Sermon for Lent IIIC, I Corinthians 10:1-13

The Third Sunday in Lent, Year C Revised Common Lectionary
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Preached at St. John's Lancaster 3 March, 2013


Our Master, Saviour, Brother, and Friend

Jesus who saves us, whatever our situation, whoever's fault it is

I hope everyone has been reading their Bibles as a part of this year’s Lenten devotion. Indeed, I hope that regular Bible reading is a habit that we all cultivate in our lives. Today’s second lesson from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians explains why reading and understanding the Bible is so important to us. He points out that the accounts we read in the Old Testament are there because God wants to give us examples of how we can receive his blessings, and he wants to give us warnings of how we can arrange for things to go terribly wrong in our lives if we choose that option.

The Children of Israel were much like all people in every age. There were very difficult times in their lives- they were slaves in Egypt. God delivered them in a mighty way, that is, he gave them a wonderful experience which would define who they were as a people and which was so memorable that they would pass the memory of it on to their children. I suppose you could call it a “conversion” of sorts. Through the plagues against Pharaoh’s Egypt, and by the miraculous passage through the Red Sea, which delivered them from their persecutors, God came into their lives in a way that no observant person could ever attribute to coincidence, or luck, or to their own wisdom or hard work. Many of us here have been in such a situation. Things had not gone so well in our lives. Problems at work, problems at home, and problems larger than our ability to cope were all around us. Some of them we could not help- a mean spirited boss, a shift in the markets or in demand for the products we sold, or some illness that seemed to come out of the blue. Other things were easier to understand, because we were participants in and witnesses to our enslavement to drink, or to money, or to illicit sexual encounters in person or on-line. Perhaps the slavery which marred our time in our own Egypt had more to do with those ongoing marginal decisions we had made thoughtlessly over the years to ignore our children or to take our spouse for granted. Perhaps we convinced ourselves that we needed a lifestyle we could not afford, and our enslavement to luxury or status led us to a worship of mammon that called us to be less than honest with our business associates and customers, and plunged us deeper and deeper into debt. But whatever the nature of our enslavement, and regardless of the degree to which it was self-inflicted, God came to us in our need. You recognized your hopeless situation and cried out with countless millions through the ages, “Lord’ have mercy on me, a sinner.” You freely acknowledged to God the mess you were in and your own part in it. And then Jesus came to you. Like that woman with the issue of blood, you reached out to touch the hem of his garment. You cried out from the depths of your heart, “Jesus! I believe that you are the Christ, the anointed one, the long awaited one, and that God raised you from the dead!” And in that moment you knew that he had heard you, and as the blood of the Everlasting Covenant washed over you, you knew that Jesus Christ had saved you from your sins, and that you were a new creature. You had crossed the Red Sea, and while many temptations and hardships remained, there was no doubt in your mind that you were bound for the promised land.

And so here we are today, on this Third Sunday of Lent in the Year of Our Redemption 2013. Like the children of Israel, we have been delivered from that sin “which so easily beset us” in former times. We are new creatures in Jesus Christ. “Old things are passed away and all things are become new.” “We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us.” But like the Children of Israel in the wilderness, sometimes our faith grows weak. Sometimes our minds wander. And sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of that mess which God calls sin, that is, the missing of the mark of God’s will. It is an archery term which is most unforgiving. It means to miss the bull’s eye. And even to the most sincere and devoted of us, “it lurks like a ravening lion, seeking whom it may devour.” The sins to which the Children of Israel succumbed in the wilderness are pretty much the same ones which tempt us today, because people are people in every age. We may have different technology and wear different clothes, but people are people. Some of them were idolaters, and their golden calf is hardly different from the desire for money or power or security which drives so many of us today. Some of them committed sexual sin, which the Bible defines as an intimate physical relationship or the lead up to the same with any person other than our spouse within the traditional understanding of marriage. They, along with all those who prayed to and danced before the golden calf were killed by the spear and sword. Some of them despised God’s provision of manna and water and flesh and reviled Moses the prophet. They were bitten by poisonous snakes, but the survivors were shown his mercy and called to repentance.

As the Scriptures today tell us, “There hath no temptation taken you but such is common to man.” You see, they were not that different from us. They worshipped money, power, entertainment, sex, good food, security and control. They thought someone else owed them something. They did not appreciate what others did. They were complainers with a noticeable set toward negativity. Again I say, they were not so different from any of us on a bad day. St. Paul says that their histories were recorded that we might have an example of how their sins brought about their downfall, and that we might see how God comes in the darkest moment to offer us deliverance and healing and a new start. The Apostle continues, “Let the person who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” It is a sobering thought, and we all know it to be true. How many times have you found the greatest temptation assaulting you when you seemed the most comfortable and perhaps even the closest to God? But all is not lost. These temptations which we face are the common lot of our species. Because the devil knows us and he knows his work, and he seeks to destroy us and our relationships with God. Life is hard and temptation is real, but St. Paul goes on to give us hope. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” And in the midst of our temptations, in the difficulty of your own personal wilderness temptation, God will come to you and never leave you without a way to cope, and to escape the threat to your soul. It may not be an easy way. It probably will not be. But God provides a way, and he says to you as he said to so many, “your faith has made you whole. Go and sin no more.” Note that he does not say “It’s ok, you did your best,” or “I understand that it has been really hard for you, and you didn’t fall quite as hard as you did before.” He forgives, and he strengthens, and he expects our cooperative response to his saving and enabling grace. Sometimes we may fall into sin, but it is never ok. We are called to live as new creatures, and when we do fail- when we “miss the bull’s eye" - our hearts ought to be broken with remorse because we failed him who loved us and named us as his own. We ought to ask his forgiveness and work on developing those understandings and skills and disciplines which will make it likely that we will avoid that same fall in the future. And we must always remember: where God calls- he enables.

I find it very interesting that in the passage of scripture which follows today’s second lesson immediately, the Apostle to the Gentiles talks about Holy Communion. It seems that in Corinth, and in Greek society in general, there were certain economic links between pagan religion and the food supply, a sort of “Kosher in reverse” if you will. There were also real divisions between the more well off and the less well off in the local pot lucks which often accompanied services of Holy Communion. Paul employs these realities to point out to the church that when we come to communion, our hearts must be pure, a “living sacrifice” as it were, “dedicated wholly unto God.” We dare not come to Communion while harboring the sorts of sins that our common human temptations cause us to commit. He bluntly says, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.” (I Cor 10:21) You can’t have it both ways. If you have sin in your life, for instance actions and attitudes brought on by love of money, power, entertainment, sex, good food, control, security, by a sense of entitlement, or an unappreciative spirit, or a negative demeanor, or any of those other things which are common to our race, and if you are unwilling to be sorry for them and stop doing them, then you shouldn’t come to communion today, because you can’t have it both ways. You are either God’s child, or you are not God’s child. Now I can assure you that he want’s you to come today. He wants you to receive his grace and be in fellowship with him, but to play both sides against the middle, to receive the blessed body and blood of Jesus now, with the full intent that you will continue to sin after you leave this holy place, is an affront to God. So, whatever sin plagues and tempts you today; however you struggle to “hit the bull’s eye" of God’s will for your life, determine this day to appropriate God’s grace for your specific circumstance. Tell him you are very sorry for your past failures. Tell him that with his help, the help which he promised, you fully intend not to do the same thing again. Acclaim Jesus as your Lord, and believe that God the Father has raised him from the dead. And come to this altar today to receive the precious sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Revel in the fact that you are an adopted child of God the Father, a very sibling of Jesus Christ, and that now you live in the power of the Holy Spirit. Take this knowledge with you into the world. Your faith has made you whole. Go and sin no more. AMEN.