Sermons for the Month
Four on Corinthians (1)
DATE: February 13, 2000
SERVICE: Epiphany VI
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Last fall I departed from our regularly appointed Sunday lessons to do a four week series on the New Testament book of Philippians, one of Paul's letters. I received so much positive response that I looked ahead to when I might be able to do it again. Since Lent does not begin until the second Wednesday in March this year, I saw we a few more weeks than normal thus creating a window of opportunity before we move into the Lenten season. This time I would like to have us look at another of Paul's letters, this time his first letter to the Corinthians, a letter we have been hearing from often this winter and will again at Easter. Since time is limited, we will not have time to look at all the issues that Paul addresses. With that in mind I have selected some of the more important and applicable concerns. I suggest you read on your own the entire letter to get the full sweep of his comments on the situation at Corinth. Before we turn to Paul's letter, we need to take a moment and get acquainted with first-century Corinth and the church Paul planted here. It is a fascinating church, but it is a church with problems-big problems. We tend to idealize the original churches. We see them as models for our own church. After all, they were founded by apostles-men and women who knew Jesus and who got their ideas directly from him. But the church in Corinth is hardly a model for anybody. In fact it is a rather bizarre place. 1) The worship services had evolved into a noisy gathering as everybody tried to outdo everyone else in speaking in unknown tongues. 2) The communion service has turned into a drunken feast in which the rich eat and drink to excess while the poor had little or nothing. 3) The views of the people about sex and marriage were distorted. Open incest was tolerated. Certain wives were suggesting that perhaps it would be best if their husbands occasionally visited the temple prostitutes. And young people were urged not to marry. 4) The relationship between Christians in the church was strained to the breaking point. It was bad enough that they were divided into warring factions within the church, but they were also dragging each other into the open-air court and publicly taking each other to task. 5) Christians were going to dinner parties at the local temple with their pagan friends. That involved not only participating in a pagan worship service, but at times indulging in an orgy afterwards. The next time someone says to you (with pride in their voices): "I belong to a New Testament church'-meaning that you probably do not-you might be tempted to respond (facetiously): "Oh, you poor guy. That's too bad. How are you dealing with all that incest and immortality? Do the church members really fight a lot?' Still we must not be too quick to judge the Corinthians. They didn't know any better. They were just emerging out of paganism. As they were the first converts, they had never seen a church before. They were the first church in the region. They had had little or no contact with Christian ideas and practices. So it is not surprising that their Christian conduct was muddled at first. I think you will find it interesting to see how Paul deals with each issue they face. Their problems at points sound curiously like some of our problems. First-century Corinth, it turns out, looks suspiciously like twentieth-first century America in some ways. Let me also say, First Corinthians is a vibrant, fascinating book, pulsing with life and energy. But it is a book that will require us to work at understanding it. While Corinth is in some ways like modern America, in many other ways it is radically different. The customs are different; the mind-sets are alien to our own; the concerns are not ours. Daily life in Corinth had quite a different feel to it than what we know. We don't get our meat from priest-butchers at the local temple. We don't hold our law court proceedings outdoors in the public market place. In many of our churches the problem is not an excessive use of spiritual gifts but a lack of the use of any spiritual gifts. Not only does the fact of a different cultural setting force us to work at understanding 1 Corinthians, but so do certain translation problems. For example, 1 Corinthians 7:1 is translated: "it is good for a man not to marry." Is this Paul's position? It hardly accords with other things he has said. The phrase should probably be in quotation marks, as the slogan of the ascetic group within the Corinthian church. There is another problem in this verse. In Greek the final phrase is literally, 'not to touch a woman.' As it turns out this is a first-century euphemism for sexual intercourse, not for marriage. Unless we know this, the rest of the chapter is confusing. So we are going to have to read 1 Corinthians carefully. But it is worth the effort. Paul has much of value for us in the twenty-first century. So with this back ground, let's turn for the final few minutes to the opening verses of our text. Turning now to Paul's letter and knowing now what you do about the Corinthian church and its problems, if you had been the founding pastor, how might you have started this letter? How would you be feeling about the Corinthians? Would you tell them off right from the gitgo? Not Paul! Instead of chastising them for their un-Christlike behavior, Paul tells them they are like a family to him. He points out that they are the church of God in Corinth (despite all their wild behavior). He reminds them that they are: sanctified in Christ Jesus and are called to be holy, that they are part of a much larger Christian community. He reminds them that Jesus is both their Lord and savior. He even commends them for having all the spiritual gifts necessary to do God's work. This is pretty amazing given the major problems this church exhibited. Paul, as you know, is not one to shilly-shally around. He is not writing a pleasant little note to his Corinthian buddies about how the weather has been and the fun things he has done while traveling around. He writes because they are in trouble. They don't have it right yet. The church has some big issues confronting them, and as the founding pastor he is concerned. After these caring opening remarks, in verse 10, Paul turns to the first problem: there are divisions in the church. People have formed parties it seems under the banners of different Christian leaders. "I follow Paul. I follow Cephas. I follow Appollos. I follow Christ." All this sounds more like a New Hampshire political convention than a church. Each one was claiming they were the true group because they followed this person or that. Now this is nothing new even in our day. I often hear people say, "Well, I'm Lutheran," or "I'm Catholic" or "I'm Baptist" or "I'm a fundamentalist" all with the hint that their group is better than the other group. And it doesn't stop there. We say "I'm a liberal" or "I'm a conservative," "I'm a democrat:" or "I'm a republican" all the while implying there is something inferior about the other. We pride ourselves on aligning with certain issues, "I'm a Christian for world peace" or "freedom from hunger," or "prochoice or "anti-abortion." Or a "strong defense system." "Anti-gay." Whatever. Now I'm not implying any kind of value judgement on any of these concerns: world peace and freedom from hunger are good things. The problem comes when we translate these into a sort of prideful exclusiveness to the detriment of another. Paul says flatly these divisions are wrong in the church and they need to be dealt with. They are wrong because Christians are all baptized into one name--that of Jesus Christ--and Christ is not divided. Furthermore, Paul says, the gospel is more than just rhetoric. It is not a matter of making the most convincing argument over against all the other arguments. Indeed, the gospel is about death and failure, about a convicted criminal who died on a Roman cross like countless others before him had done. If you wanted to make a convincing case before a group of Roman citizens, you certainly wouldn't bring that up! But this is precisely Paul's point. The gospel is the power of God. It is God using weak things. It is God acting in unexpected ways. If your commitment to Christianity is merely because Paul (or Apollos or Cephas or Stan) gave a stirring address and you were convinced by the logic of his case, then you are missing the essence of the gospel. And now Paul moves into the crux of his letter--Salvation. Before we get into Paul's argument, let's talk abit about salvation. Down through the ages, salvation has meant different things to different people. For some, salvation comes by doing good things, by doing kind, just, and loving things. For some salvation equals being a good person. Others see salvation as the result of some kind of mystical experience often via a deep, inner experience often acquired through some form of meditation or fasting. Still others think of salvation as the same thing as success. If you are a success in life--regardless of how you measure it, money, friends, the number of people at your funeral, popularity--that means God was on your side. First-century Jews felt this wealth was a sign of God's favor. Many thought of salvation as coming through religious activities--a pilgrimage to a sacred place, regular attendance at worship, saying the proper words, etc. was the way to guarantee salvation. And finally, some believed salvation came from believing a certain way, doing certain things, acting a certain way. None of this was for Paul the way of salvation. On the contrary, he says, salvation comes through the cross. It involves death, not overwhelming displays of superior power. God chose the path of humility, not superiority. God has reversed all the cultural expectations and biases and showed his power through the weak, the foolish, the mundane. In fact, Paul tells them that most of them are no big deal in the estimation of their culture. If God really worked the way the Jews and the Greeks thought, they would have been at the end of the line waiting for salvation. Instead, they are at the front of the solely and completely because of Jesus Christ. They aren't especially wise or pious or strong or even smart. Yet they are Christians. In all humility, can we say anything more brothers and sisters? You know me and I know you. As we look around this room, can we honestly say that we are all that different. Don't we all have our problems, our mood swings, our deficiencies. Are we all that smart or unselfish. Don't we too play favorites and look down our noses at certain people? Are we in a position to boast to God how we deserve salvation? No in all these things, we have nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Wrapping up these first two chapters of his letter, Paul leaves us with a question. Just what is the nature of true wisdom. The first-century Corinthians were enamored of wisdom just as we are today. But instead of bookstores and the internet, they had wandering philosophers giving lectures in the market place. The problem was, however, they thought wisdom was the same as clever, human eloquence. In other words, the better the speaker, the truer the wisdom. Paul points out they have it all wrong. Wisdom does not come through clever speeches or sophisticated logic. In fact, wisdom is exactly the opposite from what you expect. It shows itself in the foolishness of the cross. Today, we struggle with the same problem. Some believe we live in a closed universe of cause and effect where what we see, feel, etc. is all there is. Others believe that human beings stand at the center of reality. Self-fulfillment. "To your own self, be true," they say. One way to avoid the problem of salvation altogether is to believe there is no real meaning to life. "Live, eat and be merry for tomorrow we die." And of course, materialism is the bane of our American existence. "Whoever has the most toys, wins!" So I leave with you this question this morning: what is true wisdom? You know Paul's answer. What is your answer? For the answer that you give determines your salvation. AMEN