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So what’s a family to do? In a family
where he is Maize and Blue and she is Green and White, what
happens when their daughter comes home to announce she is
engaged to, of all people, a Scarlet and Gray Buckeye? And
in the same week, they find out that a favorite nephew has
just been offered a full-ride scholarship to play football
for the Fighting Irish, while their darling niece takes off
for med school at Penn State! What’s a family to do when the
family reunion turns into a run for the roses?
St. Paul had the same problem. The folks
in Corinth were taking up sides, rooting for their favorite
teams:
Paul’s Party
Apollos’ Apprentices
Barnabas’ Buddies
Timothy’s Team
Silas’ Sidekicks
Like “ten cats in a burlap bag.”
I think that’s another of those
expressions I picked up in Tennessee, describing maybe the
legislature, or something like that: “…the unity of ten cats
in a burlap bag.” You get the picture. And if you don’t get
it, how about another Southern expression which carries just
a touch of arrogance: “It’s a Southern thing. You wouldn’t
understand.”
So welcome to Corinth!
Paul himself had planted the church in
this cosmopolitan seaport city of half a million people with
a notorious reputation. Douglas Wingeier says it was known
as “Sin City.” It was a busy commercial hub, reckless and
powerful, brash and bold, the intersection of races and
cultures (Roman, Greek, Jewish, Gentile, African, Arab) with
a mix of languages from all over the Mediterranean basin.
Here was the clash of great wealth and grinding poverty as
immigrants flooded the harbors and streets in search of
work.
In this melting pot, Paul gathered a
small band, most of whom he says were not rich, not
well-educated, not powerful. And from that riff-raff, he
formed a church and stayed for a year and a half. But when
he left, it looks like he was hardly out the door when all
the old rivalries and conflicts surfaced again. The
Wolverines were at the Spartans’ throats, the Buckeyes were
baiting both of them, and the Fighting Irish were claiming
their special place in heaven, right alongside “Touchdown
Jesus.”
So Paul sends them several letters. He
wrote at least one painful letter, a letter written in
tears, he says. Perhaps it’s just as well we don’t have that
one. But we do have two letters of encouragement and
challenge, letters passionate with love, stern in
discipline, and inspiring in spirit. In these letters he
tries to focus their lives on their central mission, their
calling to follow Jesus Christ, to be more than just a
collection of individuals, the calling together in their
life in Christ.
In a recent survey of healthy churches,
the researchers found that one of the primary
characteristics was “…how church members relate to each
other. Unhealthy churches are a collection of people acting
individually, while healthy churches relate as a community.”
(“Transforming Churches” by Kevin G. Ford, quoted by Kent
Millard, St. Luke’s UMC, Communion, Sept. 2007, page
24)
In short, we are called to be more
than “ten cats in a burlap bag.” We are called to be a
Christian Community.
I’ve got two lessons to share with you
this morning. To do so, I need to take you back forty years
to when I was a freshman at Asbury College, a school
well-known for its spiritual fervor, sending out young men
and women who are both well-educated and spiritually
grounded. The old slogan back then was that at Asbury they
“take in heels, mend their soles, and send them out in
pairs.” At least I got the last part right. I found a
wonderful wife.
To make a complicated story short, we had
four presidents in the four years I was at Asbury. While
other college campuses were aflame over the Vietnam War and
Civil Rights, we were fighting over a poorly-chosen
president and divisions in the community, creating
incredible turmoil in the student body and faculty. All of
this, of course, was surrounded by a cloak of
spirituality—prayer meetings and political plotting,
underground newspapers and Bible verses. Frankly, it was a
whole lot like the church in Corinth.
The first lesson I learned was “be
careful about claiming to know God’s will.” Everyone
seemed to think they knew exactly what God wanted in the
situation, and I guess it taught me to be a bit tentative
about making that claim. But that is another sermon for
another text and another time.
1. Today’s first lesson is about unity in diversity.
I don’t know who said it then or who said
it first. When I googled the phrase, it took me all the way
back to Nicholas of Cusa in 1464. But it was the lesson I
needed as a college freshman, and it’s the lesson I try to
relearn on a regular basis. It’s the lesson Paul tries to
teach the Corinthians: “Unity does not demand
uniformity.” In fact, St. Paul invites us to go a step
further and actually celebrate diversity. St. Paul’s
favorite image for the church is that of a body, with all
its different and distinct parts, yet one in Christ. Unity
in diversity.
Yesterday’s New York Times had a
front page article about the Baptist church in Clarkston,
Georgia, just outside Atlanta, which has become a melting
pot of international diversity as immigrants move into the
town. The church has gone from being all white to a mixture
of races and nationalities. The pastor said: “Jesus said
heaven is a place for people of all nations, so if you don’t
like Clarkston, you won’t like heaven.” (New York Times,
Sept. 22, 2007)
Right alongside it, I read the story of
racial tensions in another small town in the South. And I
couldn’t help but think: “How tragic. Whatever the facts of
the case, how tragic that on the same weekend we mark the
145th anniversary of the Emancipation
Proclamation, we are still dealing with racial strife in
America.”
And I
thought about my days at Asbury College. Amid all the
fighting and feuding, I remember a brass plaque on the wall
quoting one of the school’s most famous alumni, E. Stanley
Jones:
Here we enter a fellowship. Sometimes we
will agree to differ. Always, we will resolve to love and
unite to serve.
And in a day when diversity can become
divisive, I am glad to be part of a church which honors
diversity—where unity does not demand uniformity, where we
cherish each other as unique children of God. I celebrate a
church which really is a fellowship—where we may agree to
differ, but we will always resolve to love and unite to
serve.
The
first lesson from St. Paul is about unity in diversity:
“Unity does not demand uniformity.”
2. Second lesson: Be careful what you put at the center.
At Asbury in those days, I learned the
difference between the center and the circumference. Well,
actually I had learned it long before, but I came to
appreciate it in a new way.
I asked my elementary-school-principal
wife if kids in school still use the compass. You know, a
compass is that two-pronged thingy with a sharp point on one
end and a pencil stuck in the other. You put the pointer in
the center of the page and then you can make a perfect
circle with any size radius and diameter. You can draw a
little tiny circle—exclusive, restricting, small and
limiting—or you can stretch the compass and make a large
circle going as far as your compass will reach. But it makes
all the difference where you put the point, and how far you
are willing to reach. There’s a big difference between the
center and the circumference. Some things need to be at the
center. Other things ought to be on the circumference. Some
things matter deeply; other things are peripheral.
It
matters what you put at the center.
As much as I loved Asbury College, I have
to say, back then there were lots of things at the center
which should have been at the circumference. Now remember,
it was the ’60s. It’s hard to realize it now, in our day of
buzz cuts and bald heads, but back then at Asbury we were
fussing over men’s hair being too long (it couldn’t touch
your ears or your collar) and women’s skirts being too short
(they had to touch your knees). And you could only wear
shorts on the athletic field, which means you had to wear
sweat pants or slacks over your gym shorts, then take off
your pants when you got to the football field! Quite a sight
in itself! There was no mixed swimming in the pool. No
couples were allowed out on campus after 6:15 p.m. We were
majoring on minors and missing the point of Christian
Community. It matters what you put at the center!
St.
Paul puts his pointer right at the center of all the
Corinthians’ diversity and disputes:
We preach Christ crucified—a stumbling
block to some and folly to others, but for us, the very
power of God.
(and)
For I decided to know nothing among you
except Jesus Christ and he crucified.
Of course, he then goes on and addresses
everything from sexual immorality and speaking in tongues,
church politics and poverty, worship styles and wealth,
marriage and family and singleness, lawsuits and liturgy. He
touches on all the issues of the day. But he knew the
difference between the center and the circumference, and he
made clear what was at the center: to know Jesus Christ and
him crucified.
Even as we speak, one of our sister
churches—actually, the church of John Wesley, the church in
which he lived and died, the Episcopal Church—is going
through inner struggle and turmoil. Archbishop of Canterbury
Rowan Williams was in the U.S. this week, meeting with the
Bishops to try to hold the church together. Williams once
said:
The slogan of the church ought to be ‘not
without the other;’ no ‘I’ without ‘you,’ no ‘I’ without
‘we.’
He says this does not mean a kind of numb
“herd mentality.” It doesn’t mean everyone’s individuality
is submerged, or that differences no longer exist. He is not
calling for “drab sameness.” But rather, he says believing
in the church means believing that the other person is a
unique gift God has given you to live with. It is the
radical vision of a community of people who, in all their
differences and diversity, are “immersed in the life of
Jesus and invited to eat with Jesus.” (Rowan Williams, “In
God’s Company,” Christian Century, June 12, 2007,
page 23)
Unity in diversity.
With Christ at the center.
Tonight begins another Ken Burns TV
classic on World War II. Some of you were there. Perhaps no
site in England better represents the war and its aftermath
than Coventry Cathedral. The old cathedral was destroyed in
the great blitz, nothing left but ruins. When it came time
to build a new cathedral, instead of clearing the land, they
left some of the old ruins standing and built the new
cathedral beside it, as a witness to the devastation of war
and as a witness for peace. So you literally walk through
the bombed-out remains of the old cathedral to enter the
glorious new one.
Steven Verney, the pastor at the time,
told the story of the new cathedral in a little book called
Fire in Coventry. He writes:
The cathedral was burnt, and out of the
ruins sprang new life, and the opportunity to discover in
the 20th century what God really wills his church
to be.
One tiny transformation is symbolic of
the rest—our new cathedral is not exclusively Anglican, but
holds within it a “Chapel of Unity.” So we must be ready to
meet and learn from each other.
God’s demands are terrifying, and even
more terrifying is his demand that we should love one
another. But most terrifying of all is his invitation to let
go, and to fall into his hands, so that he may take us,
bless us, and break us, and give us to each other.
(Stephen Verney, Fire in Coventry,
page 64)
I like
that. A chapel of unity right at the center.
And once again, I celebrate a church that knows what’s at
the center.
A church where unity underlies our
diversity. A church focused on Christ and him crucified. A
church truly seeking to be:
…one in the Spirit, one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are one
in the Lord.
A church where we pray that all unity
will someday be restored.
Where others will know we are
Christians by our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by
our love. |
