Transcript
Listen now to the Word of God as it is read from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, the first chapter reading briefly from the first verse. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenese, to the Church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Here ends the reading of the lesson. Our three children have never quite forgiven us fully, even though you could argue that it's not our fault. You see, I am an only child. My wife is an only child. I've never had a brother or a sister. She's never had a sister or brother. And what
that means for our children is that they have no aunts and uncles, and they have no cousins. Now they realize that we're not responsible for being only children, but they keep wondering why we married each other. Not realizing, of course, that if we had not married each other, they wouldn't be. Nonetheless, they have always felt deprived and have picked up some pretty nifty aunts and uncles along the way, mostly from my seminary classmates. Maybe it's the
fact that never having had a brother or a sister, I've never really known what it is to be a brother. And thus my eye kept coming back to that brief line that so easily overlooked in Paul's greeting to the church at Corinth. Paul I know. Oh, do I know Paul. I don't know Paul like I'd like to know Paul. There's so much of Paul I don't understand. I wrestle with Paul, argue with Paul, submit to Paul,
throw him out of the cannon, put him back in the cannon. Paul I know. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. You know Paul too. If you don't, you will. And Sosthenese, our brother, who in the world was Sosthenese? Why was he included as a co-author of the letter? There's only one other mention of a Sosthenese in all of the New Testament, and that's in the 18th chapter of Acts, and he
turns out to be an official of the synagogue in Corinth, and he receives punishment from the government because of his association with Paul. Maybe that's the same Sosthenese. We don't know for sure. And then you open your Greek text, and what do you find? It doesn't say our brother at all. It says Sostanese, the brother, the brother. And then you start nosing around in the salutations of Paul's other letters, and you find the same thing. In
2 Corinthians, it's Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and Timothy, the brother. E. Earl Ellis, in his book on New Testament prophecy and hermeneutic, argues that the word Adolfos, Adolfoi, in Paul's lingo means not only fellow believers and is gender inclusive, but that the word Adolfos, or the word Adolfoi, also for Paul means co-worker, fellow servant. And then you flip over to Philippians, and you find it spelled out very carefully, Paul and Timothy, servants of
Jesus Christ. To be the brother in this sense is to be the servant of Jesus Christ, and to stand on even ground with Paul in that regard. And then you read further in Philippians, and you come to the end of the letter, and you find the word Adolfoi translated by our New Revised Standard Version as friends. The friends who are with me greet you. To be the brother is to be the co-worker. To be the
brother is to be the friend in ministry. Many people come to this place struggling with a sense of call. Some people come absolutely certain that God has called them to this place, and they know exactly what God has called them to do, and they put their shoulder to the wheel, keep their eye on the ball, their nose to the and for three years they work in that position, and they graduate, and they go do exactly what
they came to prepare to do. And others are here absolutely in anxiety and almost spastic because they just cannot get it certain. And there's no one that's more insufferable when you're in who's certain. But we've all felt something, or we wouldn't be in this place. Now Paul called by the will of God, we all know that story, that probably would have gotten our attention too. On the road to Philadelphia, on the road to San Francisco, on
the road to Denver, on the road to wherever, and suddenly knocked off your horse, or out of your car, blinding lights, voices, that would get me to seminary. But Paul's experience is not paradigmatic. It's not the of everyone's conversion, and it's not the paradigm of everyone's call. How is Sostenese's call? The text is silent about that, which gives us permission to wonder. I find it easier in this regard to identify with Sosthenese's, whoever he was, than
I do with Paul. Paul's experience was not my experience. The ministry was the last thing in the world from my mind. Oh, I was born into a church family, raised in the church family. A Sunday school success story, became a believer because parents were believers, and peers were believers. And then at 17, in a moment of temporary insanity, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, and that threw me out of the nest. That cut the umbilical
cord, and there I was with the cross section of Americana, and it was shocking to behold. You don't appreciate the faith when that's all you know. You don't appreciate comfort when that's all you know. You don't appreciate good food when that's all you know. You don't appreciate Jesus Christ when that's all you know. And suddenly, I was mixing it up with young men my age from all over this country, and discovered what I could only describe
as the emptiness in their lives. I mean, when you live for payday, so that you can go to what we used to call the slop chute, and tie on a cheap drunk over green beer, or when you save your money so you can go across the Mexican border and spend the weekend in a whorehouse, and that is your understanding of the purpose and joy of life, you have to believe something's missing. And suddenly, I realized the
preciousness of my faith. Honestly, I did not feel superior to my friends and colleagues. I played in a basketball team. I did all the things they did. But I knew something had been given to me that they didn't know about. I also discovered I hadn't paid much attention in Sunday school, and when I would try to articulate my faith in the barracks or wherever, I'd get shot down in the street. But I those 10 to 2
watches, or the worst, the 2 to 6 watches. It's a lot of loneliness and a lot of darkness, and lots of time to think. And I began to hear a voice saying to me, if Christ has made this difference in your life, Christ can make this difference in the lives of others. And what are you going to do about that? And then it got personal. What are you going to do about that? And my response was,
Lord, you've got to be kidding. I mean, things are not that desperate, are they? I mean, our congregation produced quite a few candidates for the ministry, and if there had been a vote taken, I would not have been elected among those who should go to seminary. It is just a fact of life. And I had stereotypes in my mind, perhaps like you have in yours, of what a minister is and what a minister looks like and
how a minister acts and behaves and so forth, and I didn't match any of those silhouettes. But God just kept leaning, leaning, leaning on my life, until at the time of my discharge from the service, I knew. I knew. I didn't want to, but I knew I had to. And four years later, I ended up here, like you, at Princeton Seminary. And what has God called me to be and to do? If I'm like Sosthenese and
Timothy or whoever, I'm called to be the brother, the brother I've never been. And to have brothers I've never had, and to have sisters I've never had, because Christ has called us together to be co-workers and to be friends in ministry. Now, I've, with my wife, raised three children, and I know what a battlefield the home can be with three children, and I know about sibling rivalries, and I know about arguments and fights and all
the rest. I know that, and that's a part of the territory. But you talk to any of our three, and they'll laugh about those fights, those arguments, but don't you interfere with them. Don't you pick on one of them. You'll have all three on your neck, because they're brothers and sisters. It ought to be like that here, because we are brothers and sisters in ministry. We should have the joy and the freedom of our arguments, our
discussions, our angers, but nobody else better pick on us, because we're related. We're kin in Christ, and we who identify with Sosthenese more than with Paul have been called by God equally to be the servants of Jesus Christ. And may that continue to be our common, uncommon experience. Let us pray. Gracious God, you bind us to yourself by faith as we respond to your gift of love in Jesus the Christ. We open our lives and hearts
to experience your love as your spirit sheds it abroad there at the very center of our being, affirming us, valuating us, justifying us, forgiving us, cleansing us, energizing us, calling us, empowering us, illuminating us, and we are And we pray that together we may be bound as family in this faith and in this ministry. We're grateful for Paul, and we're grateful for Sosthenese and Timothy and all the others who are simply just called the brothers and
the sisters, but who are names to you. May we also be names to you and to one another as we prepare ourselves for a lifetime of service in the gospel of Christ, who really does make a difference. In his name we pray. Amen. Christ in our prayer, you bind us to yourself by faith. Christ in death, oh Christ in sight, Christ with us you will never forget. Let us follow, never faltering, let us siding for the
life, never living, rich and lowly, all those people known and loyal. And in you, sinners, together, may justice come one alone. Christ, you guide us for our special, with a smile upon your face, let us carry each other's burdens, breathing out each other's prayers. The words of love, the words of vision, the words of trust, and the words of faith, let them take you to heaven, save for the rest, with a smile upon your face. Let
us follow, never faltering, let us siding for the life, never living, rich and lowly, all those people known and loyal. And in you, sinners, together, may justice come one alone. Let us follow, never faltering, let us carry each other's burdens, with a smile upon your face. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.