Epiphany 7
II Corinthians 1:18-22
There was a NFL football game about 4 or 5 years ago that had a very controversial event happen during the game. Actually the game was just about to go into overtime, and you know before overtime there’s always another coin toss to see who gets the football first. And the man who called it while the coin was in the air was Jerome Bettis, the Pittsburg Steelers Rb. He called tails, the coin landed tails, but the referee had misheard him, and the ref thought he had said heads, and so the Steelers lost the coin toss. So poor Bettis is running off the field pleading, “I said tails! I said tails!” And right away the conspiracy theories began. The sports news stations were replaying the coin toss of all things. And there were some people who thought they heard Bettis say a faint “Heads” before he said “Tails.” I sure didn’t hear that. But these theorists were saying that Bettis had said both: “Heads-Tails” He was talking out of both sides of his mouth. He was being ambiguous.
There’s nothing ambiguous about our text today. There, St. Paul reminds us that there is no double-talk in the Church of God. Christ speaks with a clear Yes. And we believers respond with a clear Amen.
Part I
With the possible exception of the churches in Galatia, there was no single church that gave St. Paul fits as much as the Christian Church in Corinth. It seemed that there was always some mess in that church that Paul had to deal with. In fact, in this first chapter of II Corinthians, Paul is meeting one of those problems head-on.
Some of the church members in Corinth were spreading the rumor that Paul was an unreliable apostle. They said that you couldn’t really trust him. And as proof, they cited something that Paul had done recently: he had changed some travel plans! This is what they were getting worked up over! These troublemakers were saying, “well, Paul promised to visit us, and then he says he’s not visiting us, you just can’t trust this guy!” I guess we would compare their argument with the boxer Mike Tyson, who this past week said, “My fight is on, my fight is off, I just got a tattoo so maybe the fight’s on. Now the fight is off. Oh yes, now the fight is definitely on.” Now who these days trusts what Mike Tyson says? What these troublemakers were trying to say is that Paul was just as unreliable as Mike Tyson. “He talks out of both sides of his mouth! He’s ambiguous! You can’t trust anything Paul says!”
Now more serious than this just being an attack of Paul personally was that amounted to an attack on his message. Because the logic goes: if Paul was unreliable, than the Gospel that he preached was unreliable. If you can’t trust Paul with respect to something as mundane as his travel itinerary, how can you trust what he says about important matters like life and death, heaven and hell?
When Paul is attacked, he doesn’t become defensive. In the verses of our text, Paul goes on the offensive! He concentrates on Christ as his model of clarity and surety. The apostle calls Jesus God’s Yes-Man. Now when we use the word “Yes-Man,” we are talking about a weak-willed person who is trying to butter up his boss in order to climb the corporate ladder. Jesus Christ is a Yes-Man in a very different sense. Every promise that God makes to human beings, every promise has a certain “Yes” answer through Jesus. When talking about important matters like forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life, God’s answer is not a wishy-washy “Yes, no, maybe, perhaps, I don’t know.” Instead, when God makes a promise, he knows only one word to attach to that promise: “Yes!” Listen again to how Paul puts that in the first verses of this reading, “but as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are all “Yes” in Christ.”
The Lord is serious about the promises that he makes to you. In the Word God makes promises to you ranging from the present to the future, from care of your body to the care of your eternal soul, from what we would consider insignificant things of life to the extremely important things of life. Politicians running for office get into the habit of making many promises to many people. And even though they might have the best intentions of keeping them, often their promises of elected officials aren’t kept. The Lord is not like a proverbial politician, making promises left and right, and not sure if he can keep all of them. Jesus Christ who died on the cross for your sins and rose to life for your justification, is God’s “Yes” answer to all the promises he makes to you. Thank the Lord that whether he keeps his promises or not isn’t dependant on you and your effort, rather, all of God’’ promises are answered Yes in Jesus.
Part II
We could say then that “Yes” is the word for Christ, and the word for Christ’s followers, Christians, is “Amen.”
Jesus used to word “Amen” quite a few times, always when he was introducing an important truth. In fact, our English Bibles translate these “Amen, amen” with the words “Truly, truly.” For us, “Amen” is not just a churchy-sounding word that we tack on to the ends of our prayers. “Amen” is not just the word that ends the sermon. “Amen” is not just a liturgical custom. There’s quite a bit of depth behind that little word “Amen.” The congregation’s “Amen” is it’s ownership of the prayer spoken to them or the sermon preached to them. More than that, “Amen” expresses certainty that the prayer offered for them is heard by God and will be answered by him in the best way and at the best time.
And we Christians speaking a certain word like “Amen” is evidence of something that God put inside of us. A person cannot say, “Amen” to God’s promises and mean it unless the Lord has already put the Holy Spirit into their heart. And God has! The second half of our text reads, “And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”
Paul uses a number of illustrations to picture the role of the Holy Spirit. He says that through the Spirit, God sets his seal of ownership on us. That’s the same word that is used in the Gospel account of Jesus’ burial, when Pontius Pilate marked Jesus’ tomb with the royal seal of the Roman governor. Such a seal shows ownership and warns of consequences if the seal is tampered with. When the Holy Spirit brings people to faith through the Gospel, he marks them with a seal. This seal is not an outward one that can be seen. Rather, it’s an inward one.
There is another phrase that Paul uses for the Holy Spirit. He calls him “a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” If you are selling your home for $200,000, and someone comes along and gives you a $20,000 down payment on that house, you know that the rest is coming. It might take a little time for the buyer to get the money together, but a serious down payment guarantees the bigger check later. None of us are living in the full glory that Christ displayed in the days after he rose from the dead. We still sin, we still have problems, we still are weak. We don’t look anything like we will be in heaven: perfect, glorious, beautiful, strong. And our sinful nature wants us to doubt whether we will really ever get there. The Holy Spirit in your heart is God’s down payment to you on heaven. God is faithful! If he gives you the down payment here on earth, you can be sure that the full payment of God’s promises will be given you in eternity.
Conclusion
Maybe the text for today is unfamiliar to you, but the concepts are pretty basic tenets of Christianity. God’s promises are sure. He’s reliable in all he says and does. You can I know that, and so often I forget that many others don’t have a clue about God’s promises. And this past week, with over 100 people dying in nightclubs in Chicago and Rhode Island, it makes us remember how fragile life is, and how important it is that we have the answers to life’s most important questions. I realize that this doesn’t sound very deep or profound, but “Jesus is the answer,” isn’t he? God doesn’t talk out of both sides of his mouth. Jesus is God’s “Yes” answer to all his promises, and our Spirit-filled “Amen” is our response to the glories of God. Amen.
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