There is a true story of an older black Baptist minister in the South who spent all week going fishing instead of making pastoral calls and those sorts of things.  Someone in the congregation got upset and called a congregational meeting to talk to the pastor about what was going on.  He told them that his job was to wait upon God, and there was no way he could preach on Sunday unless he waited to hear that word come from God.  This was the whole reason he was out there with that fishing pole.  Unfortunately, I’m not a fisherman of great power and strength, but there are certain weeks when I’m preparing to preach a sermon that I feel like that old minister.  I’ve got my pole out waiting to hear a word from God, and I’m waiting diligently.  While I will admit this week that I waited in earnest—maybe a little more so than most weeks—so I hope that whatever I say today will be reflective at least a little of something that may have touched my heart in that waiting.

One of the wonderful things about our congregation lately is that we have babies.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed—hear that one crying?  We have a lot of options that we give parents.  You know, we actually have a cry room, which not very many people have used, but you can go in there and your kid can scream and hit walls, and no one can hear him or her, and you can still worship—sort of.   We also have a nursery, but I will admit to you that my preference is that babies be in worship, and that as their voices are raised, we are reminded that we are family.  We are a gathered family of God that needs young and old alike.  We need to be together in worship so that we might know God’s grace.  I know that everyone can’t be a parent, but I’m convinced that parenting, in a natural way, is probably one of the best spiritual growth experiences that God has given us.   One of the things that I’m reminded of is that our lives tend to be self-absorbed.  We tend to think of life, even though we don’t recognize this, in terms of what I want and what I desire.  And what children force us to do is pull out of ourselves (if we are indeed good parents) and think less about our own needs.  We come to realize that giving blesses us more than getting.  Now I will admit to you that I have a love of children and especially babies, but I admit that I’m far enough away from the rigors of caring for babies to really think that they truly are a pure gift.  But I try to think back and remember when my four children were very, very young.  I remember that part of being a parent is knowing that when a baby wants to be fed, it has to be fed.  Whatever inconvenience this may cause a parent doesn’t matter.  Feeding the baby comes first.  If its diaper needs to be changed, and if its diaper isn’t changed, there are consequences.  I remind young parents all the time that in war, one of the things prisoners of war are put through to torture them is to take away their sleep.  Scientists still aren’t sure what role sleep plays in our lives, but what they are sure of is that the lack of it can cause us to become unbalanced, not only physically but also psychologically.  You can know a young parent by the heavy bags that are under their eyes.  You know that if a baby needs to be up at night, whether or not you need your sleep does not matter.  You first have to take care of that child’s needs.  So I find that some of the best spiritual lessons come in our ordinary living, and we keep missing them because they don’t look spiritual, right?  The truth is that the metaphor of a child and a parent reminds us of our journey of faith.  What we will find foremost during that journey is that God has called us from ourselves to look out somewhere beyond ourselves.  Do you remember what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane when he knew that sure disaster was awaiting him?  Did he pray to God trying to affirm himself and so that he would feel good about himself?  Did he pray instead for a lifestyle in which he would know prosperous living?  We hear those things said by Christian people, don’t we?  We hear Christians praying to be kept out of harm’s way.  We hear people uttering prayers asking God to make their lives and themselves okay.  That’s not what we hear Jesus praying, do we?  Jesus says, “Thy will and not my will be done.”  It’s the same exercise that responsible parents face.  What I want to say to you today is that selfless giving is elementary to everything it is to be Christian.  Being Christian is not to focus on the self, but to focus beyond the self to that transcendent God who will always be partly known and partly not known.  We are called to give ourselves over to God’s will and not our own will.  

Now I’m going to end up back at the text, believe it or not, and hopefully you will see the connection.  I’m going to talk about something that I think is interesting.  There is a lot of controversy today about what is referred to as orthodox Christianity.  I will narrow that term down so that we can discuss it.  For the most part, what it means is that some things are foundational and have been taught by the Church is for almost 2000 years.  Now on the one hand, we have really rigid people on one side who try to take the first beliefs that were formed in the first and second and third centuries, and they try to frame them in terms that are thousands of years old.  Some of us bristle because such terms do not make sense to us in the modern age, and we are repulsed.  On the other hand, we have other people who think that the long-standing traditions of the church that are passed from one generation to another are no longer relevant.  These people think we need to create a new faith.  Essentially, some would even deny that God is a person, which is pretty central to Christianity.  And as I often try to do, I look at those tensions and try to see what is somewhere in the middle that makes sense for those who really want to live an authentic faith.  I’m going to bring up one of the more difficult orthodox beliefs in just a few minutes, then we are going to have it all figured out.  

The doctrine of original sin is a concept often very repulsive to us in modern days, because we live in a day and age where we want to focus on is what is good about us.  We are not comfortable with those parts of us that are not good, and what we try to do is pretend that the bad parts of us are not there.  Much of what we see in the so-called “New Age” religions (which cover a fairly broad sweep) really has at its base an attempt to try to see the world and who we are as totally good.  New Age religions prefer to avoid coming to terms with that shadow part human nature.  I will tell you that my definition in the year 2003 of what those people through the centuries were trying to get at when they spoke of original sin is what psychologists call narcissism.  Most of us know original sin by a more common term, selfishness.  I don’t want to point out anyone in this congregation who is selfish, because what I believe is that we are all selfish.  Part of the real struggle with my sermon preparation this week is trying to come to terms with the fact that over and over in my life, when I think I’m seeking God’s will, it’s often my own will that I’m seeking.  Often it’s my own ego that I’m trying to beef up.  Perhaps somehow, from the minute I was born to the minute I die, the one issue I will always struggle with is my own selfishness and my inability to get away from that.  All the great thinkers and the great spiritual leaders of 2000 years of history of the church have said to us, by simply observing human nature, is that there is no way that any of us can get past that sense of self.  Seeing beyond ourselves to something much bigger is something that is almost impossible for us.  As I look across the literature in theological circles today, there is an alarming sense among theologians that we live in a world that has become so narcissistic and so self absorbed that we are in the danger of loosing any sense of civilization or community.  We have lost the sense of anything that will propel us to see beyond what I want and what I think to see something bigger and more powerful.  My contention, as a pastor and as a person struggling with my life as well, is that every major crisis we have in relationships—with God, our spouses, our friends, our co-workers, and maybe even now and then the people at church—is that we tend to focus so much on ourselves.  We are so consumed by what we want and what our needs are that it is very difficult for us to see beyond to some greater good.  We live in a modern, secular culture, which is the enemy to some basic beliefs about what our faith tells us about who we are and what we need.  We live in a culture in which the self has been elevated to the point of being a god.  Our culture tells us that authority comes only from ourselves.  Anything beyond myself that may impact who I am and what I become is irrelevant.  Now as we struggle with that concept, I want to point out to you how pronounced it is.  Walk into any bookstore in the country.  How many bookstores have self-help sections?  Probably the most popular books today are self-help.  Religious books, by the way, as well as secular books tell us what we can do to improve ourselves and our lives and make us into the individuals that we want to be.  This is the sin, I think, of idolatry.  

Now I want to go back to Paul’s text, because after all, it was Paul’s text that got me starting think about all this.  Remember from last week that Paul is struggling with a church that is dealing with factions.  Paul brings up in this text an issue that he brought up in another. There is a certain faction in this congregation that thinks that their knowledge, that what’s in their head, is superior to what some other people have in the church.  Their knowledge, they think, makes them an elevated, elite group of Christians.  What Paul reminds them of in the beginning sections of this chapter, is that knowledge is not important.  Rather, what is pivotal for their faith and lives as a community is God’s love and their living in that love.  There was a particular issue in that church that had to be dealt with.  It was common in the Greco-Roman world for temples to be built to different gods and goddesses and for meat to be sacrificed to those gods and goddesses.   Now since in actuality these gods and goddesses were merely images that had been formed, what were you going to do with the meat?  There were two things that happened with that meat.  It was either sold in the market for a reduced price, or there would be a feast to that god in which people would eat the meat.  Now the more sophisticated among these Corinthian Christians understood that there really was no other gods but God, and that eating that meat was like eating any other meat.  It really wasn’t going to hurt them to eat it.  And so they were looking down at those who Paul refers to as weaker.  In many ways, those weaker Christians were stumbling in their faith because of what the stronger Christians were doing in all their sophistication.  The question for Paul is, will we eat meat?  This question has nothing to do with what is good for me, but it is a question of what is good for the community of which I am a part.  You start to get the connection of this original sin thing and what Paul is struggling with?  Paul is trying to help us understand that it’s not what I see life to be, or what my wants and needs are that are important in the community of faith in which I live.  Paul is helping us to see that God has called us beyond ourselves to something greater, and this is known as the Gospel.  The Gospel message demands that we no longer focus on what is best for us but on what is best everyone in the community.  When was the last time that any of us in the struggle of our life as a community thought about what was best for someone else that might have a different view from us?  I’ve preached other sermons about that.  We’ve become cliqued off as modern people.  We like to put ourselves in different categories.  And it makes us nervous to think that we might be accountable to a bigger community that has its basis as the Gospel.  What I want to say to you is that I’m not overly optimistic about human behavior because I’ve read a lot of history.  I think that every generation should hope for and seek the kingdom of God, but there are things like that self-centered part of who we are that will always get in the way of that.  This is why the centerpiece of Christian faith is our need of God’s grace.  Self-centeredness is rampant in the modern world in which we live—even as sophisticated as we are.  Remember that Paul says that it’s not our knowledge that is important—it is our love of God.  It is still the redeeming love of God that we as Christians know through Jesus.  We need God’s love in our lives to pull away from ourselves so that we may seek God’s Kingdom.  Seeking God’s Kingdom is addressing the needs of others in our community before we address our own.