Jesus is Lord!  3rd June 2018

Today I wish to preach from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. The passage we heard today touches on what it means to be united in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and what it means when the Gospel of Christ takes hold of our lives!

In the context of this letter, Paul is trying to reconcile himself and Timothy to the congregation at Corinth. In his absence since establishing the church there, there has been a split in the congregation. It seems that some Jewish Christians arrived claiming to represent the apostles in Jerusalem and were undermining Paul’s authority and teaching.

Our reading begins with the key to the passage: “We proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4: 5). This is central to Paul’s teaching: to be or to live ‘in Christ Jesus.’ In Galatians 2: 20 he writes “It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me, [for] the life I now live in the flesh – I live by faith in the Son of God…”.

What does it mean to proclaim Jesus as Lord? When we claim to be followers of Jesus, it is not about us – our personal egos – our achievements, what makes us special or important (whether we are a farmer, lawyer, nurse, mother or priest); but rather we are proclaiming that Jesus has prior claim to our lives – hence ‘Jesus is Lord’.

Claiming that Jesus Lord is something that goes right back to the start of Christianity. At Clergy Conference, Chrissy and I were privileged to have daily bible studies led by Dr Rebecca Burgess from the Nelson Diocese, who was Bishop Derek Eaton’s daughter. And like her father she was a splendid biblical teacher.

One of the gems that I picked up from her was that the most quoted passage from the Old Testament about the prophecy of who Jesus was – was Psalm 110 verse 1. “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.” In Hebrew the first word for LORD is YHWH and the second Lord is Adoni. But in Greek both words are translated as ‘Kurios’.

I preached on this last year: on how Jesus was ‘kurios’…and after the service a person came up to me and introduced himself, and said that he was a lecturer of biblical studies. He made some encouraging remarks about my sermon, but then said … “O, but I do have to correct you on your Greek – all through the sermon you have been proclaiming that Jesus is ‘Kyros’ – which I must remind you means ‘time’… rather than ‘Kurios’ which means ‘Lord’. I thanked him for putting me right and was duly embarrassed. Let’s face it who expects a Greek scholar to be in your congregation when you are quoting Greek?

“The LORD says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.”

It points to who his followers thought Jesus was – that he was the Messiah, the true King, the inheritor of David’s kingdom. And remember central to Jesus’ preaching was the coming of God’s kingdom: God’s new age.

Psalm 110:1 was quoted by Jesus in each of the synoptic gospels, and, it was quoted by Peter in Acts 2:34, it was alluded to in the Book of Revelation 22:16 and mentioned several times by Paul in his letters. Hence, today’s verse “…we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”

Now, if it is true that proclaiming Jesus as Lord, we are binding ourselves to the Lordship of Christ, then our whole lives should be lived from the perspective of being servants to others. The word constantly translated in the New Testament as ‘servants’… is really the word for ‘slave.’ But remember from the perspective of the Hebrews nation, who were once enslaved: slaves were usually considered members of the household and often treated well – yet they were bound to live their whole lives in service – unless the family eventually gave them their freedom.

Yet dying and living in Jesus is not about submitting to a human will, whether it be that of our own or the church’s, or some other institution’s. Nor is it about conforming to an ideal of suffering for the sake of being a martyr.

It is about being instruments in the hands of God to bring about a little bit of the kingdom of God on earth. We can only do it, one smile at a time, one good turn at a time, one glass of water at a time, one dollar to a needy cause at a time, one box of cornflakes for a food parcel at a time, one visit to a neighbour at a time. But know this by our actions we either contribute to the coming kingdom, or we don’t; or at worse we can do what is contrary to kingdom values.

Jesus’ actions brought about greater fullness of life to others, and in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is seen as challenging the Pharisee’s as to the true meaning of the Sabbath.

It is not really the argument about whether one can pluck and chew a few ears of corn on the Sabbath – although technically it could be argued it contravened the law not to work on the Sabbath. It’s not necessarily the fact that Jesus believed that the purpose of the Sabbath  was the enhancement of Mankind: ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27). Even other rabbis emphasised this.

Let me quote Rabbi Abraham Heschel. “Jewish ritual may be characterised as the art of… [the] architecture of time. Most of its observances – the Sabbath… the festivals, the Sabbatical and the Jubilee year – depend on a certain hour of the day or season of the year…. The main themes of faith lie in the realm of time. We remember the day of the exodus from Egypt, the day when Israel stood at Sinai, and our Messianic hope is the expectation of a day, of the end of days.”

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

Essentially it is about being in tune, being invested with the creation of a new world… the world of messianic hope… as Jesus would put it: the Sabbath is about contributing to and witnessing to the kingdom of God in the Now.

The conflict was ignited when Jesus said, “the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath,” That caused a riot. For he is claiming to be Lord – to be the Messiah. It was blasphemous! And paradoxically we are told the Pharisees immediately joined forces with the Herodians (who were a very secular, Roman-loving clan) who claimed Jewish kingship… together they plotted to destroy Jesus.

Yet the proof was in the pudding. Jesus was manifesting a New Age of God, the true Sabbath… for to truly celebrate Sabbath we must manifest the flourishing of a new creation in our lives and in the lives of those we love and help.

Yet, it is precisely as we share in Jesus’ life and sufferings that the light of God’s glory shines through — amid our fragile human existence — in the “face” of this crucified Messiah. This is how Christ’s death in us becomes life-giving to others.

But as Paul says, we have this “treasure” in “clay jars.” Remember clay jars were the cheap utilitarian earthenware that was used everywhere in everyday life. There were earthenware pots, pans, buckets, bottles and cups. Yet clay jars broke easily – and so they are a metaphor for the vulnerability of our human existence.

Why link God’s treasure with such inexpensive and easily broken vessels? Because the treasure of God’s Spirit and power comes from God and not from us. Let’s face it – it is remarkable that God gives his gifts to us – to be experienced in the “clay jars” of our vulnerable human lives!

I would like to finish with this story.

A water-bearer in India had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it. While the other pot was perfect, and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to her master’s house.

The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream: “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you.”

Why?” asked the bearer. “What are you ashamed of?”

“I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to the master’s house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said. The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in her compassion she said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.” Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it up somewhat. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure. The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? “That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them. “For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.” So let’s give thanks for the cracks and flaws in each of us that make our life together in the church and in this world so interesting and rewarding. We need to accept each person for who they are, and to look for the good in each other – even in our weaknesses.
And, I’d like to suggest that it is our cracks and our flaws that allow the light of Christ to shine through. As Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10), because weakness and failure allows God to work in our lives, for we rely not in our own strength. We can still be generous despite our poverty – and we can make this world a more beautiful and better place for us and others to live in, and in so doing we allow God to work through us. Amen.