"A New Thing"

      ¹³ For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and acknowledge and I hope you will fully acknowledge- ¹⁴ just as you did partially acknowledge us-that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you.

      ¹⁵ Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. ¹⁶ I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. ¹⁷ Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say "Yes, yes" and "No, no" at the same time? 1⁸ As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. ¹⁹ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. ²⁰ For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.¹

      "But you PROMISED!"

      "Mommy, you PROMISED!"

      "How can you go back on your word?"

      "I can't trust you anymore."

      "Will you stop talking out of both sides of your mouth?"

      The scripture we just heard is a small piece of one of Paul's letters to the church at Corinth. The problem with reading just a snippet of someone's personal correspondence is, well, you can imagine. Ever catch just a glimpse of an email? Ever hear just a fraction of a conversation? If you have, you know how easy it is to misinterpret things because you don't have the full story.

      Most scholars think Paul wrote at least seven different letters to Corinth, (he probably wrote more than that, but those are the ones that made it into holy scripture), so we might want to understand a bit about the back story here before we move ahead.

      We're outside this morning so I can't show you a map on the power point, so we're going to have to use our collective imaginations. Since most of us are more familiar with the geography of the United States than that of the ancient Biblical world, I am going to use some familiar U.S. landmarks to set the stage.

      We know that Paul established the church at Corinth (southern Greece) during his second missionary journey. Let's just pretend Corinth is San Antonio. This letter, though, was written during a third missionary trip, and Paul was probably in Philippi or Thessolonika when he wrote it. Both Philippi and Thessolonika are in northern Greece, known at that time as Macedonia. This is where Paul sent the letter from. Let's pretend Thessolonika is Waco and Phillipi is Dallas. This works pretty well from both the relative location and the relative distances. Jerusalem is Miami, some 800 miles by sea or some 1200 miles overland from Corinth. It's a very long way away when you are traveling on foot or by a small boat.

      Paul has travelled several hundred miles during the course of this journey and he decides not to go all the way down into southern Greece (San Antonio) on his way back to Judea (Miami).

      So. There is the immediate situation (Paul isn't going to come to Corinth as he had "promised") and then there is a bigger backstory. There is a lot going on in Corinth. There was conflict within the church and there was conflict between Paul and the church. Paul's authority is being questioned. Things weren't going so well and Paul sent them a stern letter (1:15-2:4; 10:10; 12:13-15) instead of making that 350 mile trip to go see them. To add insult to injury, Paul was accused of being duplicitous and his good name was being put to question (11:8-9; 12:16-18).² Under the circumstances, you might expect Paul to be just a little bit defensive.

      "But you promised!!!"

      The interesting thing about this passage is that Paul does not defend himself, really. He is not defensive. He explains his desire to be with them, and then he orients himself and his message back to God.

      "As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No." Now here he is not talking about his travel plans, he is talking about the gospel. About what he and Silvanus and Timothy started in Corinth, what they proclaimed, what they testified to, which was the "Yes" of Jesus Christ. Paul places Christ's "Yes" in the midst of human uncertainty.

      Don't you just hate it when people change their minds, especially about big things? We are pretty used to it, though. We live in a culture of equivocation. We sit on the fence. We hem, we haw, we fudge, we 'test the waters', we try to have our cake and eat it too. We change like the wind, we are fickle, unpredictable; we don't know our own minds! We tailor our message or even our opinion sometimes based upon who is going to be hearing it.

      No wonder it is so hard for us to make and keep serious promises!

      Paul understood this. Just as Paul understood that truth does not rest in us. Trust rests in Christ. No matter what you think about Paul, no matter how you may get hung up about his legalism or his nitpicking, about how he treats women or what he has to say about sin, the core of Paul's big message is actually a long way away from legalism and nitpicking. He turns legalism on its head. As someone smarter than I (Martha Stern) so beautifully put it:

      "Paul's deepest word is a shift from the legalism of Don't, No, Stop to the grace of Yes, Freedom, Gratitude."³

      Paul's message is that in Jesus Christ, we are saved, it is not our own doing, it is only through the grace of God.

      The crucial part of this letter today, the part that absolutely captures my imagination and my heart, and the part that I think will grab you too and maybe even shake you up a little is this:

IN CHRIST IT IS ALWAYS YES. (other translations)
In him it is always yes (ESV)
In him it has always been "Yes." (NIV)
In Him was Yes. (NKJV)

      The more literal Greek translation is this: "Yes has come to pass in HIM". Or, my shorthand, "Christ is yes!"

      Christ is the great "yes" of God's love for us. The WHOLE RANGE OF GOD'S PROMISES are FULFILLED IN JESUS CHRIST.

      In OT Hebrew, there isn't a verb that translates into the word "promised." Promises are discovered through God's speech. When God speaks in the OT, God's act of speaking embodies God's promises. God's promises are all over the OT ("You shall be my people and I will be your God. I will deliver you. Your descendants will be greater than the stars. I will never destroy the earth with flood again. I will bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey.")

      The NT word for promise appears chiefly in Acts, Galatians, Romans and Hebrews. It doesn't show up in the gospels, though we certainly can recognize Jesus' promises:

      "I will be with you. They that mourn shall be comforted. I will send my Spirit to help you. I am going to prepare a place for you. Your sins are forgiven. I will be with you, even to the end of the age."

      Everything, every promise, every revelation in the Bible converges and finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ. All promises of God are confirmed in him. The promised Word has become flesh. The new covenant has been inaugurated. Jesus is its guarantee (Heb. 7:22).

      This is the good news of Paul's letter and of God's gospel. Christ is yes! If God is for us, who can be against us? All falsehood falls away, and the truth in Jesus Christ triumphs. Christ is Yes.

      Even when your life seems a mass of confusion, Christ is there to comfort.
      Even when you feel you are living a lie, Christ is ready to forgive.
      Even when you no longer know which direction to go, Christ invites you to pick up his yoke and walk with him.
      Even when you believe no one can possibly love you, Christ seeks you until he finds you.
      Even when everyone around you tells you "no, you're no good", Christ responds to you with "Yes, welcome home my beautiful child."

      This morning we make some big promises again as we witness another beautiful baby being baptized. We all make these promises. They are bigger than you think. We promise to reject Satan. We promise to love and nurture Grant and to support his family. We stand with our heads held high and we say "yes" once again to the mystery and the simplicity and the complexity of the reality of Christ's YES in our own lives. We promise to pass it on.

      Christ is Yes, always and forever. It is as simple, and as complicated as that.