Sermon at Grace Episcopal on January 18, 2009

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Whose am I?

This week sure didn't turn out as I planned. I went to Honolulu on Tuesday for a meeting and then was supposed to spend Thursday & Friday at a HIM conference called "Smiling Tigers, Hidden Dragons." The subject? Conflict. Negative feelings, lack of trust, unresolved issues, and suppressed emotions. Did I mention this was specifically for pastors? Oh well, it wasn't really for any of us. No pastors ever have conflict in our lives, right? It's for the people we counsel in families and within marriages. Well not quite. Within churches and within pastor's families there is often tension and conflict. In all families people can feel left out, uninformed, unappreciated, and wounded. Often there is bad weather brewing even when everything looks calm on the surface. This conference was to give us tools to help our families and our churches weather the storms that come our way.

Meanwhile, our weather forecasts were focused on the winds that were forecast to be over 60 mph. And our conference was at 1st Presbyterian Church, at the foot of the Koolau mountains. While we were talking about internal storms the winds were blowing limbs from trees and heavy rains began to fall. Then we heard that public schools and public workers were told not to report to work. The organizers were trying to decide if it was safe for our conference to continue. Meanwhile back on Moloka'i where it was calm, Scotty was tying all our stuff down in the yard, under the house, on our lanai, anywhere the strong winds could blow. He was battening down the hatches to get ready for the storm.

How do you prepare for a storm? When do we prepare for storms? I believe that the time to best prepare is when things are calm. It's hard to get ready when the winds are whipping and the sky is pouring rain. I want to suggest that we can prepare for any storm that may come by answering the question "Whose am I?"

We're actually going to sing, "Who am I?" as our first communion hymn today. It's a great song that basically asks how the Lord of the entire universe could possibly care about me. Can the voice that calmed the sea really calm the storm in me?… The answer is yes, He can.

But the question of the morning isn't, "Who am I?" but "Whose am I?" I want you to ask yourself, "Who do I really belong to?"

How many of you would say, "I belong to my family"? How many of you would say, "I belong to my job"? How many of you would say, "I belong to my culture"? And how many of you would say, "I belong to Jesus"?

For those of us who want to belong to the Lord, Jesus taught that God had only two main sets of directions for those who want to belong to Him.

What at is the greatest commandment? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

What is the second commandment? Love your neighbor as yourself. (OK part b of the command could be "love one another as I have loved you")

To help us prepare for the storms, I want to focus on the church in Corinth. The church in Corinth was a perfect picture of a multi-sin piled up and wrecked church. They were divided at many levels, jealous, and immoral. Their storms had left behind a tangled and mangled mess of relationships. Four things are clear from the beginning of the letter to the church there…. and they're all bad.
- This church was proud of a man who was having an immoral relationship with his father's wife. Instead of putting him out of their fellowship, they boasted about it.
- They were confused about how to live with fellow Christians and dealing with those who are outside of Christ.
- They had legal battles within the church. In fact, they were suing each other in public courts.
- They didn't understand the inconsistency of "talking the talk" but not "walking the walk." They were practicing some outrageous sins while claiming to be Christians.

And do you know another thing that's amazing about this church in Corinth? They experienced more miracles than any other church mentioned in the entire Bible! They spoke in tongues and excelled in supernatural spiritual gifts. But here is something important. Having and practicing and witnessing these signs didn't make them mature. Amazing…. here they were, loaded with the spiritual gifts that could help conquer every storm, but they were undone by their unspiritual immaturity. One of the saddest pictures after Hurricane Inki was to see homes on Kauai that had perfectly taped windows but no roofs or walls. The main things had been neglected but the tape job on the windows was beautiful.

I'm surprised that Paul didn't throw in the towel and just forget about them. But Paul loved the people in that place. He didn't give up on them when storms rocked their walls. More importantly, God loved them too and didn't give up on them. God's love poured through Paul to a church on the ragged edge. Why did this group of men and women who had felt God's love almost get washed away in the flood?

Because they looked more to living the in the world around them rather than loving the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. And they got so stuck in their own world that they forgot about loving their neighbors as they loved themselves. And so the storms almost blew them completely away.

So it was early Friday morning and the wind was blowing hard and the rain was falling hard on Oahu. I was trying to decide whether I should try to come home to Molokai and miss the second day of the conference. I sat down to do my daily devos using that blue bookmark. I had been thinking about today's passage in Corinthians, the high winds, and then the Lord showed me something. I love how God brings pieces together from various sources to paint a wonderful picture. I read the continuation of the story of Joseph in Genesis. Joseph had been sold as a slave. But because he was faithful to the Lord, God had him excel in everything he did. In fact, he became the head of the estate of an official named Potiphar. But Potiphar's wife noticed this handsome young buck and tried to seduce Joseph. No matter how much she turned up the heat Joseph refused to sleep with her. Did Joseph sleep with this desperate housewife? No he did not

How did Joseph resist?

Long before this storm, Joseph had battened down the hatches of his life.
God's presence dominated Joseph's day. He subjected every thought and circumstance to God's law. And because he learned to do this in calm times, it carried over to when he was in the hurricane of prison. Long before that particular storm of Potiphar's wife blew into his life. He lived by a perspective that kept him pure. When Joseph was asked to sleep with his boss' wife, he replied, "How then can I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" He was thrown in jail anyway. Joseph resisted the temptation to stray and again walked with the Lord daily. Whether in a gale or in sunny skies, Joseph always answered, "Whose am I?" with "I am God's man."

Back to the Corinthians. They hadn't been living like Joseph. They may have tasted the initial blessings of knowing Jesus, but had not made a habit of walking with Him daily. And they hadn't let Jesus strengthen them in peaceful or stormy times. They weren't living as if they belonged to the Lord. There was little evidence of the changes God had made in them.

It sure is tempting to look at this and say, "Well, obviously they weren't real Christians! Real Christians don't act like this! Real Christians love each other and treat each other with respect and live peacefully with one another."
As I say, it's tempting to sit back and say, "We could never be like that." Until you read the verses just before today's lessons. Paul wrote a list of things of how they lived before they met Christ… they were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers." He says very clearly "this is what some of you used to be." And then Paul goes on to say "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

That sure sounds like real Christians to me. It sounds like real Christians who forgot to love the Lord with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. And like real Christians who drifted away from loving their neighbors.

So these were people who had discovered a new joy by following Jesus, had been given some wonderful gifts, and then ended up doing things that caused pain, suffering, and death. In fact, their lives helped cause their own storms or made their storms even worse.

How does that happen? How does someone get saved and then get lost again? The initial line of today's scripture gives a clue. All things may be permitted, but all things do not necessarily build us up.

Our lives often feel like a to-do list of competing priorities. We all have many good things that we can be doing. But we can get so busy doing permitted things that we forget to invest our time and effort in things that build us up.

God created us to live a unified life that's centered on Him with everything flowing from our relationship with Him. But all of us have had times where we get so busy doing good things that we don't focus on what makes us stronger and prepares us for the next tempest.

Take a quick inventory. How much of your time is spent on things that build up, and glorify the Lord? How much time do you spend in the E part of strengthening your Core- Enjoying the presence of Jesus in your life? What effort do you put in to healing from the last tornado that swept through and how much are you working to get stronger so that the next one won't knock you out?

The answer is found in Joseph's life. He never let the good or the bad get in the way of the best. Sold into slavery, he still put the Lord 1st. Rise to an important position, keep God 1st. Blessed with all kinds of wealth- focus on God's love for him. A big temptation comes, a babe with bucks…keep the Lord right in the center. Falsely accused of trying to rape her and tossed back into prison-love the Lord with all he has. Given an opportunity to serve Pharaoh….God 1st… and God's blessings pour from heaven. Finally, given a chance for revenge to the ones who sold him as a slave- responds with God's love, grace, and forgiveness.

Joseph's life in the calm times influenced his life in the storms. Even though he probably didn't throw a party when he was tossed in jail, he let God's peace reign in him because he knew that he belonged to the Lord.

Let's look at the 1st Corinthians 6 more time, verses 19-20. What does this say "you are?" 19. You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Whose are you? Jesus paid for you with His life. That makes you the temple of the Holy Spirit. If you are His, who does your body you belong to? God! And He wants you to glorify Him with it.

Base your decisions on what builds up your life in Christ. Then you will be prepared when the wind begins to blow. Then you will find His power to overcome the trials that try to flood your homes. And when we learn that we belong to Jesus, and love Him with all we have within us, we will be prepared and no storm will be able to overcome us. AMEN

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