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Love in Service to the Gospel
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39

by The Rev. Dr. Kirsi Stjerna
kstjerna@ltsg.edu


“I have to do it,” Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians. “I have to do it.”

Have to do what? Well, the usual: to proclaim the gospel. To spread the good news – the message about Jesus.
This conviction of Paul is very much shared by the Lutherans who in the Augsburg Confession give a similar reason for why we need churches and people called to ministry full-time: the church and office of ministry are needed explicitly because the gospel needs to be proclaimed and grace needs to be distributed through the means available.

Paul did not know about Lutherans or what people would do with his words centuries later – he knew about other faith groups, however, groups older than Lutherans: he knew about those involved with Roman and eastern religions, and he knew most intimately about the Jews who, in his view, did not have the good news Christians held dear (and vital). He had been a Jew himself, until he became a follower of Christ.

Paul’s life, after his famous conversion, was driven by his passion to spread the “good news” he had encountered, the message about Jesus, and to have as many as possible to join the Christian faith. He saw no future for “others” who would reject the message of salvation he had found in the story of Christ. Thus he advices Christians on the task to preach the Christian news and be prepared to go to extreme and adjust and flex… The rule number one in efficient evangelizing would be: Be everything to everybody. If need to, be even a Jew to a Jew, or be to those abiding to the law as one under the law, or be to those with no law as one with no law… That sounds slippery and problematic on ‘so many levels’. Could you really function as a minister like that, being like an ameba, adjusting to every situation and conversation, towards a greater cause … How would this be possible or desirable… unless the greater cause WAS so great that differences of opinion and many surface matters would simply not matter that much in the end. What would matter then? What could be at the heart of the good news about Jesus that Paul is committed to proclaiming?

Let’s see if the gospel reading for the day can help. What got my eyes was what Jesus was more often than not doing on his travels: He was preaching and teaching, as Mark’s gospel tells us, yes, but more importantly than that: he was healing those in need of healing. He was serving those needing his help, even those not daring to ask. He was DOING something with concrete results, such as causing changes in sick bodies and minds. He was engaged in healing others and serving others, regardless of whether they adhered to his views or not.

In the gospel of Mark it says that Simon’s mother in law was ill and the disciples spoke to him about her, and that Jesus, went to her, and healed her; all we know is that she was ill, she was healed, and then: she served them. That was her way of “following” Jesus. This nameless woman got to experience the good news and in her we could see an example of what the good news of Jesus can be tangibly about: about healing, about serving, about making others’ life better – about giving new life to others.

In light of the nameless woman who was healed, and in thinking of Paul’s words about the need to slave over proclaiming the good news and efficiently so… we should remember that these words of Paul came to be understood though a lens that the words would really apply only to men - called to the office of the word - whereas women have been called, if anything, to listen and to serve. Like the woman who was healed, she did not, according to the story as recorded any way, bounce about and sprint to town to speak of what happened to her; rather, she served. She cooked a meal, perhaps prepared a bed, brought water to wash up. She did these mundane things that were not recognized in the story as “proclaiming the good news” but as a response to what had happened to her.

In the decades and centuries after Jesus’ leaving the disciples to figure it out by themselves what they were supposed to do, “the good news of and from and about Jesus” became to be understood as a life-giving story, to be guarded and re-told and be celebrated. Until quite recently, the misconception has been, that mostly men were involved in the transmitting and celebration of this good news – in active preaching and official ministering - and that women would/ should remain mostly as nameless “objects” or observers or fillers in the holy stories. New evidence, however, has brought about serious challenges to these limited vistas about what was going on and what all the proclamation of the good new of Jesus did and could entail; we have actually reason to believe that what was written in our scriptures does not necessarily reflect the full reality of women’s original involvement with the Word – or fully reflect what all was important in the mission built around Jesus’ teachings and example.
Exciting evidence has been brought up about the many different roles with which women were instrumental in the exemplifying and teaching the meaning of Jesus and his impact. E.g., more often than not, what made the important early Christians’ gatherings and celebrations possible, were the many women who opened their houses and sponsored Christian mission, and served as able, eager to apply Jesus’ teachings in their situations (the same goes for women, who left their houses, to serve, with the teachings of Jesus in mind).

Regardless of what was or could have been, in Christian ministry a certain unhelpful split took place early on, both in practice and in thinking theologically. In terms of the “call” to go and “spread the good news,” the activities associated with the PROCLAMATION, let’s call that the office or ministry of the Word. All that became very soon preserved for men and became gradually esteemed more highly than the “other” duties so necessary but slowly being seen as of secondary importance or as something taken for granted. Let’s call that the office or ministry of serving - or, in Lutheran lingo, priesthood of all believers; in this arena women’s contribution continued to be acceptable. The former “realm” or office, associated most explicitly with the Word, became elevated and spiritualized, the latter more or less genderized, and less esteemed, and thus less restricted.

The Reformations period did bring renewed interest in the “spiritual” value of all duties and offices, including those predominantly occupying women. And yet, e.g., the writing in the CA about the office of ministry was written by men and for men and their offices in mind. Women’s roles were still found to be somewhere else – closer to home and family. The Reformations period did produce voices who wished to see beyond the unhealthy and hierarchical division in terms of Christian duties and (and what was considered important); there were voices, such as Luther’s, who began to emphasize with renewed appreciation the importance of the tasks preserved for women, and laity in general: Serving, caring, charity, welfare of others, alongside with many domestic chores or behind the scene activities, were lifted as central to the proclamation of the gospel. As a matter in fact, it was understood that worship continues out “in the world” when we go and try to make others’ lives better with deeds humble and big, in our private lives and in public. In that task, there should be no male or female, ordained or not ordained, rostered or not rostered – Paul would agree – so would Jesus, don’t you think?

Could it be, that in all the divisions and disagreements and Christians’ efforts to convince others, a certain priority and central truth has been lost: the truth on which Jesus’s work was based on and the truth Jesus’ person embodied. Since it is nearly Valentine’s day, you may guess where I am aiming at… yes, love.

When Jesus healed the woman in Mark, he loved; when the woman was healed and served Jesus, she loved him back. When Paul talks about being everything to everybody, could he be talking about love – and a particular kind of love, concrete, indiscriminate love? Love that “loves” regardless of opinions, agreements or disagreements, regardless of favors or alliances, likes or dislikes… love that … loves… like Jesus. I am not a Jesus scholar but seems to me that this is what he was about, love. Isn’t that what Paul is trying to model and teach as well, when giving his advice to be “everything to everybody” – isn’t that ultimately about the many faces and demands and possibilities of love? Luther, centuries later, would talk about Christian being a servant of all yet free from all; this he explained as if “the love bondage of all believers” – servanthood and freedom; this was his premise of describing the human beings ability and responsibility to live out and model the good news – in the acts of love. Love in Christian imagination should not pre-require doctrinal agreement; rather, Christian love has the power (and the example from Jesus) to look OVER divisions between “us” and “others”. Love’s primary goal and motive is to make better the life of the other, “regardless.” Our God has modeled that. God has modeled us how divine love is in its origins – AND how love here in this place always has a human face (or a canine face, as all the dog lovers would yelp); God in Jesus has modeled us how love divine always leads one to give and to serve, as humans. That is what Jesus is about, isn’t it.

When speaking of love and service and Jesus, I want to bring up in conclusion my favorite person from the Reformation period, favorite in addition to Luther, namely Katherina Schutz Zell. This pastor’s wife and theologian from Strasburg was convinced that the Christians’ call to embrace and to spread the good news demanded that we look beyond differences and pay attention to the needs of the other rather. In Christian love, she said, there are no boundaries. All Christians are called to love and to serve, without reservations. In light of that simple truth, any creedal disagreements seem irrelevant and should be overcome or at least overlooked. KSZ modeled this in her own life, leaving a very modern and timeless model for how to work for the gospel. She, like Paul, felt she “had to do it,” to give all she got, for sake of the good news, about God loves that does not ask first. Proclamation for KSZ involved action, concrete acts, and taking a stand for the sake of common good, for the purposes of making better the life of the other – and all this without asking first if the “other” believes what we believe – or even likes us - but simply acting like God always who gives FIRST, as we have learned with Jesus.

The woman in her sick bed, in the story recorded in Mark, did not show right doctrine before Jesus healed her. The story does not tell that Jesus would have insisted that the price for her healing was to believe certain ways or think certain ways. Luther and KSZ would be quick to point out: there was no price, that’s the whole point of Jesus. There IS NO price. But, there is always a consequence. The consequence in the life of that nameless woman was: that she served. She served because she loved, she loved jesus, Jesus who loved her first. In celebration of Jesus’ love, and the many faces and splendors of love divine with a human face, let us sing a hymn that makes us think of the love divine, with a human face.

Hymn # 804 Come Down, O Love Divine”

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