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Click to hear this sermon sermon061119
Response to an Imperfect Church - I Corinthians 13
An eight year old wrote this letter to God: Dear God, I don't know how you can love every single person all the time. I only have four in my family, and I can't hardly do it. This week there will be many family gatherings, and I trust all of yours will be warm and loving occasions. But the fact is, families don't always get along.
That is certainly true of the Christian family. Last week I preached some responses to an atheistic author. His best-selling book had labored hard to point out the imperfections of Christian people in history and in today's world. Most every one of his accusations was undeniably true. Christians have gotten it terribly wrong too often. And the Christian church is often a fighting family.
And when the church disagrees, the stakes can be very high, because disagreements escalate into high-falutin' religious arguments: How can you argue with us? We speak for God - you would argue against God? At staff chapel this past week we read an article that talked about how the level of conflict in the church can be so much uglier than some other places, because oftentimes what really starts out to be a simple disagreement over something material gets escalated into a religious battle - and that makes it a matter of shame and fear and all the other things that religious thoughts bring to the surface. “Gee, I thought I was raising a question about the budget, and they made me feel like I'm going to hell.” That sounds like an exaggeration, but I've seen it happen.
If you read through Paul's letters to the Corinthian church, you will see that it was a letter to a fighting family. On a number of things - on the place of women in church, on the practice of speaking in tongues, on the status of those who can take Communion, on which preacher to follow - on many other issues, there appears to be disagreement in the church. These are people who sincerely believe that they are speaking for God; and yet they can't agree on what it is that God is saying. The apostle Paul wrote to help clarify some of the issues, but the heart of his message is one of the most beloved chapters of the Bible - I Corinthians 13. We romanticize this chapter; we call it the ‘Love Chapter,’ and read it endlessly at weddings. It contains good words for a bride and a groom to hear.
But as part of Paul's correspondence with the Corinthians, it has a much more meaty purpose. It is a response to an imperfect church; and it offers a bottom-line test for the church, that we don't pay enough attention to. In chapter 12, Paul talked about the Body of Christ - how we all come together with our human disabilities, and Christ joins us together into a Body of service and ministry, everybody playing a vital role, everybody connected and inspired by the Holy Spirit that binds us. Part of that discussion is to talk about our gifts - the diverse talents and resources each person brings to the Whole.
Then, in chapter 13, Paul says, "But don't forget. There is one gift that is most important of all. It's the one that must be there if this truly is the Body of Christ. Without it, the Church does more harm than good." So here is what I Corinthians 13 might say to the modem church - at least as I experience it:
There is a branch of the Church today we might call the charismatic church. This church emphasizes the movement of the Holy Spirit, and its most distinguishing feature is 'speaking in tongues', or receiving 'God-language' in worship. When someone speaks in tongues, and then someone else interprets, it is considered a holy moment, and people rejoice over it. There are branches of the church who follow eloquent leaders - great speakers who preach with great authority, and draw big crowds. They seem to speak the very words of God.
Here's what the apostle Paul might say to Christians who value beautiful speech- whether it is speaking in tongues, or eloquent preaching: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Beautiful speech that is not loving is just noise.
There are some other branches of the Church that focus on what is going to happen - they prophesy about the End of the World and say if you don't believe it, God will destroy you. Some claim to be mystics who can lead you to a higher spiritual path; some say they understand the true message of the Bible; some say it is in believing the right doctrine, or in hitting the right level on the faith-meter. Paul says, “... if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to (move) mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
Then there are those Christians who think it's all about sacrifice and martyrdom. If you renounce everything, suffer for your faith, walk around with a long, serious face, you must be a Christian. But then Paul says, “If I give away all my possessions, if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
How can we get it so wrong? How can we build whole systems and branches of Christianity based on doctrines and traditions and interpretations and policies that we become so convinced are so essential that we use them to attack each other and condemn each other and shut people who don't agree with us out - when the Bible is so clear about the bottom line of Christian faith? It's about love or it's not about Jesus.
I heard once about a group of seminary students. They studied for a test in Christian ethics. They studied the prophets and Jesus in the Bible; they studied the great theologians; they studied the great teachers of their denomination; they studied the writings of modern prophets, like Gandhi and King. And then, heads bursting with facts, they arrived and looked at the test - it was one question: what is the name of the cleaning lady in this building? That professor understood the heart of Christ's teaching. I may speak with the tongues of angels; I may know all things, understand all mysteries, prophesy, give away all I have. If I never took the time to learn the name of the cleaning lady, I didn't get it.
Another story of a different nature, but I think with the same message: a hunter is dragging a deer out of the woods, when he meets another member of his party. The other guy says, “How come you're dragging that deer by yourself? I thought Harry was with you.” “Well, he was, but Harry got weak and fainted a little ways back.” “What?” said the other hunter. “You left Harry back in the woods, and dragged the deer out instead?” “Well, it was a tough choice,” said the first hunter. “But I figured, 'Hey, nobody's going to steal Harry!” Okay, that doesn't fit here as well as the cleaning lady story, but I still like it. We act sometimes like we're so afraid somebody's going to steal the church, or our tradition or our fragile faith - that we drag it along with us, and leave poor Harry back in the woods.
I think of the major church body this week that put out a statement inviting an excluded group to come and join them by basically saying, "You're inferior, but we welcome you with open arms." I think of the two Christian people I heard saying cruel things about a young woman who had made a serious mistake. I think of the deacon in a church I just heard about, who stepped in and yanked the Communion bread out of the hands of a child, saying, "This is not a toy. This is for grownups only." That's a true story - churches do things like that. We get unloving as we protect our faith from. .. what? The world Christ died for? The people God loved so much He sent His Son? And I'm not letting myself off the hook here. I can be just as arrogant and stubborn and impatient as anybody about my faith. We all can get pretty far afield in our own insistence on our own comfortable paths. But love calls us back. Love doesn't let us off easy. As soon as we start thinking or speaking or acting in unloving ways, we have departed from the path of Christ.
Maybe that's why Paul moves next into some powerful messages about humility. “For we know only in part,” he says. “We prophesy only in part... we see in a mirror, dimly.” In other words, at any given time, we only see and know a tiny fraction of the truth. So how can we possibly be arrogant and stubborn about what we know?
This week we celebrate family and friends and the bounty of God's grace. Part of that is giving thanks for a nation where we recognize diversity - we recognize a land where people can be very different in their approach to all kinds of things, and still have rights and freedom and a bond that overcomes and even honors those differences. Diversity is good, says the apostle Paul. Let us confess for the times we 'insist on our own way.' Love doesn't do that, says Paul. Let us watch out for the times we are 'arrogant or rude.' That's not God's way, says the Bible.
And let us all pray for the hope that President Lincoln envisioned when he declared a national day of Thanksgiving, even in the midst of our nation's most divided hour - that the family would be reunited, that the fighting would cease, and that love would be honored.
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