Strength in Weakness: A Summer in Corinth

 

Launching Trinity Sunday, May 31

Beginning Trinity Sunday and stretching all the way through the Sunday before Labor Day, we will spend the summer working our way chapter-by-chapter and verse-by-verse, through Paul's first and second epistles to the Corinthians.  Across fifteen Sundays we will cover all twenty-nine chapters.  Paul’s message is one that our anxious age needs to hear: strength in weakness.

A Church You'll Recognize

If you have ever wondered whether the New Testament has anything to say to a culture like ours, Corinth is the place to begin.  It was a wealthy port city sitting on a narrow strip of land between two seas, with trade routes from every direction crossing in its markets.  It had a diverse population of Romans, Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Egyptians, and travelers from across the empire.  It was “The Empire in miniature.”  It had temples on every corner, a reputation for moral looseness so notorious that “to Corinthianize” had become a verb in the Greek language, and a young church trying to figure out how to follow Jesus in the middle of all of it.

The issues this church grappled with should sound very familiar:  arguments about leadership and big personalities, litigiousness, worship style differences, debates about sexual ethics, disagreements about money, questions about the truth and spirituality.  Paul’s letters address them all from a gospel POV.

Why “Strength in Weakness”?

The thread that runs through both letters, and that gives our series its name, is counterintuitive.   Paul says that God's wisdom looks foolish to the world, that God's power is made perfect in human weakness, and that the cross which seemed like ultimate defeat was the moment of God's greatest triumph.  Christ “was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God.” (2 Corinthians 13:4)

This is not a series about how to become stronger by the world’s standards.  It isn’t a “how to” of sermons for becoming more impressive, polished, and successful.  It is a series about how God meets us where we are weakest and most vulnerable.  It is about how God uses our doubts, our fractured relationships, our failures, our grief, our bodies that are wearing out, and our sense that we are not enough to establish his resurrection life.  This is first-century wisdom for twenty-first-century spirituality.

The Summer at a Glance

Here is the full preaching calendar so you can plan ahead, mark your Bible, and invite friends to the Sundays that intrigue you most:

• May 31 — Spiritual Foolishness (1 Cor. 1–2)

• June 7 — Powerful Wisdom for a Foolish Age (1 Cor. 3–4)

• June 14 — The Not-Good Stuff People Do (1 Cor. 5–6)

• June 21 — Practical Advice for a Godly Life (1 Cor. 7–8)

• June 28 — Freedom Is Not Moral License (1 Cor. 9–10)

• July 5 — Coming Together as a Church (1 Cor. 11–12)

• July 12 — Love and Consequences (1 Cor. 13–14)

• July 19 — The Very Best Really Great News (1 Cor. 15–16)

• July 26 — Yes and No (2 Cor. 1)

• August 2 — Heart Tablets (2 Cor. 2–3)

• August 9 — What Ambassadors Do (2 Cor. 4–5)

• August 16 — Frankly Speaking (2 Cor. 6–7)

• August 23 — Testing Your Love (2 Cor. 8–9)

• August 30 — Bold Humility (2 Cor. 10–11)

• September 6 — The Third Time (2 Cor. 12–13)

How to Get the Most Out of the Summer

A sermon series like this rewards the listener who comes prepared.  Three simple ways to make the most of these months together:

Read ahead.  Each week's passage is printed above. Crack open your Bible Saturday night or Sunday morning before worship and read the chapters we'll be covering.  You'll be amazed how much more you notice in the sermon when you have already met the text on your own.

Come consistently.  Expository preaching builds.  Each Sunday assumes what came before.  The chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13 hits very differently for the person who has already encountered the divisions (fights?) in chapter 1 and the worship wars in chapter 11.  Summer is a season of travel and rest.  (Do both!) …but when you are in town, be in the pew.

Bring a friend.  The questions Paul wrestled with in Corinth are the questions our neighbors are quietly wrestling with right now.  Someone in your life is looking for a word about suffering, about purpose, about whether the gospel has anything real to say.  Invite them.  Bring them.  Tell them what you are learning.

An Invitation

The Corinthians were not the most distinguished church in the New Testament.  Paul reminded them that not many of them were wise by worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  Most of us, yours truly included, would have fit right in.  And yet it was to this church that Paul wrote the Love Chapter, a wonderful defense of the resurrection, and a deeply personal description of what it means to follow a crucified Lord.

That is good news for us.  The Corinthians were ordinary people, struggling people, sometimes embarrassing people, and God did extraordinary work among them.  God is ready to do the same here, this summer, in our sanctuary, through the Word.

Come hungry. The table is being set.

See you Trinity Sunday.