Listen to Sermon
Pastor Tom Johnson, February 9, 2020
The church in Corinth was a troubled church. Paul expresses his surprise and sadness that they are breaking apart. He writes them to encourage them to be a unified, growing, and healthy place. They are dividing from the inside out. Some choose their favorite Christian teachers and divided over the finer points of theology—or personality. They are dividing from the outside in. They have brought in worldly philosophy. It often conflicts with their new identity in Christ. Paul describes a healthier approach: “I did not come to you,” he says, “proclaiming the mystery of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
By all accounts, Paul was an excellent public speaker being trained in both Greek philosophy and rhetoric as well as the Hebrew Bible and rabbinical scholarship. He says he does not try to impress people with his rhetoric, elocution, or speechcraft—or with his brilliant, academic mind. No, he stays at the heart of our faith and the heart of God’s love for the world—his Son Jesus Christ, the one who is God’s gift to everyone—who was crucified to break the power of sin, evil, and death itself. It is so easy to lose our focus—to slowly wander off the path of Scripture—to get caught up in all the stuff going on in the world around us and no longer fix our eyes and our ears upon Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.
A few years ago, I was visiting my parents. My dad came out of the TV room all worked up. He was angry, confused, and anxious. He was watching one of the 24 hour news networks. He was all jacked up on politics. He told my mom, “I can’t believe one politician said this and did that. It makes me so angry the direction our country is going. I’m so upset because there is nothing I can do about it.” My mom said, “Yes, there is. Turn it off.” “What?” “Turn the TV off.” “Or watch a ball game or something else.”
Paul gives the believers in Corinth similar wisdom. Quit bringing worldly thinking into the Church. Stop using human reason and philosophy against one another. What was true for the Corinthians is true of the Chicagoans—is also true for any people anywhere and at any time. There are so many competing philosophies—so many theologies, schools of thought, and political points of view and contention.
We above all people should not allow those things in infiltrate the church. And the way we bring in this worldly infirmity is through our minds. We carry division and enmity in our hearts and minds like a virus. We may have been infected by it long ago. And now we put those at risk around us. We have the cure and antidote which Paul writes out like a prescription. We need to experience God’s love through the power of his Word and Holy Spirit. And this is not just a one-time inoculation. It is an ongoing cleansing and sanctification.
Faith in Jesus is not anti-intellectual. God does not ask us to check our brains at the door and take blind, flying leaps of faith. However, faith in Jesus does transcend intellectual understanding and worldly philosophy. Paul calls the Gospel “the mystery of God.” What a great word, mystery! It is a truth that only God reveals by his Word and Spirit. The truth of God’s love for us in Christ is so big—it is so beautiful that we cannot fully comprehend it. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” That’s a good problem! We believe in something we will spend a lifetime learning about. Paul says that to receive and understand the gifts of God only comes by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit uses God’s Word—not human words and philosophy to re-wire our brains. As we hear and read the truth of Scripture, the Holy Spirit creates newer, healthier, and better neural pathways in our minds.
Dr. Daniel Siegel is a neural biologist with a medical degree from Harvard, teaches clinical psychiatry at UCLA, and has studied brain scans and the health of the minds of his patients for a long time. He can show on brain scans how unhealthy thinking has feedback loops and unhealthy pathways. The unhealthy mind will manifest itself with addictions of all kinds, being prone to anger, being overwhelmed with anxiety, and many other unhealthy patterns. Dr. Siegel’s solution is for people to create new, neural pathways. The healthy mind gives executive function to the prefrontal cortex. This is the area of the brain where things are such as empathy, mindfulness, and self-regulation and control. He has live brain scans which show what happens when people are truly in synch with each other. Their brains light up! All those healthy neurons fire up and show clean and healthy pathways through the brain. He says that no where is this more evident than when people are singing in a choir! People are literally in harmony with one another. They are watching the director, listening to the instruments, one another, and creating a unified, beautiful sound.
We have the mind of Christ! His Word enters our eyes and our ears and floods our minds with the light of his truth and grace and love. And the Holy Spirit kindles a fire that burns in our hearts and minds. We are lit by God. And as Jesus says, we are now the light of the world bringing hope and illumination by that same Word and Spirit so that everyone will experience his love and that peace that transcends all human understanding.
From thy Cross Thy wisdom shining
Breaketh forth in conqu’ring might
From the cross forever beameth
All Thy bright redeeming light.
(“Thy Strong Word,” LSB 578, v. 4)
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