Christ Episcopal Church, Valdosta
“The Heart of the Matter is Forgiveness” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
February 10, 2019
Dave Johnson

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

During the summer I got married, the awesome summer of 1990, I trekked up and down I-95 in my old Ford Fairmont station wagon every weekend from Northern Virginia to Eastern North Carolina to see my fiancé.  During these drives one of the cassettes (remember cassettes?) I played again and again was a 1989 solo album by Don Henley, the brilliant drummer and songwriter for The Eagles.  The album was The End of the Innocence, which he wrote in the wake of his painful divorce.  The last song on this album is called “The Heart of the Matter,” a song Henley said took him “forty-two years to write and four minutes to sing.”  It is wistful and wise, and also features the amazing guitar playing of Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (but I digress).  Don Henley sings:

I got the call today I didn’t want to hear
But I knew that it would come
An old, true friend of ours was talking on the phone
She said you found someone
And I thought of all the bad luck and the struggles we went through
And how I lost me and you lost you
What are those voices outside love’s open door
That make us throw off our contentment
And beg for something more?

I’m learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

Today’s epistle passage was written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth, a prosperous seaport city and major center of trade.  Corinth was famous for its vast wealth, its cosmopolitan population, and its religious diversity.  Corinth was also notorious for its sexual immorality, so much so that “to Corinthianize” became a slang term for various forms of fornication.  The late biblical scholar Gordon Fee observed that “Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world” (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 3).

But God loved Corinth and sent Paul there to preach the gospel, the message of the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ.  During his second missionary journey Paul planted the church in Corinth, and spent eighteen months preaching the gospel there, week in, week out, before sailing on to Syria (Acts 18:1-18).  Later Paul wrote what became known as his First Letter to the Corinthians, a letter to the church in Corinth that like every church, in spite of the wonderful gospel ministry taking place, had its share of challenges too, challenges that included spiritual pride, cliques, idolatry, and of course the sexual immorality that so pervaded Corinth—in other words, the exact same challenges that beset every church.

When it comes to the gospel of the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ for the whole world—including every sinner in the Corinthian church in Paul’s day and every sinner in the pews (and pulpit) of Christ Church, Valdosta today—the more you know, the less you understand.  The unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ is so vast that what you thought you knew you have to learn again.  In the passage appointed for today the Apostle Paul gets down to the heart of the matter:

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.  For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

In response the challenges in Corinth, Paul returns the gospel, “I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you.”

Near the beginning of this letter Paul had made it clear to the church at Corinth that the focus of his eighteen month ministry tenure among them was always the gospel, always the definitive expression of the unconditional love of God for them in Jesus’ death on the cross:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.  For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1:17-18; 2:2).

Throughout this letter Paul addresses the various challenges in the church at Corinth.  Paul warns the Corinthians about the danger of the hubris among those who saw themselves as “spiritually above” the others.  He admonishes them about the divisions and cliques in the church.  He writes about the destructive consequences of their rampant sexual immorality and their taking one another to court to sue each another.  He stresses the importance of not being exclusive toward others and about receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion in a prayerful and humble manner.  He teaches about the variety of the gifts in the church and how everyone needs everyone else because we are all part of the same Body of Christ.

And in the most famous chapter of this letter, the thirteenth chapter, Paul beautifully writes about the “still more excellent way”, the way of love, agape love, self-sacrificial love, love that is patient and kind, love that does not insist on its own way, love that is not irritable or resentful, love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love that never ends.

And in today’s passage Paul returns the gospel—“I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you”—and states the heart of the matter when it comes to the unconditional love of God: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).  Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection are not a fairy tale, but actual historical events in which God revealed his unconditional love for sinners, love that never ends.

“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures”…the gospel is centered on the unconditional love of God and therefore centered on the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.  Don Henley is exactly right: the heart of the matter is indeed “forgiveness, forgiveness.”  Jesus summarized the entire law of the Old Testament scriptures in one word: love—loving God with all your heart and soul and mind—and loving your neighbor as yourself—on these two commandments “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Jesus proclaimed, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.  Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40).  Jesus said that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).

Later at the Last Supper Jesus took this a step further when he assured his disciples, “No one has greater loved than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13)—and the next day he did just that as he laid down his life for his friends…and for his enemies too—“God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  And what did Jesus pray as soon as he was nailed to cross and lifted up on the cross and left to die on the cross?  “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).  “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”

Christ was buried.  The same Nicodemus to whom Jesus had said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” helped take down Jesus’ body from the cross, helped embalm Jesus’ body with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes (John 19:39) and helped Joseph of Arimathea place Jesus’ body in a tomb hewn out for solid rock.  Christ did not faint or swoon on the cross; he died, and was buried.

And Christ “was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”  Christianity is a resurrection faith.  Christians are resurrection people.  Death is not the end of the story but the beginning of a newer and better and eternal story in which the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ becomes ever more present, ever more tangible, ever more real.  The love of God is stronger than death.

Back to Don Henley for a moment…again, he is absolutely right when he said the heart of the matter is forgiveness, because the heart of the matter of the gospel is that you are fully known, fully, loved, and yes, fully forgiven by God.  And this forgiveness does not stop with you, as Don Henley sings toward the end of “The Heart of the Matter”:

There are people in your life who’ve come and gone
They let you down
You know they’ve hurt your pride
You better put it all behind you baby
‘Cause life goes on
You keep carrying that anger
It’ll eat you up inside
I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

When it comes to the anger toward others you may be carrying inside this very moment, anger that is eating you up inside, the only antidote is forgiveness, as scripture tells us—“be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32)—“even if, even if” they don’t love you anymore.

And of course when it comes to God’s unconditional love for you, there never has been and never will be any “even if, even if” because God has always and will always love you forevermore.  It was true for the Corinthians in Paul’s day and it is true for you today.

What is “of first importance” is that Jesus Christ “died for our sins in accordance to the scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”  That is the gospel which you have received.  That is the gospel in which you stand.  That is the gospel through which you will be saved.

The heart of the matter is forgiveness.

Amen.