Whose Competence?

Evangelical Covenant Church Conference, Denver 2007

WHOSE COMPETENCE?

 

Note to readers: this sermon is very long because I was asked to preach for 50 minutes.

 

 

Text: selections from II Corinthians

 

The story Will told last night about the woman who came all the way from Des Moines to hear him, thinking he was Fred Buechner, reminds me of a story that I heard John Stott tell. I wish I could imitate his elegant accent—you don’t hear that kind of English accent any more. Anyway, he was giving an address somewhere and the man who introduced him went on and on in the most fulsome manner about what a great man he was. He said, “I would crawl a thousand miles on my knees to hear John Stott speak.” A few minutes later, Dr. Stott said, the man was fast asleep in his chair. “I can only conclude,” Dr. Stott added, “that he was exhausted from his thousand mile crawl.”

 

Well, you can imagine how I feel following Will Willimon around the country. He speaks first and leaves everybody breathless with his hilarious stories and his dazzling insights, and then I have to come on the next day. This happens to me all the time. Well, that’s OK. Nobody else can do what Will does. The great thing is that he and I are on precisely the same page theologically. I told him last night that I wouldn’t be as funny, but I was going to bring the exact same message tonight that he brought last night. May the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity make that happen.

 

I want to just put in a plug for Will’s most recent and, I think, best book—Conversations with Karl Barth about Preaching. They’re not selling it here, unfortunately--

 

I am so honored—thrilled, really—to be invited to bring the message tonight. I didn’t know anything at all about your denomination until yesterday afternoon. Like Will, I am bowled over to see your ethnic mix and your devotion to missions around the world. I am particularly impressed by your appeal to young people. It is such a privilege for me to be able to share some of the blessings that God has poured out on you.

 

I knew I was thrilled to be here when I walked in to the service last night. As my grandchildren would say, “Evangelical Covenant rocks!” You know what? I’m from the South, and I know that white people clap on the downbeat and black people clap on the upbeat. It’s pretty funny to watch a mixed congregation where the white people are struggling to get with it and they just can’t manage it. Until last night, I’d never been in a congregation where the white people knew how to clap black. What a great sign of the Spirit!

 

At that point I started worrying about this sermon that I’ve been working on for weeks. I was writing, I now realize, for Episcopalians and Presbyterians. That’s who I usually speak to. I spent most of the day today in Starbucks trying to rework it—with limited success. In some of what I say I hope you will understand that I’m coming from the big mainlines where robust biblical preaching and teaching has been increasingly hard to find. The title of one of your workshops is, “Doing Theology As If God Matters.” That nails it. That would be a good title for this sermon.

 

I will also tell you that this is the first time I’ve ever preached to a congregation so big that they had these huge big monitors. Last night when I was listening to Will from a back row, I was fascinated by the way these things work. It seemed as if Will were looking right at me. He wasn’t, of course, but it sure seemed that way. Tonight, I pray that the Spirit will use this technology and this unworthy messenger so that many of you will come away convinced that the Lord himself has spoken tonight through his Holy Word. May it be so. Amen.

 

Now for the sermon. I know that you are a Scriptural church, so I said to Bruce Lawson, “People will have their Bibles with them, right?” Well, uh, no----

So we’ve printed up about half of 2 Corinthians for you on the white pages. I hope you will want to follow along with it. I’ll tell you when the important verses come up. Some of them are in bold text. We’re going to be ranging around the whole thing but here are three verses in particular:

 

Our competence is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:5)

The transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

All this is from God. (2 Corinthians 5:18)

 

***************************************

 

OK, here goes.

 

How much do you know about Roman Triumphs? I would never have heard of a Roman Triumph if it hadn’t been for my dear grandmother. She was born soon after the Civil War and spent her whole life at the University of Virginia where the spirit of Thomas Jefferson pervaded everything. Jefferson, like most of the American Founders, revered ancient Greece and ancient Rome. When my grandmother was a girl in her teens, a Roman Triumph was staged on Mr. Jefferson’s Lawn at the University. She talked about this spectacle with stars in her eyes for the rest of her life. It still tickles me to think of it, because it was obvious that my grandmother, brought up as she was in proper Victorian society, was quite overcome by the sight of all those good-looking young men with bare arms and legs.

 

That’s a rather self-indulgent recollection on my part, but it will serve to introduce the text that was read to us. In order to understand what the apostle Paul is talking about, it will help us to know what a real Roman triumph was like.

 

Roman Triumphs were rare extravaganzas. They occurred only if there had been a decisive conquest of a territory or an enemy by a Roman general. On these occasions the Emperor would authorize a triumphal procession to show honor to the conquering hero—something along the lines of the ticker-tape parades that used to be held in the canyons of Wall Street, only more so. It must have really been something to behold. The victorious commander would ride in a splendid chariot with a brace of magnificent horses. Accompanying him would be masses of troops crowned with the laurel wreaths of victory (those are the ones with the bare arms and legs). Of course there would be martial music with massed banners and standards. Then, at the end of the procession would come the miserable wretches who had been captured and brought to the capital in bondage.

 

The public exhibition of captives was a familiar aspect of Roman imperial pageantry. You may remember that the New Testament refers to this sort of thing more than once. In First Corinthians Paul writes that “we apostles are exhibited last of all, as those who are sentenced to death” (4:9).[1] In Ephesians we read that Christ “led captivity captive” (4:8—KJV). In Colossians, the apostolic writer[2] says that God “disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them…” (2:15) So you get the idea. But in our Second Corinthians text the image is drawn out much more fully.

 

Listen to this—Paul puts himself and his fellow apostles squarely in the middle of the Roman Triumph. Chapter 2, verse 14, we read, Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph. In most of 2 Corinthians, “us” and “we” refers to the original apostles, but you and I are there too, because we are inheritors of the apostolic ministry. We are in the procession as it is led in triumph through the streets of the imperial capital. Jesus Christ is the victorious conqueror at the head of the procession. But where, exactly, are we? Are we in the lead chariots with the commanders of the cavalry? Are we marching along with the infantry? Or are we among the captives?

 

It’s a tricky question. The interpreters disagree among themselves about this. Some of the old preachers, though—they have more freedom than the scholars.[3] I feel sure they are right when they say that Paul means all of these things at once:

 

First, because we belong to Christ, he has brought us up front to share in his victory.

Second, because we are the Church, we are his troops in the continuing battle against the great Enemy.

And third—most radical suggestion of all—we are the slaves.

 

At the very beginning of his letter to the Romans, Paul proudly identifies himself as a slave (doûlos) of Christ. In the letter to Philemon he refers to himself as “a captive in Christ Jesus.” Paul never forgot, and he never let his churches forget, that he had been an officer of troops on the wrong side of the battle for the gospel.[4] He never forgot, and he never let the Corinthians forget, that if it had not been for the grace of God, he would have been a slave of Sin and Death for all eternity. “I am the least of the apostles,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am…”[5] (That’s First Corinthians, of course; we’re going to get back to Second Corinthians in a few minutes.) Paul’s deliverance from bondage always remained at the center of his message. Saul of Tarsus had become Paul the apostle, proud to announce himself as a slave of Jesus Christ, subdued—get this—subdued not by human (or, rather, inhuman) imperialism, like the wretched captives in the Roman Triumph, but subdued and freed and brought from death to life by the invading grace of God. When Paul thinks of his missionary journeys, all his travels and all his sufferings, all his preaching and all his pastoring, he thinks of them as a procession of the triumph of the gospel—with himself publicly exhibited as Christ’s devoted slave throughout the entire progress.[6]

 

Now, to be sure, the fact that doûlos (slave) was a key word in Paul’s vocabulary causes some problems for us today. We certainly don’t want to give the impression that the institution of slavery was a good thing. Paul is using the word as a figure of speech, one that he knew his readers would understand. A slave belonged to a master; that was the point. When Paul says he is a slave of Christ, he means that he has been taken captive by the one and only Master who is able to confer true freedom. To be a slave of Christ is to be truly at liberty.

 

That’s a contradiction, of course. How can you be a slave and be free at the same time? Bob Dylan had it right when he sang, “You gotta serve somebody.” The person who thinks she has become free is actually still in bondage to something or other. Freud was right about this. We are ruled by our unconscious, whether we know it or not. The great novelists and dramatists knew this instinctively; they show us human beings in the grip of every conceivable kind of self-deception. Dorothea, the high-minded leading lady in Middlemarch, is hell-bent on marrying the wrong man. Mary, the wife in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, is a captive of romantic illusion as well as drugs, and her whole family is held captive along with her. John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom is a hapless prisoner of American popular culture. Captain Ahab is determined on revenge against the white whale even if it takes the ship, and all the men in it, down to the bottom of the sea. (A number of discerning people have noted a resemblance to contemporary politics.)

 

Paul explains all of this in Romans 6. All human beings are either going to be slaves of Sin or slaves of righteousness—one or the other.[7] By righteousness, he doesn’t mean prissy goody-goodiness. He means something very much more “rich and strange.” He means the righteousness of the Son of God. To be a slave of Jesus Christ is to be free of all other kinds of bondage, as Jesus himself was free.

 

To see Jesus Christ is to see a free man. He was free even when he was in bonds. “No one takes my life from me,” he says in John’s gospel; “I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:17-18). He said something else. “Verily, verily I say unto you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.” We talk continually these days about “inclusiveness”; what about this as an “inclusive” remark? “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” That takes in just about everybody. You know the rest of this wondrous saying; “The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34-35)

 

These declarations in John’s gospel are parallel to those in Paul’s letters. We gotta serve somebody: either it will be “the world, the flesh and the devil,” or it will be Christ. To serve Sin is to be enslaved to Death; to serve Christ is to be “free indeed,” free for eternal life.

 

Let’s listen again to the letter to the Romans as Paul elaborates. First he says that being a slave of sin means being “free of [from] righteousness” (Romans 6:20). Well! That’s an interesting idea! Freedom from righteousness! I recognize that! Every single one of us has wanted this at one time or another in our lives. Freedom from righteousness—freedom from rules, freedom from parents, freedom from responsibility, freedom from other people’s expectations, freedom from consequences—who has not wanted that? Who has not experimented with that sort of freedom? But we cannot free ourselves in this fashion, no matter how much we try. Consequences have a way of catching up with us. As Paul describes it in Romans 6: “The end of those things [the consequence of those things, the final outcome of those things] is Death.

 

But now…”

 

You know what’s coming when you hear those words but now! Beginning with the second prophet Isaiah, whenever you hear those words but now anywhere in the Bible, look up! You are about to hear news of a great deliverance![8]

 

The end of these things [the outcome of these worldly “freedoms”] is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its goal [outcome, completion, télos], eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:21-23)[9]

 

So you see how these two contradictory ideas, slavery and freedom, are held together at the very center of the good news from God.[10] Serving God as a slave is not only to be free, it is to be perfectly free. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. We are discharged from the punishing consequences of the Law, Paul goes on: “We are dead to that which held us captive, so that [now] we serve in the new life of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6) This paradox of slavery and freedom extends to our ministry; Paul writes: “Although I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win more of them” (I Corinthians 9:19).

 

So here we are in the Roman Triumph. But our position seems contradictory. We are conquerors with Christ (more than conquerors, you’ll remember Paul says in Romans 8), but we are in bondage. We are free, but we are slaves. We are at the head of the procession; we are at the end of it. We have received new life; we are under the sentence of death. Which is it? Jesus’ own disciples, James and John, wanted it one way only. “Lord, grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:37-38)

 

Are we the conquerors sharing our Lord’s glory, or slaves sharing our Lord’s death? It’s both. Any longtime committed Christian will recognize that. Another passage from Paul explains. Listen carefully to this difficult but crucial text from First Corinthians:

 

…Brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives[or husbands] live as though they had none,  and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away. (I Corinthians 7:29-31)

 

This enormously important passage is called the “as though not” (hōs mē) passage. It deals with the mysterious paradox of Christian existence in this passing-away world. As the funeral liturgy says. “In the midst of life we are in death.” I once read of a young woman who was mugged one night on her own doorstep. She had a great deal of difficulty returning to her daily routine; she was almost incapacitated by her fear. She told how she had fought her way back by saying to herself on a regular basis, “Anything can happen.” Isn’t that interesting? Since I read that, I have made it part of my own mental furniture. Whenever I am tempted to take happiness for granted, whenever I find myself feeling impervious to the problems of others, whenever I feel that I am entitled—entitled to security or health or a trouble-free existence, I say to myself, “Anything can happen.” It helps me to feel fortified. It’s a way of interpreting Paul’s words, “From now on let those who rejoice live as though not rejoicing.” Both at the same time, because we live under another sign altogether. “Anything can happen” in this world, but the form of this world is passing away, and as Paul promises the church in Philippi, “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). We’re getting back to Second Corinthians now. In chapter 5, verse 1, Paul assures us, “We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

 

Having this assurance transforms lives. Paul’s “as though not” passage depicts the character of Christian existence. I think of the stories that have been told about the Anglican Christians in Uganda when their Archbishop was murdered by Idi Amin. The Archbishop’s flock mourned, but it was an Easter mourning; they mourned as though they were not mourning. I think of the families of the five Amish girls who were killed in their schoolhouse last fall. They have gathered around the family of the killer to support them and comfort them. “It’s not that the Amish families are not sad,” said a Mennonite woman who serves the community. “They are sad, but they are doing well.”[11] All through their generations they have been fortified by faith to forgive and keep on going. Mourning as though not mourning.

 

What about rejoicing as though not rejoicing? I have always loved the image of a man I knew who, at special gatherings of his family, would raise a glass and make a toast, saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” I know that feeling. I remember times in my own life when I have thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” But I am fortified by knowing that “anything can happen,” and that those perfect moments are fleeting, and that, as we get older, they are increasingly rare. Rejoice, then—yes!! with all our hearts!—but as though not rejoicing. Then we will be ready to meet tribulation when, inevitably, it comes.

 

Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 8. Here is a passage where Paul says the same things in a different way.

 

We [apostles] are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; we are persecuted, but not forsaken; we are struck down, but not destroyed; we are always carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us [apostles], but life[is at work] in you [the people of God].

 

Here, if we continue to think of those slaves in the triumphal procession, we see how coherent and consistent Paul’s images really are. The apostle of Christ is afflicted, persecuted, struck down—but not crushed, forsaken, or destroyed. The slave is in bondage as far as this world is concerned, but free for the Messianic age to come. Death, which Paul understands as an autonomous Power, is at work in the apostle’s earthly body, but through the apostolic diakonía, the life of an infinitely greater Power is given to the people of God. “While we [apostles] live, we are always being given up to death (“anything can happen”) but this giving up is for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in whatever it is that happens to us in our mortal flesh. Death is at work in those who serve the gospel—that is our vocation—but eternal life is at work through us for those who receive it. Paul knew that he would probably lose his earthly life one day in the service of the gospel, as indeed he did; but he knew two things about that:

 

First: he knew that his death would give life to the Church.

Second: he knew that his death would also be his entrance into the Resurrection of the dead.

 

If there were any doubt about the truth of this paradox, he says it again in Second Corinthians, chapter 6, second half of verse 8b:

 

We [apostles] are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

 

This now brings us to the second part of Paul’s picture of the Roman Triumph. He has summoned up the image, familiar to everyone in that day, of a spectacular military procession along the Appian Way and into the streets of the capital. He has placed us right there in the middle of it all, not as spectators, but as participants. Then suddenly he starts talking about fragrance, sweet smells—2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 14:

 

Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God…

 

What’s that all about?

 

Here’s what. The Greek biographer Plutarch, writing in the 1^st century AD, described a Roman Triumph, and he said that the streets and temples were “full of incense.”[12] This explains why Paul makes this leap from martial imagery to sweet smells. He’s thinking of the wreathing smoke, the pervasive fragrance that accompanied the Triumph. Once again he imagines himself and his apostolic team in the procession, and the gospel they bring is the incense filling the air—the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. I never understood that image until I really studied this passage last week. Those who bring the message are dispersing a sweet smell into the surrounding atmosphere. That means that this space tonight is full of an incense that we cannot literally see or smell but that comes to us as a fragrance from life to life, that is, from the source of all life who is God, to us as the gift of eternal life. A fragrance from life to life. This means also that even in the darkest, most vile den or stinking prison the gospel of Christ is able to bring the fresh wind of the Spirit of life.

 

But there is a reverse side to this. Let’s look again at this same passage:

 

For we [apostles] are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

 

A fragrance from death to death. He is thinking of those who do not receive the gospel, those who set their hearts against it. This is scary. Anyone who preaches or bears witness to Christ knows the feeling of rejection. We worry: What did I say wrong? Don’t they like me? Did I offend them? Am I a failure? We watch the numbers, wondering why the congregation is so spotty in its attendance. We count up the money in the collection plate. We look over our shoulder at the larger church down the road. The preacher wonders, am I giving off a bad smell?

 

Paul is thinking these same thoughts, because Paul himself has been worried. He was worried to distraction about his congregation at Corinth. Chapter 7, verse 5 (don’t look it up, I made a mistake; this is not on your printed sheet): “We were afflicted at every turn,” he says of himself—“fighting without and fear within.” Paul was afraid that his colleague Titus was going to bring news that the Corinthian congregation had defaulted. It was that fear—those “fightings and fears within, without”[13]—that afflicted him more than all his other tribulations put together.

 

Now in the end, the news that Titus brought into Macedonia was good (2 Corinthians 7:5-7), but it might have been otherwise. We can follow Paul’s thought as he dictates the letter. Worrying about Corinth causes Paul to think about the possibility of failure, and that is what leads him to the image of the Triumph. Even as he dictates his letter, we can feel him hurrying to reassure his readers in Corinth that even as he frantically waited for Titus, he is not defeated. No matter how faulty the messenger, the message itself is safe in the possession of God. That’s why the passage begins with the word “but.” Paul recognizes that, humanly speaking, his link to Corinth is fragile and the gospel is under attack from every direction; but…(back now to chapter 2, verse 14)

 

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we [apostles] are the aroma of Christ to God…

 

Thanks be to God. It is God who spreads the knowledge of himself, through his imperfect messengers, so that it becomes like the incense that pervades the atmosphere of the Triumph. To paraphrase our Lord’s words to Nicodemus that we heard last night, the Spirit blows its fragrance where it wills. It’s not about our rhetoric or our technique or our personality or our pastoral excellence. It’s about God. In fact—listen to this—it is the very weakness of the human messenger that is the occasion for the power of God. Chapter 4, verse 7:

 

We[apostles] have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.

 

That is the theme of the second letter to Corinth. The transcendent power (huperbolē tēs dunameōs) belongs to God and not to us.

 

It’s so important to remember that it is in the particular context of the fear of failure that Paul says this. That’s a context that everyone here tonight can understand. Paul has reason to think that his Corinthian project is about to go down the tubes. He realizes that some of them continue to hear the gospel message gladly, but he is worried (chapter 11, verse 4) that most of them are going over to the “super-apostles” who have come into Corinth preaching a different gospel. For them, the genuine gospel will be a fragrance from death to death.

 

It isn’t an accident that the Old Testament passage most often quoted in the New Testament (five times) is Isaiah 6:9. It appears five times, once in each of the four Gospels and once in Romans. It is not a happy text. It’s from the famous scene in the Jerusalem temple when Isaiah receives his call. We all know how that scene ends: it ends with Isaiah saying “Here I am; send me.” But! you are saying to yourself (aren’t you?), that’s not the way it ends! It ends with God saying to Isaiah, “Go, and say to this people: ‘Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive.’” That is the verse that is quoted more times in the New Testament than any other. Isaiah’s message will be for the people a fragrance from death for death. When God tells Isaiah this terrible thing, Isaiah is mute—stunned into silence. We do not read that he said anything further on that occasion.

 

Paul, on the other hand, does say something. When he thinks about how the gospel message will be heard by some but rejected by many, he bursts out (chapter 2, verse 16b):

 

Who is sufficient for these things?

 

The word here is hikanós, sufficient, or competent. Paul uses this word four times in our passage. I don’t know why it’s translated “sufficient” once and “competence” the rest of the time. It’s the same word. Who is competent for these things? Who is competent to deliver a life-saving message week in and week out that some people will embrace and many others will reject? How can anyone live with such tension?

 

Paul answers his own question in the third chapter, verse 5:

 

Not that we are competent (hikanós) of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers (diakonoi)…

 

Our competence is from God. That’s our verse. And this verse in 4:7: The transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. That is Paul’s theme in 2 Corinthians. Our competence is not from human striving for excellence, or from anything else human. Our competence is from God as the Spirit sees fit.

 

Second Corinthians is the letter that contains the famous personal testimony in chapter 12, beginning at verse 7:

 

…A thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient [not hikanós here but arkeō, be enough, be sufficient] for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

 

Now again, this is a paradox, because there is a sense in which no human being has ever been stronger in spirit and in body than the apostle Paul, thorn in the flesh notwithstanding. People who have covered the terrain he covered on his missionary journeys can scarcely believe that he did it under the best of circumstances, let alone with all the beatings and imprisonments and illnesses and shipwrecks and so forth. His constitution must have been amazing. Moreover, he was unafraid of kings and emperors. He was unafraid of the might of Rome. He preached Christ and started churches in territories stretching from one end of the empire to the other. He stared death in the face over and over and never flinched. When Paul says he is weak, he doesn’t mean that he is a weakling. He doesn’t mean that he has no power. What he means is that the transcendent power of his message comes from God and not from him. It is not human power, but God’s power. In his first letter to Corinth he wrote, “I worked harder than any of [the other apostles], but it was not I. It was the grace of God which is with me.” (I Corinthians 15:10). Our competence is from God.

 

Whatever else I may or may not be, I am a student of American churches. I don’t know many other clergy who have spent more time in more churches of different sizes, types, denominations and locations than I have. And I think there is real danger of American Christianity losing its soul. And I think, based on what I have seen here, that your small denomination might have a powerful role to play.

 

Here’s what I have observed. I believe we are losing sight of the gospel. In preaching and teaching on the so-called liberal end of the spectrum, there is a vacancy where God is supposed to be. I make a point of reading sermons, and what I hear from most of the mainline churches is variations on the theme of how we are called to build the Kingdom of God—emphasis on “we,” de-emphasis on “God.” I heard a sermon day before yesterday, based on a text appointed for the season of Epiphany: the story of the miraculous draft of fish and Peter’s confession, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8) The preacher told two lengthy stories about himself and how he had learned to do various things in a new way—try new foods, try new software. Then he exhorted us to stop saying, “But we’ve always done it this way!” because Jesus was telling us a new way to grow our church. End of sermon. Jesus might as well have been a motivational speaker at a business conference. The point of the gospel story—what Peter recognized—the epiphany of God’s power incarnate in his Son—was completely missing. This is just one example of the preaching I hear. There are stories about Jesus as a teacher and an example , but there is no Christ kerygma, no gospel of what Paul calls in chapter 4, verse 4, “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Now there’s a text for Epiphany!

 

So on one end of the spectrum there is a loss of the apostolic proclamation. Now to be sure, on the other, “conservative” end we hear much more about the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The problem is that there is an intoxication with glory and power that may not always be God’s glory and power. It is hard to imagine some of these prominent conservatives saying with Paul (chapter 11, verse 30), “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” Maybe the small size of the Evangelical Covenant Church is a sign of your calling. Perhaps you can be a living reminder to us of the one thing that Paul puts front and center—the cruciform shape (the cross shape) of the Church in the world.

 

Paul wants all the churches to know that there is a way of understanding the Triumph of Christ that is a betrayal of the gospel. Take for example a hymn that’s become extremely popular in my Episcopal church, “Lift High the Cross.” There was a great outcry at one time against “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” but as far as I know, no one has objected to “Lift High the Cross.” People think it’s about the Crucifixion, but it isn’t. It refers to Christ as “him who died,” but there is no hint that this was God’s unique sacrifice for the sin of the world. There isn’t a single word in this hymn to suggest the suffering and weakness that characterizes the true apostolic faith in its earthly pilgrimage. What the hymn celebrates is this: “The hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.” It sounds like the Crusades. It sounds as if we are at the head of the Roman Triumph, not at the end with the slaves. I wonder if Paul, hearing these words, might not respond with high sarcasm, as he did to the Corinthians:

 

Already you [Corinthians] have become rich! Already…you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we [apostles] might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death…(I Corinthians 4:8)

 

We need to remember always where our place is in the procession. If we don’t remember, there will be poison in the atmosphere instead of incense. Here’s an example. Just a few days ago, USA Today ran an appalling story. A member of the legislature in my home state of Virginia, where legislators are expected to be churchgoers, made two horrendous statements in one breath. He said that he didn’t see any need for Virginians to apologize for slavery, and that African-Americans should “get over it.” After all, he said, “the Jews haven’t apologized for killing Christ.” I got on the Internet to see what was being said about this. A shocking number of people had posted comments in support of this legislator.

 

Something is wrong with an American Christianity when these things can be said. The apostolic gospel is not being heard. Telling another person to “get over” something that you have never experienced is the very opposite of what our Lord did when he died the death of a slave. The Jewish question comes up, not incidentally, in 2 Corinthians. The passage in the second half of chapter 3 (it’s omitted on your sheet) is about the old “dispensation of death/condemnation” and the new “dispensation of the Spirit /righteousness ” has lent itself to disastrous consequences over the centuries as Christians have taken it for an excuse to condemn the Jews. Since the Holocaust, however, intense concentration on such passages by scholars and theologians has resulted in a wide and committed consensus. We must insist that “the Jews” did not kill Christ. We enact the truth in a prominent way in our Palm Sunday liturgies when the entire congregation calls out “Crucify him!” Our Lord is on the Cross because of the sin that enslaves the entire human race, and it is our responsibility as ministers (diákonoi) of the new covenant to make that known throughout this country. Paul said some intemperate things about his fellow Jews in I Thessalonians, but that text pales into insignificance when set alongside his major teaching.[14] In Romans 11 Paul says in so many words that that the unbelief of the Jews is part of God’s overall plan for the salvation of the world and that Gentiles had better not gloat over their unbelief. “Do not boast over [the Jews],” he writes in no uncertain terms, “do not become proud, but stand in awe” (Romans 11:18a, 20b).

 

Do not become proud. Boast in our weakness. Here are the requirements for apostolic ministry: incompetence, incapacity, insufficiency, impotence. What sort of program is that for a red-blooded American? Here’s what Paul says. Look again, chapter 3, verse 4:

 

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.

 

Paul is not suggesting that we have no competence. He is not suggesting that we have no power. The point is that it is God who gives the power, God who gives the competence. That’s where the confidence comes from.

 

You’ll recognize the Old Testament passages that Paul is quoting here. From the prophet Ezekiel:

 

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out your…heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you...(Ezekiel 36: 26-27)[15]

 

Who’s going to do all that? God is. This is not the result of any “spiritual journey” that human beings are capable of making. This comes to us from far beyond any point that we are competent to reach. The gift of the Spirit has arrived from a sphere of power outside our apprehension. We have not apprehended it; it has apprehended us. We can only receive it with empty hands held out in gratitude. And then it is our joy and our privilege and our vocation to give ourselves over to this ministry that Christ is working in us. If there were to be any doubt about this, Paul writes (chapter 3, verse 3):

 

You [Corinthians] are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

 

Isn’t that just absolutely wonderful? The Christian congregation is a letter from Christ, written by the Spirit of the living God. The preacher only delivers the letter. I think that should result in a greater love for our congregations than we have ever had before. No matter how small your flock, no matter how few people seem to be hearing you, those whom the Lord does give you are letters from Christ written with the Spirit of the living God. Tell them that. Tell them that early and often. Chapter 3, verses 3 and 4: you are a letter from Christ, written with the Spirit of the living God. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ to God.

 

Now back to that sermon I heard two days ago. The parish where that sermon was preached has spent tens of thousands of dollars recently on studies about how to grow their congregation. They have had numerous parish meetings presided over by architects and planners and consultants. These people command high fees because they are known for their high degree of competence. This congregation is getting ready to mount a capital campaign for many millions. This is an American sickness; the church in other parts of the world knows its poverty and its need of God. In other parts of the world the church is more likely to know that we are not competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers…The transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. Professional strategies can kill. Capital campaigns can kill. Only the Spirit can give life.

 

All around this country, congregations are being starved to death on a diet of anthrōpos when what they need to hear is theos. They are hearing a gospel of human potential instead of “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” I beseech you not to fall into this trap. Beware of those with an alien agenda, the social engineers, the cultural gurus, the consultants and the pollsters if they are not humble, if they claim to know too much, if they are too much like masters and not enough like servants. As a biblical people we are focused on doing theology as if God matters. Chapter 1, verse 21: “It is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”

 

And that’s a promise.

 

Long pause…..

 

I have learned since being here that your church is tremendously invested in the planting of new churches and in the revival of congregations that no longer have a pulse [Willimon]. From our Second Corinthian text, draw courage from this crucial insight:

 

Paul does not evoke the spectacle of the Roman Triumph when he is riding high. He evokes it in circumstances of severe testing. He does not say that God leads us in triumph when he is on the crest of the wave. He says it when he is in the trough. Chapter 1, verse 8:

 

We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead…

 

Our competence is from God. When I found out, a few weeks ago, that the theme of this conference is pastoral competence, this text jumped out at me. It has been a godsend to me, in the true sense of the word Godsend. It has given life to me and hope for my place in the triumph of Christ, no matter how weak I may become in the things of this world.

 

My heart’s desire, tonight, is to speak to you as though Paul himself were speaking, and through him, the Lord. Who is competent for such a thing? Not I. Not I, but the transcendent power of God. For some of you, at least—those whom the Spirit elects to move—may this be for you tonight and for all your days the gospel fragrance from life for life.

 

• May this be for your congregations the knowledge of the God who raises the dead.
• May they come to know that they are letters from Christ written by the Spirit of the living God.
• May you teach them by word and example that God’s grace is made perfect in human weakness.
• May you be strengthened day by day in the promise that you are an earthen vessel for a reason: to show that that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to you.
• May you be established by the promise that it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
• May we return home to our various apostolic ministries giving thanks to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere
• May we be among our people as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

 

For Christ is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you. For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but…we shall live with him by the power of God. (2 Corinthians 13:3-4)

 

May it be so. Amen.