Being a Three-Dimensional Christian

A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on June 22, 2024 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: 2 Corinthians 6: 1-13

Perhaps the two most common distortions of being a Christian are to treat it as a transaction or to see it as a sacrifice. Let me explain.

I quite often hear a person say something like this. ‘It just doesn’t seem fair: I’ve always tried to be a good person. I don’t tell lies, I’m honest in my relationships, I give generously, I don’t lose my temper with people, I try to volunteer in my community. So why do so many difficult things keep happening? Why can’t something go right for a change? Why is life so hard?’ This is a portrayal of discipleship as transaction: like some kind of a deal we do with God, by which if we feed in enough good stuff, we’ll get blessings in return, or at least be spared bad things.

Less often I realise a person is living something like this. ‘I’ll do anything for my kids. I’ll work three jobs, I’ll study for a degree while trying to keep the household afloat, I’ll run the big fundraiser even if it means reducing my self-employed hours, I’ll keep inviting my brother for Christmas even though he always gets inappropriate when he’s had a few drinks. It’s not about me enjoying life – it’s about keeping everyone healthy and surviving.’ This is a version of discipleship as sacrifice. Somehow it’s saying, ‘I know Jesus is supposed to have laid down his life to set people free but actually, if I lay down my life, maybe that’ll finally do the trick.’

For some people all the time and for many people some of the time a relationship develops where God becomes either a market trader with whom we make a bargain or a tyrant who looks kindly on our sacrifice. I would call both these models one-dimensional. I want to look with you at the way Paul describes his relationship with God in 2 Corinthians 6 to find a richer, more wholesome and three-dimensional way in which we may reconfigure our understanding of God.

Paul does like a list, and at first glance 2 Corinthians 6 looks like a mass of random things all piled on top of each other. But on closer scrutiny he’s saying three things and illustrating each one in considerable detail. Quickly we see he’s well aware of the two impoverished notions of God I mentioned just now and sets about going well beyond them. We can imagine his description like x, y and z axes on a three-dimensional graph.

On the x axis he faces up to the fact that life can be really tough. This isn’t just a flippant dismissal that not everything goes according to plan. He actually uses nine words and they come in three groups. He says ‘Let’s look at three ways we experience adversity.’ Number one is stuff that just happens. His three words are afflictions, hardships and calamities. It’s actually quite a comprehensive list, because it means physical or mental illness, economic or practical setbacks, and dire misfortune that falls upon not just oneself but everyone else, like a cost-of-living crisis or a pandemic. The Italian footballer Mario Balotelli got a reputation as a bad boy who was always in the news. Finally he printed an undershirt, and when he scored in the Manchester derby in October 2011 he revealed the shirt, which said ‘Why always me?’ Reaction was divided between those who saw him as a narcissistic celebrity and those who recognised that he was expressing what a lot of people feel a lot of the time. It sometimes feels like St Paul had an undershirt that read ‘Why always me?’

Number two under adversity is rather different. It’s activities deliberately engineered to cause harm. Paul lists beatings, imprisonments and riots. In other words, violent assaults, restraint on his liberty, and mass action in response not just to Paul but to all his companions. Such things are certainly worthy of the term endurance, with which he speaks of all nine forms of adversity. Today we’d probably use the word trauma. Paul was a survivor, and he frequently lists his nightmarish experiences, almost as if to sustain his sanity.

Then number three adversity is very different again. He names labours, sleepless nights and hunger. He’s referring to challenges he’s voluntarily taken on. They’re almost badges of honour. Taking care of a new-born baby requires labour, sleepless nights, and hunger because you forget to eat. Going on a backpacking hike might involve labour, sleepless nights, and hunger, but the point is physical challenge and being with creation. Paul has no resentment and he doesn’t call it a sacrifice. But notice what this list of nine adversities together amounts to. Paul isn’t centring himself in a lament about how tough and unfair his life is. He’s recognising as he catalogues his trials that almost everything he’s gone through, Jesus went through. It’s not so much a punishment, a betrayal, or a sacrifice: it’s more a privilege. He’s turning resentment and bewilderment into a true sharing in the life of Christ. It’s not a deal God’s backed out of or a futile gesture: it’s a participation in God’s way of being in the world.

Then moving to the y axis, in his second list, Paul describes his state of mind as he shares in God’s being in the world. He sets out eight foundational motivations that guide his thoughts and feelings and actions every day, and can shape ours. He starts with purity. As the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard said, ‘Purity of heart is to will one thing.’ That one thing is God alone. The last thing on Paul’s list is the power of God. So Paul’s decentring himself by beginning and ending with God and his daily checklist ensures the story never begins or ends by being about himself. Then Paul goes on to knowledge. He means not encyclopaedic amassing of information but true knowledge of God, as we’d speak of knowing a person’s character. The next two qualities, patience and kindness, are more familiar: remember when Paul gives us his most famous list about love in 1 Corinthians 13 patience and kindness are the first two qualities he names. They’re always a good place to start. It’s worth asking, when we face ourselves in a difficult situation with another person and don’t know what best to do, ‘Am I being patient?’ ‘Am I being kind?’ Paul also speaks of another pair, genuine love and truthful speech. Probably every day we face the choice between the appearance of love, which tries to be nice, and tends to avoid difficult conversations and potential tension, and the kind of love that entails truthful speech, which is based on a deeper trust that a relationship can only grow if it names and addresses pain and difference.

But the most intriguing quality on Paul’s list is when he talks about holiness of spirit. What would it mean to have a holy spirit without the capital letters? To focus our entire disposition on being in the presence of God, to sit light to all ambitions and comforts that present alternative versions of what flourishing life might mean, and to make ourselves accountable to others lest we deceive ourselves in what placing ourselves in God’s hands might mean? Think of how we judge ourselves – by our accomplishments, intelligence, skill, attractiveness, qualifications, popularity, possessions, wealth, taste. Imagine what it would be like to be free of all these temporal judgements and assess our lives on one criterion only: by whether our spirit is already where it will be forever, in God’s hands; by how much we recognise we are already claimed by God in eternal relationship; by the extent to which our true belonging has already taken shape. That’s perfect freedom, from which no prison can deprive us. That’s profound joy, from which no hardship can distract us. That’s holiness. Holiness of spirit.

Paul is saying there’s three dimensions to living as a Christian. The first is to embrace rather than resist the adversity that life brings: to say not ‘This is so unfair,’ but ‘This is an invitation to participate in God’s way of being in the world.’ The second is to allow the mind of Christ to become your mind, to make the story about God not about you, to be patient and kind, and to cultivate a holy spirit in all things.

There’s a third dimension to Christian existence beyond accepting adversity and forming the right dispositions. But there’s a z axis to Pauls’ graph. There’s one more list. After nine in the first list, eight in the second, there’s seven in this last list. All of them are contrasts between appearances and deeper realities. Paul says people think we’re impostors – but in fact we’re for real: after all, the God we speak about is the essence of all things whereas we’re but passing shadows. People think we’re obscure strangers – yet everyone knows who we are: and if we look over the last 2000 years, he’s absolutely right. People leave us for dead – yet here we still are. As Mark Twain put it, ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’ People see we’ve been punished – but we haven’t been killed, and are still going strong. Don’t write us off yet. People recognise we’ve got a lot to be sad about – but look at us, we’re always rejoicing. We find abundance where others see only scarcity. People observe how little we have, and think we’re poor – but see, we’re rich in the things that really matter. People say we have nothing, and they’re right, if they’re judging by conventional belongings – but what they don’t realise is, if you belong to God, everything that belongs to God belongs to you. We possess everything.

Paul’s explaining how so much of the Christian life is paradox. A paradox is a statement that seems perfectly true in itself yet runs contrary to another statement that’s equally valid. To live with paradox is to find a way to accommodate things that can’t logically coexist. Once you appreciate it, paradox is everywhere. Most famously, the Trinity is a paradox: God is one, yet God is three. Then there’s the incarnation: God is infinitely qualitatively different from us, yet Jesus is utterly one with us. Then there’s the Holy Spirit: Jesus is ascended into heaven, and thus elsewhere, but through the Holy Spirit he is made present here, for example in bread and wine. Then there’s providence: God loves us all equally, yet loves each one of us as if we were the only one.

When it comes down to our experience, paradox is just as universal. We die; yet life is indescribably abundant and effervescently glorious. Relationships are laced with misunderstanding, exasperation, and hurt; yet intimate, joyful and tender. We are each clumsy, foolish and self-absorbed; yet resourceful, merciful, and gentle. The world is full of war and anger; yet abounding in beauty and goodness.

So Paul says, this is what it means to be a Christian. You need to find a way to do three things. Make your hardships part of your greater participation in God. Allow the Holy Spirit to reshape your imagination. And accept and come to enjoy paradox. That’s how to move from a one-dimensional assumption of transaction or sacrifice to a three-dimensional faith where each dimension enriches the others. That’s how to find a three-dimensional faith in a three-dimensional God.