B. Maurice Ritchie - Sermon Untitled (June 25, 2000)

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-	Let us bow for prayer.	0:05
	Oh Lord, your word is a light unto our path.	0:10
	A light unto our feet.	0:14
	Open our hearts and minds that we may perceive you,	0:18
	and greet you in and beyond	0:23
	thy sacred page.	0:26
	Amen.	0:28
	It is difficult for me to resist an opportunity	0:32
	to preach from one of the letters of St. Paul.	0:34
	And particularly, the letter to the Corinthians.	0:38
	I could give you a succinct, scholarly reason for that,	0:42
	something like this:	0:46
	in no other New Testament writing do we get the extensive	0:48
	and rich insight into relations within a	0:51
	primitive Christian community of the mid-first century	0:53
	as in Corinthians.	0:58
	But I will be more honest and tell you	1:01
	that it was a former Sunday school pupil of mine	1:03
	who piqued my interest in this correspondence.	1:06
	Her name is Rina Parks,	1:10
	one of the most articulate students	1:13
	of Scripture I have ever met.	1:15
	And certainly a woman endowed with incredible wisdom.	1:17
	And she was in her 70s when we first came	1:21
	to know each other.	1:24
	One Sunday as we launched into the study	1:26
	of the Corinthian correspondence,	1:29
	Mrs. Parks said, "I like to think of Corinthians	1:31
	"as the 'Dear Abby' of the New Testament.	1:35
	"You know, it's just full of everything you find in life.	1:38
	"Fornication, adultery,	1:42
	"innuendo, intrigue,	1:45
	"incest, people at each others throats.	1:47
	"Bickering.	1:49
	"You name it, you can find it in Corinthians."	1:51
	I never forgot that.	1:55
	And so it became a habit of mine as I counseled	1:57
	young Divinity School students in their struggles	2:00
	with their congregations	2:03
	to invite them to turn again to Paul's correspondence	2:05
	with the church at Corinth.	2:09
	Because whatever it was they might be facing	2:11
	in their congregations,	2:13
	they were sure to find echoes of it	2:15
	in the pages of Paul's letters.	2:18
	It is precisely in this correspondence that we get some	2:22
	of Paul's most sublime recapitulations of his apostleship	2:25
	as well as rich insight into the price that he paid	2:30
	to become the founding father of more than	2:34
	one Mediterranean area congregation.	2:37
	Paul writes in today's sixth chapter that he has lived	2:42
	in the hopes of commending his ministry	2:45
	to those he would serve.	2:46
	Do you suppose he is merely lapsing into some occasional	2:50
	hyperbole when he records that he has suffered endurance,	2:53
	affliction, hardship,	2:57
	calamity, beatings,	2:58
	imprisonment, riots, labors,	3:00
	sleepless nights, hunger?	3:03
	Paul is fully capable of embellishing a record,	3:07
	an account,	3:11
	particularly when it came to a solid defense	3:12
	of his apostolic office and his apostolic authority.	3:16
	And in this letter, both were on the line	3:20
	and certainly in his larger history	3:23
	with these cantankerous Corinthians.	3:25
	Yes, he's fully capable of fattening a list	3:28
	and extending it.	3:31
	But the corpus of Paul's letters and the accounts	3:33
	of his ministry by Luke and Acts,	3:36
	indicate that, if anything, he may have been a bit modest	3:39
	on this occasion.	3:43
	We can only imagine that hunger or sleepless nights	3:45
	and labors were nothing compared	3:47
	to calamity, beatings, imprisonment and riots.	3:49
	Later he could add shipwreck to the list.	3:53
	More than once, Paul was barely able to get out of town	3:57
	with his life.	4:00
	He suffered at the hands of local city authorities.	4:02
	The local religious authorities,	4:05
	both pagan and Jewish.	4:07
	As well as on occasion	4:10
	from some local Christian authorities.	4:11
	Yes, we may be sure there is a personal history behind	4:15
	each of these references in these few verses.	4:19
	If Paul is feeling defensive, then who wouldn't?	4:22
	One marvels that he was still in the fray	4:25
	as he wrote his letter.	4:28
	When we look at the consequences of Paul's ministry	4:32
	as he sketches them here,	4:35
	we would naturally conclude he must've	4:37
	been quite a hell raiser.	4:39
	You certainly wouldn't think of him as a	4:42
	Caspar Milquetoast.	4:43
	That kind of person who not engender this kind	4:45
	of hostility and anger from crowds and authorities.	4:47
	Today, just one beating, one calamity,	4:51
	one imprisonment or riot is enough to undo any preacher	4:55
	with his congregation and his denomination.	4:57
	Today's church is not looking for these rabble-rousers.	5:01
	It's hard on membership and it's hard	5:05
	on financial development as well.	5:07
	Paul has told us the results of his personal commendation	5:11
	of the Gospel in these verses.	5:16
	Then he shares with us what landed him there.	5:19
	And strangely enough, it does not read like	5:23
	a laundry list of trouble.	5:25
	Did you catch it?	5:28
	Purity.	5:31
	A keen conscience.	5:33
	Or what he calls knowledge.	5:36
	Patience.	5:38
	Kindness.	5:40
	Holiness of spirit.	5:41
	Genuine love.	5:44
	Truthful speech.	5:46
	The power of God.	5:48
	Those personal traits do not strike these modern ears	5:51
	as a formula for trouble--	5:55
	except perhaps the power of God--	5:57
	that's trouble in any life, oftentimes.	5:58
	Yet grief and trouble, among other things,	6:02
	are what Paul's discipleship yielded him from time to time.	6:04
	We might strike it up to the cost of discipleship.	6:08
	As he writes, "We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way	6:15
	"so that no fault may be found with our ministry.	6:19
	"But as servants of God, we have commended ourselves	6:23
	"in every way."	6:26
	In other words, he has set the example.	6:28
	Paul was never modest about	6:31
	inviting people to follow him and his good example.	6:33
	He has lived the faith before the Corinthians	6:37
	as before the Galatians and the Philippians.	6:39
	Now he pleads with them to follow suit,	6:43
	to commend themselves to others	6:46
	as he has commended himself	6:49
	to them and Corinth.	6:51
	I'm afraid Paul was a few courses shy in marketing.	6:54
	Highlighting as he did in these verses	6:58
	the high cost of discipleship.	7:00
	That's not exactly the way you claim your market audience.	7:02
	Affliction, beating, riot, hunger.	7:08
	Not very invitational.	7:13
	Yet here he is,	7:15
	pleading with the Corinthians	7:17
	to incarnate the grace of God in their lives now.	7:18
	Now is the acceptable time.	7:22
	Now is the day of salvation.	7:25
	There's no point in waiting to act on faith.	7:27
	The foundation has already been laid in Jesus.	7:31
	In his life, his death,	7:34
	his resurrection.	7:36
	He has inaugurated the day of deliverance and salvation.	7:39
	The Old Testament prophecies are all fulfilled.	7:43
	No need to wait for yet another.	7:45
	Now the time to respond to the liberation of God	7:48
	and to begin living in God's new age.	7:51
	Not to live in God's new age	7:56
	is to mean that Christ died in vain.	8:00
	There will be no new revelations.	8:03
	No new dramatic interventions.	8:05
	We have a triumphant story of our Lord.	8:09
	The kingdom has launched.	8:12
	It's time to get on with living it before the world.	8:14
	Time to become, as he says a few verses	8:16
	before today's passage,	8:18
	time to become ambassadors for Christ.	8:20
	"Finally, put no obstacle in another's way," he says.	8:26
	"Let no fault be found in your Christian witness.	8:31
	"As servants of God, commend yourselves	8:35
	"in every way."	8:39
	That is Paul's direct address to you and me.	8:42
	In this first year of a new millennium,	8:47
	are we interested in hearing what he has to say?	8:50
	Do we want to hear about accountability,	8:53
	not only to God and Christ,	8:56
	but to the neighbor on our pew,	8:58
	the neighbor in our neighborhood,	9:00
	the person in the workplace behind us?	9:03
	Paul is telling us that we do not negotiate	9:06
	this world alone.	9:09
	Anymore than the animals entered the ark one by one.	9:11
	"No," according to Paul, "as we move through this world,	9:15
	we bring others with us by the way we live the gospel	9:18
	before the world."	9:22
	For over two decades, I have called	9:27
	on Christian congregations from Mateo to Murphy	9:28
	to interpret for them the field education program	9:31
	of the Divinity School.	9:34
	The field education program is the kind	9:36
	of student preaching program	9:38
	for students preparing to be ordained ministers	9:41
	or lay ministers in the church.	9:44
	On these occasions, I have tried to move congregations	9:47
	from their perception of themselves as employers,	9:50
	of helpers in ministry,	9:54
	to an image of themselves as a teaching congregation.	9:56
	Routinely, I have said to them,	10:00
	"You teach in everything you do and say.	10:02
	"You are a Methodist church in this neighborhood	10:06
	"and by the way you organize and conduct your life,	10:08
	"you are teaching this community what it means	10:12
	"to be Christian and what it means to be Methodist.	10:15
	"Your neighbors may know nothing	10:20
	"of John Wesley.	10:22
	"They may know nothing of the great evangelist	10:24
	"Frances Asbury.	10:27
	"But if I ask them to tell me about Methodism,	10:30
	"they will likely point to one of you	10:33
	"and slowly it will dawn on them that there's someone nearby	10:37
	"who is a member of a Methodist congregation.	10:40
	"And they will begin to tell me	10:43
	"about their Methodist neighbor."	10:44
	And that is how it is with students	10:46
	as well as the children in your neighborhood	10:48
	and the strangers near your church.	10:50
	All these come into your midst	10:53
	as seekers and learners.	10:55
	They look at how you do ministry.	10:58
	Their eyes and minds are like rolling video cameras	11:00
	taking in all you do in the name of the Christian gospel	11:04
	as well as all you do not do for the gospel.	11:07
	They will observe the way you do ministry in your community,	11:12
	and they will assume from that observation,	11:15
	rightly or wrongly,	11:17
	that that is the way ministry should be done.	11:19
	"Daily, as a Christian people,"	11:22
	I tell these congregations,	11:25
	"daily, as a Christian people,	11:27
	"you live the faith before a community,	11:28
	"and daily you instruct an entire people	11:31
	"on what it means to be Christian--	11:33
	"whether you intend to instruct them or not."	11:35
	Our daughters did not learn the Lord's Prayer	11:40
	and the Apostles' Creed in Sunday school	11:43
	or in confirmation class.	11:45
	They learned them sitting with their parents on the pews	11:48
	of a Methodist church, Sunday by Sunday.	11:50
	Suddenly one day, they were reciting the Creed	11:53
	and the Prayer with us.	11:57
	And to me, that was an epiphany.	11:59
	For my heart sank as I thought to myself,	12:02
	"My heavens. What are they learning when we leave the	12:04
	"sanctuary and go to the fellowship hall	12:07
	"and observe how we Christians interact with each other,	12:09
	"and what do they observe and what do they learn	12:12
	"when we go home for lunch at the dinner table	12:14
	"and rehearse the service of that day?"	12:18
	We live in an age	12:22
	which wants to say that my freedom is my own and ends	12:24
	only at my neighbor's fence or nose.	12:27
	It's a Burger King philosophy.	12:30
	You can have it your way.	12:31
	There's no implied responsibility to another person.	12:34
	I am free to be and do what I will do so long	12:38
	as I do not infringe on your rights	12:40
	and on your prerogatives.	12:43
	This mentality is alive and well in our culture	12:46
	and including in our university.	12:49
	But this flies in the face of ancient wisdom	12:52
	which told us something like this:	12:55
	I'm sorry,	12:57
	but what you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say.	12:59
	Whether we will or not, we make a mark	13:04
	on others with our lives.	13:07
	The question is, what will that mark be?	13:09
	It's slowly dawned on me recently that messages	13:16
	which were common as I was a teenager	13:19
	are no longer current among teens.	13:21
	My generation of the Methodist church heard regularly	13:23
	that we were not free to do as we pleased.	13:26
	We were free to do anything	13:30
	as Paul himself says elsewhere in Corinthians.	13:31
	But not everything was edifying.	13:35
	And not everything was positive for ourselves	13:38
	or for our friends or for our community.	13:41
	We can be sure that wherever we may be	13:44
	or whatever we may be doing,	13:46
	someone was watching and we would influence another,	13:48
	for good or for ill.	13:51
	"Do not become a stumbling block for others,"	13:53
	they told us.	13:56
	"Do not let your lifestyle become an impediment	13:57
	"to the gospel for yourself or for others.	13:59
	"You may think you have no power and influence.	14:02
	"But everyone has some power and influence somewhere	14:05
	"and sometime.	14:10
	"And the way you live," they said,	14:12
	"whether you intend or not	14:13
	"you are leading and influencing others."	14:15
	We were taught to assume responsibility	14:19
	for our peers and our community.	14:21
	We were not free to do as we pleased.	14:24
	We were free to do what God pleased.	14:26
	And what our community and nation asked of us.	14:29
	As a dean responsible for monitoring student progress	14:36
	for ministry in the Divinity School,	14:38
	I've had to confront the rather rare student	14:39
	on his or her behavior.	14:41
	On more than one occasion, students have responded to me,	14:45
	"Well, what I do on my own time	14:47
	is my own business, isn't it?"	14:49
	And I usually say, "Well, you know,	14:52
	if your behavior were not an issue here,	14:54
	it would be your theology.	14:56
	That theology wouldn't survive the first year	14:57
	at the Divinity School."	14:59
	But the presumption was	15:02
	that there were "on hours" and "off hours" for Christians	15:04
	and for ministers of the Gospel.	15:09
	And I fear these students reflect the mentality	15:12
	of some of our contemporaries who think	15:14
	of themselves as Christian.	15:16
	The church is sort of like a religious club I attend.	15:18
	I pay my dues.	15:21
	I have my spiritual itch scratched in Sunday service.	15:22
	The rest of the week is mine.	15:26
	But Christian faith is a vocation.	15:28
	A calling.	15:30
	In our baptisms, we were all called to ministry.	15:32
	We rise with Christ out of the baptismal waters	15:36
	into glorious ministry of healing and reconciliation.	15:39
	There's a calling which brings with it a specific identity.	15:44
	A specific self-understanding.	15:47
	And specific practices.	15:50
	So that's what Paul is trying to tell us	15:53
	in these verses.	15:55
	He writes about purity and patience.	15:57
	About the sensitive conscience.	16:00
	Kindness, holiness	16:03
	and genuine love.	16:04
	All these moral virtues are also communal virtues.	16:07
	Not mere personal virtues.	16:11
	When we looked at Paul's larger letters,	16:14
	he tell us, "We commend ourselves through modesty	16:16
	"and humility,	16:19
	"through non-violence and gentleness,	16:21
	"by purity of motive and behavior,	16:24
	"yes, through the sufferings we endure	16:28
	"as we live the faith in our communities."	16:30
	It is clear from Paul's description that we as Christians	16:34
	are called to put ourselves aside for the sake of Christ.	16:37
	To be the leaven in the lump.	16:40
	The light on the hill.	16:43
	The seasoning in the dish.	16:45
	We are part of a living organism called the church.	16:47
	And our lives are interwoven with all those lives	16:51
	as well as the lives of our community	16:54
	and our world.	16:56
	The notion that we can disengage ourselves	16:58
	from the communities that surround us	17:00
	is an illusion.	17:02
	If we are not interested in pilgrimage	17:05
	with all those other lives,	17:06
	among whom we are set,	17:08
	we have missed the point of the Gospel	17:10
	and we find no abiding place among God's people.	17:13
	We fall victim to desolate and impoverished lives.	17:17
	Again, Paul writes, "From now on we regard no one	17:26
	"from a human point of view.	17:30
	"Even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view.	17:32
	"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,	17:36
	"and God has given us the ministry of reconciliation.	17:40
	"We are ambassadors of Christ.	17:44
	"God is making his appeal through us.	17:46
	"Now is the day of salvation.	17:49
	"We put no obstacle in anyone's way,	17:52
	"so that no fault may be found with our ministry.	17:55
	"As servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way.	17:59
	"So be it.	18:04
	"So help us God."	18:05
	In the name of the Father, and of the Son,	18:08
	and of the Holy Ghost.	18:10
	Amen.	18:13

Item Info

Title:

B. Maurice Ritchie - Sermon Untitled (June 25, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:05. Sermon end time: 18:18.
Key quotation: Daily as a Christian, people you live the faith before a community and daily you instruct an entire people on what it means to be a Christian people, whether you intend to instruct them or not.

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43t9dn5k

Date:

June 25, 2000

Speaker:

Ritchie, B. Maurice

Biblical Book:

1 Corinthians

Chapter and Verse:

1 Corinthians 6:1-22

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1019
ref10195_kf1
uachapelsermaud
duke:320299
dcrau001663
ark:/87924/r43t9dn5k
f7c1807a-535b-434f-9c09-379fdfa61f80

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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B. Maurice Ritchie - Sermon Untitled (June 25, 2000)

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