conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

has christ been divided?

This is the sermon I preached at North Shore Baptist Church this morning. I will post the one I preached at Reconciler some time on Monday. It is a similar sermon, but I tinkered to make it more appropriate for the congregation.

Anyway, here is the Baptist-specific one.

lectionary

Good morning. God?s peace to this house from the Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. It is good to be back in this familiar pulpit. It is good to see friendly faces.

And I commend all of you for being here. Do you think Doug and Carol picked a good weekend to be gone or what? The snow kept Trish and I from venturing out much at all yesterday. There is something about snow that makes me sleepy. I don't know what that is, but it is a pleasant lethargy. I hope to have the same opportunity again soon?both the lazing around and preaching in this pulpit.

So, let?s begin, shall we?

For those of you who may not know, I am a member of the pastoral team of a small ecumenical church plant in the Rogers Park neighborhood. The pastoral staff consists of an Episcopal pastor, an Evangelical Covenant pastor and myself. Our hope, to put it as succinctly as possible, is to put wheels on some of the thinking by ecumenical organizations. We want to live what these men and women have been formulating for all of these years. This is the end of the week of prayer for Christian unity and as a congregation we at The Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler wish to live into this ecumenical vision.

This past Wednesday, the pastoral team from Reconciler, and one lay member of our congregation came before the evening study group to present our vision and share what we have been up to in Rogers Park. We shared our testimonies about how we became involved in ecumenical ministry. We spoke of the worship life of our congregation and how it has become the focal point for our growth and identity. This was surprising to me. With so many options available to us, differing ritual styles, theologies and traditions, I have to confess that I was worried about the worship life of our little congregation. I was worried that we would be frustrated or stymied by our differences.

How many times will we have communion?
Wine or grape juice?
Common cup?
How long will the sermon be?
Will we use a lectionary?
Whose prayer book will we use? Will we use any?
What about a hymnal? Will we use praise and worship music?

These and many other questions weighed heavily on my mind. In my experience, these are the things that can cause rifts in a community. The varying traditions given witness in our little church all have specific answers to all of these questions. There are theologies behind each tradition that lend weight to our habits. How will we ever allow for these traditions to speak? How would we worship without offending each other? How would we worship without creating a service that said nothing in an effort to avoid offending one another?

For me, at least, the answer came from Paul. I think I need to revisit the epistle to the Corinthians again and again. It is full of wonderful wisdom, creative solutions to problems that have always plagued the church.

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

1:10 Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.

1:11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.

1:12 What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ."

1:13 Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

1:14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,

1:15 so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.

1:16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)

1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

1:18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

I have to admit that this passage always makes me laugh. What is Paul talking about? Did he baptize those people or not? It is like Paul is showing his age or something. He wearily goes off on some tangent about who he might or might not have baptized. He sounds confused. A couple of the commentators I read preparing for this sermon suggest that Paul is so flustered by the situation at the church in Corinth that he is incapable of remembering who he baptized. He?s just that mad.

When I read this passage, I can almost hear him saying "I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else...but that's bedside the point. Gosh. What was I talking about? Boy, you people! You see... Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and, apparently, not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

It is not a great leap when we are already thinking about ecumenism to think that Cephas, and Apollos or even Paul himself could be John Calvin or Martin Luther or any number of Baptists?the list could go on and on. It should be an easy leap to hear ?denominationalism? or ?factionalism? when we are presented with the troubles at Corinth. Like the church then, the church today is divided.

And in response to that disunity. Paul suggests a means for unity. He recognizes the disunity. He understands how it happens. Paul recognizes the temptation to turn our faith into a club or an association of some kind where we are concerned about allegiances to a patron (Cephas, Apollos or even Paul himself) or an allegiance to an institution above all else.

For Paul, the means for unity in the church is the cross. It is through foolishness, through humble submission to Christ that we can achieve unity. In chapter three of the letter to the Corinthians Paul sums it all up for me. ?21So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future?all belong to you, 23and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.?

For our new church, it is this attitude that we attempt to live into. It is not that Paul is suggesting we ignore Cephas or Apollos or, heaven forbid (!), Paul himself. Oh no. Paul has too much more to say to all involved to care to be ignored. But he does tell us whose we are, and, in the end, to whom we belong.

The discipline I am learning at Reconciler is to not brag about being Baptist, to not insist that being Baptist is the best and only way to be Christian. Or even the only way I can be Christian. I am having to reshape my thinking. It may be that, though I am Baptist, and I express a certain loyalty to being Baptist, the fundamental reality is that the church is about Christ. Paul says that the church is Christ. I cannot proclaim Baptist identity, as precious as it might be, as if it were a substitution for being Christian.

This has been my work as a pastor in an ecumenical congregation. To bring about unity, to bring about reconciliation, I have had to sacrifice some of my identity as a Baptist in order to claim my identity as a Christian. Perhaps this is not your stumbling block, but it has been mine. I must confess that this was a revelation of sorts to me. I realize now that I have spent far too much time arguing and debating. I cannot tell you how many times I said in seminary ?But as a Baptist?? It has been hard to learn to speak about Jesus and not about being Baptist.

In ecumenical work, this, I believe, is the task we must all take on as our own. The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity says it better than I can:

If the ecumenical project of modern Christianity is to move forward. Unity will require our churches not only to renounce the selfishness and insularity that we all dislike and easily see as sinful. It will also require our churches to embrace a spiritual poverty that has the courage to forego genuine riches of a tradition for the sake of a more comprehensive unity in the truth of the gospel. [The disciplines of unity are penitential. As St. Paul teaches, for the sake of unity, we must be willing to suspend gospel freedom and conform to the limitations of the weak. This process will be ascetical; it will necessarily involve that sacrifice of real but limited goods for the sake of the greater good.]

Like Christ, we must lay down our own lives, our institutional lives in order to serve one another and to bring unity, a real and present unity.

The fruits of this discipline have been numberless. This humility and self-giving has been nurturing to us at Reconciler. Through what may appear foolish, worship life is enriched, deepened, by our willingness to let go of our particular (and perhaps peculiar) identities and seek that which is of Christ and one another as members of Christ?s body. It is not as if Paul and Cephas and Apollos are going anywhere. They too are members of the one body. The riches of our traditions are embraced by Christ himself. Now they do not serve as stumbling blocks but as stepping stones. Now they are gifts to one another for the sake of our shared salvation through the cross. This is good news!

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.
God has multiplied the nation,
God has increased its joy.
Rejoice before God as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of our burden, and the bar across our shoulders, the rod of our oppressor, has been broken as on the day of Midian.

That light that shines is the light of Christ.

That light shines into the dark places of the world.
That lights shines into places of disunity
That light shines into places of oppression.
That light shines into denominational offices.
That light shines into regional offices, diocese and conferences warming hearts and enlivening minds.
That light shines into this congregation.
That light shines into our homes.
That light shines into our hearts long made hard by fear and distrust.

Disunity cannot stand. Have hope in the cross. Have hope in the way of Jesus. Let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Aquinas or Luther or Calvin or Bonhoeffer or Fiorenza or Barth or King or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future?all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

No church is a utopia. No denomination is either. No home, no family?strife exists. But we, we who follow Christ know how to meet strife and disunity. Humility and self-giving are God?s gifts to us so that we may be Christ to one another, in our homes, in this place and in all the world.

May God grant us peace and unity now and always.

Amen.

Posted by tripp at January 23, 2005 10:06 PM