Let's talk men's fashion...

 

 

Read 1 Corinthians 11

I know what he is going to talk about. Tom will use these scriptures to tell people to park their cowboy hats and ball caps on the rack outside the sanctuary.

He is going to say that this sanctuary is to be a place of reverence, so park your popcorn and energy drinks in the car.

He is going to post an organizational chart with the man, the woman, children, pets, plants, and then kids in the hierarchy of things.

He is probably going to do an old guy PowerPoint with neverending analogies from the Corps or worse, more dad jokes that he got on sale.

Or not. What did Paul say?

These are the governing words to remember: Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

That said, Paul starts dispensing some grooming and fashion advice. Men—no head covering.

Women—just who are you to go around with your head uncovered?

Men—get a haircut. High and Tights would be excellent.

Women—don’t even think about getting a man’s haircut.

Here’s the logic.

There is God. That’ not a hard sell.

Then there man. He is next. No ball caps between your gord and God.

Women—sorry, you are a little farther down the ladder.

Now, we should hear the backpedaling. What? Paul became a little conciliatory. Really?

Women, remember when you were just a rib?  That’s just the way the forbidden fruit fell long ago.

I know, ever since then, man has come out of woman.

So, it’s not a governing hierarchy, is it?

Where did we begin?

Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.

Paul said that he was following Christ. If you're unsure about the next step, look to me. I’m doing my best to please the Lord. We’ve talked before about the rights I have as an apostle, but those things don’t matter to me.

Bringing glory to God, that matters to me.  I’m on a good track. My example is solid.

Here is some good advice. It is not directive or punitive as far as I know. I am not going to say it here, but I think you and future believers will sometimes go a different path.

Make no mistake, Paul is not lukewarm about this.  This is our way! While I am in this world leading the Gentiles to Christ, we will do some things my way.

If you have taken the yoke of a Rabbi, and this one was a Pharisee, you sometimes get some strict stuff. This was not a Rabbi-disciple relationship, but Paul was surely mentoring the new church, one in which there were few that migrated from the Synagogue.

These traditions may have been more Hebraic than Hellenistic, but Paul felt them applicable to then and there. What do we do with them?

Embrace the story: God creates man, then woman from his rib, then woman creates a man in her womb and delivers him into the world.

It’s a hierarchy that is a cycle and hardly central or governing. Accept God’s order of things throughout creation. Embrace it. Fighting it won’t change it, but I am not giving it more time today or tomorrow.

Chew on his counsel. Now, let’s get back to making disciples.

Absolute Humble

 

Read 1 Corinthians 11

Paul is motoring along without regard to where the chapter breaks will come. To his credit, this is a letter made into one of 66 books that we know so well.

There is overlap and a little repetition, but the subjects addressed were not only timely for Corinth but for us as well.

This Jesus is Lord business is serious stuff. He is our Lord and that’s more than a perfunctory title. We owe him allegiance, commitment, obedience, and love. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe.

That means that we take our commission seriously. We make disciples.  I spent a fair amount of time on what some might consider peripheral matters, the grammar and syntax of inviting someone to church. We invite people to become the church.

We invite people to live! Come and know Christ. Come and know life. Come and know peace. Come and know the Lord, and those who also call him Lord.

One of the benefits of knowing the Lord and being connected to others who know him as Lord is this thing we call fellowship. The Koinonia of this relationship is a benefit not everyone comes to know.

We are blessed to know it unless we have what I describe as an out-group.  The Family of Faith doesn’t have outgroups. It’s all family, in whatever shape and size we come in.

We are family!

And today, we look at the Lord’s Supper. This is still Koinonia. It is an intimate fellowship with God—with the Lord. We draw near to him. He draws near to us.

It’s necessary to get into a fellowship with other believers. But what is it?

Bread and Juice?

Bread and wine?

Pellets and Shot Glasses?

Light fare for heavy matters?

Something a little tastier than the Seder Meal? This unique meal included the Passover Lamb whose blood had delivered them from bondage in Egypt. The story was retold each year so that it would not be forgotten. It would be remembered.

 

Just another meal with no meat? This time, the Passover Lamb was headed to the cross where his blood delivered and still delivers the people of God from sin and death.

What is the Lord’s Supper? It is occasion and method by which we were told to remember the Lord, to include his life, death, resurrection, and promises.

Do this to remember me.  Remember?

Hold your horses!  Paul wasn’t at the Last Supper. How could he know what Jesus told the others?

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

 In these first words, Paul authenticated the validity of the instruction. This is from the Commanding Officer. I wasn’t at the original Last Supper. Check Davinci’s painting when it debuts, but this comes from and with the ultimate authority.

Paul references that specific night, not by day or date, but by the betrayal that would terminate the koinonia present among the disciples—sleepy as they were—and their Lord, setting off a series of totally impractical events, which could only be the plan of God.

Then to the elements.

First, the bread represents the body of the Lord, which was broken for us, although He didn’t break any bones. We are to do this to remember Jesus Christ our Lord.

Next the cup, likely full of wine, but a shared cup. Today, we get a lot of grape juice, but this was likely the fermented fruit of the vine.  The Seder Meal traditionally had 4 cups of wine, so it was probably wine, not just juice.

It is the cup. It represents the New Covenant. This is the covenant poured out in the blood of Jesus. We are to remember this as well.

The New Living Translation puts it this way.

After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.”

It’s not really the meal, though keeping fidelity with the elements is a good thing. It’s about remembrance.

Remember Jesus—body broken; blood shed for our deliverance. Remember.

Paul added a reminder that would have been out of sync at the Last Supper. Paul said that we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.

That we proclaim it means that it is important.  What is?

I am good about not letting too many things get under my skin. Some things are important, and some are not. Just let the nonsense roll off. Don’t take criticism from people you wouldn't seek out for advice.

Every once in a while, yell at the television or computer or the idiot that thinks he is Danika Patrick in the construction zone in OKC , but generally, much of the stuff that gets to us doesn’t matter in the fulfillment of God’s plan.

There are some things I just can’t cope with, at least not yet. Whoever said it was ok to have only a single space after a period did not consider the damage to the ego and psyche of old people. We were not consulted. This cannot stand.

How about calling it a disorder to want things in order? I’m not down with that.

Those were a little tongue-in-cheek, but this is straight-up serious. Have you ever seen those posts about how badly someone messed up, sinned, ruined their lives. They should be convicted of everything in the book, but…

JESUS DROPPED THE CHARGES!

No, he didn’t!  Every charge and specification against you was fully prosecuted. You were guilty and sentenced to death.

Jesus stood in your place when it was time for punishment. No charges were dropped. Jesus paid it all.

JESUS PAID IT ALL!

When Jesus died on the cross, that single act of death accomplished more than any other death in history.

It was and it is important. It is something to proclaim. We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes back to get us. This is important.

The church in Corinth was probably trying to hold a fellowship meal and then partake of the Lord’s Supper somewhere during that meal, likely near the end to maintain fidelity to the original practice. I am glad we don’t attempt that here.

Imagine trying to spend intimate time with the Lord between the first round of plate-piling and dessert. Would you grab me another slice of that pecan pie on you way back?

There were fellowship issues that we talked about last week and now we look at this cavalier approach to the Lord’s Supper. Paul, made his counsel something of a warning.

Don’t approach this table in an unworthy manner. Don’t even strut in here thinking that you are all that when the remembrance of the Lord should take us immediately from puffed up to absolute humble^©.

I’m coining that term right now. I’m going to slap the old copyright© on it and have one writing project already set up for retirement. Absolute humble.

I might have borrowed a little bit from science—absolute zero. That’s when it’s so cold that all molecular motion ceases. It is -273 degrees Kelvin. It even needed its own metric.

Believe it or not, the wind chill here has never quite reached that point.  Back to communion with the Lord. Our destination before we arrive at his table is absolute humility.  We are completely empty of ourselves.

Absolute humble—yes, I know the proper syntax is humility—is that point when all human self-righteousness ceases. We have emptied ourselves of ourselves. 

Absolute Humble

Do we get it. This is the most important death in the history of death.  We proclaim it. It doesn’t make sense in the terms the world knows. Death is the end.

Except for us. This death that we proclaim was the beginning of life for us. The moment we believed in the Son of God who died on that cross, we crossed over from death to life.

That death atoned for our sins. We were made and are right with God. None of this is of our own doing. We just believed and received.

Remember my last pet peeve from earlier. Jesus didn’t drop the charges. He paid our price in full. He received our death penalty punishment. There was no appeal.

And he took the sin of the world upon himself for us—you and me for sure—but the weight of the sin of a world of lost and condemned people was upon his shoulders until he cried out, “It is finished! +

If we remember this, we will come to the Lord’s Table only after examining ourselves. Even if we just had the best week of our life, when we examine ourselves and remember him as he told us to, there is only one destination.

Absolute Humble

I need just a moment more, this time for the rest of the story. We will leave Paul of Tarsus for a moment, and then we will consider Paul Harvey.

The rest of the story is that when we reach absolute humility, the celebration that we know in resurrection is so much sweeter.

Come to this table in absolute humility. Leave in magnificent celebration!

To understand the victory, we must remember the price.

Come to this table in absolute humility. Leave in Extraordinary Celebration. It all starts by remembering him as he told us to remember him.

 

Amen!

 

 

From the CPC Confession of Faith.

The Lord's Supper

5.23 The Lord's Supper was instituted by Jesus Christ on the night of his betrayal. It is a means by which the church remembers and shows forth Christ's passion and death on the cross. The sacrament is also a perpetual means given to the church to celebrate and experience the continuing presence of the risen Lord and her expectation of the Lord's return.

5.24 The elements used in this sacrament are bread and the fruit of the vine, which represent the body and blood of Christ. The elements themselves are never to be worshiped, for they are never anything other than bread and the fruit of the vine. However, because the sacrament represents the Savior's passion and death, it should not be received without due self-examination, reverence, humility, and grateful awareness of Christ's presence.

5.25 This sacrament is a means of spiritual nourishment and growth, an act of grateful obedience to Christ, and a commitment to the work and service of Christ's church for all who celebrate it.

5.26 All persons who are part of the covenant community and are committed to the Christian life are invited and encouraged to receive this sacrament.

5.27 Each congregation should celebrate this sacrament regularly. Every Christian should receive it frequently.