Keeping it All in Focus

KEEPING IT ALL IN FOCUS (January 26, 2002)

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 1 Corinthians 1:18

I recently began using my old Pentax camera in which nothing is automatic. One has to adjust the focus with every shot. It's a bit tricky but crucial. But it reminds me how important it is to keep things in focus.

It was absolutely wonderful yesterday to have our officer training and so many here, sharing excitedly in what we are doing, each person telling the things about the church which mean so much to them, and taking time out on a Saturday to come here, to form the three boards, to get an idea of why we do things the way we do them, of the biblical background for our system, to explore the questions which are asked in the ordination of elders and deacons.

But we must always make sure that our focus is right.

This is what St. Paul tried to remind the quarrelsome folks at Corinth.

We can be very grateful that the church in Corinth was having many problems because Paul wrote some of his finest words to this church to solve these problems. One of the problems was division. The church was prone to line up behind different leaders.

There was a group which claimed to belong to Paul himself. This was a group made up of Gentiles. Paul had preached the gospel of Christian liberty from the strictures of ancient Judaism. Now some of the people were using this message of liberty to promote license, a kind of do as you please. As the William Barclay has said, they had forgotten that they had been saved not to be free to sin but to be free not to sin.

Then there was a party which belonged to Apollos. One can read more about him in Acts 18. He was strong in the scriptures and he was a powerful orator. He was also a Jewish-Christian from Alexandria, so he was most likely very well educated. This was probably a group to which a very intellectualized, even snobbish view, of Christianity was very appealing. "I belong to Apollos," they would say with a sneer of superiority.

Then there was a group which claimed to belong to Cephas. They were Jewish Christians and they were concerned that the ancient Jewish practices which distinguished the Jewish people from others were being forgotten. They were used to living in the diaspora and that meant adhering to traditions.

Then there was another group which said, "well you belong to Paul, and you belong to Peter, and you belong to Apollos, but I belong to Christ." They probably claimed that they were the only true Christians. We still have groups like that. They weren't really saying they belonged to Christ, but that Christ belonged to them. They were probably a bit intolerant and self-righteous. There are always certain people who feel they have all the truth.

Has Christ been divided? Paul writes. Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? It is important here to understand Paul is not downplaying baptism. But what he is saying is that somehow people have lost their focus and that focus must be the cross of Jesus Christ. St. Paul and indeed the entire New Testament is sure that on the cross of Christ something happened which was unique, that there Christ suffered once for all, as Peter wrote, for sin, that he bore the sins of many, to use the imagery from Isaiah, and that through the cross the division between humans and God was somehow overcome and that through it we have a restored relationship with God.

It is true that there are several different theories or theologies which the Church has developed of what happened on the cross - the overcoming of evil and sin as in a conquest, the suffering servant who bears the sins of the world, a great example of the love of God, the fullest expression of the forgiveness of God, but however it is explained it is clear there is a new relationship opened up between humans and God, that through the cross we have direct access with God the Father, and that all of this was done out of the love of God and by the grace of Christ and not by any merit of our own but solely by the grace of Christ, who being rich yet became poor for our sakes that we through his poverty might become rich.

We must never forget that the early church had a remarkable power to draw many people who were slaves. Yes, there were some who were rich, such as Lydia in Philippi, and probably many artisans and traders, but there is no doubt that many slaves became Christians and one reason was the cross. The cross said simply that God loves everyone like that, without distinctions of race or social status. "Call no man worthless for whom Christ died," was how St. Paul put it. There is no other message with this same power because this is a message not based on theory but on action, on what God has done.

Now when the focus is on that - on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, then there is no room for boasting, and there is no room for petty divisions. Everything else pales in comparison. That is Paul's point. The cross may seem foolishness to the Greeks, for whom it wasn't intellectual enough, and a scandal to the Jews, for it was incredible to them that One who ended his life on the cross could be God's only son, but it was the wisdom of God and the righteousness of God and if the church ever loses its focus on the cross - God loves like that, James Denney used to say holding up a cross - then its over.

This is why crosses are on the top of our churches and in the center of our worship, and it reminds us to put it at the center of our lives and of our life as a church, and that way everything else will be in focus. But forget that, and people start majoring in the minors, factions and divisions form, and people forget what they are about in the first place.

We must never forget that on the cross, as Leslie Weatherhead said, God expressed his uttermost for us once and for all. We should, he said, at the cross put down all our good deeds that we hoped might count as merit, and all our bad deeds that we feared would make Him hate us, and we should instead ask the great God to forgive us for Jesus sake and prostrate ourselves at the feet of the Master who died and rose again, and then ask Him to dwell in us, to guide us, to empower us, to make us anew.

Many people say their faith was shattered by September 11. Indeed that atrocity affected us all, but it did not shatter my faith. Instead, I have seen as never before the power of self-sacrifice to move people. Before September 11 I might have said that what really moved Americans was money and power. These were what interested us. Who makes what and how much. How much is Bill Gates or Derek Jeter worth? Or the head of General Motors?

But on September 11 the whole country was moved not by talk of gaining money and power but by the sacrifice of countless people - firefighters, rescue workers, and thousands of ordinary New Yorkers. This spoke to people the world over. Months later we are still moved by these stories. And this is the very way God has chosen to speak to us: through the drawing power of the cross. "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself," wrote Paul. So out of this great picture of sacrifice the word goes out that at the heart of the universe is a God who loves us so much that he gave his only Son for us.

But as important as it all is, the most important thing we do here is come together each week to worship God. That is how we keep it all - not only our work in the church but also our lives - in focus. And the focus of our worship is gratitude for what God has done in Jesus Christ to draw us to him and what God is doing through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to move in our lives today.

Isaac Watts wrote: "When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride…. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all."