But Life in You

By Jared Warner

Willow Creek Friends Church

June 2, 2024

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Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili

2 Corinthians 4:5–12 (ESV)

⁵ For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. ⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ⁸ We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. ¹¹ For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. ¹² So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Last week I was a bit heavy on the philosophy. I also put a great deal of weight on the idea that we are our brother’s keeper. I am guessing that those ideas are probably not something we have heard a great deal. I will admit that it is not a common teaching in the Western churches because that is not our culture. Those ideas are common in the eastern oriented churches. My introduction to those ideas came to me through the classic Russian novel Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevesky. In that novel the youngest son, Alexei, who is a novice monk within the Orthodox church meets with the saintly mystic where for several pages the novelist writes one of the greatest sermons I have ever read. I will not bore you with the whole thing but, this great mystic says in essence, people must forgive others by acknowledging their own sin and guilt before others, And no sin is isolated, making everyone responsible for their neighbor’s sin. If you have not read that book, give yourself about a year and read it. It is probably the best book I have ever read.

I bring this up again today because it is important. We are going through great trials in our society. We are often losing faithful focus, and getting distracted by media pundits. I am just as guilty. I myself must be careful when I consume news. I get caught up and will watch news all day long. And as I do this I notice that anger wells within me. I get irritable and am not very patient with people that may hold differing opinions. I have been hear for fourteen years. I notice something early in those years. We all watch way too much news in our culture. News has become entertainment, and when news is consumed as entertainment instead of the transfer of knowledge, something happens. We become polarized, we stop thinking about what we heard and just repeat what we have been told, and we become angry and fearful.

I am saying this because I saw this in myself. I grew up on a farm and spent hours sitting alone in a tractor listening to news radio. Then I worked as a lawn and landscape chemical applicator, again my entire day was spent by myself working alone listening to news radio. I began listening to the news because I was tired of listening to the same songs over and over again on the radio, and this was before podcasts were common. I noticed that I became extremely opinionated about everything. It was not until I started my masters degree that things began to change. I was challenged to look at different perspectives and I had to write papers where I would have to explain why people held that particular view and explain why I may or may not agree with them.

Today many might say that school made me “woke”. I admit it is true. I realized that there are different ways to approach an issue, and the approach may not be the same but the intended outcome, the reason these scholars were writing were often for the same goal. This actually began when I was in Ukraine, even before I went back to school. I met people that lived in a completely different culture. People that took a radically different approach in many ways, and when I talked to them their goals in life were the exact same goals that I myself held. They wanted to get a good job, raise a family, and have security in their life.

All of this came crashing in on me the first few years I was here. I noticed that we as a meeting were living in fear. We were often distracted and wondering which direction to go. Things would happen and we would react. I say we, but the reality is I. I was distracted. I was reacting. I was afraid. I was not putting my faith in the right place. We are not the same meeting we were a decade ago.

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

Where is our faith when we fear? Where is our focus?

I just want us to sit with those questions for a moment. I want us to really consider where we are placing our faith when we are fearing the future as we approach the unknown. Speaking for myself, when I am worried about the future, usually I am focused and placing my faith in myself.

Paul is telling the Corinthians that he is not focused on himself. That those that are living for Christ are not focused on themselves. They are not worried about themselves. Their entire focus is on Jesus Christ, and they are serving the people within the community for Jesus’ sake. Have you ever really considered what Paul is saying? He is saying, I am my brother’s keeper. He is saying that everything they do is to promote the gospel of Christ, and as they minister their focus is not on their own comfort or will, instead they are doing the ministry to promote what is best for the people within the community they serve.

I sat with this verse for a while this week. I mulled over it as I drove down to camp yesterday. I looked out over the prairies along I35 and I thought about things. Then John made one of the most profound statements I have heard. “It is so clean.” I asked John what he meant by that statement. And he said, “It just looks like it was how God intended things to look. And people haven’t made a mess.” The prairies right now are the greenest I have seen them in a long time. The ponds and streams are filled with water, the cattle on a thousand hills looked happy and healthy. And I sat there looking out over the landscape stretching out before us and I thought, “John is very observant.”

That is what Paul is getting at. That is what the mystic in the novel was getting at. We cannot make the world into what God intended to be if we are focused on the wrong things. We cannot expect the people outside these walls to follow Christ until we fully follow. We cannot expect change within our community unless we see our own contribution to the mess.

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves.” We are not the answer. We are part of the problem. I am afraid that if I do not take it for myself I will not get what I want. I am the problem.

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Paul is taking us back to the very beginning. Back to the third verse of the first book of scripture. Before the world was brought into order, God’s Spirit hovered of the waters in the chaotic darkness, and he said let there be light.

I have mentioned many times how I love Genesis. I say this as a man who studied life sciences in the university. I say this as a man that fully embraces science and faith. Because when I read those words I see things a bit different than some, and Paul alludes to this. In Hebrew light is often used as a metaphor for knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is transferred from one person through words. God said let there be light, and there was light. God spoke words, he transferred what was in his mind to this created place. And scripture tells us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear or respect of God. God spoke he and his wisdom illuminated Earth, and John the apostle tells us that in the beginning the word was with God and the word was God. Everything was made through him. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that word was the light, shining in the darkness to enlighten humanity. It is almost as if Paul and John are saying similar things.

He is not proclaiming himself, but Jesus, and as he does this he is a servant to the community for Jesus’ sake. And Jesus is the light, the wisdom or word of God revealed to us as he made first century Israel his dwelling place. What do we fear? And where is our focus?

Since Paul has taken us back to that first book of scripture, he continues to draw on that image. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” Often when I have heard this verse quoted the speaker takes a platonic approach. They speak of the spirit as being good and the body bad. I do not think Paul is speaking in this manner, although I do understand why they take that approach. We have this treasure, he says, what treasure? The light or wisdom of God shining in the darkness, that has shone into our hearts to give us knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The treasure we have is wisdom and knowledge. We have this treasure within us, in jars of clay.

A jar is a container. We put many things within a jar. When I lived at home on the farm, I often helped my mom and grandma in their gardens picking beans, digging beets, and plucking tomatoes. We would then wash and cut this produce and place them into jars, and then we placed the jars into the pressure cooker I cannot explain the whole process because I did not pay attention I was just hoping to get some bread and jelly. Somehow in the heating and cooling process the air was removed from within the jars and the produce within was preserved for many months. We place the things we want to keep within jars. The things that preserve life and make it worth living. Green beans, beets, homemade tomato sauce and soup, jellies and jams. I am making myself hungry. A jar is a container to store precious things for later use. It is a vessel used to transfer these precious goods from one person or place to another.

Paul says we have this treasure this precious resource in a jar of clay. I said he is taking us back to that first book of scripture. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” and he formed the adam, of dust from the ground. My wife has a degree in ceramic arts, and ceramic artists take the dust of the ground, add water, and make clay. They then take this malleable clay and they use it to form just about anything the mind can imagine. They can make bowls and plate to allow us to eat. They make cups and mugs so we can have our morning coffee. They can make sculptures that have little utility except to bring joy to the person that created and purchase the item. A ceramic artist participates in the very art that God initiated. They take the dust of the earth and they form it into something. They then let the clay dry. This dry clay hold the form the artisan intended but this dry clay is fragile, until fire is added. This baking process removes all the remaining moisture and the jar is like stone, and fragments of ancient pottery can be found centuries or even thousands of years later.

I hope you are beginning to see the larger picture. We are formed from the dust. We are dust and to dust we will return. But there is something precious within these vessels of dust that will go beyond. “We are afflicted in every way,” Paul says, “but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…” We have struggles, trials. We have gone through the very fires of what some might describe as hell. Fire bakes clay and turns it into stone. Our struggles and trials harden us so that we can persist without breaking. We are jars of clay, formed to carry a precious treasure. We were formed to bear the image of God. We face the trials so that the light or wisdom of God can be carried within us, preserve within more heat and pressure so that we can share it with others at the proper time.

“We are struck down, but not destroyed,” Paul says, “always carrying in the body of death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

We live in a world of unknowns. We live in a society where fear often reigns and we make decisions based on that fear. We face these struggles, these trials and our emotions often burn like a hot furnace. We fear but where is our focus?

I know many have watched the news this week. And for some of us we are angry. Others of us might be worried as we face an unknown future. Some of us might be jubilant. This is all distraction, every bit of it. It is distraction because our focus is not where it should be. We are focused on ourselves, our hope, our dreams, and the things that we want. This is not what we were created to be. We were created to bear the image of God in the world. We were created to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth and transform it into a place where God would dwell with us. But we are distracted.

Why did Christ come? Did he come for a kingdom on earth? “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus during his trial. And Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

The words that Jesus uses are important. Of and from, and the order he uses them are significant. My kingdom is not of this world. In this sense the word of tells us of the substance or nature of Jesus’ kingdom. It is not of this world. Its composition is of something else. He goes on to say if it were of this world my servants would fight. The nature of God’s kingdom is not the same as the nature of the kingdoms of men. The kingdoms of men go to war seeking power and resources. We see it throughout the news. On the battlefields of Ukraine, Israel, Haiti, and pretty much every continent. We see in the courtrooms and in the ads on television. The kingdoms of men fight for power and resources, for influence and domination. But Jesus’ kingdom is not of that nature. It does not come from men. It is not of the people, by the people, for the people. It is not from the world. It is from a different source and substance. It is from the knowledge and wisdom of God.

The kingdoms of the world use fear to rule. They us the threat of death. Yet Jesus did not fear. He did not run from the threat of death, because his focus was on some more precious than the things this world can offer. His kingdom is hope.

My grandma did not have me pick the beans and snap them into bite size pieces out of fear. She had me do this because she had hope that in three months we would eat those beans when the weather turned cold. We prepared not out of fear but hope, and we ate those precious beans out of the jar as we sang praises of thanksgiving around a table. Hope and fear. One focuses on self preservation and the other focuses on the sharing of God’s bountiful blessings. One focuses on the potential loss and the other focuses on future existence. One focuses on death and the other on life.

Jesus came to give hope. His kingdom is from hope. His life is pregnant with hope. And he told Pilate that the kingdoms of this world do not take his life but he gives it. He gave his life, he suffered through the injustices of this world so that he could bind and bury then within the depths of this earth. He face the trials, affliction, crushing blows, perplexing denials, persecution and the hammer struck piercing nails. He faced this all so that a treasure could be preserved in his own jar of clay. Hope.

Death is at work in us. Fear and anger rage within our bodies. Clouds of unknowing descend around us, and hamper our sight as we traverse the pathways of life. Death is at work. Wars rage. Verdicts are passed. Decrees are issued. Death is at work. The rulers of this world all face the same end. Eventually power will be lost to another. It will either be taken from them through the violence they perpetuate and given to another. Or they will breath their last as disease overtakes them. Scripture tells us in Hebrews 9:27 that it is appointed for man to die once , and after that comes judgment. Death in some form will take the wealthiest and the most powerful, and they like the poorest and least influential will return to the dust. “Death is at work in us, but life is in you.”

“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Death is at work in us. We are part of the problem. We are our brothers’ keepers. We are in need of forgiveness and restoration, but this only comes when we recognize that death is at work in us, and repent or change directions. Stop focusing on the fear and despair, and looking to the light God is shining out of the chaotic darkness. Death is at work in us, but as bearers of a precious treasure in jars of clay, life is in you.

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