Saturday, February 7, 2009

Excerpt from sermon "Obligation of a Christian"

Thanks for tuning in. I have included below an excerpt from this Sunday's sermon, but I am publishing the entire sermon elsewhere in the future, so it isn't completely available here--but will be delivered at St. Peter's UCC at 10:00 a.m. Feb 8, 2009.

“The Obligation of a Christian”
Text: 1 Corinthians 9: 19-23
Reverend Jennifer A. Little, M.A., M.T.S., M.Div.
St. Peter’s United Church of Christ
February 8, 2009

This morning we have before us one of the most often misunderstood and misinterpreted text among Paul’s writings. It is also one of the most important. Our text this morning embodies the split between an ethic of hospitality and an ethic of condemnation. It is a text that reflects the kind of split in the church that was the occasion for Paul’s writing to the Corinthians, and it reflects the kind of split we experience today among our sister churches. So, it is important that we look at this text and listen with a keen ear for the gospel of Jesus Christ reflected in Paul’s writing.

Let’s begin by naming the gospel, the good news of God’s blessing that we experienced in Jesus the Christ. The good news that Jesus came to bring was God’s very self—God’s love and forgiveness, God’s blessing and abundance for humankind.
Throughout the stories of Jesus’ life we find this blessing of God reflected in Jesus’ actions toward the most unexpected people: Jesus ate and drank with “sinners.” Jesus announced the nearness of the Kingdom of God to the tax collectors, the Pharisees (the strict religious interpreters of the day), the sick, the blind, the hungry, the outcasts of society as well as the religious authorities. He did this through hospitality. He talked with them, he ate with them, he didn’t seek to separate himself from them, did he? No, he became as one of them, one of us.