Sermon Notes from our Pastors

 
 
LIVING SACRIFICIALLY: BROKENNESS THAT BUILD (2 Corinthians 12:15-19; 13:4)

Resurrection Living (2024 April Theme)

April 28, 2024

2 Corinthians 12:15a,19b

“So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well…everything we do, dear friends, is for your strengthening.”

2 Corinthians 13:4

“For to be sure, he (Jesus) was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.”

Focus: to live sacrificially as Easter people is to expend ourselves as “broken bread” because of the “Bread of Life” that lives within us.

Living sacrificially does not mean being a “doormat” for other people i.e. enabling others to use / misuse / abuse you against your will. It means responding in the same way as the Gift-giver (Jesus) – allowing yourself to be broken and shared, just as the bread and wine of Holy Communion are willingly shared to feed and to unite. It is seeing yourself as a recipient of a gift of Life that this world did not give (nor can it understand) and therefore cannot take away – but a gift that can only be given away: that is sacrificial living.
 
I. Sacrificing as parents for their (spiritual) children
 
  • You can give only what you already have. When you have Jesus, the Living Bread living inside, you will always have something that you can give – you are never truly “empty.” Therefore when you see yourself as “broken bread” and “spilled/drunk wine” – sacraments – giving of your broken self is never from “surplus” or “lack” but always from love and willingness. (That is the truth of Jesus’ sacrifice, of the Macedonian Christians in 8:1-4, and Paul’s own life in 12:15.)
  • Sacrificial giving for those who belong to you (and to whom you belong) is a reflection of parental love. Because of Christ we become part of a spiritual family – the church. The desire to give without wanting anything in return (except love) is what the ideal parent does for their child, never thinking of it as a sacrifice. That is exactly what God has done for is in granting resurrection life of his children at the “expense” of his Son; that is also how Paul saw himself in the way he would gladly “expend himself” (= be broken cf. Colossians 1:24) for those he felt responsible for, his spiritual children.
 
II. Building lives through God’s (paradoxical) power
 
  • Discovering the paradox of God’s power. Paul repeatedly contrasted the human perspective of Jesus’ death with the reality of God’s working. Humanly speaking the Cross was weakness (a stumbling block) and foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:22-23). But the reality was that it showed “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (v.24). Jesus showed in the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine that his sacrifice had the power to change everything – the past, present and future of everyone that came to him. And that’s the same power of brokenness that we too exhibit when we too live sacrificial lives.
  • Spending and expending ourselves in order to build lives. In a world that thinks that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” the Corinthian church couldn’t really believe that Paul could serve them for free. They were suspicious of hidden motives he might have (2 Corinthians 12:16-18). But all Paul wanted, all God wants, is that we not only be saved, but be built up. A parent’s true desire for their children is that they grow in maturity, that they may fulfil God’s purpose for them, and be blessings as Abraham was meant to be (Genesis 12:3). The power of sacrificial lives is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ uses our brokenness to build others (Romans 14:7-9)!
A sacrament is an “outward and visible sign of an inward, invisible and spiritual reality.” When you sacrificially offer yourself as broken bread to God and to others (2 Corinthians 8:5,9) can you say it is a sign of an inward spiritual reality of God’s power that is working in and through you to those that you “feed” yourself to? Does it point to the invisible reality of the risen Jesus living inside you?