold onto this week. May we sense an invitation from spirit to observe our own stories, to notice our own feelings, and to tend our own needs. I think we'll meet you in that so we can be in the world as helpers and healers and advocates.
Speaker 2:May the peace of all peace in Christ be ours this week. Amen.