You may have heard that one of the most difficult places to be a Christian is on our freeways. If you drive you know that being caught in morning or afternoon traffic, going less than 5 miles per hour, taking more than an hour to go 20 miles or so, can be very frustrating. If we add that there are literally thousands of other drivers feeling just as frustrated, we have the possibility for unpleasant things to happen.
Sometimes things get me so frustrated that my wife has to remind me I’m a Christian, and a minister, so I shouldn’t let my feelings overtake me to the point where I do or say certain things. I will admit, though, that there are times while on that crowded freeway when my feelings get the best of me and I do things I later regret.
As you know I live in Mililani. A trip home from the Liliha area during afternoon traffic can sometimes take an hour; in the evening it usually takes about 25 minutes. However, when the lanes on the freeway are combined into one lane going through Pearl City, as with the current rail project construction, that same evening travel can take much longer. In fact, I remember one night when it took me almost 2 hours to get home; a very frustrating night, indeed.
I left work at about 9 pm and made sure to call my wife to let her know I was on my way home. Everything was going well until I got to Moanalua Gardens, just before the freeway goes up Red Hill. That’s where the traffic had come to a standstill. I didn’t think too much about it – maybe it was an accident or a stalled car up ahead.As I sat there, literally not moving for almost 15 minutes, I began to wonder what was going on. If it were an accident or a stall I surely would have moved by now. I honestly didn’t know what was going on and as I looked around at the faces of the drivers close to me I could see that they also had no idea.
Many of them had gotten on their cell phones to see if social media could tell them anything, which reminded me that I really should call home to say I was going to be late. Using voice dial and the phone’s hands-free options, I called home. Being that I really didn’t want a ticket for using my phone in the car, I decided to put it away so the temptation of doing like everyone else would be minimized.
Of course, the more I looked around the more tempted I became. I began to think to myself that I would definitely see a police officer coming, if one could get through that traffic. I convinced myself that others would surely be caught before I was. And, before I knew it I was on my phone, seeking answers for this horrid traffic from Facebook and Twitter.
Of course, since I was stuck and moving at such a slow rate, my social media searches didn’t stop at what were the reasons for the traffic; I wanted to also know what all my friends were doing. I became so involved at being on my phone, I never noticed the police officer as he passed by on a motorcycle. I immediately covered the phone with my hand, thinking that would lessen the glow coming from its screen.
I didn’t want to be like everyone else, but the fact that everyone else was getting away with it pushed me over the edge. I broke the law. Fortunately the police officer either didn’t notice or had decided to let all of us law-breakers get away with having our phones on and I didn’t get a ticket. I did, however, learn a lesson.
In today’s passage from 2nd Corinthians, Paul helps the church realize a similar situation, except that Paul’s rhetorical talents helps the reader understand how silly the whole thing really is.
Paul begins by mentioning that it makes no sense to brag, because bragging gets nowhere, and decides to move on to the topic of visions and revelations. The reason Paul wants to talk about this is because at the time this letter to the churches in Corinth was written, many others who called themselves prophets and teachers had come into the church. The quickest way for these super-apostles to accumulate followers was to talk about how one was a personal participant in the seeing of visions from God. Paul is now addressing the church’s enchantment of these kinds of people.Paul tells a story about someone he may or may not know who might or might not have had an out of the body or in the body experience 14 years ago. Paul doesn’t claim to know any of this, but he does say God knows, immediately basing what’s happened in God instead of himself. What I find amusing about what Paul has started doing, is that while he says bragging has no use, he’s actually started bragging about himself. That person who may or may not have done those things 14 years ago is him.
While with one breath he says he won’t brag about himself, with the very next one he does. However, he tells us he won’t brag about his strengths, or the things which make him just like the perfect super-apostles he’s talking about. What he does want to brag about are the things which make him inferior, his weaknesses. This is alright to do, in Paul’s opinion, because he won’t be making a fool of himself as his bragging will be coming from a place of truth.
He then goes on to tell of all the afflictions he’s endured since becoming a follower of Christ, and in doing so tells us of how his weaknesses have actually become his strengths. By turning the rhetorical table completely around where he is now bragging of his strengths…Paul proclaims he has become a fool. To make things even more comical, Paul blames the whole thing on the Corinthians.
To add a little insult to the point he just made, Paul adds that he’s not inferior to those so-called super-apostles as he is the only one who continuously shows the churches he works with signs, wonders and miracles; never treating the churches in Corinth different than the other churches he works with. Adding that he has never been a burden to the church in Corinth, except that, unlike the super-apostles who live among them now, he has never been a financial burden on them, he never made the church provide for his personal needs. And for that, for not being a financial burden, he apologizes – tongue in cheek, of course.
If I were in the Corinthian churches I would be feeling pretty guilty right about now. Kind of like how I felt when that police officer drove by.
You see, I knew getting on my phone was wrong, but what I also saw was that everyone else was doing it and I really just got caught up in a game of follow the leader, even though I knew that leader was going in the wrong direction. On that night in that horrible traffic I made the conscious decision to put my trust in what others were doing, instead of what I absolutely knew to be the right thing to do.
One of the benefits of my job at Kapolei High School is that I get to develop relationships with 16 and 17 year olds who may not feel accepted by other adults. In my 5 or so years with the school, I’ve shared in the journeys of these teens as they face every imaginable life event. I’ve sat with young people as they cried over the recent deaths of family members and cheered because a new sibling was just born into the family. I’ve helped a few get a passing grade in their classes, and I’ve watched as others achieved becoming valedictorians.
Mostly, though, we sit and talk about daily stuff such as friends and family and what they did over the weekend. I want to say that over the years I’ve developed some pretty good friendships with these young people.
A few years ago there was this one boy. He was a junior and really tried his best to get good grades. He told me he studied, and he did most of his homework and classwork. But for him the pace with which we moved in our Academy was maybe a little too quick.
He didn’t get bad grades, averaging a low C for most of the year. But he wanted to do better; he wanted to prove that he could get better grades. So he tried harder, came in for tutoring and did what most students who are trying to better for themselves should. No matter how much he tried, though, he just couldn’t get his grade high enough, at least high enough for him.
It was the middle of the semester, and a time when we take mid-terms in our Academy. One of the classes in which this young man struggled was having a 50-question exam and for the entire week leading up to the exam he came in everyday to study and get tutoring. Whenever he took a mock test, however, he couldn’t seem to remember anything.
The day of the test came, and he was visibly nervous, so I took a little time to talk with him and joke around a little to try and settle him. I’m not sure it worked, because his nervousness never left. The exam was passed out and he was actually one of the first to finish, not the first, but among the first 10% at least. I walked over to him and asked how he felt about the test and he said he thought he did really well.
He did in fact do really well, scoring in the mid 90’s. After the tests were passed back he took a look at his score and breathed a sigh of relief. He had accomplished what he set out to do.
I don’t know why he did what he did a few days later, but for some reason he approached me during recess and told me how he was able to score so high on that test. He cheated; hiding the answers from the exam study sheet on a small piece of paper behind his name badge.
This young man was my friend; we had shared a lot of life together. I knew his home situation and if word got back to them that he cheated, he would most likely be beaten – I’m not exaggerating. But I couldn’t let the fact that he, along with a small handful of others, cheated on a test go un-told.
I found myself in that place where I could have been a friend and followed what his other friends did and kept quiet, or I could do what I was supposed to do and let the teacher know. I could have been a follower of the wrong way which would have been foolish, or do what is right.
I lost a friend that day as he couldn’t believe I turned on him and the others.
Making the right choices doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes it’s easier to just follow the crowds. But, as Paul reminds us it’s in taking the difficult road, it’s in making the decisions which are right but not necessarily easy that we find our strength in Christ.
Jesus made some difficult decisions during his ministry here on earth. He stood up against oppression and for justice in a time when the poor and sick were all but forgotten. He spoke out against discrimination based solely on a strict adherence to the laws of his day and instead told everyone to simply accept others for who they were and for where on life’s journeys they found themselves. He did the things which angered those in power, but found himself loved by everyone else.
His was not a ministry of doing things simply because someone said he should. His was a ministry which pointed out that what God truly sought from humanity was that we find a way to live in harmony with God, each other, ourselves, and creation.
It is this Christ that Paul says to let rest on us, so that we can live within and share in Christ’s amazing power. In so doing, Paul would say, we also allow the power of the one God for all people to be within us, to flow through us and to live among us.
God is always with us. Amen.
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