January 23, 2011 (3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
1. Jesus once said, “Wherever two or more are gathered, I am there with them.” This saying has led to a couple of pretty pointed jokes. My favorite is, Wherever two Presbyterians are gathered, there will be at least three opinions.” And it’s not just Presbyterians—Christians in general have a terrible time agreeing on things. Churches, ostensibly places of worship and service, are hotbeds of argument and disagreement. Lest we think that this is a modern-day phenomenon, we have Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth to show that congregations have been fighting with each other since the very dawn of our religion.
Paul writes his letter to the Corinthians because he has heard through the grapevine that they have been fighting with each other. While we can’t be 100% positive of the cause of their conflict, it seems that different factions have been forming in the church based on people’s commitments to especially gifted preachers. These Corinthian Greeks, who had long valued flowery rhetoric, have been sweet-talked by the honey-tongued early preachers. Then, to drive it home, some had the opportunity to be baptized by their preacher of choice. And so they would brag: I belong to Paul, I belong to Peter, I belong to Apollos, and so on. It reminds me of when I was in the fifth grade. A little boy in my class asked me where we went to church and I said the Presbyterian Church. He said, without guile, “You ought to go to the Baptist Church. We’re closer to God!”
2. I laugh at what my little friend said to me now. But the truth remains, and I know it all too well: different churches and factions in the greater Christian Church continue to fight and disagree and consider themselves more holy or more correct. And, within every congregation of Christians, of any denomination, there are conflicts and factions and ill will one towards the other. Some of the reasons for these conflicts are “religious” while others have to do with personalities, political disagreements, and sometimes the smallest petty things. As I was preparing this sermon, I realized that Paul was an outside observer of the church in Corinth. He could see their disagreements with some objectivity and thus give them some pretty straight advice. I wondered, then, if First Presbyterian Church of Alton were observed from the outside by someone like Paul, what would he or she say to us about divisions and disagreements in this congregation? What squabbles or differences of opinion or disagreements would be highlighted in his or her letter to us? Since I’ve been here, I personally feel that some conflicts in this church have healed to a great extent. But we must be on our guard. And the problem, as we see from 1 Corinthians, is not mere disagreement between people of good will. That kind of disagreement is part of the rich human experience. The problem, rather, is when these disagreements lead to factions in the church. When some people band together and compete against other people, we have to ask with Paul: “Has the cross been divided?” When I got here to this church, I read reports and comments from the mission study. Some comments, sadly, suggested that there were factions in this congregation that had stooped even to making threats to leave the church if certain decisions were made. Like I said, I think a lot of healing has occurred during the past two years, but this kind of competition divides the cross. When we are at cross purposes we ignore the purpose of the cross. 3. The Greek word for household is “oikoumene.” The Christian Church quickly adopted this word to refer to the larger Christian household around the world. Early Christians and Christians today have affirmed that we belong together. This word “oikoumene” is the root for at least two English words today. The first is “ecumenical,” which of course refers to interdenominational cooperation. The ecumenical movement seeks out ways for the world’s Christians to work together. But the other word from oikoumene, which is more provocative, is “economy.” The Greek oikoumene, or household, is the root for understanding economy, or how we function with the resources that we have at our disposal. Our economy is our system of assigning value. For example, in a monetary economy like ours, we have agreed together to give value to little green papers in our wallets and purses. But in God’s economy, what creates value? In God’s oikoumene, household, economy, on what do we agree that ties us together. Professor of New Testament Daniel Kirk writes, “We discover in 1 Corinthians that the cross creates its own economy. The cross transforms the value of our actions and status. Because of the cross we must learn to view the world differently.”
4. So what is the value of the cross? If we were to form our household, our economy, on the value of the cross, what would that value be? Partisanship in the church, as Paul says, “empties the cross of its power.” How so? Because the cross should be what unites all of us together. It should be our central focus. It should be our common currency. And the cross means:
- Self-sacrificial love. The cross means putting aside your own need to be right or to have power or to be in the right group. And it means joining Christ in caring more about love for others than consolidating your own position. This goes for life in the church just as much as it goes for life in your family. The cross revalues how married people treat each other, how friends see each other, and even how political and religious opponents carry out their business.
- Giving of yourself to others not out of a spirit of obligation or victimhood or self-serving martyrdom but out of joy and thanksgiving for the community of love that God has given us. No greater love is this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Likewise, as in Corinth and in Alton, no greater love than to be united in the cross of Christ in the church, despite differences of opinion or emphasis.
- An invitation to a whole new way of life. Saint Augustine famously wrote that there are two cities, the earthly city and the city of God. We must, by the power of the cross, find our citizenship in God’s city rather than the back-biting, coercive, anxiety-producing cities and economies of human life. We are called by Christ to rely fully on his cross.
5. And let’s not be mistaken. It’s ok for us to disagree with each other. We can be Democrats and Republicans. We can Cardinals and Cubbies. We can be in love with traditional worship and we can be attracted by other forms of praise. We can be conservative and we can be liberal. We can even have varying visions for the future of this congregation. But we can’t be partisan. We can’t say that those kinds of issues will decide whether we stay or go from the church. Again, Professor Kirk writes, “For Paul, the ramifications of party spirit are nothing less than a denial of the gospel itself. The story says that Christ is crucified, and when we act as though anything else (or anyone else) defines who we are then we deny the story of our salvation.” We are people of the cross. We are to be of one mind and one purpose, and that purpose is the cross of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray:
Holy God, help us to love each other with the same love that you have for us. Unite us in mission even as you bless us each with unique gifts and interests. Let all who witness us know that we are one in you. By the power of the name of Jesus. Amen.
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