“What Did You Call Me?”

1 Corinthians 1:1-9 and John 1:29-42
Delivered January 19, 2014  at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York, NY

MANUSCRIPT

AUDIO

I fell in love with Jesus my freshman year of high school on a mountain in Tennessee.  It was awesome, more like falling in love than rationally accepting a set of prescribed beliefs.  I went to church throughout high school, and youth group but I spent much of my time dying for a conversation.  Life is complex and so are Jesus’ teachings, but somehow all I heard at Church were simple, flat answers.  I heard “don’t do that” or “do good” or “love people,” but don’t remember very many conversations about how to do that in the particular relationships of my life.  When we do it correctly, I’m convinced that being a disciple of Jesus is impossible apart from long conversations with other disciples.  Disciples are not born, they must be made, and they are made through conversations, which take place at the intersection of the Bible and real life.[i]

The Apostle Paul knew this full well, and we have preserved for us thirteen letters[ii] to young Christians in young churches and their specific questions.  Like me, they were still trying to figure out how to follow Christ through the particularities of their context, and their own communities’ issues.  The Corinthian letters[iii] give the best picture of how our belief in Jesus corresponds to our real lives and the real issues we find.

The Corinthian Christians have a lot of questions; questions about food which has been sacrificed to idols (1 Cor 8), enjoying sex rightly (1 Cor 5; 6:12-20), spending money wisely (1 Cor 16:1-4), about the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-34), about marriages with non-Christians (1 Cor 7:1-17), spiritual gifts like preaching, teaching, praying in tongues, prophesying, and healing people (1 Cor 12-14).  But before Paul enters into addressing their specific concerns and before he even talks about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as proof of our coming resurrection (1 Cor 15), Paul begins his letter by driving straight to the heart of the matter.  You see, these 9 verses may in fact look like the address lines of ancient Greco-Roman pen pals, and to be sure, they are that, but they are also the subject line of the whole letter.  Paul weaves the theological foundation for every answer he will give into his very introductory addresses, so that the Corinthian church will not be ignorant of Jesus’ connection to their contemporary concerns.

Paul is teaching the Corinthian Christians and us today to think of all our lives through the lens, the framework, the filter of Jesus Christ and the gospel of grace.  So Paul begins with the beginning.  Paul begins with Jesus Christ our Lord, because for Paul, it all starts, continues, and ends in Jesus.  In these 9 verses, Paul names Jesus 10 times.  10 times in 9 verses!  Paul names Jesus in every single sentence.  In fact, in verse 4, he names Jesus 3 times in a single sentence.  It doesn’t matter if Paul is talking about himself, his friends in Corinth, the past, the present, or the future he keeps his finger always pointed at Jesus because as he says in a different place, Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith (Heb 12:1-3).

Jesus is not only connected to our lives, we are connected to Jesus, and so Jesus is the foundation, the base, the starting point, the cornerstone, the bedrock, the structure, and the support for our lives.  Our identity is now so wrapped up in Jesus, that to talk about myself, I need to talk about Jesus, and to talk about other people I need to talk about Jesus.  We can only know WHO we are if we know WHOSE we are!!

To communicate this idea, Paul repeats another word, again and again, “CALLED.”  In these 9 verses the root-word “CALLED” is used 6 times[iv].  As a side note, before bold and italics were invented, repetition was the most common way for authors to emphasize their main ideas, so when you are studying the Bible and words get repeated again and again (like “our Lord Jesus Christ” and “called” in this passage), it’s a pretty good sign that you’ve found the main idea.  Repetition is a sign of God’s petition.

So following this observation, we begin to hear God’s Word speak to us about the ways in which “our Lord Jesus Christ has called us.”  The most fundamental truths that Paul and Jesus want you to know tonight are that you have been CALLED OUT, CALLED IN, and CALLED TO BE – CALLED OUT, CALLED IN, and CALLED TO BE.  There is nothing more true about you or me than this.  If we can wrap our heads around this awesome truth our entire lives will change from the inside out.  If we go from ignoring this truth to knowing this truth to actually believing this truth and living this truth, everything about our lives will change.  Let me show you why.

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[i] Tertullian is credited with saying the following in his Apology to Christians (xviii): ““Christians are made, not born. Christianity does not come naturally. You don’t get Christians out of people’s loins [something I would never say in a sermon!], you get Christians out of the baptismal font.”  I have not verified it, but it is quoted by William H. Willimon, “Made, Not Born.,” Creedal Christianity (blog), January 14, 2008, accessed January 21, 2014,http://creedalchristian.blogspot.com/2008/01/made-not-born.html.

[ii] The number thirteen includes Ephesians and all the Pastoral Letters.

[iii] Most scholars believe that 2 Corinthians is an amalgamation of several letters – anywhere from 2 to 7 different letters.

[iv] The root for “to Call” or καλέω appears in “called”  (κλητός, v. 1), “church” (ἐκκλησία, v. 2), “called” (κλητοῖς, v. 2), “call” (ἐπικαλουμένοις, v. 2), “blameless” (ἀνεγκλήτους, v. 8), and “called” (ἐκλήθητε, v. 9).

TO READ THE REST OF “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?” CHECK OUT THE MANUSCRIPT.