The Power Of Uninformed Decisions
Sermon
You Have Mail From God!
Second Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
One of the most nerve-wracking experiences in life is finding a place to live and a person to live with. It's as true for college students as it is for older adults. Everyone at some time or another has to house-hunt, roommate hunt, room hunt, or apartment hunt. In fact, one of the biggest changes in life occurs in college when you actually have a choice as to where you will live and with whom you will live.
The freshman experience is an unknown experience. You either room with someone you think you know from back home or the school assigns you a roommate. Your place to live, if you are a resident student, is given to you by the university. Someone once asked: "When you go away from home, what is the biggest adjustment you have to make?" The top four responses were: "The roommate, the roommate, the roommate, and the roommate." It's such a big decision. The same holds true when we marry another person or have children. It's an uninformed decision. There's no way to predict totally what it will be like. Even people who live together before marriage can often find that living in marriage with someone you're legally, financially, morally, and familially tied to is quite different.
Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University contends that all our major decisions in life are "uninformed" decisions which require us to step out in faith. He could well be right. Consider most of our major decisions. What profession shall I enter? To whom should I be married? Should I stay married? Where should we live? When should we have children?
All of these life-changing decisions are uninformed decisions requiring a measure of trust. We certainly do not know for certain the when, where, who, and why of life until we experience it for ourselves. The critical factor in every uninformed decision would appear to be the unity and resolve with which we approach the unknown. In the base of these big questions our problem is often that we don't know the answers. All we know to do is live by faith in the God who holds all things together. That's the "good news," not the pat answer.
Today's text is a case in point. It begins with Paul having anticipated someone in the congregation in Corinth asking the questions, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" Even though Paul called this questioner a "fool," who hasn't been anxious about what happens after death? Paul's problem was he didn't know.
But Paul was the man in charge. People have always looked to the clergy and the church for answers to the big questions. The Graeco-Roman world was a world that lived to debate the issue of resurrection. The Greek idea of the immortality of the soul was the very air that the culture breathed. Paul was, in the eyes of many, the man in charge of shaping the theology of the Christian religion. By his own indirect (and often direct) admission, he was the one Christ had left in charge of the ministry to the Gentiles. He certainly was no substitute for the Christ they had lost from the world but since he was all they had, he was willing to try to answer the big questions. Like the babysitter left in charge of the children when the parents are out for the evening, Paul could never be the substitute for the Jesus who had departed this earth. Yet he was all these children in the faith had. Jesus had gone and Paul was in the pulpit and sending answers to questions being raised by the anxious children.
Like a good babysitter, Paul would not open the door to strangers and he would not let the little brothers and sisters fall down the basement steps. The children asked a question and Paul, as was his custom, wrote a quasi-official letter rather than a private letter.1 The letter was, he hoped, one that would settle the issue and avoid the problems of opening the door of the house to strange ideas and having the children stumble.
Paul, the man in charge, knew the individuals within this multicultural congregation held several concepts of life after death. The idea of a soul separate from a body came from the Greek world. Many Greek intellectuals considered the body evil, an earthly prison for the eternal soul.2 To Paul, this was a foreign concept which was not based on the tradition or the Scriptures he had studied as the student of Rabbi Gamaliel. Consequently he tried to argue against adopting this concept with his Greek converts lest they open the door to a strange belief. By insisting on a resurrection, Paul had closed the door to strangers.
But the children could still fall down the steps if they did not understand the universal appeal of Christ's resurrection. Burial customs in the Hellenistic and Roman periods were primarily based on the tombs of the more affluent or those who belonged to associations which provided proper burial for their members.3 Careful not to imply that this doctrine applies only to a small group of believers out of harm's way behind locked doors, Paul began to elevate the realm of God through using his antithetical parallels: perishable/imperishable, dishonor/glory, weakness/power, and physical body/spiritual body. His final parallel leapt all the way back to creation: "The first man was of earth; the second is from heaven." Unlike Matthew who was later to track Jesus' genealogy back only to Abraham, Paul equaled the risen Christ with the redemption of the whole human race. Christ was the second Adam. Jesus was the reordering and reconstitution of all human flesh.
Paul carried his analogy of death and rebirth back to Adam to support his point. This was not the Greek idea of a soul but life as a human being, represented by the first Adam, being compared to a second Adam as a divine spirit.
By using the word "heaven" four times in the passage, Paul elevated the idea of "Savior of the World" beyond the earthly associations. This good babysitter, named Paul, did not want his children to stumble down the basement steps. Paul lived and taught under five different Roman Caesars. When Julius Caesar died in 44 B.C., the empire named him a god. He was given the title, "Savior of the World." Immediately following the death of Julius Caesar it was the practice in Rome to elevate Caesars who had died to the level of divinity as a way of honoring them. But the later Caesars, the ones contemporary with Paul and the early Christians, did not want to wait until they died to become a god. Why wait until death, since a god is a god? They insisted that they be made a god as soon as they assumed the office of Caesar. Consequently these Caesars were named gods, and citizens of the empire were supposed to worship Caesar as a god.
These Caesars were given titles that were also ascribed to Jesus, such as "Prince of Peace," and "Savior of the World."
Paul had a tough task. He had to shut the door to strange beliefs, using language people understood, yet at the same time enabling the new converts to have an understanding that Jesus was above all thrones, lest they fall down the basement steps and equate Jesus with being just another Caesar.
Paul's uninformed decision caused him to step out in faith. Jesus is not our "chum." We don't know everything about Christ -- Christ goes back to creation. Christ is above any human, even Christian, attempts to explain God. The power of creation pulls all things together toward its spiritual fulfillment. Whereas the most humble material (dust) was employed to produce the first humanity; the second creation had its origin from heaven and brought a new nature to humanity.4
What a babysitter. Paul explained in understandable terms his concept of the resurrection of the body as a plan of God. Christ was first but Christ was a prototype for all in the final victory of God.5
You and I do not know all there is to know about life and death. We are uninformed. Paul's method remains applicable to us. Jesus is gone and we are here. But take heart: where Christ is, we shall also be. Our job in the interim is to keep from opening the door to strange New Age beliefs and avoid falling down the steps into worshiping any earthly person or group. There is a power available to us in this greatest of all uninformed decisions. It's called faith.
____________
1. Bruce Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). The letters attributed to Paul were much longer than other ancient letters. The average private letter on papyrus contained 87 words, whereas Paul's letters averaged about 1300 words.
2. Graydon F. Snyder, First Corinthians: A Faith Community Commentary (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1992), p. 253.
3. Victor H. Matthews, Manners and Customs in the Bible (Boston: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), p. 239.
4. See William F. Orr and James A. Walther, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976).
5. James M. Efird, How to Interpret the Bible (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1984), p. 118.
The freshman experience is an unknown experience. You either room with someone you think you know from back home or the school assigns you a roommate. Your place to live, if you are a resident student, is given to you by the university. Someone once asked: "When you go away from home, what is the biggest adjustment you have to make?" The top four responses were: "The roommate, the roommate, the roommate, and the roommate." It's such a big decision. The same holds true when we marry another person or have children. It's an uninformed decision. There's no way to predict totally what it will be like. Even people who live together before marriage can often find that living in marriage with someone you're legally, financially, morally, and familially tied to is quite different.
Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University contends that all our major decisions in life are "uninformed" decisions which require us to step out in faith. He could well be right. Consider most of our major decisions. What profession shall I enter? To whom should I be married? Should I stay married? Where should we live? When should we have children?
All of these life-changing decisions are uninformed decisions requiring a measure of trust. We certainly do not know for certain the when, where, who, and why of life until we experience it for ourselves. The critical factor in every uninformed decision would appear to be the unity and resolve with which we approach the unknown. In the base of these big questions our problem is often that we don't know the answers. All we know to do is live by faith in the God who holds all things together. That's the "good news," not the pat answer.
Today's text is a case in point. It begins with Paul having anticipated someone in the congregation in Corinth asking the questions, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" Even though Paul called this questioner a "fool," who hasn't been anxious about what happens after death? Paul's problem was he didn't know.
But Paul was the man in charge. People have always looked to the clergy and the church for answers to the big questions. The Graeco-Roman world was a world that lived to debate the issue of resurrection. The Greek idea of the immortality of the soul was the very air that the culture breathed. Paul was, in the eyes of many, the man in charge of shaping the theology of the Christian religion. By his own indirect (and often direct) admission, he was the one Christ had left in charge of the ministry to the Gentiles. He certainly was no substitute for the Christ they had lost from the world but since he was all they had, he was willing to try to answer the big questions. Like the babysitter left in charge of the children when the parents are out for the evening, Paul could never be the substitute for the Jesus who had departed this earth. Yet he was all these children in the faith had. Jesus had gone and Paul was in the pulpit and sending answers to questions being raised by the anxious children.
Like a good babysitter, Paul would not open the door to strangers and he would not let the little brothers and sisters fall down the basement steps. The children asked a question and Paul, as was his custom, wrote a quasi-official letter rather than a private letter.1 The letter was, he hoped, one that would settle the issue and avoid the problems of opening the door of the house to strange ideas and having the children stumble.
Paul, the man in charge, knew the individuals within this multicultural congregation held several concepts of life after death. The idea of a soul separate from a body came from the Greek world. Many Greek intellectuals considered the body evil, an earthly prison for the eternal soul.2 To Paul, this was a foreign concept which was not based on the tradition or the Scriptures he had studied as the student of Rabbi Gamaliel. Consequently he tried to argue against adopting this concept with his Greek converts lest they open the door to a strange belief. By insisting on a resurrection, Paul had closed the door to strangers.
But the children could still fall down the steps if they did not understand the universal appeal of Christ's resurrection. Burial customs in the Hellenistic and Roman periods were primarily based on the tombs of the more affluent or those who belonged to associations which provided proper burial for their members.3 Careful not to imply that this doctrine applies only to a small group of believers out of harm's way behind locked doors, Paul began to elevate the realm of God through using his antithetical parallels: perishable/imperishable, dishonor/glory, weakness/power, and physical body/spiritual body. His final parallel leapt all the way back to creation: "The first man was of earth; the second is from heaven." Unlike Matthew who was later to track Jesus' genealogy back only to Abraham, Paul equaled the risen Christ with the redemption of the whole human race. Christ was the second Adam. Jesus was the reordering and reconstitution of all human flesh.
Paul carried his analogy of death and rebirth back to Adam to support his point. This was not the Greek idea of a soul but life as a human being, represented by the first Adam, being compared to a second Adam as a divine spirit.
By using the word "heaven" four times in the passage, Paul elevated the idea of "Savior of the World" beyond the earthly associations. This good babysitter, named Paul, did not want his children to stumble down the basement steps. Paul lived and taught under five different Roman Caesars. When Julius Caesar died in 44 B.C., the empire named him a god. He was given the title, "Savior of the World." Immediately following the death of Julius Caesar it was the practice in Rome to elevate Caesars who had died to the level of divinity as a way of honoring them. But the later Caesars, the ones contemporary with Paul and the early Christians, did not want to wait until they died to become a god. Why wait until death, since a god is a god? They insisted that they be made a god as soon as they assumed the office of Caesar. Consequently these Caesars were named gods, and citizens of the empire were supposed to worship Caesar as a god.
These Caesars were given titles that were also ascribed to Jesus, such as "Prince of Peace," and "Savior of the World."
Paul had a tough task. He had to shut the door to strange beliefs, using language people understood, yet at the same time enabling the new converts to have an understanding that Jesus was above all thrones, lest they fall down the basement steps and equate Jesus with being just another Caesar.
Paul's uninformed decision caused him to step out in faith. Jesus is not our "chum." We don't know everything about Christ -- Christ goes back to creation. Christ is above any human, even Christian, attempts to explain God. The power of creation pulls all things together toward its spiritual fulfillment. Whereas the most humble material (dust) was employed to produce the first humanity; the second creation had its origin from heaven and brought a new nature to humanity.4
What a babysitter. Paul explained in understandable terms his concept of the resurrection of the body as a plan of God. Christ was first but Christ was a prototype for all in the final victory of God.5
You and I do not know all there is to know about life and death. We are uninformed. Paul's method remains applicable to us. Jesus is gone and we are here. But take heart: where Christ is, we shall also be. Our job in the interim is to keep from opening the door to strange New Age beliefs and avoid falling down the steps into worshiping any earthly person or group. There is a power available to us in this greatest of all uninformed decisions. It's called faith.
____________
1. Bruce Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). The letters attributed to Paul were much longer than other ancient letters. The average private letter on papyrus contained 87 words, whereas Paul's letters averaged about 1300 words.
2. Graydon F. Snyder, First Corinthians: A Faith Community Commentary (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1992), p. 253.
3. Victor H. Matthews, Manners and Customs in the Bible (Boston: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), p. 239.
4. See William F. Orr and James A. Walther, The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976).
5. James M. Efird, How to Interpret the Bible (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1984), p. 118.
