- Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly–mere infants in Christ.
- I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
- You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
- For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
- What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe–as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
- I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
- So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
- The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.
- For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.
Peace that comes from our good Lord be with you all.
• Pilgrim
As you know, I’m preparing to leave the place where I have lived for the past 18 years. This makes me feel a little empty. I could not help thinking that life is a journey while I was staying in Rome last week. I reflected on myself: where am I going? Do I know where I am supposed to go?
You might also feel everything around you strange at a point of your life. But I think experiences in strange places are God’s invitation to self-reflection. That self-reflection asks you whether things that you do and things that you cling to are really valuable to your life.
A pilgrim once said, “Being a pilgrim signifies there’s no map in his (her) mind. He (she) only walks with God”. We do not know what will happen on our inside and outside at every moment of life. Pilgrims, therefore, are required to have an open-mind to what approaches to them, such as what to eat, where to sleep, good people and bad people.
Jesus, who lived as a pilgrim himself, told his disciples, “Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.” The only thing they could provide the host was to wish for peace. Likewise, we might also be able to pray for peace for those who provide hospitality and good deeds while we are living as a pilgrim.
Apostle Paul understood his life as pilgrimage as well. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (Phil 3:12). We cannot but be impressed and respectful at Paul’s persistence in his faith. He marched towards faith and holiness throughout his life. Abraham left his comfort zone for an unknown world at age 75 upon God’s calling. The prodigal son became a new person by returning to his father’s home. Our life also should be a process to keep returning to our Father.
• Pilgrimage toward heaven
Paul continues to say, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..”. What are the things behind that we should forget, and what are the things ahead that we should strain forward? Simply put, we should forget the material life that goes against the Holy Spirit, and instead we should hold on to the spiritual life following the Holy Spirit.
I advise you to look back on yourself to see how much you are progressing spiritually. You can do so by reflecting yourself among various relationships you have with others. Do you get angry easily, yell at your children, and get easily discouraged? Are you lazy in reflecting yourself but bragging in front of others? Do you still have cravings for food and see other people with the eyes of desire? If you are and do so, you are a man of flesh and material no matter how long you have been a believer.
Let me put in another way. Have you become more gentle and generous? Are you praying for your spouse with love? Do you care for other people more than before? Do you listen to the Lord more than before? Are you trying to follow God’s word? Do you listen to God’s voice coming from your inside? Are you striving to obey that voice? If you are and do so, you can be told to progress spiritually.
• Between gravity and grace
Apostle Paul is referring to Corinthian Christians as worldly ones. Their jealousy and quarreling are evidence for that. Upon knowing the Lord, they went on the road for spiritual pilgrimage. However, they still had the habits of their old being. This is really frustrating. Whenever I pray to the Lord, my sinful nature and worldly habits occur to me and make me discouraged. But brothers and sisters, what is important is to make persistent attempts to be holy. Even if you fail hundred times, you rise up again to follow God’s will because you believe in God.
We live between ‘gravity’ and ‘grace’. I mean by gravity the things that attract us to the world and distract us from God’s will. Peter walked on the sea and then sank because he got heavier. This is not a joke. When he was looking at Jesus, he could overcome the gravity. However, when he started to look at himself, he got heavier and sank into the water.
Likewise, while we are living in this tough world, we can overcome the logic of the world if we make our Lord the center of our life. In contrast, upon making ourselves the center of the world, we get heavy and cannot but sink into the deep inside of the world. Keep in mind that the power to overcome the gravity of the world comes from God’s grace, not from us. Only when God’s grace holds us from up there, we gain the strength to defeat the gravity.
The world often discourages you. However, those who put their hope in God never get discouraged because they do not depend on themselves. They are able to spread the seeds of hope and life no matter what situations they are in. What supports their spirit is God’s grace. God’s grace prevents us from being overwhelmed by the gravity of the world.
Apostle Paul continues to say that he gave them milk, not solid food. Milk here indicates the joy and happiness that they had when they gained eternal life through Jesus’ cross. However, we should know that faith is accompanied by hardships. Jesus said in Mark 10:30, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields–and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life”. If you think that to believe in Jesus is so easy, you must have something wrong. Those who apply faith to their real life are supposed to experience persecutions. Paul expresses the difficulty to live by faith with “solid food”.
I often say that to have faith is to make God’s word concrete with flesh or to translate the word of God into one’s life. Those who receive God’s word with joy but do not try to live the faith and do not translate it into their lives are destined to feel empty, just like those who only look at the menu but do not order any food in a restaurant.
• God’s fellow workers
Furthermore, when you do not try hard to translate God’s word in your life, you cannot help having jealousy and quarreling with each other. When you argue about what is correct and what is wrong, God’s glory disappears. Apostle Paul felt ashamed at Corinthian Christians’ fights and talk about the famous metaphor of planting. He says, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God, who makes everything grow. Both Apollos and Paul are servants, while they function differently. They should thank each other for carrying out the task that each one did.
Paul uses the word “God’s fellow workers” to refer to those who are called for the work of god. In that sense, we all are also God’s fellow workers. However, we often misunderstand the term. That is, we treat God as our fellow worker, not make ourselves God’s fellow workers. In order to be God’s fellow worker, we need to know his plan and will. However, we only want and pray our desire and plan to be fulfilled with the help of our fellow worker, God. There is no self-denial, no dedication, no endurance to wait for God’s will to be achieved.
God’s fellow workers carry God’s yoke together. God hopes to carry out his work for the world together with us. Brothers and sisters, what is God’s work? It’s the cross. It’s the good news of the cross that sets us free. It’s the love of Jesus who died on the cross. That’s the reason why we come together, pray together, eat and wash dishes together. It’s not for the purpose of consoling our loneliness, but for the purpose of experiencing God’s love together and preaching the love to the world.
Brothers and sisters, we are now fellow workers of God. What a trembling and exciting calling it is!
Don’t forget. You are God’s fellow workers. Don’t forget. Our life is a pilgrimage toward the heaven. Lent starts this coming Wednesday. It will be a chance for you to look back on yourself and proceed to maturity just as the deep winter proceeds toward the spring. I pray that we all cherish the calling as fellow workers of God in our heart and walk the life of a pilgrim. Amen.