Nassau Presbyterian Church

June 3, 2012
I Corinthians 4:1-6
“An Act of God’s Mercy”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

On this first Sunday of June, we are beginning a four week study together of the 4th chapter of the Apostle Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthian Church. II Corinthians 4. I will offer the reading of the first 6 verses in just a moment. I would like to linger in the 4th chapter with you these next few weeks because some of the verses just leap off the page. We do not proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord….We have this treasure in clay jars….We are afflicted in every way but not crushed…Just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with the scripture--- “I believed and so I spoke”—we also believe and so we speak….grace as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God…..even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day…what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

One New Testament scholar suggests that it is important to remember that while so much of Paul’s writing seems to focus on the individual Christian life, that with the epistles, Paul is addressing “communities of Christians living within God’s long story of good news for a lost world.” So, this month we read II Corinthians 4 together as a community, the body of Christ that is Nassau Presbyterian Church. A community read of II Corinthians 4. Today as we celebrate fount and table, next week when we ordain and install church officers; a slow walk through these 18 verses pondering the ministry to which we each have been called, it’s challenges, our purpose, our hope.

When one sits down to read all of II Corinthians, it’s clear that Paul attempts to address his own relationship to that particular community. In fact, the early chapters read kind of like one side of an email exchange that should have gone face to face some time ago. Like that correspondence at work or among extended family, that email flurry that someone should have stopped, or picked up the phone, or walked down the hall to the other office, or given someone else the grace-filled benefit of the doubt. It all starts with Paul’s desire to clear the air and by the time we get to chapter 4, with those familiar phrases that grab attention, Paul is tapping into the nature and witness of ministry in the community of faith. Each one of us, Paul argues at the end of chapter 3, is being transformed through Christ, in the Spirit of the Lord, being transformed from one degree of glory to another, transformed for a life in ministry.
II Corinthians 4:1-6

This ministry, Paul calls it. This ministry; this ministry of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Proclaiming the gospel of the light of the glory of God made known in Jesus Christ. Proclaiming not ourselves, but proclaiming Christ as Lord and Savior. This ministry. Proclaiming that gospel of Jesus Christ in a world that actively seeks to block the ears, and blind the minds, and cover the eyes. This ministry. It is not just the truth of the words, Paul argues, but the truth that is reflected in the lives of those who seek to live the gospel. Their lives offered to the conscience of all in the sight of God. This ministry; proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ not just in word but in action, not just in rhetoric but in relationship, not just carved in stone, but in the living tablet of a spirit-filled life. This ministry.

Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We do not lose heart. He repeats that later in chapter 4. “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away.” In Ephesians, Paul writes “I pray therefore that you may not lose heart over my sufferings for you; they are for your glory (3:13).” Luke tells us in chapter 18 that Jesus told a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. Lose heart. It’s a bit of a paraphrase actually when it comes to the Greek. The King James opts for the word “faint”. We faint not. We do not lose heart. The dictionary definition of the Greek term has to do with becoming discouraged or tired, as opposed to losing the spirit or doubting in faith, or becoming heartless. In this ministry we do not lose heart. According to Paul; we do not grow weary, we do not get discouraged.

Well, that can’t be true, can it? Not getting tired or discouraged. When you go about this ministry, when you take part in a community’s collective witness, the shared proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ? No discouragement? No weariness? If Paul really thinks that you’re not supposed to get tired or discouraged, then, I don’t know about you, but from where I sit, and stand, and work, and live, and sometimes sigh, we’re all in a bit of trouble. Don’t get weary. Who’s he kidding? Paul is the one who writes about being harassed by the thorn of the flesh, a physical struggle that had to have worn him down. Paul’s the one who wonders about whether it would be better to depart and be with Christ. That has to be some mix of a pious longing and a realistic does of being fed up. Paul’s the one who wrote “From now on, let no one make trouble for me” which presumes, one would assume, that there were those making trouble for him.

And yet, engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart, Paul writes. It’s not that you never get discouraged. It’s not that you’re never weary. But this ministry, this ministry, this ministry it is by God’s mercy. This ministry is an act of God’s mercy. This ministry is here because of God’s mercy. This ministry of proclaiming not ourselves but Christ himself as Lord, this ministry lives because of God’s mercy. Not God’s wisdom, not God’s judgment, not God’s power, but according to Paul, this ministry, it is because of God’s mercy. And if the ministry is by God’s mercy, then for God’s sake, we will never give up. We will not lose heart. As the best translation I could find put it, “Such by God’s mercy is our ministry, and therefore we will not waver. Such by God’s mercy we will not waver.” This ministry.

Horace Hinsdale was the pastor of this congregation from 1877 until 1895. The history of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton describes Rev. Hinsdale as “restrained”, that he thought other pastors were too optimistic, and that perhaps he had become a bit disillusioned with the challenges of this ministry. At one point he spoke from the pulpit about how rum and rum selling were directly responsible for “the shameful occurrence which marred the festivities of commencement.” He worried about the wide-spread liquor traffic in Princeton. He lamented that people were living too far from the church and that it was becoming too difficult to influence their daily lives. What worried him most however, was that the presence of the college and the seminary would eventually overtake the congregation’s life. That too many members of the church were inclined to put the interests of the college and the seminary above those of First Church. This was a problem, as he preached in his Farewell Sermon “which the pastor of a Princeton Presbyterian Church must assuredly reckon with, and which will sometimes fetter his hands and oppress his heart.”

Near the end of that sermon he voiced his ultimate concern that once the college had finished construction of Alexander Hall, and it no longer needed this building as a meeting place that it would take back the land and tear the church down. “I envy not {those} who, except under the pressure of inexorable necessity, can give the word to tear down these walls, and seep from the ground the vestige of the sacred uses to which it has been so long devoted.” More than 100 years ago, amid what must have been quite a rhetorical flourish, it was the preacher’s plea for the congregation to not lose heart. More than 100 years later. Such by God’s mercy.

Such by God’s mercy. Proclaiming Christ Jesus and not ourselves. Lives commended to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. Speaking and living God’s truth in a world that works to block the light of God. Such by God’s mercy. Marking life with the sabbath rhythm of praise, adoration, and worship. A weekly gathering of the community that seeks to offer a glimpse of the kingdom, inspiring every generation to dream dreams and see visions, with mustard seeds of hope and justice and righteousness taken from this place to be planted in the world’s soil. Such by God’s mercy. Telling the stories of Jesus to the youngest ears as if for the first time. Teaching the stories of Jesus until they sink so deep within the heart that they won’t ever go away. Living the stories of Jesus as yet one more generation full of the world’s wisdom watches and waits for the project to fail. Such by God’s mercy

Seeing in the poor and the hungry the face of Jesus. Caring for the sick and dying with the compassion of Jesus. Welcoming those others shun, reaching to those of other faiths not to convert but to love, embracing any who doubt, all with the arms of Jesus. Such by God’s mercy. Looking to the future confident of God’s ever present blessing, refusing to be set aside by an intellectual and economic culture that insists its time to move on, defying the voices within the larger church and within the Presbyterian denomination that work for schism or predict the end or assume there is no place for a congregation like this, for this ministry, in a post-everything world. Such by God’s mercy. We will not waver. Not because of our strength, our own perseverance, our own will, or even our own best work. We will not waver because of the mercy of God.

On the night of his arrest, Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks, he blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, saying “this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Or to put it another way..

Such by God’s mercy.