B, Post Pentecost 7 Proper 9 - 2 Corinthinans 12:2-10 "Super-Self"

2 Corinthians 12:2–10 (ESV)  I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.  And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—  and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.  On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—  though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.  So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.  But he (Jesus) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul addresses those at Corinth to hang onto the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ and avoid Satan who acts as an “angel of light”.  He confronts these people who teach contrary to his teaching and tempt others away from trusting God’s word.  Those who do this,  Paul calls super-apostles.  These are folk who work superiority over others, forcing folk to follow their ways, contrary to the ways of God.  These people are super-selves and encourage others to super-size their egos too!!

In our age of individualism and self-glorification of the individual, super-apostleship is arguably just as prevalent, if not more so, than when Paul addressed the Corinthians. 

How can you and I safeguard ourselves from super-apostles?  But more importantly, how does a person protect themselves from inadvertently becoming a super-apostle, or a super-self?

This is the issue Paul needed to pursue at Corinth.  He has come under attack by these super-selves, so he defends the apostleship to which he is called by God.  But he has to do it without falling into the same trap as those who have become super-apostles, false-apostles, false-teachers of God’s word.  Paul’s aim is to create true disciples, true believers, or Christians who stand under God’s word, under Jesus Christ, rather than under him.  Sub-selves of Jesus, or disciples, rather than super-selves!

This is why Paul speaks to the Corinthians in what might seem peculiar to our ears.  He refers to himself as a fool.  As one who has no mind, out of his mind, or has no understanding.  This is a very strange way to defend the faith, you might think!

He speaks of a man caught up to the third heaven or paradise of whom he will not boast.  Paul speaks here of himself, apart from himself, not to boast of the things God has done with him to prepare him for his apostleship under the cross.  But Paul boasts in his foolishness, nothingness, weakness, and the harassment of Satan in his thorn in his flesh, to stop him boasting and becoming conceited in the flesh of himself. 

To stop him from becoming a super-apostle within himself, Paul appeals to this suffering selflessness.  Rather than be a super-self, Paul proclaims his suffering-self!

But Paul even goes further by saying, “Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles.  Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.”  (2 Corinthians 11:5–6 ESV)

Paul calls himself “unskilled in speaking”, this is literally an “idiot in speaking”, and ignoramus!  He goes on to question and say of the weakness and foolishness of his flesh, “To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!  But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that.  Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I.  Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labours, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.”  (2 Corinthians 11:21b–23 ESV)

What Paul is comparing himself to is the “idiotes” (id-ee-o-tace)or nothingness of Christ.  Not that Christ was nothing, but that Jesus Christ selflessly put his divinity aside and became “absolutely nothing” to save you, me, Paul, and the Corinthians.

This flies in the face of any super-apostle.  The super-self within all of us, seeks to be outstanding in position and perception, rather than understanding or being submissive and subordinate, under the knowledge of Christ.  The knowledge of a super-self will come from a glorified hyper-sense of self.   One’s knowledge is not of Jesus Christ but of what one thinks is good or evil.  Rather than submit to a fool like Saint Paul or any other “idiot” to whom Paul submits, they position themselves, second to no one, serving only if it is to benefit of the super-self.

The desire of super-apostles will always be to tempt others away from humility and faithful submission to God, to a faithfulness in other things or persons.  They use scandalous scams that lure the vainglory of the old sinful super-self, within each of us, to covet pleasure, popularity, and prosperity of various kinds.  This is emotionalism!  The super-apostle wants the person they tempt, to think like them, to be emotional, so they can control them with their "superior ways and beliefs".

With the growing rejection of Christ-centred faith in the world today, individualism and the super-self, sees the cross of Jesus Christ as a scandal.  This should not be a surprise to us, as the people of Nazareth, Jesus own kin, saw him as a scandal.  But it’s this very scandal that Paul and all Christ-centred people continue, suffer, and persevere in patience, waiting for the hope of eternal glory.

So, to protect ourselves from super-apostles, as well as becoming super-selves, we need to invoke a test, first on ourselves and then on those who come to us seeking to teach us something!  The test is simple: Test by asking, “Where is the glory going!”  “Is it going to God alone or to somewhere or someone else?”  It’s as simple as that!  

However, we need to do this, because we still need to be taught.  We are still learners, disciples! The other danger that we face in this age of individualism is to further promote the old Adam, the super-self, and cut ourselves off from true sources of teaching, that God puts in place.

Rather than be misinformed by a super-apostle, we can also cut ourselves off from God the Holy Spirit’s work, by being uninformed without the word of God, and continuing in this uninformed state, we quickly revert back to having the malformed mind of a super-self, separated from God and his word.

You and I need to be daily carried from the individualism of the super-self, back into the word of God, by the Holy Spirit.

As there were in Paul’s day, there are many today who, use the word of God in a way contrary to the way the prophets, Paul and the apostles, as well as many mum, dad, and children disciples, who have sought and continue to seek being faithful servants of God.

Rather than support you in repentance, confession of sin, and belief in Christ’s forgiveness of sin, super-selves and super-apostles who masquerade as “angels of light” under Satan, will give the sense that Christians shouldn’t struggle and suffer with sin.  They will seek subtle ways of putting themselves between God and his word.  Probably by using God and his word, just as the devil sought to do against Jesus, and countless others since.

As your pastor, I know that you all have been caught up into the third heaven, to paradise, when God baptised you into the holy priesthood of all believers.  I also know as your pastor; you have been given thorns in the flesh.  That, super-apostles and your super-self, harass you, torment and seek to tempt you, within the church, to be without the Holy Spirit and the word of God.  Or, to add laws to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But as Jesus says to Paul, he says to us all, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9a ESV)

This is what God the Son promises you in his Holy Baptism.  His cross is sufficient for you.  The Holy Spirit was Jesus’ perfect power, to, and through, the scandal of the cross.  This same Holy Spirited power is sufficient for you for your forgiveness of sin, life and salvation.

Therefore, in your weaknesses let the power of Christ rest upon you, as you reject the super-apostle and daily drown the super-self within.  Amen.

C, Post-Pentecost 13 Proper 18 - Luke 14:25-35 "Counting the Cost"

Jesus had gained a following.  A great crowd of disciples and people were following him.  To where were they following him?  But could they follow him?  Or was he really following them?

The Gospel text before us today has a threefold warning written into it.  Three times Jesus says, “If you do x, y, or z, you cannot be my disciple”.  Let’s examine the X, Y, and Z of why he says one cannot be his disciple.

The first “cannot” word Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26 ESV)

Luke records the harshness of Jesus’ words with the call to hate.  How can this be?  Mathew’s Gospel softens this harshness by replacing  whoever “hates” with whoever “loves (x) more than me”.  So, Jesus’ first call to discipleship is not to love one’s family and life more than Jesus. 

It seems Jesus seeks to scatter us from our relationships.  But Jesus walked towards Jerusalem to do something so much greater than this.  He needs to take us from our family heritage, our culture, and our identity.  Then he can awaken us with his life, in the Holy Spirit, in our eternal heritage with the Father, and in our adopted identity through his suffering and death.  After this he gives us back to our families, our nation, and our society as agents of his supreme love.

In our age of individualism and our regression into social tribalism, Jesus is exposing our idols of pride built on one’s identity; be it race, class, family.  Or, even today as some think we have freewill to choose what we identify ourselves as!  Also, Jesus is laying bare, the shame that comes from our fallen identity’s narrowness and individuality.

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, just after Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, he also spoke about taking up the cross and following him.  Jesus then says, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels”.  (Luke 9:26 ESV)

God’s intention for us is that being firstly a member of his heavenly family, like Paul, we confess to the Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16 ESV)

And as Paul says to young Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth”.  (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)

And the writer of Hebrews says of Jesus and us who allow him to make us holy, “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.  That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2:11 ESV)

Peter in his epistle to the persecuted church says, “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.” (1 Peter 4:16 ESV)

With the weight of God’s word just heard, are you more ashamed of the gospel or your family?  Is honour before the world more important than honour before God in his church,  including those in this church our shame and pride would naturally exclude.

Like Paul who formerly prided himself, as a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees blameless under the law, confesses to the Philippians, that hanging onto his former identity is as shameful as keeping and showing your poo[1]. 

Jesus calls you to hate your own life like your manure or that which is cast aside as waste.  And he is not just talking about the things you consider as evil or shameful.  But also, the things in which you seek honour, and deem as good, shaming God to second place.

His call to hate others or love him the most, then flows into his second impediment statement for discipleship, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 27 ESV)

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus speaks to his disciples about those ashamed of him and his words, the Son of Man will be ashamed on his return.  Just before saying this, he invites them to take up their cross (Luke 9:23).  But here in the second of his “cannot” discipleship statements his call is not just to “take up” one’s cross but “to carry” or “bear it”. 

This is stronger language again.  The disciples knew to carry a cross was the Roman way of making one carry one’s instrument of death to the place of their crucifixion and death.  Jesus makes it clear, if you are going to walk with me, death will occur! 

Hate your family, now make a faithful stand which will lead to death!  What?

It’s here Jesus takes a break before pointing out the third reason why one cannot be his disciple, his learner, or one who truly understands, to do the will of the Father.

Jesus says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.”  (Luke 14:28–30 ESV)

Counting the cost of loving Jesus more than anyone or anything!  Hating my life so much I would forsake it and follow Jesus to death!  It makes you wonder, “How on earth can I do this?  How can I make this work?”

The picture of building a tower and being humiliated by not being able to finish its city, immediately makes us think of the Tower of Babel.  The spirit of humanity collectively sought to work their way up to God, but God confused their language and dispersed them before they could build themselves up as a collective human god.

As the Babel event rings in our ears, know that just as Jesus says, those who cannot “finish their towers will be humiliated”, they too will be shamed like those of Babel whom God mocks.   After they built their tower “up to heaven”, God still has to “come down” to see what they were doing.  They are humiliated and dispersed!  

Surely before you or I work to love Jesus more than our family, social status, or state, before we seek to die for our sin, we might sit down and count the cost. 

Jesus then paints another picture for us saying, “what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:31–32 ESV)

We might regard King David as the greatest king of the Old Testament who battled and overcame hundreds of thousands in battle.  Yet before God he cries out, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:2, 7 ESV)

Here is God’s chosen King of Israel, trembling and found short before God!  Crying out for peace before God!  No sacrifice could please God, no offering could cleanse, nothing he did could recoup the cost!  And David knew it!

What is the cost of our unfinished work?  Can I pay to have peace within?  How can I have terms of peace without God?

This brings us to Jesus’ last hindrance on being his disciple.  Counting the cost and seeking terms of peace, Jesus says, “therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”  (Luke 14:33 ESV)

The deeds, intellect, and the life one lives, will only bring shame if we try to use them as a bargaining chip at the table of life and death.

This is well and truly proven by the Israelites, who, on entering the promised land, heard Moses say, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” (Deuteronomy 30:15 ESV)  But they lost their land of milk and honey, first to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and finally to the Romans. 

God set before them life and death, living a life of good over evil under the Law.  Yet the good they lived was for themselves, and they lost their land, the paradise of God being with them in the temple in Jerusalem and received payment for their sin.  God’s wages for sin, is always death!

Jesus then says, “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  (Luke 14:34–35 ESV)

If Israel’s good was not good enough, and our good, is not good enough either, if our lack of saltiness is too shameful to put on the dung heap, consider the cost, seek terms of true peace!

Those who have ears let them hear!  Taste and see it is the Lord who is good!  No one could follow Jesus to the cross, just as none of us can make salt, salty again if it loses it saltiness.  We lose favour and flavour with God, when we seek the poopy pleasures of good and evil. 

God gives our flavour back, in a cleansing bath in baptism, rejuvenating saltiness, preserved “with and in” his word.  He flavours you once again and delights in you as his own, with the work of the Holy Spirit and our risen ascended Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus counted the cost and paid the price. He was cast out of the city like poo and nailed to the cross, clean and innocent, in the place of uncleanness and shame.

Now the shame of our sin is not confessing it and repenting.  True discipleship relies on the Holy Spirit to honour God through our confession as sinners being daily forgiven!

As King David said, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  (Psalm 32:1–5 ESV)

In Jesus Christ, the guilt and shame of your sin is taken away.  By allowing the Holy Spirit to bring you daily to Jesus, in confession and repentance, making him your Messiah, is the highest form of worshipping and following God.  Amen.

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[1] Philippians 3:8 “rubbish” here in the Greek is vulgar meaning “excrement/filth”.