February 27, 2011 - Epiphany 8, Year A (RCL)
Have you ever wondered
what it would have been like
to live in the time of Jesus,
or perhaps just afterwards,
when the church was brand new
and there were eyewitnesses to Jesus’
resurrection,
and miracles were not uncommon,
and at least according to the book of Acts,
Christians had everything in common
and lived some sort of idyllic life?
I always imagine
that if I lived back then,
my faith would be so strong,
and just being part of the church would be so exciting
that life would be somehow easy, or at least a lot less complex,
and I would be incredibly happy
all the time.
And then you come to a book like the first letter to the Corinthians.
And get a glimpse
into what life
was really like
for the early Christians, even such great heroes of faith
as the apostle Paul.
And it’s not quite
so perfect.
In fact, it’s pretty much like being part of the church today.
A mixture of good and bad.
Firsthand accounts of Christ, yes,
and the enthusiasm of new converts,
but also arguments and criticism
and confusion.
Even in the first few chapters of Corinthians
we’ve begun to get a picture of a church that is new and exciting, but also has its problems.
It’s not the idyllic church of the book of Acts, with everyone having everything in common and sharing everything for the common good.
It’s much more like the church we know,
with ordinary people, most times getting along fine,
but sometimes
getting caught up in disagreements and power struggles and general discontent
and all the things that happen when you get a group of people together for a while.
But finally Paul has had enough.
He’s sick of the complaining, sick of the comparisons
between various leaders,
sick of trying to lead while others undermine him.
And so he puts it plainly.
“Think of us” - that is himself and Sosthenes who is helping him out -
“Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.”
Paul
is a servant of Christ.
Most of us
probably don’t have a great deal of experience of servants.
It’s one of those things
that seems to belong
to a bygone era.
If you read descriptions of life in the past, even as recently as a hundred years or so ago,
you know that households, at least the households of the wealthy, and often even the middle class,
had servants, people who cleaned and cooked and cared for children,
and who were given a place to live and food to eat and a small wage.
Technically
they were independent;
they could look for work wherever they wanted,
but in reality
they were pretty effectively tied
to the family they worked for.
And their job was to obey orders, whatever those orders might be.
Whether they liked it
or not.
Nowadays most of us don’t have servants, instead we hire contractors.
People who do the same sort of work, but who have a lot more freedom and independence.
But Paul is not a contractor; he is a servant, a servant of Christ.
And what that means
is that Christ has given him his orders,
to preach the gospel
and build up the church.
And he is accountable to Christ, and to Christ alone.
It doesn’t matter whether the Corinthians like Peter or Apollos better;
it doesn’t matter whether they are giving Paul trouble.
Paul has work to do for Christ, and he will be faithful in doing it.
But Paul is not only a servant, he is a steward.
What Paul is thinking of, when he describes himself this way
is the way a large household was set up in his day.
There were lots of servants, with all sorts of tasks and responsibilities, but there was one steward.
That was the person whose job it was
to oversee the household, and in particular
to make sure that all the accounts and records were kept.
The steward was the one, in the story of the wedding at Cana,
who checked out the wine that had been drawn from the water jars, the wine that Jesus had made from water.
The steward checked it out and made sure it was of a suitable quality to serve to the guests.
Stewards were the ones
that made sure
that not only did the household run smoothly, but that everything that needed to be preserved and kept track of
was taken care of.
And so when Paul describes himself as a steward of the mysteries, he is talking about taking care of, preserving, the gospel.
And it wasn’t until last week
that I realized how precarious that gospel was, and how important Paul’s job as steward.
One of the places we visited in the Holy Land was Qumran.
You might know it as the place where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.
It’s a desolate place, sand and bare rocks and ants, and only the occasional piece of dead-looking vegetation clinging to the soil.
About 70 years ago, on a rocky ridge beside the Dead Sea, a bedouin shepherd boy accidentally found a cave when he was looking for a lost sheep. And in the cave were some large clay jars,
and in the jars,
manuscripts of the bible that dated back almost 2000 years.
Archaeologists explored the area around the cave, and found the remains of a community, a kind of monastery, from about the time of Jesus. They found a dining room and ritual baths, and storehouses, and thousands of seeds from dates.
The community had been totally destroyed in the first century,
and all traces of it had been lost for almost twenty centuries.
Thankfully, something was left; the scrolls that had been carefully put away and preserved. But the community itself, and its faith, are long gone.
Imagine if Paul had done the same thing that the community at Qumran did. If he had written down everything that he knew about Jesus and sealed it up in big clay jars and put it in a safe place. It sounds like a great idea for a steward.
Except it all depends on someone finding those jars. Otherwise everything he had preserved
might have been lost forever.
So what he does as steward, instead,
was to preserve the gospel in living jars.
To preach it, time and time again, so that the message would not, could not, be lost. It became a living message, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that has been preserved and at the same time given life and hope to millions over the centuries.
Paul is a servant and steward. His task is to do the work of Christ, and keep the message of the gospel safe, passing it on in its true form. And whether the Corinthians like it or not, he will keep on doing that work, because that’s what God has called him to do.
That’s Paul. But what about us?
For that, we have to go back less than a chapter.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 3,
Paul describes all the Corinthians, and us with them,
as servants.
He’s echoing the words of Jesus, on the night before he died,
who called his disciples his servants;
that call of Christ
has been extended to each and every one of us.
We are servants
of Christ.
And Christ calls us
to nothing less
than obedience.
We are to obey him,
doing whatever he calls us to.
And that includes, at the very least,
loving God with all our hearts and minds and souls and strength.
Putting God first
in everything.
And then loving one another
as much as we love ourselves.
And we are stewards.
Christ spoke about being stewards in his parables;
after his resurrection, he charges his disciples with the same task of stewardship that he gave to Paul,
to take his own good news of forgiveness and resurrection,
and to tell it to so many people
that it can never be lost;
to make disciples.
But it’s in the first letter of Peter
that our call to be stewards is clearest.
He writes, “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.“
We are the servants and stewards of Christ. And so, I invite you to think about two things this week.
How is Christ asking you to serve him?
How are you sharing the gospel of Christ?
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010