The Way of the Goose

 August 30 2020

2 Corinthians 1:1-7

         On of the things that I’ve gotten into in the past couple of years is feeding the birds that frequent our back yard. I have a couple of bird feeders that I keep filled and it is fun in the morning to look out the window and see all the activity around them. Of course, you can’t feed birds without attracting a horde of squirrels and these lovely creatures are on our dog, Mazy’s radar at all times. During this time of the year the squirrels are not only looking for the stray sunflower seed some bird may have dropped but they are also foraging the acorns and nuts gathering them up for the winter ahead. Seeing them scurrying around always makes me think of one of my favorite books called “Gung Ho”. This is actually a book about business management which was written by Ken Blanchard and it deals with what it takes to motivate people. The book is told from the perspective of a wise old Indian who looks to nature to learn what it takes for people to be gung ho about their work. He summarizes what he learns down to three ways of being,; the way of the squirrel, the way of the beaver and the way of the goose. The way of the squirrel is that the squirrel is busy because it knows that what it is doing, gathering nuts, is all about staying alive. So to get excited about work or whatever you do you have to always keep in mind how does what you do affect your life or the life of others. The second way is the way of the beaver and if you watch a colony of beavers build a dam each beaver adds to the building of the dam in their own way. So the way of the beaver is to give people the freedom to figure out how they can contribute to the work at hand. The third way, the way of the goose is the real point of what was on my mind for today. During this time of the year as we enter into fall you begin to notice that more and more flocks of Canada geese are on the move. Now before you even see them you for sure will hear them honking and squawking as they fly overhead. Have you ever wondered why they make such a ruckus as they fly along? I mean wouldn’t it be better if they would just save their energy and flew a little quieter? Well, what they are doing when they are honking is they are cheering each other on. This is the way of the goose, the way of mutual encouragement for the long journey ahead. In order to be gung ho about the work that is to be done all of us need to have others around us to cheer us on.

         If Paul would have known about the way of the goose I think he would have been totally on board with the idea. Where my version has the original Greek word translated as “comfort” a better understanding of the word is actually encouragement.  So reading the first few verses of this first chapter of Second Corinthians again, substituting encouragement for comfort, see how this changes up what Paul is trying to say. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all encouragement who encourages us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction, with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God. Paul is saying that God is cheering us on and as God cheers us on we cheer each other on. If you think of the way of the goose then there is a whole lot of honking going on! Yet while all this encouragement is a great thing what we can’t forget is why Paul feels there is such a need for us to be encouraged. The reason for all of this encouragement is that as followers of Jesus we are going to experience afflictions or otherwise translated, suffering. These are the two themes, encouragement and suffering that Paul is bouncing off of each other here in this first paragraph of his letter. So to understand our need for encouragement we really first have to understand why we as followers of Jesus can expect affliction, suffering or trouble on account of our faith. As Paul wrote to his dear friend Timothy in his second letter to him, in the third chapter, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Now even though this seems pretty straight forward it is surprising how many followers of Christ, especially here in America are taken aback when they run into trouble because of following Jesus. Paul doesn’t say that you may run into trouble, or you might run into trouble; no, Paul says that you will run into trouble if your aim in life is to live a godly life in Jesus Christ. What most people haven’t done though is to consider just why persecution and suffering are a necessary part of our walk with Christ. The answer lies with what we have talked about in the previous weeks, what Paul has been writing in his first letter. As we said when we began this series this second letter to the church at Corinth is really a bunch of letters, a long distance conversation Paul is having through his writings with this church that he loves. So, in past weeks we covered what was his first communication with them and what Paul wrote about was this new covenant God has brought about with the coming of Jesus. This is a covenant where Gods law is no longer written on tablets of stone but instead God’s law is written on our hearts.With this new covenant everyone can know God through a personal relationship with him.So with this new covenant we are now able to keep the two commandments that Jesus taught us abide by. The first is that we are to love God with all of our heart, to love God with all of our soul or life and to love God with all of our strength or our resources. The second which is like it is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love God with all of our heart is to treasure God’s word. This means that we not only hear God’s word, but we have faith that God’s word is the true way we are to live and so we then obey this word. The faith we have in God is a resurrection faith, a faith that God indeed can give life to the dead and bring into existence the things which do not exist. It is when we have this faith in God that our life is in his hands that we can offer our life to him out of love.  And since our life is safe in God’s hands we then place our treasures in heaven using our resources for his kingdom. We begin by treasuring God’s word and we end placing our treasures in heaven from where God speaks his word.

         Now what is not really spelled out by Paul is just what is this word that God speaks? Just what is it that God is speaking to us? Well, the gospel of John helps us understand just what is this word that God is speaking to us. In the fourteenth chapter of John where Jesus is speaking to his disciples on the night he was betrayed, Jesus tells them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Then further in his teaching Jesus instructs them “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” So the word spoken to us by God that we are to keep or obey is the commandment of Jesus. This commandment is found in the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel where Jesus commands his disciples and us, “Love one another just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” So, in order to love Jesus, to love God with all of our heart we must love one another. To put it another way, as we read in Johns first letter, the fourth chapter, “If anyone says, “I love God” and hates his brother he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  What is not apparent when we consider keeping the word of God, obeying his command to love one another just as Jesus loved us, is that this is the source of the affliction that is certain if we desire a godly life in Jesus. Yet if we listen to Jesus it becomes clear why he experienced such hatred from some of those around him. In the seventh chapter of John, we hear Jesus tell his brothers, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” The love Jesus showed to others, the good works done through the power of the Holy Spirit that gave glory to his Heavenly Father, this life witnessed that all other actions apart from God, done in the power of the flesh were evil and condemned by God. The coming of Jesus meant that a new order was being put into place, an order where goodness, selflessness, and extravagant love were to be the rule. This meant that that the evil way of life lived through the power of the flesh and its desires was on the way out which terrifies those who refuse to know any other way of life. This is the root of the hatred Jesus experienced. And as Jesus taught his disciples on the night he was betrayed , “If the world hates you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word I say to you, ‘A servant is not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

         This is what we have to keep in mind when Paul writes about the affliction and suffering not only that he experienced but the affliction and suffering he knew his brothers and sisters were sure to face whenever the kept the word of God. This is also why Paul knew the need for encouragement. The word “encourage” means to put something within your heart to make it strong which is what is needed when we are called to love God with all of our heart. As Jesus warned his disciples, there were going to be those who received his message with joy but when suffering or persecution came on account of that message they would fall away and the word of God would never bring about the new life God intended. This is why Paul states that we desperately need to be encouraged. The one who first encourages us is God himself.Now we can understand more how God encourages us in the Greek word we translate as “encouragement” or “comfort.” The Greek word is paraklesis and it is actually two words, para which means alongside like parallel lines run alongside of each other, and the word klesis which means to call. So the image is one of someone who comes alongside of another person and calls out to them.Now what makes all of this even more interesting is that when Jesus tells his disciples about their Heavenly Father sending to them the Holy Spirit, the word Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit is Paraclete. This is the God who comes alongside of us to call out to us. This is what Paul was speaking of when he wrote that we first are encouraged by God. Our hearts are strengthened because the Holy Spirit, the God who comes alongside of us speaks his word to us. And what is the Holy Spirit going to say to us to encourage us? Well, what Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would speak to them about, interestingly enough, is him. In the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, we hear Jesus tell his disciples and us, that “the Holy Spirit , whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.” And in the fifteenth chapter of John, Jesus again teaching on the Holy Spirit tells his disciples, “when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” Lastly from the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells us that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth because he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’Are you beginning to see just how the Holy Spirit that the Jesus sends us from the Father encourages us? The Holy Spirit speaks to us about Jesus. The point is made so clear in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews where we read, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our gaze upon Jesus the originator of our faith and the one who brings our faith to completion. Who instead of experiencing joy instead endured the cross that was set before him, disregarding its shame and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow exhausted in your life and lose heart.” The Holy Spirit speaks to us about Jesus, about his faith in his Heavenly Father, our God who has the power to bring life to the dead and bring into existence the things which do not exist. Jesus gave up the unspeakable joy of life in the bosom of the Father to come to earth to live a life of the greater love, a love that laid down its life upon the cross, a cross considered a curse among his people that became instead the place of greatest blessing.  This faith of Jesus, this is why he now abides eternally in the presence of his Heavenly Father and why we have the hope of abiding there as well.Yet, this hope is only ours if we endure. As Paul writes, “If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation; and if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.” The word Paul uses here for patience is a word that means to abide under, in other words it is to accept to live with suffering as a part of life with Christ. This is the difficulty that is faced when suffering comes, to remain under the suffering instead of listening to the desires of the flesh which can be summed up as flight or fight. Patient endurance is to not fall away when persecution or suffering comes nor is it to fight against suffering demanding what may be rightfully ours. No patient endurance is to fix our gaze upon Jesus who fixed his face like flint toward the cross. For us to do so means that we not only need the encouragement that comes from our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit but it also means that we need encouragement from each other. In the third chapter of Hebrews we read, “take care lest there be in any of you an unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But encourage, again the word is paraklesio, one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ if we indeed hold our original confidence firm to the end.” This is telling us that we are to come alongside one another and call out to each other and speak to each other about Jesus. This is why the author of Hebrews also writes in the tenth chapter that we should not neglect to meet together but we are to encourage one another all the more as we see the Day of the Lord drawing near.This is why the fellowship we share as brothers and sisters is so important because it is this fellowship with the brothers and sisters that we can see that helps us hold fast to the fellowship we have with the God that we cannot see.When Paul states that we share in his sufferings, the word he uses for share is actually the word for fellowship. In other words, Paul believed rightly that the body of Christ is a fellowship of suffering and encouragement. As Paul wrote in the twelfth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored all rejoice together.”

         So, yes the unpleasant truth is that when we desire to live a godly life following Jesus we will experience the hatred of the world. I mean, if it happened to Jesus why should we not expect that this hatred would come to us those who are following him? But our hearts our strengthened by the Holy Spirit who every morning is there speaking to us about Jesus causing us to fix our gaze upon Jesus instead of focusing in on all of the world’s distractions. As Jesus endured so can we. He is the originator of our faith and he is the very completion of our faith so we look to him to keep our faith. And not only do we have the gift of the Holy Spirit but we also have each other. Ours is a fellowship of suffering and encouragement. When one of us hurts, we all hurt. When one experiences joy, we all rejoice. The common denomination in all of this is this idea of the word. God speaks, calling us to love each other which causes the world to react with hate. So, God speaks again the word, the word called Jesus which strengthens us to keep his word. And we speak, a word, a word about Jesus, a word to give strength to another’s heart just as God first spoke his love to us. This is why we don’t take flight and fall away from God or fight to take up the weapons of the flesh but we patiently endure, abiding under our sufferings until the day when we will all abide in the presence of God forever. Ame.