Looking Ahead to February 12, 2023

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Deuteronomy 30:15-20
• 1 Corinthians 3:1-9

The Sermon title is What Helps You Grow?

Early Thoughts: Who has helped you grow? What choices have influenced your growth over the years?

This week's passage from Deuteronomy is one of my favourite pieces of Scripture. It reminds us that our choices matter. It reminds us that while God has offered us a way to live, a set of rules or guidelines to follow, we still have the ability to make choices. It reminds us that we have to make good choices if we are to have abundant life for ourselves and our community.

I would suggest that God wants us to grow as individuals and as communities (I think this is part of the logic behind much of the Law in Torah, that these are ways we can grow to be the people God wants us to be). As we grow we make, and learn from, our choices. Consequences are often a really good teaching tool.

Then we have our fifth (and for now final) passage from 1 Corinthians. Paul jumps back to a more explicit discussion of the things that seem to be dividing the Christian community if Corinth. And still one of those issues is that some people think one teacher is better than another. Paul wants the Corinthians, and us, to see that they are all part of a larger picture.

How many teachers have you had in your life? Some were formally called teachers or mentors. Some were people who were a part of your life and happened to teach you something, either intentionally or by happenstance. Many of us probably have teachers/mentors in our lives that we call favourite, and teachers/mentors who we disliked. But if we are honest, we have to admit that we are who we are (for better or worse) because of all of them.

Paul says that he planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. And the important one is the one who gives the growth. 

So how has God helped you to grow? How has God helped us as a community to grow? Many people have planted seeds. Many people have watered and weeded and tended. But has God given growth?

How have we embraced the growth God has offered? How have our choices led to more opportunities for growth? How have we resisted the growth that God has offered? When have we chosen not to grow?

A couple of other things occur to me as I write this:

1. Growth means change. An acorn does not look like an Oak. I remember a Continuing Education Event I attended a few years ago. The presenter, whose family had grown through fostering and adoption, said that they were always clear that each time a new member joined the family they were a different family. They were not the same as they had been before. To grow is to change. I suspect this is why we sometime resist growth both as individuals and as communities.
2. While we all have our list of those who have fed/watered/tended/taught us, it is also true that we have all been the ones to teach/tend/tend/water/feed others. Seeds have been planted in our lives and souls, we have planted seeds in others. Some may be fruitful, some may have been weeds. How do we help (or maybe hinder) each other to embrace the growth God is causing within them?
   

Tris week I invite us all to think about growth. In some ways it is a mysterious thing, as the children's song asks: "Do you or I or anyone know how oats peas beans and barley grow?". In some ways it is a scary thing, we don't always know (and we can't always control) what we, our communities, our children will grow into. But in the end the promise of growth is a sign of hope, a sign the God is with us.

So how is God causing growth in and around you here in 2023?
--Gord