Love is a Verb IV

Well, as you can see, I have been revising the reading schedule as we go this week. We should be back on track after today. I first want to catch up with two writings from Paul.

I Corinthians 6:12-20

As human beings, we are hormonally driven people. Those drives make us passionate in love and for serving people, able in emergencies to act decisively, strongly under threat, able to communicate with precision and power and a host of other things. They also can be addictive and destructive when our lives have the wrong focus. In fact, they become our taskmasters. We are to be the master over our desires, not the opposite.

When we use our bodies for self-indulgent or sinful purposes, we are not just violating our own bodies, we are violating our relationship with God (the Spirit/spirit connection I spoke of last week). It is spiritual adultery. The guideline from Paul is, "We should only do those things that we would be proud to have Christ doing with us, because there is no place we go that God is absent." With David in Psalm 139, we celebrated that God is with us even in the midst of our worst difficulties - an ever present help in time of need. Paul is saying that is also true when we compromise ourselves, and we drag the Spirit of God through our personal mud.

The words of Paul here are so counter-cultural, but straight on point. Many historians compare the sexually driven society of today with that of Roman society. We are taught in various arenas that our sexual urges are not controllable and need to be gratified - that it is normal to be unfaithful and promiscuous. But the biblical perspective is that we are not just desires and physical capabilities, that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, bodies for whom Christ died. It is out of that higher value that we choose to act sexually - in restraint outside of marriage and in the beautiful environment of God-anointed love in marriage.

So, are you loving the LORD your God with your body? It what ways might you be spiritually adulterous and how will you ask God to help you overcome those self-centered desires?

Romans 12:1-8

All of us want our lives to mean something. We want to be significant to others and to make a significant difference in our world. Paul writes to the Romans: "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - which is your spiritual act of worship." The way we use our abilities in life can be a daily act of worship to God. I watch athletes, singers and instrumentalists, writers, comedians, salespeople, lawyers, teachers, health professionals (doctors, nurses, therapists, etc), construction workers, craftsmen and craftswomen, housewives, business owners and managers, and so many others do their work to the glory of God.
What kind of society would be created if people did that as their daily vocation with that kind of focus? It would turn the world upside-down.

Paul, in verses 3-8, invites us to go a major step further and ask this question: What kind of society would we create if people not only offered their bodies individually for the glory of God, but also did so co-ooperatively with others. Our society is so individualistic that we have trouble catching this vision from Paul and Jesus. When we together offer our bodies as living sacrifices then the impact upon the world is greater than the sum of its parts. How might your gifts and skills link up with others for great service to Christ? St. Luke's is learning to be in partnership in some great ways. With Hurricane Katrina we partnered with other United Methodist churches and with United Supermarkets. For needs in the communities around us, we partner with the Food Bank, with Maedgen Elementary School, with experts in digital communication, with the legal profession, with architects and builders, and with banking, just to name a few. To love the Lord our God with all our strength means linking up with others who are doing the same. The results can be astonishingly good.

James 3:1-18

The spoken word is powerful. In the first creation story, God speaks all of creation into existence. Today's passage from James invites to consider the potentially destructive power of what we say to one another and how we say it.

James begins with the special burden that is on teachers. When I was going through candidacy for ministry in 1982, my mentor, Phillip Royal said, "It's a big head trip to speak in front of people and lead them, isn't it?" He was right and those of us who preach and teach in the church and in other settings, must die daily to selfishly using our power and position to promote ourselves.

The description of the tongue in verses James 3:2-12 is classic and worthy of our reading it often. One thing for sure, once the words are out of our mouths, they cannot be taken back. And taming the tongue takes diligent and disciplined work (more than the taming of a horse or the turning of a ship). Read again the potential for harm in the things we say,"Consider what a great forest is set ablaze by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of hte body. It corrupts the whole person, and sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." What reputations, what potential good, and even what churches have destroyed by the question, "Do you know what I heard?" And maybe you have discovered as I have that the pace of lies that are spread is much faster than things that are true. Rumors and gossip rapidly get out of control.

Our vicious tongues betray a split personality within us. We're sweet and sour, creative and destructive, enabling and disabling, or in the words of James "blessing and cursing," like "fresh water and bitter water" from the same source. It's amazing how many Christian people pride themselves in how they can cut a person to ribbons. They act like its a sign of intelligence. I find it quite the opposite, a sign of ignorance, in which the value of the person they are destroying is ignored and potentially damaged and the call of God upon the cutting person is ignored just to have power in the moment. James invites us to consider what it would be like to live for the love of God in all that we speak, both to God and to others. Remember the spoken word creates worlds and destroys them. Will you and I choose today to be those who build with our words or destroy? For James, the choice tells whether our salvation is true or not.

In verses 13-18, James connects the previous two discussions on deeds and words with what it means to live wisely for Christ. The contrast here is between earthly and heavenly wisdom. Earthly wisdom has selfishness at its core, producing envy, selfish ambition and other destructive motivations. We can say this is also true in reverse, that when envy, selfish ambition and other motivations are present, we are functioning from the wrong core. What we often do is try to justify or rationalize those motivations, but James is saying that we need to repent and let go of them.
We instead choose a higher way with Christ-like love at our core. The results are pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, merciful, fruitfulness, impartial, and sincere. A first reaction to this might be, "O, how sweet." It all seems so weak and passive. But it is actually a much stronger move to choose the way of integrity, peace, consideration, yielding for the benefit of others, mercy, etc. It is out of weakness that we degenerate into envy and selfishness. James closes with a principle for life" Those who sow peace raise a harvest of righteousness. In contrast, consider what the harvest is of those who sow strife and dissension. So what is the harvest like around you right now? Who are you at your core? Is your disposition in life more earthly or heavenly?