Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19 I Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
About two years after Jesus’ crucifixion, Paul, at the time named Saul, was on the road to Damascus. He had just overseen the stoning of the apostle and first Christian martyr, Stephen, and was heading to Damascus to rout any believers of The Way to bring them bound back to Jerusalem. As he was riding along on his horse, a light from the heavens fell around him, blinding him, and a voice from God asked him why he was persecuting him. Saul went without sight for three days and nights at which point God sent Ananias to him to witness to him about what the Lord had done. The scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he was baptized in The Way.
The conversion of Paul is vital to the evangelism of the faith. Though Peter is the rock upon which the church is built, Paul is the mechanism by which the faith is spread to both Jews and—maybe more importantly—Gentiles as well. Paul’s conversion experience seems rather extreme—being blinded by the light—but it is a foretaste of the challenges and difficulties he will face in the next few years as he works to spread the faith. As zealous as Saul was to stamp out The Way, once he converts and becomes Paul he is even more zealous to spread The Way.
Over the course of Paul’s ministry, he embarks on three evangelical tours. The first of these tours will take him to Corinth in an attempt to establish a church there. In chapter 18 of the book, The Acts of the Apostles, the story of Paul’s work and the establishment of that church are described.
Paul arrives in Corinth after a mildly successful mission trip to Athens in which he created more enemies than believers. But Paul is undaunted. He makes a few contacts with those who become sympathetic to his words and then starts showing up at the synagogue to try and convince both Jews and Greeks. His efforts fail. At one point Paul will get so frustrated, that he shakes the dust from his robes and declares that “From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Though he leaves the synagogue, Crispus, the official of the synagogue, becomes a believer. Paul baptizes him and they work to evangelize other Corinthians.
Paul stays in Corinth a year and a half to establish the church there. Toward the end of his tenure, the Jews who had not converted to The Way make an attack against him and bring him before the tribunal. The tribunal, Gallio, dismisses the case citing his responsibilities to Rome, not the Jews. But it is enough for Paul to realize his time has come to move forward with his work of evangelism. As Paul leaves Corinth (and what he will later describe as his “painful visit”
there), he does so in good faith that a foundation for the church of The Way has been laid and says farewell to the believers—entrusting them and empowering them with building up the faith.
Fast forward and we learn that there has been continued difficulty and opposition experienced by the church in Corinth. Some of that is due to external pressures on the believers, but the greater threat to the church there is internal. Factions have arisen and the people of The Way have become divided. Some say that they belong to Paul, others say the belong to Apollos or to Cephas (Peter) or to Christ. They all believe in Jesus as the way, but the paths they are choosing to follow vary from one another. This division in the church in Corinth then becomes the reason for Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. It is considered the most valuable letter that Paul writes not simply because of the “Good News” it contains in witnessing to Jesus Christ but because it paints a picture of the challenges a local church in the midst of the first century faced and the Christian ethic defined for how the church might thrive.
Paul spends the bulk of this letter dealing with the quarrels between the various Christians. Never does he address any particular quarrel, nor does he take sides. Instead, Paul admonishes all of them—not to shame them—but to help them reimagine what community truly is and why it is so important to stay connected to one another.
Our reading this morning explores one of Paul’s best metaphors for this need to remain connected to one another. He uses the imagery of the body—the human body—and how each of the parts relies on and is effected by all the other parts of the body. “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.” He then goes on to list those parts and how they contribute to the whole—if the whole body was an eye, how could it hear anything? If the whole body was an ear, how could it smell anything? And no part of the body can tell another part of the body that it doesn’t need it—all the different parts are important and together find completeness and purpose in one another. So, too, are we all baptized into the one body of Christ.
We need one another. Paul recognizes this—“Jew or Greeks, slaves or free.” Today we might say, Episcopalians or Baptists, republicans or democrats—we are all part of the one body. Like Paul, we are called to draw the body together and protect it from the divisions that would tear it, and us, apart. In order to do so, we must recognize the roll we play in those divisions. Without assigning blame and judgment, shame and guilt we must recognize and appreciate that all are drawn into life with the desire to be free from suffering, fear, and anger and to know peace and joy—that is our common humanity. That common humanity extends to kings and
presidents, immigrants and children. When we lose that, we lose the very essence of our soul that has been gifted us by God.
But Paul is not simply making a case about our need for one another—it is also about how we are ordered together. Our ordered life depends upon us as individuals connecting one to another. That greater ordering of life brings creativity and vitality. It is the disorder and chaos that leads to destruction and division.
We live in divisive times. Those times did not begin last Monday or even eight years ago. They have been building, systematically, over years with a significant increase in the speed of our divisions since the advent of social media. No one is to blame or maybe everyone is to blame—as our human nature is want to do, those things that are meant to connect us become twisted up and broken and allow our sinful nature to override our better angels at times. To cast fingers and assign blame because we hold different values and beliefs in no way serves to further the mission of Christ.
For some reason we’ve gotten that mission wrong. We have been led astray to think that the life of Jesus is about winning when in truth, it is about salvation. Just ask Paul—he was winning as a Jew persecuting and stoning those of The Way and after his conversion he met defeat upon defeat as he was arrested time and again by the political authority and harassed by the religious authority. He established churches which soon lost their way—as they faced immeasurable odds and challenges—but he did not give up on them and instead patiently admonished them not that they would feel shame but that they might be accountable to Christ through their relationships with one another. Paul never writes to one of his churches to tell them that they have been judged and condemned because they are unworthy, instead in their unworthiness he reminds them that Christ died for them because he loved them and offered his life for our salvation.
Paul reminds the church at Corinth that they are only as strong as they are connected in a fellowship of Christ with one another. He reminds the Corinthians that their strength as a community is necessary to face the external threats to The Way. He tells them, “When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly.” (I Cor. 4:12b-13a). We do not win by fighting what we hate, we are saved by holding on to what we love.
That is who Jesus Christ was and is and always will be. Any message other than a message of love, is not of Christ. As Christians, we are called to love—to love one another, the poor, the marginalized, those who we disagree with, those who have no power and those who misuse their power. We are to love everyone without exception.
At the end of Paul’s admonishment to the church in Corinth, and by proxy to us, to remember and live as one body, he also reminds us that we are individual members of that body. As individuals, we have each been given certain gifts that help build up the body. Instead of trying to control one another’s gifts or coveting them, we are to “strive for the greater gifts…and a still more excellent way.” That way is the way of love. Paul ends his admonishment of us by pointing us to love. Chapter 13 of this letter to the Corinthians is known as the “love chapter” and it reminds us that love is patient and kind, it is not rude or boastful, it does not resent but rejoices in truth. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
“Love never ends.”
Love is not about winning or losing, right or wrong. It is about being connected. We have a choice–we can stone one another or we can love one another.
Amen