“Whad’ya Know? III: Our Labor Is Not in Vain, or

Fighting with the Bees”

September 6, 2009

I Corinthians 15:53-58

In Paul’s letters to the early churches he often writes about what he knows, what he hopes to know, and what he tries to know. Paul helps us in our own pursuit of knowledge. He helps us as we seek to live faithful lives whether we are in school or out of school. So in these early weeks of the academic year, we’re listening to some of Paul’s answers to the question: “Whad’ya know?” in the scripture lessons.

On this Sunday before Labor Day we hear some good news: “You know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

Whad’ya Know? Our labor is not in vain.”

A couple of months ago one of the networks carried a news story about some bees that got into a church in Kansas. Actually, it wasn’t just “some” bees, it was seventy thousand bees. During their stay at this church they produced over forty pounds of honey. The film that accompanied the story showed scenes of honey dripping down the walls.

These bees were something to deal with. A beekeeper was stung twenty times as he tried to get rid of the insects.

Then they turned on the pastor. There he was on national TV running around, waving his arms, trying to fend off the bees. He, too, was stung many times.

It reminded me of something Abraham Lincoln once said. And, since I’m from Illinois, you know that the words of Lincoln have an almost biblical authority for me. Reflecting on preaching and preachers, Lincoln said: “I don’t like to hear cut-and-dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!”

Well, at least that minister in Kansas had some experience at that.

Fighting with the bees. Preaching like that might indeed be entertaining—the wild thrashing and beating at the air of a person surrounded by bees certainly captures our attention. It puts a little action in the sermon.

This reminds me of this preacher I used to watch on TV out in Connecticut. Walking back and forth up on the platform in front of the congregation, he looked, as Garrison Keillor once said of another minister, like a caged lion, pacing back and forth.

Fighting with bees. A caged lion. It’s wonderful to watch. Great entertainment.

But I think that Lincoln was getting at something deeper than just the entertainment value of a sermon. Even if we’re not moving about in some out of control way, when we who preach do our best, we recognize the danger and the significance of getting up into a place like this and speaking.

Preparing a sermon can feel like fighting with bees. One looks at the larger world and the much-loved world of the congregation, and then at the so often obscure and puzzling world of the Bible and tries to make some connection. And just when you think that the words of scripture are soothing and comforting, they seem to turn on you like a swarm of bees, calling your deepest certainties into question.

I suspect most ministers would agree that we are fighting with bees even as we speak. The anxiety that accompanies our speaking of the Holy One means that most clergy understand the minister in the novel who said: “I threw up when they said unto me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Sure, we’d like preaching to be easy, or entertaining, but we recognize that the danger of being stung is great. Perhaps we should enter the pulpit, not in black robes, but dressed in the hat, netting, and gloves of bee-keepers.

And maybe that’s what we should all wear—because that’s what life is like for all of us. We’re all fighting with bees.

We’re all dealing with distractions and difficulties and dangers.

Whether we preach or not, most people feel as if they’re fighting bees. And some of us look that way as well. The dangers and the challenges that surround us are many and we keep swatting at them in the hope that we might be kept safe.

In his First Letter to the church in Corinth, Paul gets right to the point, acknowledging that the great sting we fear is the sting of death.

There are those who would tell us that death is something to be embraced. But Paul writes out of a love for this world and this life that sees death as an enemy—the final enemy, working against life and all the good that living brings. Paul would probably agree with the famous advice of the poet Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The good news—the good news that we often forget—is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus, this enemy has been defeated. In Jesus Christ, God began the process of redeeming all of creation—began the process of redeeming you and me. As part of God’s new creation, we take death seriously for what it is. And at the same time, we know that resurrection—not death—resurrection is the final word.

In a culture that evades telling the truth about death, the good news of the resurrection is as refreshing as a cold front on a humid summer day. Richard Hays teaches down at Duke Divinity School, where they know their theology as well as their basketball. He puts it frankly, saying: “If asked, ‘What do we hope for after death?’ many devout Christians would answer with sentimental notions of their souls going to heaven and smiling back down on the earth. Such ideas have virtually no basis in the Bible….The predominant future hope of the New Testament writers is precisely the same as the hope presented here by Paul: the resurrection of the body at the end of this age.”

In Jesus Christ we are part of God’s new creation—a creation of life.

This is the good news: The victory over this last enemy, the victory over the sting of death is certain.

And that victory influences how we live now.

Paul tells the early Christians—and tells us: “Be steadfast, immovable.”

In the light of the resurrection, we are called to stand firm in the face of the winds and experience that can blow against us. The harsh judgments of others, or the adversity that comes with taking a principled but unpopular stand, or the simple bad breaks of life might threaten to crush your spirit. God, however, has begun something good in you and in the world and will bring it to completion.

The New York Times recently ran a story about Justin Schmidt, an entomologist in Arizona who is an authority in the field of insect stings. He’s been stung—though never on purpose—by about 150 different species on six continents. The article said that “A harvester ant ‘felt like somebody was putting a knife in and twisting it.’ A wasp known in the American Southwest as the “tarantula hawk’ made Schmidt lie down and scream.”

The truth, however, is that most insect stings do no damage at all, except to the two percent of the population who suffer an allergic reaction. Stings just scare us, so that, as Schmidt says, “people flap their arms, run around screaming, and do all kinds of carrying on.” That is to say, they look a lot like preachers.

Bears, on the other hand, figure out that the bees are just bluffing and put up with the pain of stings in order to get the honey from the hive. The Times article concludes: “There’s probably a life less in that—you will do better once you learn to distinguish between the things that will kill you and the ones that merely sting.”

Because of the way that God acts in us and among us, to be immovable is not to be stiff and resistant. It is to be flexible and resilient, active and involved—knowing what kills and what merely stings.

As the people whom God is transforming, we are called to abound in the work of God.

You can give with abundance; you can love with abandon. You can give yourself to those you love, to the causes that claim your heart. You can walk in the way of peace in a world that celebrates violence; you can work for justice in a world that favors privilege; you can speak the truth in a world that prefers easy lies. You can laugh and sing and dance—maybe a little more than you would otherwise.

Why would we dare to do any of this? Paul says it is because of what we know. Listen again to how he put this. It’s not just what Paul knows. He writes: “You know that in the resurrected Christ your labor is not in vain.” The good that we do does not end with our defeat or even with our death. By God’s power our works continue, still bearing fruit.

N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham, put it better than anyone else when he wrote: “The resurrection of Jesus means that this present time is shot through with great significance. What is done to the glory of God in the present is genuinely building for God’s future. Acts of justice and mercy, the creation of beauty and the celebration of truth, deeds of love and the creation of communities of kindness and forgiveness—these all matter, and they matter forever. Take away the resurrection, and these things are important for the present but irrelevant for the future and hence not all that important after all even now. Enfolded in this vocation to build now…the things that will last into God’s new age, is the vocation to holiness: to the fully human life, reflecting the image of God that is made possible by Jesus’ victory on the cross and that is energized by the Spirit of the risen Jesus present within communities and persons.”

This is what we know: what you are doing here matters. Whether you are here for four years or forty, whether you are just starting your career, or at its height, or retired, your work is worth doing.

We’re all fighting with the bees. Sometimes we’re terrified. Sometimes we look a little silly. As we continue to distinguish between what will kill us and what will merely sting, we hear again the amazing good news that even the sting of death is not what we might expect it to be.

So we continue. We move forward in our work because it is of value in God’s now and in God’s eternity.

“Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord.”

Whad’ya know?

Our labor is not in vain.