“By the grace of God, I am what I am…”

1 Corinthians 15: 1-22

February 10, 2019

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

It would be difficult to overstate the impact the Apostle Paul has had on the world. Though he never met Jesus in the flesh, some of his letters are the earliest writings about Jesus we have. So much of the Second Testament was written by Paul. And since most of his letters are full of theological interpretations about the life of Christ and what it means to follow Jesus, a lot of Christian doctrine over the centuries has been shaped by his particular understanding of Jesus.

I have a confession to make…..I struggle with the Apostle Paul. And as I read over today’s passage from 1st Corinthians, I smiled as I got to the last few lines because they remind me of all of my complicated feelings about the guy.

As a child, I probably read the letters in the Second Testament more than the rest of the Bible. You see, the Epistles are mostly short, which means I could read one from beginning to end during the sermon on Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, Paul (and those who pretended to be Paul, writing under his name) has a highly rhetorical style – definitely not on a 4th grade reading level. So I didn’t understand much of what I read and, consequently, thought he was pretty boring.

But by the time I was in high school, I could understand 80% of what Paul had written and I didn’t like all of it.

He always seemed so full of himself. So certain that everything he had to say was gospel truth. And, of course, I was angered by his rants about how women should stay silent in church and obey their husbands without question. (Some of which, by the way, Paul didn’t actually write….turns out there were a lot of people who wanted to be like Paul and pretended to be him in order to get their stuff read.)

It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I finally began to pay attention to Paul again. And it was because I finally took the time to get to know Paul as Paul that I finally learned to listen to this person who had always gotten under my skin just a bit.

That’s why the last few verses of today’s passage really grabbed me – they reminded me of the first time I actually sat down and thought about Paul as a human being. A human being filled with faults, sure, but also a human being who lived and breathed and walked on this earth and engaged daily in the struggle to follow God’s call.

In short – a person just like you and me.

So when Paul says, “By the grace of God, I am what I am…” there is a part of me that wants to listen.

Because there is a part of me that knows I am what I am….both the good and the bad, the profound and the obnoxious, the kind-hearted forgiver and the judgmental know-it-all….I am what I am because of the grace of God.

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Paul’s story, in a nutshell, is this: he was a faithful Jew. And we need to really emphasize the word FAITHFUL. He was madly in love with God. He was proud of his heritage. He followed all the rules. He was so faithful, in fact, that he was willing to persecute the Jews that had begun to follow Christ because he thought they were putting their mortal souls in danger.

But then, one day, while he was traveling to a city called Damascus, he encountered Christ.

Now Paul would have been about the last person in the world you would have expected to run into a vision of Jesus Christ. After all, in Paul’s mind, this Jesus guy was a false prophet who had been killed and was dead in the ground. Paul’s running into Jesus on the road is probably the equivalent of Pat Robertson encountering a vision of the Prophet Mohammed….and – get this – being radically changed by the experience.

Paul’s encounter of Christ was so intimate, so powerful, so real that it convinced him he needed to not only stop persecuting those who followed Christ…but actually join them.

And, not only did he join them, but he expanded their vision of what it meant to follow Christ. Without Paul, Christianity might never have expanded beyond a small Jewish sect. More than anyone else, Paul was the one who insisted that Gentiles – those who weren’t Jewish – could become followers of Christ, too.

How about that? The one who initially wanted to kill people for falling too far outside the bounds of what he understood as acceptable eventually became the one to push for drawing the circle wide and wider still to include “outsiders.”

Never forget that God has a sense of humor, right?

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When I start to remember Paul was a real person, things about him that once seemed obnoxious become more palatable. His zeal, for example.

I’d always found his stern admonitions and know-it-all attitude horribly off-putting….but when I started to think about just how radical of a shift he made in his life to follow Christ, and just how much he gave up and risked in order to do so, his holier-than-thou attitude became understandable.

Sure, it still annoys me when he says stuff like, “On the contrary, I worked harder than everyone else.” But now I just sort of chalk it up to him having bad social skills because, you know what? He probably DID work harder than most other folks. Apparently he just didn’t realize how obnoxious he sounded when he said that.

Does this mean that I want to be best friends with Paul? Not really. There are still things he says that I find incomprehensible. And I don’t agree with all of his theological claims. And there are days when I find his tendency to say things like “I am the least of the apostles” in the same breath as “I worked harder than any of them” just too wearisome to stomach.

But, on the whole, I’ve made peace with Paul because I see him as a real flesh-and-blood person. I respect his call from God and I respect his dedication to follow that call. I know that he is simply human – by the grace of God, he is what he is – just like you and me.

I don’t have to agree with everything Paul says to remember his humanity. I don’t have to think he’s right about everything in order to keep my heart open to the possibility that I might learn something from him.

You know, one of the reasons I am a part of the United Church of Christ is because we place such a high value on the covenant we share with one another. We realize that we don’t have to agree on everything in order to love one another. When people join our congregation they don’t have to say they believe a certain set of things to become a member….they simply have to be willing to enter into a covenant with God and the rest of us….

to seek the mind of Christ,
to be open to the new light and truth God has for us,
to bear each other’s burdens and share each other’s joys, to pray for each other, to serve in the name of Christ,
to give to this church and its mission,
and to take our stand for justice and peace,
confident God’s concern embraces the whole world.

Confident that God’s concern embraces even those who are very different than us. Confident that God’s concern extends to those who we think are so closed-minded they’ll never “see again” the way Paul did. Confident that God’s concern embraces those we don’t understand, those that frustrate us, those whose behaviors truly make no sense to us at all.

Whew. That is HARD, isn’t it? Maybe not for you, but for me that can be a real challenge some days.

Earlier this week I had a chance to be in dialogue with the new Director of RCPD, Dennis Butler. About twelve leaders from various faith communities and MAPJ sat with him for over two hours over at Mt. Zion Church of God in Christ talking about what it looks like to share life together in a diverse community. I’m sorry to report that we were unable to solve all of the problems that racism has created.

What we did do, though, was share stories. We listened hard to everyone present and honored that each person there is a unique and beloved creation, made in God’s image. We raised difficult questions. We admitted when we didn’t have all the answers. We spoke from our own lived experiences. It felt like a holy time of nurturing relationships.

And relationships are what make EVERYTHING happen.

What would it look like if we took the time to remember that each person we encounter can echo Paul’s words, “by the grace of God, I am who I am” – and then we took the time to ask the person sitting next to us, “Just who are you, anyway? And how did God’s grace make you that way?”

I believe that the Apostle Paul was radically changed by an encounter with God.

I believe that many of the people we interact with in our daily lives also have complex, gripping, astounding stories to share about their own lives. Taking the time to pause, slow down, and intentionally make space to hear those stories of how our neighbors’ identities have been formed is a powerful and holy experience.

It doesn’t mean we will become best friends with everyone we encounter. It doesn’t mean we will agree with everything another person says. But it does mean that we have the opportunity to see God’s grace still moving, living, breathing new life into our world.

May it be so. Amen.