Immaturity Preached By: Rev. Karla Wubbenhorst on February 28, 2010

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Lee Scott
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1 Scripture Reading: I Corinthians 3: 1-3a and I Corinthians 5: And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you? 3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgement 4 in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? 13 God will judge those outside. Drive out the wicked person from among you. Sermon Text Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, for our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Around this time of year we know that Easter is coming because of the Cadbury cream eggs and the chocolate bunnies that make their annual appearance in the grocery store, but when I Page 1 of 7

Matzo also came in a crumbled form called matzomeal, that you could then form into matzo balls to put in dumpling soups, or to use as a coating for fish.

2 lived in Montreal, a city with a large Jewish community, there was something else that made an annual appearance in the grocery store matzo. It came in square boxes, containing 8x8 sheets of this flatbread, that was sort of like a wasa cracker. Matzo also came in a crumbled form called matzomeal, that you could then form into matzo balls to put in dumpling soups, or to use as a coating for fish. The thing about matzo was that it was unleavened that it consisted of flour and water only - -baked without yeast. Around the time that we celebrate Easter, the Jewish community celebrates Passover, which the New Testament also refers to as the feast of unleavened bread. Passover is a seven day festival in Judaism that looks back to the time when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and God brought them out into freedom in a single night. On the night they left Egypt, the people were told to be in readiness, so they made bread for their evening meal without yeast. Bread with yeast needs to be left to rise. It takes time to make, and that night the Israelites didn t have time, so ever since, Jewish law has commanded that all Jews hold a supper called the Seder on the first night of Passover, and that at it, they eat matzo unleavened bread. Jewish law also commands that during the seven days of the festival which follow, no leavened bread can be eaten. In fact Jews are not even allowed to have any leaven in their possession. Leaven is not only yeast, but any mixture made of grains and water, that has been allowed to ferment, so bread, cereal, cake, cookies, pasta, pizza, beer. In orthodox Jewish homes there is a tradition that in the weeks before Passover, a thorough Spring cleaning is undertaken. Any of these foods are either consumed, sold or burnt. Many modern Jews take the opportunity to seal all their leaven in a cupboard and make a notional transaction of sale at their local synagogue, so that seven days later they can buy their leaven back. But apart from what is in that sealed cupboard, not a speck of leaven can be found anywhere. Kitchen counters are scoured so that every little grain of flour and the tiniest speck of yeast are removed. Utensils and ovens are sterilized, using extreme heat or Page 2 of 7

Candlelight is considered ideal for illuminating without casting shadows, so that if any leaven remains in the corners it can be found, brushed out with the feather, and burnt, together with the

3 boiling water. Jews who own bakeries or distilleries have to go through all this at an industrial level of cleaning. On the night before Passover the head of the household makes an inspection, going from room to room with a candle, a feather and a wooden spoon. Candlelight is considered ideal for illuminating without casting shadows, so that if any leaven remains in the corners it can be found, brushed out with the feather, and burnt, together with the wooden spoon that has been used for handling it. If you re like me, you find all this fascinating and strange, but it would have been common knowledge in Corinth among the people to whom Paul was writing. So when Paul says to this Christian congregation, which had its roots in the synagogue: Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. Let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth they would have immediately recognized the kind of intense, extreme house cleaning he was talking about. The part of today s reading that comes from I Corinthians chapter 5 is about the extreme measures Paul says the Christian community has to take in order to clean and eradicate from its midst any leaven of malice and evil any sin -- because the thing about leaven is that it only takes a little spick to leaven the whole batch. Or in an expression that is more familiar to us, it only take one rotten apple to rot the whole barrel. Paul has identified a rotten apple in his congregation. There s one man who is doing something that would even raise eyebrows among the sexually permissive Greeks and Romans that are living in Corinth. As we ve said, Corinth was a very permissive society. The visiting of prostitutes was a regular thing, and they were addicted to pornography, which in their case didn t take the form of obscene images on the internet, but little clay figurines with exaggerated genitalia, sex dolls of a kind, sex barbies, that you can still see in museums of the Mediterranean if you have an interest. But even the sex-crazed culture of Corinth would raise an eyebrow at a man who shacks up with his father s wife, and those of Jewish background should have an even more instinctual repugnance to that sort of thing, because of the story of Rueben in the Old Testament, one of Jacob s sons, who started having sex, not with his mother, but with one of his father s other wives. It was considered adultery; it was considered incest; it was considered a scandal in all Israel. Page 3 of 7

4 But now there is this guy in the Corinthian congregation who is having an affair with his step-mother. And presumably he is justifying it, and some in the church are accepting his justification, saying there s nothing wrong with it, because we re in a new age now. All those uptight rules were just for the training of Israel while it was underage, but now we have come of age, we re more sophisticated, we ve gotten right away from legalism. We don t believe that God can actually be interested in a little thing, like what we do with our bodies, like who we sleep with. And so this guy comes to church without even blushing. He sits there in the pew, with his arm around his step-mother. He brazenly steps forward to take communion, and in so doing he says, I feel no contradiction between my lifestyle and the holiness of God. Those still living in an unenlightened age might have a problem with it, but it s not a problem for me. The problem is with those who would be so backward as to make an issue of it. The problem is with those judgmental and censorious people that are criticizing my freedom to do whatever I want, now that Christ has set us free. This Lent I m preaching a series on the problems the sins that existed in the Corinthian congregation, and which we can still recognize in the church today. This one I m calling Immaturity because that s how Paul answers this claim that religion has come of age now, that it s only people stuck in a former age that care about things like sexual purity, or would take issue with a person s sexual choices, and try to make it a matter for church discipline. Paul says: no actually, it s you who are being immature. Most Christians learn to keep their external lifestyle free of those big sand-traps while they are still taking the baby-steps of faith. Of course it takes much longer to correct our thoughts as well as our actions, to mature to the place where a selfish heart is thoroughly transformed into a loving one, but most Christians manage to exclude the really glaring sins while they re still toddlers in the Christian life. So if you re being caught up by one of those sins, don t make out that you re being ultra mature, you re really showing what a baby you are how much you still have to learn about what it means to follow Christ. When I was at University I came to know a group of immature Christians. They were the ones who around campus were known as the God Squad. They liked to wear the label, they liked to throw around incense at the 8am communion service, but they didn t mind being hung over as they did it. They didn t mind leaving their sexual partner of the night before naked in their bed, as they climbed into their jeans and then into their cassock and alb. They were interested in Christian learning and Christian aesthetics. They liked to hold heady discussions about the early Christian Page 4 of 7

Most of them were having sex, some with their girlfriend or boyfriend, but others were experimenting with gay sex, not because they were drawn to it, but because they were at university now, and they

5 thinker, Boethius. They liked to hang medieval Christian art posters on the walls of their dorm room. They liked to audit the post-graduate course in Augustine s Confessions, but a few of them were using drugs. Most of them were having sex, some with their girlfriend or boyfriend, but others were experimenting with gay sex, not because they were drawn to it, but because they were at university now, and they thought it might be chic, and they wanted to test every taboo. After the Easter vigil which would conclude at about 1am, there used to be this thing called the Resurrection Party. It started off tamely enough with the priests from the chapel offering a blessing over the food and the whole chapel community sitting around for a nice meal, but there was alcohol, and around 3am someone would bring more alcohol, until around 6am these Christians would stumble out into the quad singing hymns loudly and drunkenly and stopping to vomit between verses. It was a scandal. It made a mockery of Christ s name. It was behaviour, as Paul says, that not even the pagans those on campus who made no pretentions to be followers of Christ, would sink to. If the priests from the chapel had been awake at all they shouldn t have tolerated it. They should have said: you can go back on the schedule to assist at holy communion when you grow up a little in your faith, when you develop the maturity to match a little better your walk with your talk. In Corinth I mentioned that there were other religious teachers besides Paul, teachers that the Corinthians with their love of wisdom and high society, might have preferred, because they would teach them to talk about things that would mark them as a Christian elite. But Paul says, I can t talk to you about Boethius and Augustine, we need to talk about more basic things like keeping chaste and keeping sober. I could not speak with you as spiritual people, says Paul in chapter 3 verse 1, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. The problem with immaturity of the kind Paul is talking about is that it is contagious. You can see Page 5 of 7

6 this a little with the development of children. The older brother decides he wants to get toilet trained, but then a younger brother is born, and the older one sees his younger brother getting a lot of his parents attention as his diapers are changed, at some level he misses the diaper, and there s a regression. Or with older kids, a few that are able to read are sitting around quietly enjoying their books. And a younger child comes into the room he s not able to read, he s only able to bang on toys. Soon the books are laid aside and the whole gang of them are banging on toys. Moral immaturity is contagious too. Sometimes all it takes for a child to start acting out sexually is for the parent to leave a stable marriage and move in with their lover. Sometimes all it takes for a congregation to become convinced that the standards God calls us to aren t really that high after all, is for a minister to leave his wife for the church secretary, or for a person living in an adulterous relationship to be voted unchallenged onto the church session. As painful as it is to pursue a disciplinary action in these cases, the church that doesn t, has much more pain and shame in store for it, because immaturity is catching. Churches that excuse people when they give way to the childish clamour of I want what I want, are encouraging more childish behaviour. Instead the church must challenge people to be mature in Christ, to forego what they may want sometimes, for the sake of what will bring honour to Christ, and what will build up fellow believers. It is possible for Christians to live a double life. I remember the grandmother of a minister s daughter I once knew saying with such sorrow and prayerful concern, that she feared Grace (not her real name) was living a double life she was one way, using one kind of language among her friends, and she was another way at home and at church, where she moved among her parents and their friends. As a minister s daughter she knew how to pray, she knew the kind of language and the kind of look that was expected of her on Sundays and at home, but it didn t prevent her from hiding away make-up and sexier clothes in her school bag, so that she could transform herself once she got to school into exactly the kind of teenager her parents would disapprove of. Grace was leading a double life. She did it to feel mature to try out some of the things her friends at school were trying but to the extent that her Christian faith was genuine at all, she was in fact being a very immature Christian. If you are leading a double life, don t believe the devil s lie that you are at the acme of sophistication. You need to recover sincerity and truth in Page 6 of 7

7 your Christian walk. You need to confess that you are involved in things which have unraveled all the progress you have made in Christ, and brought you back to the level of a Christian infant. If you can say that with all humility, instead of talking about your sin with the excuse-making or jokecracking, or defensiveness, which we tend to use to evade conviction, then there is just a hope that you can get back on track. We must never forget that we were bought with a price. It is nothing less than Christ s blood which it took to cleanse us from sin, so we should not lightly wallow in sin again. Instead Paul says, get your candle and your feather and your wooden spoon and make sure every bit of the old leaven is brushed from every corner: Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Page 7 of 7

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