Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you had been born in a different country than the United States of America? I realize a very small percentage of you were born elsewhere. So I would say to you few Chapelites who were born in foreign countries, have you ever wondered what your life would be like had you been born not where you were born or in the USA, but somewhere else? What if we all had been born in Cambodia or India or Albania or Nigeria or Upper Volta or Peru or Guatemala? How different would our lives be?

Christian people, you need to understand that Paul is addressing a crucial issue for what Christianity is and should be. It is not a religion based on religious laws, but rather on faith in God as He is made known to us through Jesus Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mt. 5:17). The spirit of the law gives life to us; it results in an ethic of love. The letter of the law results in a deadening of life, and turns human existence into an enormous and lethal list of do’s and don’t’s. Legalism destroys what the laws of the Bible are intended to nourish. Having personally been so adversely affected by this is his early years, Paul ferociously attacked in his later years the very foundation of legalism when he wrote to the Galatians.

There appears to be a contradictory principle which Paul is explaining here. Do you want to be free from financial concerns? Then be generous in what you give away to others. If you are a skinflint, you will always be plagued by concerns over having enough assets to sustain you, but if you contribute to others with liberality, you will always have more than enough. Tight-fisted stewards of God’s resources plant their seeds sparingly, while openhanded stewards plant their seeds bountifully. Cautious planters reap little for themselves, while courageous planters reap much.

The 12th chapter of I Corinthians is a litany of what the apostle Paul calls “spiritual gifts.” The most widely-known of these gifts are ones that most mainline Protestants personally observe the most rarely, either by doing them or seeing them. They are speaking in tongues, interpreting the strange words uttered when someone “in the Spirit” speaks in tongues, and the gift of healing.

Last week I noted that the first-century Christians in the Greek city of Corinth were an obstreperous bunch. They were boisterous, exuberant, enthusiastic, and unpredictable. Cumulatively, Paul spent several months or a few years visiting them from time to time. Apparently he found them to be a loveable if also confounding collection of humanoids. Something happened among the Corinthians which has happened on infrequent occasions throughout the two-thousand-year history of the Church of Jesus Christ. They practiced what are often described as charismatic gifts or gifts of the Spirit or spiritual gifts. A large and growing branch of Christianity is called Pentecostalism which is noted for these gifts.

Is it just me, or does it also seem to you that the television airwaves are being inundated with more and more class-action lawsuits initiated on behalf of more and more people who may have been injured or damaged by something or other? If you suffer from mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer normally caused by exposure to asbestos, we are told, call such-and-such a law office. They have filed a lawsuit against the asbestos manufacturers. Billions of dollars have been set aside to settle this suit, they say, but if people don’t sign up soon, they may miss their opportunity to receive any of the legal awards.

There are many kinds of strength and weakness. A 259-pound weightlifter is obviously physically stronger than a newborn baby. A Wall Street hedge fund manager who makes 100 million dollars a year is financially much stronger than someone who earns the minimum wage at McDonalds. Someone who is stymied by trying to decide what kind of cereal to buy when there are sixty brands is probably a weaker personality at least in some respects than a brigadier general who gives orders to colonels and majors, who in turn give orders to scores or hundreds of privates and corporals. Someone who has constantly been beaten down by adverse circumstances over decades likely feels weaker than someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth who perceives the entire world to be his personal oyster.

If we believe Jesus is God’s Messiah, which I believe and I hope you also believe, then Paul asks how that conviction translates itself into how we live. What should the Christian life look like? How ought we, as Christians, to live?

How is The Chapel Without Walls connected to THE Church of Jesus Christ? We are non-denominational, and are not aligned with any particular denomination. We are Protestant, sort of, and more liberal than many if not most other Protestant congregations, although it might appear that institutionally we are not a member of THE Church. But we are. And we are because, like it or not, every Christian congregation anywhere is a member of the universal Church. That is not an indisputable fact, but it is my strong conviction. Again, to quote Paul, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (I Cor. 12:12).

It is my firm conviction, which may or may not be valid, that the theology espoused by the apostle Paul in his various letters that are part of the New Testament has led to a major and very unfortunate detour in Christian theology. That is especially true for what is called Christology, meaning the study of Jesus as the Christ. Nevertheless, despite my personal skepticism regarding Paul, Pauline theology became the normative and orthodox theology of the Christian Church by the end of the first century of the Common Era, and it has remained so to the present day.

Matthew and Luke believed Jesus to be the Son of God. There were many factors in the life of Jesus which led them to believe that, but the circumstances of his birth were the first of those many factors. Matthew and Luke were convinced Jesus was born of a virgin. If anyone was born of a virgin, God would have to be the paternal parent in that obstetrical miracle, or how else could it occur at all?

During Advent I am preaching a series of sermons called a Reverse Retrospective on the Life of Jesus. We started with the crucifixion two Sundays ago, last Sunday we looked at Jesus’ frequent theological battles with the scribes and Pharisees, and next Sunday, the Sunday before Christmas, we will of course consider the birth of Jesus. For today we shall be thinking about one of the earliest events in the public ministry of Jesus, namely, the choice of his twelve disciples.

Text – “Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” – Matthew 23:31

Psalm 133 is a three-verse Song of Ascents which begins with a memorable and admirable proclamation: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!” But what is meant by the word “brothers”? And what is meant by “unity”?

Text – Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord! Lord, hear my voice! Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! – Psalm 130:1-2 (RSV)

Jerusalem, the Holy City, Zion, the City of God, the City of Peace. The very word Jerusalem means “City of Peace,” but it has known little peace for the past 3200 years No city in the world has caused more political or religious discord than Jerusalem. At around 500,000+ residents in 2013, it has the largest population now it has ever had, but it isn’t size which makes Jerusalem so important, nor location.

God is the 24/7 God, the God who never slumbers nor sleeps. He is continuously “on the job,” and eternally at His self-appointed divine post. None of us is like that. None of us can be like that. We run out of steam and experience fatigue and require sleep to recover for the next day, but there are no days or nights to God, nor is there any need for physical refreshment. God is not a physical being; He is purely a spiritual being, whatever that might mean (and no physical being can fully comprehend that).

Text – Nevertheless, God regarded their distress, when he hard their cry. He remembered for their sake his covenant, and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love. – Psalm 106:44-45 (RSV)