A Good Bake--June 17, 2022

A Good Bake--June 17, 2022

"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.  I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.  It is the Lord who judges me." [1 Corinthians 4:3-4]

So, true confession: I am a fan of The Great British Baking Show.  It is a delightful program that makes for the perfect show while folding laundry or some other mundane domestic task, and I love the whole premise.  Amateur bakers strive to create cakes, tarts, loaves, and other culinary curiosities as set forth by the judges of the show, who then taste, evaluate, critique, and praise their work.  Sometimes the food to be baked is pretty familiar to everyone--something like, "Bake us some gingerbread cookies" (well, "biscuits" in Britain).  Sometimes it's a really rare item, like an obscure kind of French cake from the 18th century.  Sometimes, the judges ask the bakers to create things they've never made before, never tasted before, or that the bakers themselves don't particularly care for. And that means there will be times in the competition where one baker will be sure their creation is the best, only to have the judges disagree and not like how the cake turned out.  Or there will be times when a loaf looks done on the outside, but when they cut into it, reveals itself to be underdone and inedible.  Or there will even be times when a contestant is sure their baked good is a failure, only to have the judges really like what they've done.

Now the thing that I find really intriguing about all this is that sometimes the contestants doing the baking are harsher about their own cooking than the actual judges are!  Sometimes a baker will be sure they're about to be dismissed from the baking tent only to discover the judges thought they did well.  And because it's not a democracy, the other contestants don't get to conspire together over whom they should vote out.  It's really all to do with what the judges think, and not anybody else, or even yourself.

So if you've got a harsh, mean-spirited, or capricious judge, that's bad news, even for a good baker.  But if you have a judge who is fair-minded and decent, it often means you've got a better shot at success than if you let your own worst criticism of yourself carry the day.  Sometimes in life, we are our own worst enemies, after all, and we can sabotage our own efforts to do something good if we've told ourselves already we are failures or don't belong.  And on a show like The Great British Baking Show, everyone understands you have limited time, limited information, and limited resources to bake with, so the real question is simply, "What did you do with what had been given to you?"

That's the perspective Paul finds himself with here in these verses from First Corinthians.  Like a baker on the TV show, he knows that he doesn't have to worry, in the end, about what anybody else thinks about him or his work.  He doesn't even really have to worry about his own self-critical impulses, either, because he's not the final arbiter of the quality of his work.  Paul knows that his own work gets presented to God, not to any other church leader, and not even to himself.  And he knows that God's question comes down basically to, "What did you do with what has been given to you?"  In other words, how have we stewarded the things, people, and resources that have been entrusted to our care?

We should note that none of this conversation for Paul is about going to heaven or hell.  Paul is decidedly NOT saying that if your work is good enough you get a ticket through the pearly gates, but if you're the worst baker for the day you get thrown out into the outer darkness.  It's not even about trying to compete with someone else to do better than them while you're vying for the top spot in the contest.  It's more that Paul knows that since God is the One in the end whose opinion really matters, we don't have to spend our lives constantly worrying about how we measure up in anybody else's eyes.  We don't even have to listen to our own self-defeating inner voice that tells us we aren't good enough or don't belong.  God is the One who gets to evaluate--the same God who has already loved us deeply enough to go to a cross for us in Christ.  We don't need to worry that the judge is a jerk--this is the same One who has saved us by grace and claimed us forever.

And once we realize that this is not a matter of being "good enough" to get into heaven by our accomplishments, but rather a question of using what has been entrusted to us because we are already beloved of God, then this is all about freedom.  When you know you don't have to waste time worrying about what someone else thinks of the way you use your time, energy, words, and actions for the sake of love, you are freed to love all the more deeply, and more fully like Christ.  When you know you don't have to care about looking popular or trendy or "successful" or "strong" or like a "winner" or "tough" but rather only about walking the way of Jesus, you realize you can stop fussing about an awful lot of things that others are obsessed with.  In our lives of faith, then, we are each free to ask simply, "How can I use this day and its opportunities as well as possible, so that when I get to the end of the day, I know that God see I have used them all well?"  We're not worrying anymore about doing enough to make God love us or accept us--we are already loved and accepted permanently and unconditionally by God.  And once we know that we are free to ask, in the famous words of Gerhard Forde, "What will you do... now that you don't HAVE to do anything?"  In other words, once you know you are irrevocably claimed by God before you have done a thing to earn it, now how will you use the freedom, the time, and the resources in front of you out in ways that reflect how you've been loved already?

So yes, what we do in this life matters--not as our way of earning a spot in the afterlife, but for the same reason the people on the baking show keep coming back week after week to bake: they love what they do, and they want to do what they do as well as possible, simply for the love of doing it.  What if we saw this day as the opportunity to love others well, not to earn gold stars or heaven points (which do not exist) but simply because the God who has claimed us already will smile to see what we do this day to show love?

That seems like a good way to spend a day, don't you think?

Lord God, enable us to use this day well, in whatever it brings, with the freedom of knowing we are yours already.