Sunday's Sermon "Grow in God"

1 Corinthians 3: 1 - 9

“Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

In the previous chapter, Paul has described the essence of a spiritually mature Christian. He contrasted that in this chapter by describing the saints at Corinth as “infants in Christ”. His message to these saints had been simple. It had to be simple because they were not ready to hear the message of Jesus about God’s Holy Community. Paul had told these people that in God’s Kingdom, God is open to all people equally and loves them equally without reservation. These saints, however, are so busy arguing about petty things and petty differences that they are not ready for the “meat” of the gospel. They were arguing about their differences.

For Paul, having differences in opinion was not a bad thing. But quarreling over differences was another thing altogether.

Far too often we seek to find differences in one others theology and try to determine who is right and who is wrong. Instead, we should marvel at the uniqueness of each person and celebrate our unity. In actuality, none of us has the complete picture of God or even the mission of God. We may only have a part of the picture as Paul said, “we see through a glass darkly” or perhaps not at all. So, let us hope that our relationship with God has matured over time. We hope our concept of divinity is not the same as when we were children.

When I was a child I understood God to be a kind of long bearded old man sitting on a throne above the clouds. He was a Santa Claus type of God. First of all, he was male and secondly, was available primarily to grant my wishes.

As I became a teenager, I saw God as a friend but still a God who was there to take special care of me and grant my wishes. That concept continued through my early adult years. It was a very naive concept.

Our concept of God is also dependent on cultural mores. Primitive peoples are constantly trying to placate an angry God.

As Charles Neff, a missionary to the orient, began to work evangelizing that people in the 60’s, he came to realize that the oriental culture has very little respect for a son. He had been trying to teach them about Jesus as the son of God. They were not impressed. Therefore Neff changed the directions of his sermons. He realized he had to emphasize God as the Father figure. The Father figure is very important in the oriental culture. Our concept of God also depends a lot on the circumstances of our lives. A person who had been abused by her/his father would not find a father figure of God to be adequate at all.

Christians through the ages have had to come to terms with a God who seemingly allows them to suffer losses, pain, and death just like everyone else. They are not immune from pain and death. Whether their dilemma is a result of their poor free-will choices, part of an incomprehensible divine plan or some kind of punishment, they really don’t know. While religious people can create any dreams they like, those dreams are pretty much confined to promises of some kind of an afterlife to make it all worthwhile after the fact ... in ways that are never exactly clear, nor even for certain.

To heal from loss and to come to terms with death, it's important for us to see worth and value in our lives ... in other words, to find meaning. And to fully live, that meaning and plan needs to be our own ... not some other entity’s plan.

For me, that meant finding a completely different concept of God. By this time of my life, I had lost my grandfather, grandmothers, father, mother, and stepfather. I decided there had to be something wrong with my theology. A good and loving God would not take my loved ones in such horrible ways. And a good and loving God would not take my father by allowing him to be dropped into a vat of hydrochloric acid. The God of my youth didn't seem "fair" to me. I'm sure people down through the ages felt that same way in similar circumstances. It's incomprehensible to us that a loving God would not interfere and prevent such a catastrophe. That's because we still hold a time worn image of God as "all powerful".

I encountered a theology that seemed to work for me when I found process theism. The process God is the God of love but is also a God who does not have unlimited power. This God has set up our universe with laws and rules and does not...actually cannot, break those same laws.

This concept of God recognizes that God is Spirit…not man. Over time, I came to feel that this Spirit of God resides within each person and encourages, even persuades, each person to do the things that will be not only good for themselves, but also good for others and the rest of God’s created world.

But we nowadays have another cultural phenomenon. Many of today’s citizens even here in the US understand the concept of God differently then we have traditionally. If we wish to reach the postmodern youth and many of the younger highly educated, we might have to use different metaphors to describe God than the ones we have traditionally used. Many folks today see God quite differently from a King who lives in a heaven in the sky. I might suggest that in order to reach these folks, we might instead have to use an imagery of a God who is “with us” and “within us” in all times.

If God is “with us” at all times, constantly leading and persuading us in the right direction, we learn to trust and listen to God’s still small voice. From past experiences, we have often learned that going our own way often leads to bad decisions and unhappiness. God’s persuasive ways more often lead to freedom.

But it becomes easier if we see God as less the focus of power and more the distributor of power. Such an understanding also helps us when things go awry in our lives. We no longer blame God for the bad things that happen to us. We become aware that God’s Holy Spirit is right there with us as we go through our battles..whatever those battles may be….encouraging us and helping us to heal. We realize that God’s Spirit will never forsake us. And that can bring us great comfort.

Some people feel they must believe in an afterlife and a punishment/rewards system in order to have personal peace. I am beginning to believe that we greatly underestimate people's abilities to find their own peace. Telling another person what we believe, even if it is different from what they believe, is not making a choice for them ... it is giving them a chance to know us and to know another option that works for us.

We should be able to be tolerant of different theologies. We should be able to find some value in even different religions. We need to be prepared to use our life experiences to grow in God and to remember, none of us has a monopoly on truth.

This problem was not exclusive to Paul’s congregations. Earlier the same problem was prevalent in Jesus day. His disciples had missed his message so completely that Jesus retooled it and boiled it down to two simple commandments: He taught them: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with your entire mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ~ Luke 10:29.

This was a theme to which Paul had to return so the Corinthians would get the point. In one of his most familiar passages 1 Corinthians 13, Paul continues: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (vs. 11-12).

Yet so many people today seem content to accept concepts from the past. Some, it appears, start growing but eventually regress, finding discipleship too demanding, too all-encompassing, too restrictive of what they feel is a more attractive lifestyle. We often reach a point of being satisfied with what we’ve got. We’re stuck and happy about it. Ignorance may be blissful but it’s also potentially dangerous.

It is the same choice those of us who say we follow Jesus as his disciples face today: Theology is not that important. The important thing is life choices.

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. –Deuteronomy 30:19-20”

That was God’s call to “grow up” at that time and we are still being challenged to do just that! Grow in God.