Sermon 2/19/17
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Us and Them: Agreeing and Disagreeing
I was visiting with a parishioner
yesterday, and she was telling me how she mostly watches sport on TV because
she doesn’t think there’s anything else on worth watching. She said, “I thought
it would be better once the election is over, but…” and she let her sentence
trail off. I’m sure we can easily fill in the rest for her. We thought tensions
would ebb – but there is so much fear, so much anger, so much pain, so much
hurt, so much division. I have strong political views, and I’m sure many of you
do as well, but I’ve found myself wanting to disengage lately, even where I’m
passionate about issues, because the level of meanness is exhausting. I’ve noticed that a handful of my friends
have quit facebook altogether lately. Somehow we think that our words and actions
online don’t count, and people seem free to be hurtful online in a way they
remember not to in “real life.” I’m not giving up on facebook, but I will admit
that I’ve used the “hide” feature more than once, allowing me to not see posts
from people who have nothing nice to say. I’m weary. We talked last Sunday
about our call to live out our baptismal vows, to seek justice and extend
welcome in God’s name. But it is hard to act, to stay faithful and strong when
it feels like everyone is getting clobbered out there in the world. I’m not naïve,
and I don’t expect or even want us to all be of one mind and one voice. But I’m
saddened and fearful when I see that disagreement turn into fights turn into
wars.
And so today, we turn back to 1 Corinthians, the book we were
looking at this fall when we talked about our theme “Church Can Happen
Anywhere.” The Corinthians are the perfect community to think about when we
need to look at conflict and God’s call to us in the midst of turmoil and
division. Our passage for today comes from near the very beginning of 1
Corinthians. Paul doesn’t waste any time getting to the point of his letter to
this new faith community. After nine verses of greeting and blessing, he jumps
right in: “I appeal to you, in the name of Jesus: be in agreement with each
other. Don’t have divisions among you. Be united in the same mind and the same
purpose.” He goes on to describe that he’s heard reports from some of Chloe’s
people. We don’t know anything much about Chloe – this is the only place her
name is mentioned. But the verse suggests that she was a person of some
significance or leadership in the church at Corinth. At any rate, Chloe’s
people want Paul to know what’s been going on in Corinth.
In the early faith communities, one particular leader would
be the founder – the first person who came to the place to share the message of
Jesus and the good news about God’s grace. But that person would move on to
other communities, and other teachers and preachers would eventually come and
visit with the fledgling church. Apparently, at least three people have had an
impact on the community at Corinth – Paul, Apollos, and Cephas – who we know
better by his Hebrew name Simon Peter. All of them have been through Corinth
and taught the people there about Jesus and how to be followers of Jesus. But
something troubling has happened. People in Corinth have started identifying more with the messenger of the good news than with the message, and so instead of being followers of Jesus, people are
claiming that they are followers of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. Each of these
teachers would have had a unique way of sharing the message – just like no
pastor you’ve had here is the same – but people are starting to divide and
align themselves with whichever teacher they liked best.
Paul very quickly lets them know that this is not the way to
go about things. “Has Christ been divided,” he asks, or “was Paul crucified for you? Were you
baptized in the name of Paul?” The
unspoken resounding answer to all of these questions is, of course, NO. Paul
says he was sent to proclaim the good news, but that his preaching wasn’t full
of eloquent wisdom. This is a good thing though, he concludes, because then
people know that the power of the message he shares is from Jesus and the
cross, not from Paul himself. The message of Jesus and the cross might seem
like foolishness to those who haven’t received it, who don’t understand the
strength of Jesus offering his life for us – but when we get it, when we
believe and understand – the message of Jesus is the saving power of God. Grounded
in the message of Jesus, Paul spends the whole rest of the letter urging the
Corinthians to work for reconciliation, and healing of conflict and division.
Last week I shared with you John
Wesley’s words from his sermon Catholic
Spirit. He asked if we could be of one heart, even if we were not of one
opinion. I want to tell you a bit more about the sermon those words come from.
Wesley was preaching on a passage from 2 Kings. In the passage, we meet a man
named Jehu who has been anointed by the prophet Elisha as the next king of
Israel. Jehu is on a mission to stop the worship of the god Baal, and to
destroy a temple to Baal, so that Israel will be faithful to God once again. On
his way to confront the priests of Baal, he meets a man named Jehonadab on the
road. Jehonadab is a Kenite, not an Israelite. He has some different ways of
worshiping God, and he has a different lifestyle from Jehu and the Israelites.
But he’s somewhat of a sage, a wise counselor among his people. Jehu sees him
and says to him: “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours?” And
Jehonadab answers, “It is.” And so Jehu says, “If it is, give me your hand.” Jehonadab
does, and together, they go to return Israel to a faithful worship of God.
It is this exchange of words that
Wesley uses as the centerpiece of his sermon. Wesley writes, "’If it be,
give me thy hand.’ I do not mean, ‘Be of my opinion.’ You need not: I do not
expect or desire it. Neither do I mean, ‘I will be of your opinion.’ I cannot,
it does not depend on my choice: I can no more think, than I can see or hear,
as I will. Keep you your opinion; I mine; and that as steadily as ever. You
need not even endeavor to come over to me, or bring me over to you … Let all
opinions alone on one side and the other: only ‘give me thine hand.’”
Wesley sees a lot of room for being
in relationship with one another even where opinions are very different. This was
an important topic for him to think about, because he was long-engaged in a
struggle with his own church, the Church of England, about theology and worship
practices, and engaged in a struggle with his own Methodist movement about
whether or not the Americas should break away from England to be their own
people and own faith movement. Still, Wesley didn’t believe that relationships could flourish without solid common
ground. That’s the “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours” part.
Here’s how Wesley interpreted these words. He asks: Is your heart right with
God? Do you believe in God and God’s perfection? Do you believe in Jesus? Is
Jesus revealed in your soul? Does he dwell in your heart? Is your faith filled
with the energy of love? Do you love God with all your heart, soul, and mind?
Are you busy doing God’s will and work in the world? Do you serve God
faithfully and reverently? Is your heart right toward you neighbor? Do you love
all people without exception, even your enemies? Do you show your love with
good works? In order to say that your hearts were true to each other, Wesley
expected you to be able to answer yes to
all these questions! That’s a lot of
common ground. Interestingly, Wesley doesn’t say anything about specific
theological tenets, even though he would argue fervently for his points of
view, and he doesn’t say anything specific about worship practices, although he
had strong feelings about them, and he doesn’t even claim any particular
religious tradition as correct, even acknowledging in his sermon that everyone
thinks they’re right about everything, but no one really can know that they’ve
got all the answers. (1) If, Wesley says, your heart is true to mine as mine is
to yours, then we might join hands and journey together. We do this, he says,
not by coming to hold the same opinions and practices, but instead by loving
one another, praying for one another, and encouraging each other to love and
good works.
I find Wesley’s words to be
powerful. He was an extremely
opinionated person. He wrote about everything from politics to theology to
nutrition to advice on how long people should sleep to writing a medical book
with suggest treatments for a variety of illnesses. He considered himself kind
of an expert in everything. I can only
imagine that he was sometimes fairly difficult to be around. But even still, as
right as he thought was about
everything, he was more interested in finding some common ground for serving
God than in making sure everyone else was just like him.
The apostle Paul was like him –
another strongly opinionated person who didn’t hold back from sharing how he
thought things should be done. Yet, again and again Paul writes that in Christ
Jesus, we are made new creations, and some of the old dividing lines fade in
light of our identity in Christ. No longer Greek or Jew, male or female, slave
or free – not because we’re all the same, and not because our diversity isn’t
valuable, but because our common ground and common purpose is even more
important. Paul Bellan-Boyer writes, “Clothing [ourselves with Christ does not
erase our differences, but it does cover them, set them aside, put them in a
new context … Paul does not ask that the Corinthians be identical – only that
they cease to work at cross purposes,
and instead work for cross purposes.”
(2)
I think, then, that’s a question we
need to ask: Do we have some common ground that is more important to us than
being right? Do we have some common
ground on which we can build up our relationships? Do we have a common purpose
that drives us? For many years, I served on the Board of Directors of the
General Board of Church and Society or GBCS. That’s our denominations public
policy and advocacy agency, located in Washington, DC. The agency, among other
things, represents our United Methodist beliefs right on Capitol Hill. I’ll
talk a bit more about their work next week, but today, I want to share this:
GBCS would partner with a variety of different faith groups in order to amplify
our voice on the Hill. Sometimes, we’d partner with faith groups where we had a
lot of disagreement on a variety of issues. For example, United Methodists and
Southern Baptists have different beliefs about a lot of theological and social
issues. But we’d still work together when we could find common ground in our
Christian identity on issues that mattered to both of us, even knowing that we
would never share the same perspective on other important matters.
“Is your heart as true to mine as
mine is to yours? … If it is, give me your hand.” In the midst of disagreeing,
passionately, about issues that are near and dear to us, I think we can find
some common ground in simple things, ways we can agree to treat each other. We
can speak to each other face to face when we’re disagreeing, speak to each other
directly, rather than to others about each other. We can avoid making
generalizations and stereotypes about groups of people. We can talk about what
we believe and why we believe it using “I statements” – “I think this, I
believe this” – owning our words. We can remember that our online words are
still ours – who we are online is who
we are – period. We can remember to be critical of ideas, but hesitant to be
critical of people. We can listen – really listen – to people with whom we
disagree. We can be kind and compassionate. Simple things. Basic things. But
these basic things can give us common ground worth standing on with the rest of
humankind!
And then, we can push ourselves to
go deeper, friends. Remember the questions that Wesley asked: Is our heart
right with God? Is Jesus revealed in our souls? Do we love God with all our heart,
soul, and mind? Are we busy doing God’s will and work in the world? Do we love
all people without exception, even our enemies? Do we show our love with good
works? Friends – if together we can say yes to all of those questions, if we
will, if we strive to be able to say “yes” with confidence to all of this –
what differences could possibly hold us back from accomplishing God’s vision
for the world? “Is your heart as true to mine as mine is to yours? … If it is,
give me your hand.” Amen.
(1) Wesley, John, Catholic Spirit, http://www.umcmission.org/Find-Resources/John-Wesley-Sermons/Sermon-39-Catholic-Spirit,
and my own paraphrase of his words.
(2) Bellan-Boyer, Paul.
http://citycalledheaven.blogspot.com/2011/01/no-divisions.html
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