Recipe for Courage: One Part HOPE; One Part FREEDOM; and One Part Mercy--Blend Well

 

“A Recipe for Courage: One Part Hope; One Part Freedom; One Part Mercy—Blend Well”

 

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
3:12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,

3:13 not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.

3:14 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside.

3:15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds;

3:16 but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

3:18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

4:1 Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.

4:2 We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.

 

In a time when the very foundations of human society seem to be quaking, the Christian believer seeks some sense of surety, or an anchor to keep from just vibrating away like a poorly-built edifice in an earthquake. At the very least, we look for courage or boldness to “stand firm,” to use Paul’s language, and the fortitude to speak out, when necessary. Our witness is more effective when it comes from a strong place—not necessarily a strong view or opinion, but a strength of inner character, of Spirit, of faith. In today’s message, we’ll look at a collection of scripture verses wherein the Apostle Paul seems to be offering a “recipe” for this courage.

 

A disclaimer: I’m using “cooking” terms because this is one of my retirement or “bucket list” pursuits. I never learned to cook anything beyond what one can pull from the freezer and heat up in the oven or zap in the Radar Range (threw that reference in just to see how many of you reading this are of my vintage; do you remember this as Amana’s famous moniker slapped on the massive, loud, and even dangerous “first editions” of the domestic microwave oven?). Of course, this leads to a rabbit hole of a story…

 

Early in my ministry, I would take an annual week-long retreat to Olmsted Manor, our United Methodist adult retreat center in remote Ludlow, near Kane, PA. Often I would be on my own for meals during that week, as there was often no other group staying during the “work week.” On my way up, I would stop by a grocery store in Kane and pick up my supplies for the week—remember, I don’t cook, so they were all “processed” meals. The first time I took this retreat, I picked up some “microwave popcorn” that had really just come on the market, since the device that cooked them was still pretty novel. When I arrived at Olmsted, I found the light switch for the kitchen, and hunted up the microwave oven (Olmsted’s director at the time, Rev. John Miller, had told me they had one). I popped in one of the bags of microwave popcorn into this ominous-looking Hobart commercial microwave and actuated the large, metal bar that sealed the door shut. Figuring this to be more powerful than the Amana Radar Range, I set it for three minutes of cooking time rather than five or six, and went off to my room to drop off my baggage. I returned to the kitchen a few minutes after the Hobart had finished its programmed work and lifted the door. What was in the middle of the thing was nothing but a pile of ashes. Obviously this was not your “father’s microwave,” as they say. The next day, Rev. Miller showed me the smaller, less lethal microwave in the staff area.

 

The story really has no great purpose in this sermon, other than to point out just how far Yours Truly would have to come if I were to even begin to “master” the art of cooking, even 36 years later. There would certainly be more piles of ash in my culinary journey. ANYWAY, suffice it to say that the global pandemic and its near total shutdown of eating at restaurants forced my wife and I to begin preparing our own meals at home, something we really hadn’t done regularly since our children were still living with us. (Our busy church and work schedules had us eating most of our meals at restaurants.) And because Dara—a dietitian who has worked around food for most of her life—was really tired of cooking, my retirement goal of learning to cook got moved up a couple of years. Unfortunately, the Internet and Dara’s sometimes stretched patience became my teachers, due to the unavailability of cooking classes during COVID-19. 

 

In this instructional vacuum, I’ve attacked cooking more like a chemistry lesson than as a “great chef.” (Many people have suggested I watch the multitude of “great chef” programs on TV to learn, but I have neither the tolerance nor the patience for them—If I were learning to ski, I wouldn’t watch the mogul competition at the Winter Olympics!) Hence, recipes became my friends. 

 

I recently baked my first batch of cookies from scratch using a recipe out of a cookbook that is so old I think it was printed on papyrus. The cookies came out surprisingly good, given I missed an important line in the instructions. I’m hoping they didn’t cause any illness for those who consumed them, as I made them for the Daily Bread program that feeds unsheltered persons on Pittsburgh’s Northside. I ate several of the cookies myself as a testing dummy, and I’m still here.

 

Now, back to the “recipe” Paul gives us for courage…

 

He actually uses the word “boldness” in the Corinthians text, but I think it appropriate to substitute the word “courage,” here. The dictionary defines “courage” as “strength in the face of pain or grief,” and that is what many of us are facing in this worldwide malaise, complicated by pandemics, a lurching economy, political polarization, and of late, a war in Ukraine. We need and seek courage. 

 

Our recipe begins with one part HOPE. Hope is a lot of things. At its simplest, it is a “wish” for something better, or for something we don’t have. As we move on up the biblical understanding of hope, we arrive at “promise.” For the believer, we hope in the promises of God to be present with us during our times of trial, and to—as we said last week—“work all things together for good for those who love God, and who are called according to God’s purpose.” Moving further, we see hope as “assurance”—a well-founded belief that God is “on the case,” and has our best future in mind. “Hope” is a word of VISION, not a roll of the dice “hoping” we win something. God is behind our HOPE, and as the writer of Hebrews states, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for…” 

 

My reading group (as well as many others at St. Paul’s UMC in Allison Park) just finished reading and discussing the book, The Book of Joy, written to record the myriad insights that came from a five-day, face-to-face meeting between the Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu (not long before he died of cancer). These to remarkable people live through—and guided their people through—much suffering and long quests for justice. They speak of JOY as almost an inevitable thing in the lives of people who walk through suffering hand-in-hand with the Divine Presence, others whom they love, and just OOZING hope! Hope as an ingredient of Joy is unmistakable, but that is part of a recipe for another time…

 

So, we put in a full measure of HOPE. Next, we add FREEDOM. It’s easy to see how COURAGE has hope as an ingredient, but what of freedom? I have noticed that many recipes have ingredients that don’t seem to make sense to me and my limited knowledge of cooking, so I ask my wife. She explains how something is a “shortening” for this particular item, a “rising agent,” or an ingredient that is necessary to “activate” another ingredient in the recipe. Freedom is all of these to the recipe of COURAGE. But like we don’t use gasoline as a “rising agent” in cooking, neither should we think of “freedom” the way it is often used in our current socio-political situation!

 

If you listen to what many “protesters” say (especially during this awful pandemic) or read posts on Facebook, you will be led to believe that “freedom” means “MY RIGHT” to “do what I please.” (The term “Constitutional right” gets thrown around a lot, but I find that few people have actually READ the Constitution themselves, but are relying on the ignorance of others who are wont to interpret it in this “do what I please” view.) This is not freedom, it is licentiousness, something the scriptures condemn. Requirements to wear masks or to be vaccinated are NOT infringements on freedom when they are for the good of all and for the greater good of the society or the country. Declaring so and protesting such corporate safety measures would be like protesting speed limits on the highways or laws against theft. Freedom in a free society is only “free” if all people purpose to obey laws designed to protect constitutional freedoms such a freedom of religion, speech, or to assemble, while guarding individual freedoms such as ownership of property. Some laws exist to balance individual vs. corporate freedoms. Such is the case of safety regulations—or mask mandates! 

 

For the Christian believer, freedoms are designed to permit us—and to encourage us—to do the RIGHT things. Paramount among our Christian freedom is freedom from sin AND freedom to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” as Jesus taught. We are free to DO GOOD toward others, which is a very Wesleyan concept, for Christians of the Methodist sect. Nazarene Wesleyan scholar, Thomas J. Oord, states:

 

 Many of the most perplexing questions Christians face are at least partially answered by affirming the idea that God empowers creatures by granting freedom to respond. If Christians follow Wesley’s lead on this issue, they will discover conceptual resources for making sense of God’s call in their lives.

 

“Freedom to respond”—to God’s grace in having our sins forgiven, forgiving others for their “trespasses against us,” and freedom to respond to Christ’s teachings—is what freedom means to the Wesleyan Christian. Our freedom is subject to Jesus Christ and the leadings and imparted wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Christians should not go around touting individual “freedoms” when they violate the laws of God or the teachings of Jesus, himself. Our faith leads us to love of neighbor, the poor, and any that our time may see as the “least of these.” We are “freed” to carry out acts of benevolence and works of justice by God first “freeing” us from the law of sin and death, and then empowering us to live “beyond ourselves,” for others. This is the Christian way, and a way written about extensively by late theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in works like Life Together.

 

So, we add a full measure of this transformed understanding of FREEDOM to our recipe for courage.

 

The final ingredient from Paul’s text today is MERCY. Paul reminds us we are “engaged in this work by God’s mercy,” and that we “don’t lose heart.” God’s mercy came to the world in the form of a person—Jesus Christ. In the Christ Event, God offered pardon to us all, wiped our slates free of the penalty of sin, and has empowered us to exercise the “freedom” of the redeemed, reconciled life. God’s mercy overlooks our human failings and jazzes us up with the presence of the Holy Spirit—God’s OWN presence—in the life of every believer. God’s mercy continues to visit us when we screw up, and when we forget God’s favor, focusing selfishly and exclusively on our own desires and erroneously adopted “values” that conflict with the teachings and example of Jesus. We will never NOT need God’s mercy, so if we are to develop courage, how can that be, apart from God’s continuing mercy? 

 

So, we take full measures of HOPE, FREEDOM, and MERCY, and mix well. Mix WELL! I have learned from cooking that sometimes you have to mix the “dry” ingredients well, first. The dry ingredients are just what they sound like: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, baking powder, etc. I use a metal whisk to mix them. They don’t actually “mix” or have any kind of chemical reaction without some liquid to “catalyze” or “activate” them. But they do change, physically. They take on a uniform, powdery consistency, and a perceived color change as the darker-colored powders mix evenly in with the lighter-colored ones. I guess this could be seen as a kind of analog for our human efforts to bring about equality, or to “balance” the communities, schools, and societies in which we live. Diversity, especially racial diversity, may be seen as this “mixing” of the dry ingredients in a food recipe.

 

Things don’t really start to happen, though, until the “wet” ingredients are introduced. Obviously, these may include water, milk, eggs, fruit juices, oils or shortenings—even beers and wines to some recipes. It is then that the individual ingredients begin to lose their separateness and meld into something wholly new. Dough, sauces, or batters are born, with an entirely novel identity. Here, maybe we think of the “wetting” ingredients as being the spiritual elements—the Holy Spirit that moves us beyond our human limitations, the redemptive, transforming presence of Jesus Christ, or even the image of “blood” as a cleansing substance. Once these come into play, true transformation begins. Diversity becomes more than just a “mixing,” but instead a new “people” is born, no longer identified by their previous distinctions:

 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

 

To this new “sanctified soup” we may add many other parameters or characteristics God “blends” into the emerging “Kingdom” community. Many of us believe this may not be limited to just Christians and Jews, either, but other interfaith groups touched by the Divine.

What results is the “food” of courage. This recipe yields as much boldness as is needed by each of us as Christian disciples and as the gathered, called Community of Faith to carry out the ministry “that we are engaged in,” using Paul’s words. The energy and synergy that comes from this “recipe” overcomes any fear or timidity we may have, providing courage to live life according to the ways of God, to shun the ways of humanity that are counterproductive and even hateful, at times, and to do the work of God in the world. 

 

Apart from these key ingredients and the necessary mixing, preparation, and “baking,” we will never arrive at the courage we need to accomplish these tasks and live these lives, let alone “commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God,” to cite our text today. Is it necessary for us to state that in a tasty recipe, the ingredients must “sacrifice” something of themselves for the good of the finished product? Each brings its “flavor,” but much of their “personal” identity is lost to the greater, combined, and melded “taste” of the whole.

 

Do you have the necessary courage to enter into this “kitchen”? Are you willing to risk some part of you for all others, while holding on to your distinct “flavor” that will savor the mix? If you are not quite there yet, well, take one part HOPE, one part FREEDOM, and one part MERCY, and blend well…Amen!