Practicing The Faith Together, In Community January 27, 2008 Third Sunday After The Epiphany

(First, read the text for this sermon: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18)

God the Holy Spirit has called us together this morning. God has made us a worshiping community. At this time and in this place, the Spirit draws us, together, into the mystery that is God.

There is mysterious power in God. It is the power that causes hard-bitten fishermen like Peter and Andrew, James and John, to suddenly leave what they are doing to follow the Christ. It is the power that calls out to us to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” To repent: which means to turn away from what makes for death, and to turn towards God.

Some worshipers “go to church” expecting what is ordinary and routine. And you know what? That’s just what they experience! But other worshipers are conscious that they have been drawn together by the Spirit. There’s a gathering together in deep spiritual hunger. There’s an openness to what the Spirit is going to do this morning, as the Spirit moves among us during this time together.

Of course, wherever there is power, there is danger of destructiveness. We read verses this morning from Paul, writing to the tiny ancient congregation at Corinth, which was experiencing powerful divisions. Members were suing each other in civil courts; there were people complaining that Paul was paid too much; there was debauchery during Holy Communion – some were getting drunk and others were going away hungry; people were fighting with each other over the use of charismatic gifts in worship…

Paul addresses the power struggles that were going on in the congregation. He writes, For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 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."

What damage is caused, when individual leaders try to appropriate that power of the Holy Spirit to build up their own personal standing. Among the Corinthians, different factions among the members have clustered around strong leaders in the congregation –Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas. Paul, for his part, renounces any claim that he has! He asks, Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Who was crucified for the Corinthian worshipers? In whose name were the Corinthian worshipers baptized? Of course: it was Jesus who was crucified for them. They were baptized into the grace and forgiveness and salvation of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so Paul makes his appeal to this divided congregation by his own authority – but not in his own name. Instead, he is appealing to them by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, Paul was writing a letter to a specific group of people, to deal with specific problems. He had no idea that we would be poring over his words, dissecting them, all these centuries later! If he had, he probably would have re-worded some of what he wrote!

For instance, there are these lines: 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. Ever since this letter was collected into what we now call the New Testament, many followers of the Christ have tried to hold themselves up to an impossible standard. Is that true: that all of us are to be in agreement? Always? That there can be no divisions among us? That all of us are to be united in the same mind?

Is any of that possible? Not humanly! But, over the centuries, various leaders have done great damage to the Church by over-zealously insisting that everyone believe a whole list of specific tenets of the faith, in certain specific ways. The emphasis is on: “What do you believe?” And what about those who don’t believe “properly?” They are cast out among the great unsaved.

I think this rigidity displays a fear of the Holy Spirit’s mysterious power! I think it serves to close us off from what the Spirit might be doing, which is always surprising, and sometimes unsettling. I don’t think that is what Paul is urging of us.

I claim a strength of the ELCA Lutheran approach to the faith (which, actually, causes great discomfort among some). It is to take seriously the radical sinfulness and radical grace taught by Luther: that not a single one of us can save ourselves, no matter how strong our set of beliefs. Instead, each one of us is entirely dependent upon the grace, the forgiveness, the salvation that we receive from the Holy Spirit in those swirling and splashing baptismal waters. With the “same mind” that that is the case, with the humility that entails, the Spirit draws us together into community, with our many different “minds” about many different issues. That diversity within a worshiping community is to be celebrated!

Are there beliefs that are required? I think so! It’s kind of like envisioning a target – with the most important stuff, the “required” stuff in the center. In the center is the belief that we are saved purely by grace, through Jesus the Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. There. That’s what’s in the middle. Everything else? What a diversity we have among us, of everything else that’s on one of those rings further out from the center!

I think it’s a great strength of our particular Lutheran tradition – that we don’t demand uniformity right down the line – because that allows for the possibility that we can be open to the mystery that is God! When we can release the compulsion to keep God safely defined and under control, we can be open to discerning what it is that God the Holy Spirit is doing, as the Spirit moves among us in this community of the baptized, and within us each, as individuals in community! What healing is the Spirit working? In what ways is the Spirit calling us to risk? There is great and mysterious power in God!

God the Holy Spirit draws us into that mystery through the practices of the faith. In those swirling and splashing waters, you and I are baptized into those practices of the faith. Some of them are listed in the baptismal liturgy, in the promises that parents and sponsors make, when there is a baby or young child being baptized. In practices such as worship, and eating and drinking the Holy Communion, and daily reading of the Bible, and speaking the words of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed and the Ten Commandments, in daily listening prayer, in learning to trust God, in caring for others and the world God made, in working for justice and peace – by the doing of those things, the Spirit forms us into people open and responsive to the mystery that is God. In the baptismal liturgy, those promises necessarily mean that the parents themselves will engage in those practices – to model to their children what the journey looks like into the mystery that is God! And it’s more than that, and more universal than that. It is responding to the call to practice the faith so that we journey into our own salvation, whether there are children in the household or not!

It is a journey that is more than life-long: because God is always more than what you and I can understand or explain. It is a journey into foolishness, Paul writes. 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 a journey that certainly does not depend upon a particular leader, no matter how charismatic, or a particular preacher, no matter how effective. (Indeed, there are intriguing clues that Paul himself was not a good preacher. In this morning’s verses we read, 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. Isn’t it interesting that this greatest founder of Christian congregations admits his limitations as a preacher?! And of course, there’s the story, in Acts (20:9), of the evening when Paul droned on and on and on – for so long that one of his listeners, sitting on a window sill, fell asleep and fell out of the window!)

If Paul was a bad preacher, how much more remarkable the growth of the ancient church: entirely dependent upon the mysterious power that is in God the Holy Spirit, the power drawing people into the message of the cross that is foolishness, the power motivating disciples to invite others into the practices of the Jesus movement.

It is into that continuing community that you and I have been baptized; the community of people engaging in the life-changing practices of the faith which open us to the mystery that is God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia