The Life Worth Living--September 16, 2022

The Life Worth Living--September 16, 2022

"Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.  But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that--no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting!" [1 Corinthians 9:13-15]

Death first, before insisting on getting more for himself.  Well, how about that?

It's the sort of thing you have to look at twice or more and pinch yourself to believe is there in the Bible--at least in American culture.  We have built a whole mythology around the importance, even the "virtue," of insisting getting, defending, and fighting for your rights... and here is Paul giving it all away.  It's breathtaking, really.

Truly, it is utterly fascinating to me how a culture like ours, that has lots of voices insisting it is a "Christian" one, doesn't see the contradiction between our national myth of insisting we get our rights, on the one hand, and the New Testament's alternative story of being willing to set aside our "rights" for the sake of others' needs.  We are taught Patrick Henry's line, "Give me liberty, or give me death," but I don't ever remember a sermon, Bible study, or TV preacher pointing out that Paul literally says the opposite: "I would rather die than demand my rights at the expense of my witness to the gospel."

Now, you could say that Paul is being a bit melodramatic here--I mean, honestly, it doesn't need to come to dying.  We're talking about matters of getting compensated for your work.  Paul is talking about waiving the privilege of taking a paycheck for his labor as a servant of the gospel.  And he's been adamant that even though he has the "right" to that kind of compensation, he refuses to insist on it, in order to remove any hint of a whiff of a possibility in anybody's mind that he's just a fly-by-night hustler looking to make a buck off the pious and foolish.  That doesn't have to be a matter of life and death--but Paul does seem deadly serious here.  He wants us to be clear that his sense of entitlement to his "rights" is subordinate to God's economy of grace--and because God doesn't operate on a transactional basis, as if God would only show mercy when there will be a profitable return on the divine investment, then Paul won't play by such rules, either.  "Indeed, I would rather die," he says, than insist on my rights and end up harming my witness.

But maybe Paul is on to something more than being histrionic or theatrical here.  Maybe instead of having to imagine some kind of scenario where a detail of Roman soldiers would arrest and execute Paul for not insisting on taking a paycheck, maybe this is more about the day by day choices we make to die to ourselves and to live for Christ.  Maybe as Elaine Puckett so wisely put it, "When we think about laying down a life for another we usually think in terms of a single event. But it is possible for us to lay down our lives over the course of a lifetime, minute by minute and day by day."

That's just it, isn't it?  We don't have to be facing a Roman cross or the executioner's axe [although, Paul would eventually face that, to be sure] to lay down our lives, but we can choose in this day, moment by moment and day by day, to refuse to demand our "rights" or our "freedom" or what we are "entitled to," and instead to use our energy to seek the good of others, because that is the way of Jesus.  We can choose to waive our privileges and instead to leverage them for the benefit of others who don't have those privileges.  We can be willing to go without a luxury, or to be willing NOT to insist on getting what we think we are owed, if it will mean we can share or help someone else.  Now, that will be countercultural, to be sure--and some folks won't like our suggestion that the way of Jesus is not compatible with a "My rights must come first, and I don't care who I upset" kind of attitude.  And, sure, we need to be prepared to let those folks be upset when we say that following Jesus is what leads us to renounce and relinquish our rights for the sake of others rather than to demand them.  That may be one more way we die to ourselves.  But like Dietrich Bonhoeffer said so powerfully, following Jesus is a life of costly grace--"it is costly because it will cost us our lives, and it is grace because it gives us the only true life there is."

In the end, that's the great realization of the followers of Jesus: that the only life worth living is the one you give away.  Sometimes, in some circumstances, that means the willingness to face the execution squad, like both Jesus and Paul, and a long line of martyrs.  But in many situations, it means the daily choice to lay down our lives, our privileges, and our "rights" for the sake of love.  That is a choice we make now... and in the next moment, and the next hour, and the next day.

What will we do with the moment in front of us?

Lord Jesus, give us the courageous love to give ourselves away for you and for the sake of those you love.