Welcome to worship. My name is Danny Bradfield. My pronouns are he, him, and his. And I’m pastor of Bixby Knolls Christian Church, a church that exists to bring healing and wholeness to our community and to the world.
I’m so glad that you have joined us for worship today. Your presence, even online, is a blessing to me and to one another. You are welcome just as you are.
Let’s talk about how we interpret the Bible. You know that people interpret the Bible in vastly different ways, and come to vastly different conclusions - even though they’re reading the same Bible. Part of the reason for this is the lens or filter through which we read the Bible.
See, it’s like we’re all wearing different sets of glasses. Those who wear glasses that are tinted pink will see everything looking rosy. Those who wear glasses tinted blue will see a blue world.
The glasses we wear - the lenses through which we look - determine what we see when we read the Bible.
I talked last week about liberation theology, which teaches us to read the Bible and understand faith through the lens of the poor and the oppressed. Do that, and you are going to come to some different conclusions than someone who only reads the Bible through a lens of power and privilege.
If I only ever read the Bible through my own white, male, Christian lenses, and never tried to see or understand scripture from any other point of view, then it’s likely that I would come to the conclusion that the Bible supports me and my privileged lifestyle.
I’d be like those slaveowners in the nineteenth century, who saw in the Bible a justification for slavery. Through ignorance or choice, they were blind to the Bible’s emphasis on freedom and liberation - because they could only see through the lens of being a slaveholder, and the lens of one who is living in an economy that depended upon slave labor.
That’s why we have to ask ourselves: through what lens or filter are we reading the Bible?
It gets even more complicated when you discover that the Bible was written in different times by different people from various cultures, and that they were all looking at the world and at God through their own set of lenses. So we have a great diversity of viewpoints and ideas in scripture. Sometimes, there are even contradictions.
Some people like to pretend that those differences and contradictions don’t exist; but the exegetical gymnastics they have to go through to present the Bible as wholly consistent from beginning to end are not sustainable.
I will always be fascinated and captivated by the fact that Leviticus and Deuteronomy forbid eunuchs and foreigners from joining God’s people, while Isaiah intentionally welcomes eunuchs and foreigners… and then in the book of Acts, we see Philip wrestling with this inconsistency because a man who is both a foreigner and a eunuch comes and asks him, “Hey, can I be baptized?”
Philip decides that, yes, he can be baptized… but how did he come to that decision, when one scripture says one thing, and another scripture says something else?
I think he based his decision on love; the love he learned from being a follower of Jesus. He saw that the scripture said two different things, and when he tried to figure out what to make of that, he used love as his interpretive tool.
In other words, he had learned to put on the glasses of love, to see the world through those lenses of love, and let that guide his interpretation.
Thirteen New Testament books claim to have Paul as their author, yet many of the things they say contradict each other and display different styles of writing. Historians and scholars recognize these as clues that not everything in the Bible that says it was written by Paul was actually written by Paul.
Scholars generally do agree that First Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul. Perhaps the most familiar part of First Corinthians is chapter thirteen - the “love” chapter.
It’s the chapter that begins, “Love is patient. Love is kind…”
You know it. You’ve heard it before, at weddings and in song lyrics and other places.
What you might not think about, though, is that chapter 13 does not exist by itself. It is part of an ongoing presentation that Paul develops over several chapters. It is the culmination of a conversation on gifts of the Spirit: “There are many gifts, but one Spirit...all are good and useful for building up the body of Christ… but the still more excellent way… the greatest gift of all… is love.”
Paul wants us to see and understand the world, and see and understand God, through the lens of love.
And I think this really is the key to understanding everything else that Paul wrote. Love is the highest gift. Love is the greatest of all.
If we’re going to understand Paul’s thoughts and teachings, we need to start with love.
In today’s scripture reading, Paul says: “Though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all.”
Why does he say that?
I think maybe I’ve already given away the answer to that question: Paul says that because he looks at the world through lenses of love.
Paul didn’t always see the world through lenses of love. He was once a proud Pharisee who saw the teachings of Jesus as a threat. And he did everything he could to root out and destroy the movement Jesus started.
But then, in a blinding flash of light, Paul realized that he had been looking at the world through lenses of power and privilege. He was struck blind - literally - and when his sight was restored, then he learned to see the world through a different set of lenses - the lenses of love.
Before, when he was looking through lenses of power and privilege, it was all about what others could do for him. That Paul would never have said something like this. He never would have said, “I consider myself a slave to all.”
But now, he’s willing to humble himself. He’s willing to don a servant’s attire, and wash other people’s feet, and make personal sacrifices. All because of love.
Note that Paul never regrets being a Pharisee. He learned so much as a Pharisee, about God, about faith, about scripture… Being a Pharisee laid the groundwork for his life of faith.
It’s like many people I know who grew up in conservative, evangelical churches, and who eventually left those churches because they were more judgmental than loving. These people remain thankful for what they learned there: Bible verses, how to pray, the importance of living a life of faith.
But eventually they realized that God was calling them to look at the world through a different set of lenses - a set of lenses that was more loving, more inclusive, more Christ-like.
Paul learned to look at the world through a different set of lenses - the lenses of love. And it was Jesus who helped him do that.
No longer did Paul insist on doing things his way. He was now ready to walk humbly.
Paul said: “look. It’s not about me. It’s about the way of love taught by Jesus. I am a Jew and I have freedom in Christ. But freedom in Christ is not freedom to serve my own self-interests. It’s freedom to love. This makes me a slave to others whom Christ calls me to serve.”
This… this!... This message of Paul’s is desperately needed today. “My freedom in Christ is not freedom to serve my own self-interests. It’s freedom to love. This makes me a slave to others whom Christ calls me to serve.”
Seriously! How many people who claim to be followers of Jesus don’t understand this simple teaching. They think that the freedom they have is freedom to do whatever they want. They’re stuck in the way of power and privilege. They’re stuck in what Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove calls “slaveholder religion.” It’s a way that hasn’t learned to see the world through the lens of love.
That’s how we get people who refuse to wear masks, claiming that it’s their right and their freedom to choose. People who feel like the 74 million votes their candidate got should count more than the 81 million votes the other candidate got. People who try to prevent their neighbor from being vaccinated, or who refuse to get vaccinated themselves, even though science says vaccination protects not just you, but those around you. People who insist on their own rights, even when exercising those rights oppresses and endangers others.
I’m sure that Paul, with his emphasis on love, would argue that you have no right, whoever you are, to engage in any action that oppresses or threatens the wellbeing of your neighbor. What you need to do is take on the role of a servant, and show love to your neighbor.
It is certainly worth our time, as Christians, to meditate on love. Paul wrote extensively about it, in 1 Corinthians, in Romans; Jesus talked at great length about love, in the Sermon on the Mount, at the Last Supper, and on many other occasions.
And we need to keep in mind that the type of love they are talking about is agape love. There are three different words for love in ancient Greek. Eros love is romantic love - the kind of love people celebrate on Valentine’s Day. Philia love is the love between siblings and close friends. It’s the love we experience for one another within the church.
And then there is agape love. Agape is the love one has for every person, every stranger, every enemy. Agape is the love that says “no matter how much I may dislike you, I still want what’s best for you. I want - and I will work for - your freedom, your happiness, because I know God’s image is in you, and that we are united by the Spirit, and that until you find peace and happiness, I will never find true peace and happiness.”
The other day I attended an online conference which included Father Greg Boyle of Homeland Ministries… and he said he doesn’t consider any person evil. There is no truly evil person. There are people who are misguided and lost and caught up in their own narcissism… but no one is truly evil, for all are created in the image of God, and all are worthy of love.
Only agape love could make such a statement; and agape love is a much harder kind of love to practice. If it were easy, Paul wouldn’t have needed to write so much about it! If it were easy, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to talk so much about it! If it were easy, we wouldn’t be in awe of people like Father Boyle and the love they try to show to every person, every day of their lives.
It’s something we are called to work on in our lives, every day… To show love to all people - neighbors, strangers, and enemies… to see the world through their eyes, to take off our own set of lenses for a moment and try to try to see through their lenses...to consider your neighbor’s welfare, and not just your own, in any decision you make...to consider your neighbor’s welfare, and not just your own, when you vote, when you voice your opinion, when you consider how you’re going to spend the money you’ve earned…
What a blessing it is to have these words of Paul, and these words of Jesus, to help us grow into this kind of love. What a blessing it is to have the example of people like Father Greg Boyle. What a blessing it is that God gives us the opportunity, every day, to learn just a little bit more, to grow in love just a little bit more, and to put on those lenses of love, and learn to see the world in a whole new way.
