In Saturday’s Beatle Bailey comic strip, Sgt. Snorkle tells Private Zero to get his cell phone since the hike was going to be a long out of the way one. Zero says that he has lost his phone and asks why someone does invent a phone that is wired to the wall so it doesn’t get lost.
With every upgrade in technology we gain something and we lose something. People post pictures on Facebook of items no longer in use and ask if people remember them. At my age I do know more than ninety percent of them, and have used many of them.
More of us have computers today than we did ten or fifteen years ago. Thirty years ago I bought my first desktop unit which had minimal memory. I replaced it seven years later with one that had a small hard drive. Nine years later I got a laptop which was replaced in six years by the one which I replaced last autumn. I am on my third smart phone in the last decade. The one I have now has more computing capability than the college main frame computer of 50 years ago. It fits into my pocket rather than an outsized living room and is exceedingly more reliable.
Every time I turn my computer on it looks for updates. Then I get a little pop-up window that tells me that I need to install them. Sometimes I feel as though I spend more time keeping programs up to date than I do using them.
A meme is an idea or image that goes viral on social media. One recent meme has a child asking the parent what a book is. The parent answers that books were software updates for the mind.
For computers, tablets, and smart phones there are thousands of apps – software programs – that will connect you to certain stores, keep track of your heart rate, tell you your bank balance, track your calories, tell you when to send a birthday card or buy more ink for your printer. That’s not all that different from a library with hundreds of thousands of books to update our minds in every imaginable subject area.
The computer apps are written to work on an handful of operating systems: PC, Mac, Unix, and a few very specialized ones. Books also are based on certain operating systems which are language based or genre based. You can’t use a Dickens novel to build a bridge and a textbook on quantum mechanics won’t be much use in telling you how to change the pads on your car’s brakes.
Each upgrade in the operating system brings a certain measure of expectation and anxiety. I have spent a lot of time this past week upgrading a nearly new computer in the church office to Windows 10. We bought the computer to replace a perfectly good one which ran on Windows XP, which Microsoft no longer supports, and for which software programs are no longer being back-engineered. Without the upgrade we could not produce necessary reports.
If Paul were literate in our computing technology, he would say that the belief or faith operating system of the Corinthian church desperately needed the agape update that he describes in chapter 13. Agape love is the update we need, and, if we don't get it, have it, or use it, nothing else matters. Nothing else works.
While apps have made us better connected electronically, we aren’t necessarily better and more compassionate people. While we are posting a comment to a distant friend’s Facebook page offering sympathy for their illness, we may be ignoring the distressed person sitting at the next table in the coffee shop. We can Instagram a picture of our delicious vegetable lasagna dinner while walking past a hungry homeless person on the street. While making a smart remark in response to a friend’s post on the current political scene, we forget about the hard times our immigrant grandparents or parents experienced. Are we nothing more than clanging gongs? Don’t we need the update?
Paul was dealing with an app problem in Corinth (“app” as in the “application of the Gospel”). Even though they were first century Greco-Roman people eking out their living without cell phones, the Corinthians were acting like a bunch of selfie-taking narcissists instead of the church of Jesus Christ.
The list of problems in Corinth sounds a lot like the ones we face in the 21st-century WiFi connected world.
- They were as divided as two sets of social media trolls lobbing insults back and forth at one another (1:10-17).
- They were obsessed with celebrity teachers, always posting sound bites from their favorites (3:1-9).
- They seemed to have a relaxed view of sexual ethics, rather than clearing sordid affairs from their history (5:1-2).
- They might have used a legal app to draft lawsuits against one another (6:1-11).
- They may have Snapchatted pictures of food sacrificed to idols to those who were trying to eat kosher (8:1-13).
- The wealthier members of the community might have Instagrammed pictures of the Lord’s Supper feast before their poorer neighbors got there and missed out on all the food (11:17-34).
The Corinthians tweeted and posted, pinned and chatted, all the while missing out on the richness of real Christian community.
So, Paul texts them that they need an update — one that will not only make their community run more smoothly and in a more Christlike manner, but will also beef up their spiritual security and make the church more user-friendly to outsiders.
It’s “the love update.” Or, better: “The agape update.”
We love to use the word “love.” Unfortunately our use of it covers a multitude of meanings all the way from loving an app, a dress, guacamole, and so forth, to loving a child, parent, or spouse.
The “love” word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 13 is agape, which is the kind of love that is less about typing your feelings in cute emojis (those little smiley faces) than it is about upgrading to real, willful, sacrificial, unconditional, self-giving love.
Paul lays out the details of that particular update, and how it turns the attention from taking selfies to taking action on behalf of others.
In a community that embraces agape, the agape update changes everything. Instead of being at each other's throats, love makes them patient with one another and takes away the specter of jealousy (v. 4). Love raises peoples’ heads up from the minutiae of their own lives and gives way to the needs of others (v. 5-6). The agape update turns us away from the evil influences that can creep into our lives. It turns us toward the truth of the gospel (v. 6).
This update enables the community of faith to bear, hope and endure all things for each other and for Christ (v. 7). Once this update is installed, it will never fail (v. 8).
Even faith and hope pale in comparison to the power of the agape app. Those apps will always be incomplete without the full update of love (vv. 8-10). The self-obsessed way of the world makes people act like a bunch of spoiled kids. The presence of agape leads the community to maturity, clarity and fulfillment for all (vv. 11-12). Faith and hope are great apps to have on hand at all times, but neither of them is as vital to the entire church operating system as love (v. 13).
How do we get this app? “Use your ambition to get the greater gifts,” is what Paul says just prior to the agape update. After it he urges the Corinthians to “pursue love.” The reality of agape is that it is really more an act of the will than a feeling. Agape love has to be chosen daily, prayed over, studied, practiced and constantly used in order to be effective. It’s a community app that makes the whole community better reflect the presence of Christ.
George Plasterer, pastor of Cross-Wind United Methodist Church in Logansport, Indiana, makes this point: “Most of the apps update automatically. Obviously, such is not the case with love. We have to be quite intentional about it.” The agape app is made available to us by the Holy Spirit. But it’s totally on us to activate it and use it. And, it takes some practice, however, and a clear sense that we have the ability to share this love because Christ has shared it with us first through his sacrificial death on our behalf. As another love app designer named John put it, “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). When we recognize how much we have been loved, it can increase our bandwidth for loving others in the model of Christ.
The Corinthians desperately needed the agape update, given their history of wrangling with one another. Paul’s plea to download the agape app is no less important for us today when individuals, communities, cultures, economies, churches and denominations are in conflict with one another. In a world where many apps are places for trolls to gather, the church needs to be a people whose primary pursuit is love.
Get the agape update. Like it. Share it. Live it. It’s the best app ever!
General Resource: “The Agape Update,” Homiletics, January 31, 2016. Pp. 40-42.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment