The Flowering Cross

1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 12-13:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

12 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. 

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

Transcript
Please forgive any errors in this automatic transcript. Thank you!

We've been talking in lent or we talked in lent. Lent is over now it's Easter time. But we talked in lent about how the transformed life is one that starts with consecration, starts with consecration, not demonstration. Consecration means you give yourself to God and God does his transforming work in you versus demonstration first, which is I'm going to do the right things. I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to force myself to get up early and read the Bible every day because I have to. I'm going to do these things and then maybe I'll be good enough. But that's that's a demonstration. First life. We talked about Mary and Martha. We said that's what Martha was trying to do. And it was exhausting. It was wearing her out, making her irritable, probably irritating. But Mary's just there breaking all the expectations and the norms to consecrate herself and to sit in front of Jesus. We said, that's the key to transformation. But now what does it look like once we are transformed? That's what we're going to focus on today. And to do so, we're going to talk about Jesus. Yes, Jesus. I'm sure that's shocking on Easter Sunday. But we're going to talk about the work of Jesus. Jesus, of course, never really needed to be transformed in the same sense that you and I do. We have to be transformed because we have a sin nature. Jesus does not have a sin nature, but he came to be part of this world and show us what it looks like when we are transformed. So we see Jesus consecrate himself, and then we also see him demonstrate what it looks like to live, that the transformed life that we're after, to live the transformed life that we're after. And so he shows us what that's like. And I love the text we chose today from first Corinthians thirteen, because that shows us if we think about Jesus through that text, it shows us what it actually looks like on a day to day basis. To live a transformed life. Now, you might have been surprised that I chose this text instead of like a resurrection text. First of all, I really enjoy doing non-traditional texts on very traditional Sundays, because I like to remind us that the gospel comes from the whole Bible, not just a few passages, the whole Bible at all points to Jesus. Old Testament, New Testament, all of it. But what I think that Jesus can show us for our day to day lives is that when we struggle, when we struggle with disease or sickness or loss, when we struggle with just living in a broken world, just like Jesus did. And when we have normal human joy, we experience good things just like Jesus did. All of it is used to make something beautiful. It doesn't change the fact that evil that's been done is still evil. We're not calling evil good because God can use it for good. Evil is still evil. Good is still good. But God is so good he can even intertwine evil into a greater story. Think about the cross. That's what he did at the cross. He took something that was horrible, ugly. Something meant for death more than just death, right? A torturous death, a terrible one. And he took that cross. And in the end, we wear crosses as jewelry. Now we have crosses all over this church. They're not hard to find. We have a flowering cross right now. I've heard some people say they think it's strange that the symbol for Christianity is the cross there. Like, imagine if we had like an electric chair around our neck. Like, that'd be really weird, right? But it's because it's nothing like that. It has to do with who Jesus died on the cross. We don't remember really any of the other people who suffered that kind of horrible death. We remember Jesus because Jesus transformed even death, a horrible death, into life for himself and for us. So let's walk through this passage. Love is patient. Love is kind. I want you to think about whatever you know about the life of Jesus. Where have you seen Jesus? Be patient and kind in his life. As I've been reflecting on Holy Week, Jesus must have had just infinite patience because the disciples, when he dies, they're all shocked. They don't understand what's happening. But when you go back and read the Gospels, he says several times, the Son of Man is going to be killed and then come back three days later. And they're like, that doesn't make any sense. He's like, I literally told you he must have had endless patience. He says, I've told you this, but he's patient with them. It takes him a second to understand what's going on here. He's so patient with them, almost like a a parent with a child asking the same question over and over again. I shouldn't say too much. Mine's in here. Love is kind. Even when he knew that all of his friends were going to leave him. All of them. Judas betrayed him. Yes, Peter denied him. But they all, at least at first, scattered because they were terrified. And yet a few hours prior, Jesus was washing their feet. He was taking the job of a servant to show the greatest love to his friends in that act of kindness, even though he knew they were all going to flee. And we know he knew because it's written in the text, you're all going to abandon me. And they're like, no way. Yet Jesus was right. So how do you remember Jesus being patient and kind? Love does not envy. Love does not boast. How do we see Jesus lacking in envy, lacking in boasting? I wonder if there was ever a temptation to be envious of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The people actually listened to them. They had some. They were wrong on a lot of things, apparently, but they had a level of influence. Or what about the Roman kings? Was there ever a level of. Again, temptation, never giving in jealousy. For that kind of power. Surely it would be easy to want to take the easy way out when you know that the road leads to the cross. And yet he does not seem to envy them. He walks his road similarly, he doesn't boast even when he is on trial For crimes he did not commit. Being accused, being lied, lied about. And what gets me every time I hear the crucifixion story. It got me on Friday for Good Friday. When we read it here was that they slapped him in the face. I know they did a lot more painful and terrible things to him besides that, but there's just something about slapping somebody in the face, let alone the Son of God. And yet, Jesus doesn't do anything about it because it was his job in that moment to accept that crucifixion. And so he did not boast in who he was. He was not proud, hung on a cross, bloody and humiliated. He does not dishonor others. So I said, the disciples scattered and he chose kindness, even though they scattered. But they started, it looks like, to kind of trickle back. And at one point we have a scene where John and Jesus mother are in front of the cross and he looks at John and says, take care of her. I'm entrusting my mother to you. Which means even though John was one of the people who scattered because all the disciples left, he saw John come back and there was no lack of forgiveness. There was no grudge. It was just, okay, I've got your next task. Are you ready? That's what we do when we consecrate ourselves. Jesus doesn't hold it against us. Anything in the past. He says, okay, are you ready for the next thing? Let's keep walking. Let's keep moving. And he has him take care of his mother. He doesn't dishonor him. And of course, Jesus is not self-seeking. Everybody knew who he was and it killed him in the end. Of course, we know that's not the end. Not self-seeking. If he was self-seeking, then when he was tempted by Satan, he says, you know, throw yourself off this temple so that everybody knows that you're the best. Your God. The angels will come swooping down and save you. Everyone will know you don't have to do this whole cross situation. If Jesus was self-seeking, he would have chosen that. But he didn't. He was not self-seeking. Love is not easily angered. It keeps no records of wrong, not easily angered. I think about Judas again. He washed his feet. He served that first Lord's Supper to him. Not easily angered. Keeps no records of wrong. I love the scene after his resurrection when Jesus is having breakfast with Peter. They're having fish, which I think I said last year. I think that's a really weird breakfast. But whatever. They're having fish. Maybe it was perfectly appropriate for their time. And Jesus goes through this questioning him three times. Do you love me? And it wasn't so much a ritual of forgiving each of those individual denials as it was making sure Peter knew. I know what you did, and I forgive you. All you got to do is. Do you love me back? Are we ready to keep going? And Jesus gave him his commission. What to do? Here's what you do next. He keeps no records of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. He never delights in or partakes in sin despite being so affected by it, more affected than anybody else. All our diseases and our struggles. It comes from living in a fallen world, not necessarily from any individual sin. I want to be clear about that, but just from living in a fallen world, a broken world. We deal with with struggles or from relationships with each other. We do tend to wound each other sometimes, don't we? Jesus never participated in that. He rejoices in the truth. And the truth is that his suffering was worth it to him because it saves you. And all you have to do is give yourself to Jesus. Give yourself to him. The text continues. Always protects. Love always protects. It always hopes. It always trusts. It always perseveres. We. He must have demonstrated that during Holy Week. Always protecting his people, his wayward sheep. It's always hoping. Even though he knew what Friday was leading to. It was worth it for the hope that was beyond. He trusts the father even as he's being whipped. Even when. In that moment he perseveres. Even as he says the words, he says the words, father, why have you forsaken me? Even in that moment, Jesus shows us that sometimes our feelings and reality are two different things, and even Jesus holds them in tension. We can feel like God has abandoned us and yet, no, no, he's right there with me. Jesus perseveres. And of course, love never fails, and neither does Jesus. The apostle Paul is trying to teach the Corinthian church that it doesn't so much matter what you do, it doesn't matter what the outside of your Easter egg looks like. It can be great. There's there's different designs that it gets different people great, but what matters most is that what's inside and what's shining out is the love of Jesus. But how do we know that we're being transformed? How do we really know? That like, okay, I've consecrated myself to God. I pray God, okay, here I am every day. And I guess things are changing because I know God's faithful. But how can I tell? Because change often happens so slow we don't notice. It's like a child. I don't know if any of you ever measured yourself or your children against the wall growing up. That's not something we did. But when, um, we moved to a new house when I was in high school and the previous owners had done that with their kids, and my parents have left it to this day. They've been there, I don't know, over twenty years now, and it's still there, seeing the growth of these kids who grew up in this house and you don't notice day to day. But when you're measuring once a year, however often, wow, look how much you grew. But it's more than just once a year. We can tell with my oldest, she gets a lot of bad growing pains. It's very sad. She gets a lot of bad growing pains. And so we know she's growing from the pain. So sometimes pain can be a sign that we're growing or it's something that God can use to grow us. But beyond that, I say, okay, well guess what do you think you're going to get to reach next? Because you're getting so tall. And she gets so excited that she can reach the faucet to wash her hands without a stool, or she can reach a snack we thought was put high enough. So excited. And so we get, you see the growth, not from necessarily day by day, but as her body grows day by day, you start to see those little milestones, whether it's reaching a snack, reaching the faucet, or your little, your little mark moving up just a little bit higher. We don't choose to grow. We nourish ourselves, of course, but it just happens. And in a similar way, we don't choose to transform. We give ourselves to God and He does that work. So what are the markers? How can we know we can reach the faucet or get the snack? Or how do we know our marker's been moved a little higher? And to answer that, I'm going to come back down to this cross. The title of the sermon today was The Flowering Cross. And how? The first time I saw a flowering cross, I was very confused because I'm like, the cross is a symbol of death. It was it was used for murder and torture. Like, why are we putting flowers on it the first time? Not I'm not feeling that way anymore, but the first time I'm like, why? How? What? I don't understand this. And so when I got here last year, that was my first Easter with y'all. And I saw y'all had a cross. I'm like, okay, I gotta figure this out. What is this? And I realized, as I said earlier, this cross is not so much a symbol of the cross. It's what Jesus does even with horrible things, he can make even terrible things meant for death. Full of life. And I think that's how we see the change in our lives. That especially in our struggles, we can see them on good days too. But actually, I think it's easier to see them on the more challenging days, on our darker days when we begin to notice. Love is patient. Love is kind. Wow. I didn't snap at my spouse or my kid quite as quickly as I usually do. I feel like a little more patience today. Huh? Just a little more. We're not perfect. Not yet. Just a little more. Oh, wow. I just came through all that traffic, and I didn't get mad at anybody. Huh? That's new. It's these little markers where God is bringing life into situations that are usually so Stressful, so taxing. And perhaps I'm talking about driving and family, but I'm also thinking about our health. I know many of you, including myself, have these recurring health struggles that don't seem to go away. And that is so frustrating sometimes because you're wondering, God, why are you taking this away from me? And I don't we don't always know why he's not taking it away. We don't always know why God chooses to miraculously heal sometimes and not others. But what we know is that God can make beauty and life come out of dead things. God can make our lives flower. And so there might be a way that God is wanting to make a beautiful flower even in your suffering. Sometimes you see it in the moment. You're like, oh wow, what I'm going through right now and how I have my relationship with God is really inspiring this person. That's great. Sometimes it's on the other side. I've been through situations where I came through the situation and I'm like, what was that, dear Lord, why did we just do this? And then a year or two or more later, I start to see, oh, God needed me there for these other reasons that had very little to do with the things I was so worried about. He's making flowers, whether we're looking at it or not. And so today we are going to be taking communion. And we're going to be receiving the body and blood of Jesus, which represents Jesus body and blood shed on the cross. It represents Jesus body and blood shed on the cross for us, and yet it's used to nourish us. It brings life into us. Jesus is really with us when we take communion. He's really with us. And what I want you to be thinking about as we receive communion this morning, is that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead reminds us that no matter what's happened, no matter what's happening, no matter how bad things seem, in the end, God can even make that turn out for good. He guarantees it with his very life. With Jesus's life. It's a guarantee for us that no matter how dark and ugly and horrible the crosses are, that we that we bear, that he will make it flower in the end. But here's the thing. We have to give it to him. We have to give that cross to him and say, I'm. I'm ready for you to do something with this because everything I've been trying is not working. I need you to do something. And I'm going to choose to trust you every day. It's so much simpler than sitting down with a planner, trying to figure out exactly what you need to do to make your life a little better. Jesus, I give myself to you. I give you these ugly crosses, and I'm trusting that you are going to turn them into something beautiful. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you again for your son. I thank you that you're always with us. We're never, ever alone. And even the horrible things that we have in our mind right now, whether they be things that we did or things that people did against us. Just the disease. Living in a fallen world. Help us to believe that somehow you can even make that horrible thing. Flower. Flowering cross. Amen.