“Now We See Only a Reflection”
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
When I was a freshman in college, I had a radical conversion experience, for which I am forever grateful.
What happened after that was a bit more troublesome.
I happened along an extreme Fundamentalist Group on campus that believed the Bible was the literal, inerrant word of God.
They only used the King James Version of the Bible…
…calling the New Revised Version the New Revised Perversion.
They preached a fire and brimstone message which was, thinking back on it, filled with a lot of judgment aimed at anyone and everyone who didn’t think and believe exactly as they did.
To give you an example of just how extreme these folks were: the women wore head coverings in worship and were not allowed to preach or teach.
They didn’t watch television, didn’t celebrate holidays other than Thanksgiving and birthdays—Christmas Trees were the breeding grounds for demon worship and acting silly was looked down upon as a sin.
I believed everything they told me 100 percent—after-all, they backed it all up with the Bible and I didn’t know anything about the Bible—except that I believed it was the Word of God.
When school let out for summer break and I returned home—I couldn’t relate to my friends any longer and they couldn’t relate to me.
Even the church I grew up in and then every other church I visited—no matter how conservative they were--was doing something that the Group I had been in had taught me was wrong, misguided, of the devil and so forth.
And so, I was all alone.
One evening I was reading the Book of Acts.
I decided to read the whole thing in one sitting.
And when you do that, you tend to pick up on things.
When I realized that the Apostle Paul gives three different and somewhat conflicting accounts of his conversion experience in that one book my world was shattered.
I threw my Bible on the ground and turned my back on what I believed.
I found out that the Bible was not inerrant after-all.
I had never known what depression and anxiety were before this.
But, boy, did I have it now.
You see, I had been so brainwashed that I still thought that the group I had been in was correct—they were doing things God’s way like no one else was--but I had decided not to be a part of them and so I was headed for hell.
And was life even worth living if you are headed to hell?
I had already missed out on everything at the ripe young age of 18.
Thus, began my 10 years of wondering in the wilderness.
Over the years I tried to get my faith back several times, but I just couldn’t believe the same way I had anymore.
Eventually, I lost my faith all together, I no longer even believed in God—and boy, was that a relief.
It was at that point that I opened up a Rock and Roll Tee Shirt Shop in a mall, and the mall was right next to the largest high school in the city.
And so, the kids who were skipping school would come and hang out in my shop all day.
On the weekends, the parents who would use the mall as a baby-sitter would drop their kids off at the mall and my store was the hangout.
The skateboard kids loved me and my store.
When they came in, because they weren’t allowed to carry their skateboards in the mall, they would hand them to me to put behind my counter for the day.
And we all got along great.
They were the kids I would have been friends with 10 years earlier, when I was in high school.
We had a lot in common and they came to think of me as one of them.
But I wasn’t.
I was an adult.
And the conversations they had and the things they shared with me bothered me and disturbed me because these poor kids were so very lost and messed up—like I had been at their age--but they seemed to be in even worse shape than I had been.
I sold tee-shirts from all the popular heavy metal and modern rock bands.
But my number 1 best seller at the time was Marlyn Manson.
I sold more Marylyn Manson tee-shirts, hats, watches, stickers, patches—you name it—than all the rest of the bands combined.
One night, I was sitting and watching the MTV Music Video Awards and Marylyn Manson who had recently released his album “Anti-Christ Superstar” and claimed to be a minister in the church of Satan got up onto something that looked like a pulpit, but it had an arrow on front pointing down.
He ripped up a Bible and as he did so he said, “Who would want to go to heaven anyway? You’d just be surrounded by a bunch of….” –you can fill in the blanks and then he broke into his song “Beautiful People.”
To say, I was disturbed by this is an understatement.
Here was the guy I was making most of my money off of.
Here was the guy that these lost and precious kids with so many problems whom I’d come to love and care about looked up to and worshiped.
That night I made a pact with myself that I was not going to sell anymore Marylyn Manson Merchandise in my store, at the very least I didn’t want to be part of the problem.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to this pledge, but I did.
Before I knew it, my faith started to come back, and I wasn’t even looking for it—truly learning that faith itself is a precious gift from God.
I wasn’t sure what I felt about this at first, but soon, I found that I was happy again for the first time in a long time.
Afraid to read the Bible, instead, I read a book that my uncle, who was a United Methodist Minister, had sent me 10 years earlier.
It’s called “Your God is Too Small,” by J.B. Phillips.
It was what I needed to read at that moment in time.
I believed again, but it was different.
It was all about love, compassion and mercy rather than judgment and guilt.
Having felt called to the ministry from as far back as I can remember, I decided I wasn’t going to put it off this time.
I applied to Candler School of Theology at Emory University and the rest is history.
In our Scripture Passage for this morning Paul writes these words, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
What does he mean by this?
Here in the 21st Century we might think that a mirror gives us a pretty good idea of what things look like, but in Paul’s day mirrors were made out of copper.
It was like trying to see your reflection in a spoon or a window or a mud puddle.
It wasn’t clear.
It was imperfect.
It was only a part of the picture.
You could see something was there but couldn’t make out the details.
And that is what our finite minds know about God, about our faith, about the way the world works, and about the things we disagree on and fight with one another about here on this earth.
None of us have all the answers.
None of us are completely right.
None of us know God fully or understand the deep mysteries of God.
But what we can know, what we can experience, the Solid Rock we can stand on is the goodness of love, and that love is the most important thing in the universe!
So, if we are going to err, we should err on the side of love!
Let God sort out the details, let God be the judge—we don’t see clearly enough nor have the right to do that ourselves.
Last week, I saw a post on Facebook by a White Christian Nationalist.
It had a picture of the devil walking down the isle of a packed church sanctuary with a tub of popcorn and a Coke in his hands.
Above the picture it said, “Contemporary Christianity is so full of ‘love’ they would shake hands with the devil if he showed up at their services, thank him for visiting, and welcome him back anytime.”
So full of love?
“A new command I give you,” Jesus says in John 13:34-35, “Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
It is not possible to love too much.
That’s the one thing we cannot overdo and it’s one thing that will never run out.
There is always enough to go around.
In 1st John Chapter 4 it says, “God is love.”
1st Corinthians 13:1-13 is arguably the most beautiful and the most important passage of Scripture in the entire Bible.
Imagine if the 18-year-old Ken Sauer or the 29 year old White Christian Nationalist or the guilt ridden, lost and angry world could know the depths and truths of this Scripture: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.”
Imagine if the Christian Church—meaning all Churches--embraced this and owned it as the most important thing, or as Paul puts it: “The most excellent way.”
Would the world we live in be any different?
Would more people embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Would our churches be full?
I tend to think they would.
Will you pray with me?
Lord Jesus, we thank You that You are God and we are not. Help us to always keep in mind that You are Love, everything You are and everything You stand for is Love. Therefore, we commit our lives to You, seeking to be like You in love: patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not dishonest, not self-seeking, not keeping score of wrongs, not delighting in evil but rejoicing with the truth…always protecting, always trusting, always persevering.
In Jesus name and for His sake we pray: Amen.
