Letters of Recommendation

Church fights, gossip, accusations... We invented them, right? No, not really! Even the apostle Paul had his problems. This sermon considers his solution to opponents that he encountered in his Corinthian congregation. It might even have something to say to us today!

“There is nothing new under the sun.” That well-known proverb is from the first chapter of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (1:9b). We’ve heard it many times. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes goes on to ask, “Is there anything new of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’?” “No!” is the answer. “It was here already long ago; it was here before our time.” (1:10) And Ecclesiastes is absolutely right! There are very few things that are really “new.” Even though we may think our experiences are unique, almost everything has happened many times before.

That’s even true where church is concerned. The problems that our churches face today are nothing new. They go all the way back to the days of the earliest Christians. Even Paul, who started many of the first Christian congregations, had to deal with some nasty problems: church fights, splits in his congregations, and even other teachers who claimed that his understanding of the gospel was mistaken! In fact, that’s the background of his second letter to the church at Corinth, the letter that we now call the book of Second Corinthians. After Paul left his newly-founded church at Corinth, other people came to the congregation claiming that Paul wasn’t a very good pastor. They said, in fact, that Paul had given the Corinthians the wrong idea about Jesus and about the gospel message; and they split the congregation in half over what they said. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We hear about this kind of conflict all the time. If people like Paul’s opponents came to our church today, they would probably gossip that people here at Nashville aren’t very good Christians; and that maybe the church in the next town is a much better place to worship. They might even encourage folks looking for a church home to go someplace else.

How do you fight somebody like that? How do you respond to rumors that you really don’t know what he was talking about? What could Paul write to the church at Corinth that would help to heal the split in the congregation that had resulted from this gossip? Paul responded by writing the portion of II Corinthians that we heard this morning (II Corinthians 3:1-6). “Surely I don’t need a letter of recommendation, do I?” he asks. “You yourselves are my letters!” Paul is saying, in other words, “Think back to the time that I spent with you. Think back to the time when I first told you about Jesus. Think back to when you realized that Jesus was the Messiah. Remember how you felt? Remember how happy you were, and how you couldn’t wait to become a Christian? Why, your own experience should convince you that I told you the truth! And if anyone wonders whether I know what I’m talking about, your lives of love and charity will show them the results of my teaching. You are living letters of recommendation to everyone you meet!”

“Living letters of recommendation.” What a great idea! Our very lives, says Paul, are the most powerful arguments for the truth of the gospel. How we treat other people, how we choose to spend our money. even what we do in our spare time show the power of the risen Christ at work in our community of faith and in our lives as individual Christians. Why, we should be ready and rarin’ to tell people who we are and why we behave the way we do. We choose our actions so that they reflect as positively as possible on our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that doesn’t mean that we can’t ever make a mistake. We’re human, after all! But it does mean that maybe we should be a little bit more open about being Christians than we usually are.

Here’s what I mean by that. How often do we talk about our Christian faith outside our church community? Every day? Every week? Or would the roof collapse if we mentioned our faith in the line at Kroger? Think for just a minute: How do you respond when somebody comments, “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you stay so patient, or so cheerful, or so optimistic.” (You fill in the blank with whatever positive aspect you see in your life.) To comments like that, we usually answer something like, “Oh, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.” That answer may be true; but it’s not the whole truth. The whole truth has is that through the Spirit, Jesus Christ helps us deal with what life throws at us. What might happen if we answered, “I can only do it because of the hope I have in Jesus Christ and the support of my faith community”? I know that’s true, because many people have told me that it is! How do we get through illness, suffering, and grief? We do it because we hang on to the gospel truth that God loves us; and Jesus Christ has prepared an eternal home for us; and the Holy Spirit walks with us every day of our lives until we get there! That’s how I get through it, anyway. And I’ll bet the rest of you do, too.

So… why don’t we say more about that? We may be letters of recommendation, but most of the time we keep our envelopes sealed tight. Although we have lots to say about our faith in Jesus Christ and the difference that he makes in our lives, we hardly ever talk about it! Maybe that’s because we don’t think we’ll do a very good job of it. We think to ourselves, “Oh, that kind of talk is for preachers. Besides, suppose somebody asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer! I’d better not say anything at all.” But did you listen to what Paul wrote to the Corinthians? “Our competence comes from God,” he said. “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, a covenant not of the letter, but of the Spirit.” In other words, don’t worry if you don’t know the answers to all the questions that somebody might ask you. After all, we’re not encyclopedias, we’re letters of recommendation. People don’t start coming to church because they have all their questions answered. They start coming to church because they see that it makes a difference in someone’s life!

Even folks who have never darkened the door of a church might try it if they hear what a difference Jesus makes in our lives. After all, we have the same worries whether we’re longtime churchgoers, or don’t know the difference between the aisle and the altar! All of us are stressed out with too much to do and too little time to do it. All of us are worried about the future. We’re afraid that one day, we won’t be able to get by with the skills we’ve learned. And we’re all secretly terrified that people don’t care about us, regardless of what they might say. Our faith in Jesus Christ is the answer to all those concerns. A real boom in church growth might happen if we became the marketing strategy for God’s glory! Nicely furnished lounges and coffee bars and innovative programs don’t bring people to church. We do!

Maybe it will help to remember the show Sesame Street. Every episode of Sesame Street is “sponsored” by a letter – the letter T, for example. As living letters, we sponsor something, too – but it’s not a children’s TV program. We are sponsors of the Lord Jesus Christ, agents of the Holy Spirit as God works to draw all people into the plan of salvation. Wow! What a privilege! May God help us to be brave and faithful and loving as we work to be persuasive living letters of recommendation of our Lord!