Blessing the World

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

 “Blessing the World”

22 May 2106 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Dietrich Bohnoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Germany at the outset of World War II. As he looked around his homeland and saw the German state taking over his church and supporting horrific acts upon German citizens, he decided to make a stand. To not just speak out against what he saw as sinful but join a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was already in prison when they discovered his involvement in the plot, so they just sped his transfer to a concentration camp in Buchenwald where he died in April 1945, a mere two weeks before the camp was liberated.

            Coptic Christians are the largest religious minority in Egypt and live on the edge in a country where religious discrimination ebbs and flows. On Christmas Eve 2010 in Cairo, a congregation of Coptic Christians were leaving their Christmas Eve service when a car pulled up and sprayed bullets at the departing congregation. When the gunfire settled, eight congregants under the age of 23 were dead and nine others wounded.

            In 1979, a military junta took control of San Salvador. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador at that time and had been working hard for the rights of the poor in his home country. This was a relatively new activism for Oscar. He began this work for the poor following the assassination of a fellow priest who advocated for the poor shortly after Romero was appointed as Archbishop. Romero criticized the US government for supplying arms to the military government and called out the new government for the human rights abuses they were committing. He never backed down. On March 24, 1980 as he was conducting a mass, right as he raised the chalice during the Eucharist, he was shot and killed by an unknown assassin.

            Nate Saint was a missionary working on an operation called Operation Acua to bring the Gospel to the Huaorani people in Ecuador in 1955. He was the pilot making a number of flights over their land before finally landing there in 1956. The caution was well advised as the Huaorani were known for their violence, especially towards outsiders. They established a camp a few kilometers from the tribe and had been exchanging gifts. However, that didn’t end well as all five missionaries were speared a mere five days later. Their story as well as that of Nate’s son and his later efforts of evangelizing the Huaorani are immortalized in the movie The End of the Spear.

            I could go on and on with stories of people who have suffered and given their lives for Christ throughout the centuries. But, I wonder if sometimes Christians put too much emphasis on the need to suffer to be like Christ and follow in his footsteps. Granted, there will be suffering to spread the Gospel. Some may even be called to martyrdom. But, that isn’t as common or as necessary as we are sometimes led to believe.

            The other thing we tend to do is to think and act as if suffering is part of God’s plan so much so that we actively seek out ways to “suffer for Christ” or embellish our own suffering.

            If we read this passage with these two ideas in our hearts, we could isolate a phrase such as “it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering,” and find a sympathetic voice to confirm that we are supposed to patiently endure whatever suffering God sends our way.

            But, I think that would miss Paul’s point. I think we can all agree that Paul is a devout scholar of Scripture, especially in light of his zeal for keeping to Hebrew Scripture before his Damascus Road moment. This letter begins a bit differently than his other letters to churches in that instead of a lengthy greeting to the church, he spends time pronouncing a blessing to God and connecting that blessing to the church. It sounds like Paul is making a direct connection back to Genesis 12 where Abraham is blessed by God to be a blessing to the world.

            Perhaps the reason we remember the suffering servant is due less to the suffering and more because we see in clear 4K resolution how they are a blessing to the world. Bonhoeffer was blessing not just the German church and people with is stance, but also his Jewish brothers and sisters. The Copts in Egypt, blessed us with a vision of how to live honorably as a religious minority under hostile conditions. Oscar Romero blessed the poor and stood up to military power both in San Salvador and the US. Nate Saint, though he never saw the fruit he sowed, blessed a people and brought them together through his family.

            None of these people set out to become a martyr. Many actively resisted being the groundhog who stuck their head out of the hole so it wouldn’t be hit. What they did was follow Christ and trust that Christ would provide the consolation and grace needed to face life each day. They didn’t gain money or any real fame in their day, only after their deaths. They weren’t specifically called to death, rather to give their all to Christ through a specific ministry. By giving their all, they weren’t hesitant to go where Christ led

            Paul doesn’t call Corinth to suffer. He calls them to follow Christ and trust that Christ’s blessing upon us all is more than enough. It gives us extra blessing to share with the world. Paul starts this letter reminding Corinth and us that we have a universal call to bless the world. As this is our first and most basic call as Christians, let us always seek to bless the world.

Regardless of our specific call, we will always be called to bless the world. It may not be in a spectacular and memorable way, but that doesn’t mean we get to ignore this universal call on our lives. Rather, let us seek to always bless the world so that from our being a blessing, the world learns of our specific calling on our lives.  It doesn’t take us to die a martyr’s death or to physically suffer for Christ to bless the world. In fact, it’s the every day blessing that we provide the world that is more difficult and that also forms us to be vessels of blessing for the world. Let us leave here seeking not martyrdom, but to be people of consolation to everyone living in a difficult and complex world. We have received more than enough blessing from Christ so that we can bless the world.