God Gives the Growth

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, February 12, 2023
1 Corinthians 3:1-9

    So Troop 170, you may remember that I have two Eagle Scouts for brothers, and I grew up going to Pinewood Derbies, selling Boy Scout popcorn and holiday greenery, tagging along on practice hikes for their backpacking trips and so on.  I think I can probably still recite On My Honor almost from memory – we’ll see in a little bit!  My Girl Scout troop, I’ll admit, did not do half of the cool stuff my brothers got to do in Boy Scouts. I am still kind of jealous.  My brothers and I have pretty much spent our entire lives in mostly friendly sibling rivalry; Girl Scouts vs. Boy Scouts is just one of the many examples I could share.  We’ve been focusing here at Faith on our second reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians the past few weeks, and today’s our last Sunday – the third chapter, where Paul addresses unhealthy competition in the church.  Paul is deeply concerned that the infighting among the Christians in Corinth is setting a bad example for people inside AND outside the church.  The church is made up of mostly adults, but they’re acting like children, Paul says.
    Like sibling rivalry, in today’s second reading we see that people in the church from New Testament times can get caught up in comparing themselves to others.  In our example for today, some people preferred the “pastor” who started the Corinthian church, Paul, to the new pastor, Apollos.  These well-meaning Christians were living by human ways rather than God’s ways, saying that some people were better than others in the church because of how much education they had, or social status, or even what kind of spiritual gifts they had.  Paul is frustrated!  He started the Corinthian church about four years before, and he says that they are still “infants in Christ,” not ready for solid food, spiritually.  He wants these believers to grow up, spiritually, to get over their petty differences and worrying about their own interests and who’s the best to work together to grow the church.  A divided church is not a good witness to all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  Instead of pointing to themselves, they should be pointing others to Christ.  How do we grow up spiritually? Paul has a few insights for us.
     Paul has this beautiful analogy to farming here.  I grew up visiting my grandparents’ farm and then served a church in a farming community in Nebraska for my first call as a pastor.  Paul says it doesn’t matter who plants and who waters if we remember that God gives the growth.  We need to look to God in scripture, in prayer, and among each other, the faithful, for healthy spiritual growth.  Farmers know this better than anyone.  You can have state of the art irrigation systems but you can’t control how often it rains, if it floods, if there’s a drought, if it hails or if it freezes early or late. That’s why farmers have lots of insurance on their crops!  God gives the growth. You can buy the best fertilizer, seeds, herbicides and pesticides but ultimately, God gives the growth.  I discovered with many hours alone in tractors and combines farmers have a pretty healthy prayer life, especially during growing and harvest seasons!
    But for those of us more removed from farm life, what does it mean for us that God gives the growth?  The Boy Scout “On My Honor” pledge continues, if I remember right, “I will do my best.”  Even if we’ve never been Scouts ourselves, most of us strive to do our best to follow the Scout Law – to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly and so on.  We do our best as Christians to follow the Lord’s commandments as we heard in our first reading from Deuteronomy today.  We do our best to love the Lord and walk in his ways because God’s rules for us are life-giving.  Striving to be courteous, kind, cheerful, clean, thrifty and so on is life-giving!  It’s a way of life that makes our lives better.  
Paul takes it a step further for us today to remind us that we do our best, but ultimately, God gives the growth.  As we began worship this morning with confession, which we usually do most Sundays, we also recognize that we don’t always do our best.  Confession, self-examination and reflection, humility are all good things for us to practice to grow up spiritually.  We can’t do better if we think we’re already the best and that there’s no room for improvement!  We can’t pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help if we think we don’t need God or others; that we’re fine on our own!  Maybe we see too much of ourselves in the Corinthian church goers who were self-focused, prideful, and couldn’t get past their own strong opinions to get along with those who disagreed with them, or forgive those who had hurt them as Jesus asks us to forgive.  We try our best, and then trust that God gives the growth, because God wants us to grow up, spiritually speaking.  God wants us to be healthy and joyful spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally and so on!
    So dear Boy Scout Troop 170 and dear church, keep on striving to grow – not so that you can boast about how great you are to your friends and compare yourselves to others but because God wants us to live a life that is joyful and healthy.  We all benefit -- the church, the community, the world – when we learn and grow and work together.    We can think about tangible ways that our volunteer work, the classes we are taking in school, the opportunities for Bible study or daily devotional and prayer at home we have keep us learning and growing in faith.  And having striven to do our best, we can rest in the good news that it is not all up to us – we plant, we water, but God gives the growth.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.