'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. 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.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 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.'
--I Corinthians 1: 10-18
'As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.'
--Matthew 4: 18-22
In the summer of 2018 my wife Kristen Leigh and I set out on our honeymoon/pilgrimage/research trip to Greece. We visited Athens and Sparta, took a boat to Ephesus to see the cave of Thecla, and prayed in the Cave of the Apocalypse where Saint John was exiled on Patmos. And that’s a sampling.
But the most relevant piece of that trip to my blog this week was when we stopped in Corinth while driving around mainland Greece. Corinth is a really cool town, nestled in the hill country, and as we all know, it has a big role in the story of Christianity, with St. Paul writing to the people there more words than he wrote to any other faith community in any other city; in fact, I Corinthians is the earliest known piece of our New Testament, dating to around the year 40 AD. Paul wasn’t alone, either, as Clement of Alexandria also wrote to the church there, and his letters nearly got included in the canon of Scripture. It must’ve been a pretty significant town and been a thriving Christian community. Not exactly. While walking around the ruins of the old city, I came across a placard that read: “The apostle Paul preached the Christian gospel here unsuccessfully!” Seriously?! You’re trying to tell me that Paul failed?! In a way, yeah, yeah he did.
The reading for this week from the beginning of the First Letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians hints a bit at why his message failed. There are divisions, fractures, within the community, the natural human instinct of falling into camps, into tribes, into us and them. Some are saying, 'I belong to Paul,' while others are saying, 'I belong to Apollos' or Cephas (that's the Greek name for Peter), or Christ. Why make that distinction, and who cares?
It's important to remember that members of these early Communities of the Way, as they were called, had mostly been baptized by the same person. So you can see what ends up happening: one group gets baptized by one person, another group by another person, and eventually the groups begin to bicker and argue, saying, "We're more important than you because so-and-so baptized us." Yes, this was a real argument! Theologian William Barclay surmised that those who said, 'I belong to Paul' were the Gentile converts, the ones who said, 'I belong to Apollos' were the Greek philosopher types, and those who said, 'I belong to Cephas' were likely the Jewish members of the congregation. As for those who said, 'I belong to Christ' Barclay suggests that these are your run-of-the-mill fundamentalists who believed that they, and they alone had it all figured out. As the character Marty Huggins says in the under-appreciated 2012 comedy The Campaign:
Did Paul really think that he was going to convince this ridiculously diverse community to get on the same page? Maybe, or maybe he just thought he could plant a seed and that someday, long after he was gone, they’d figure it out. Or they wouldn’t. God would decide.
There is a call for unity in Paul’s letter, a call to make Christ their only identifier. We are in the middle of the International Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which runs from Wednesday, Jan. 18 to Wednesday, Jan. 25. It was begun by the World Council of Churches, a body literally made up of people from every single recognized Christian denomination, and has been a thing for 115 years. But how many of you knew about this week’s observance, or even of the WCC’s existence? I’ll admit I hear about it from time to time but I never remember to mark the occasion in church because it’s not something mandated by our diocese or the presiding bishop. I’m a servant of the hierarchy, what can I say?
And while we’re at it, can we even say that the prayers have worked? Has the council achieved a greater sense of unity? The 20th and 21st centuries have not only seen further splintering within Christian bodies – including our own Anglican Communion, and more recently with our siblings in the United Methodist Church – but also the number of folks who identify as “nones” – as in “I’m a part of NONE of the churches” – or “spiritual but not religious” has skyrocketed since the Council was formed in 1908. Is any of this working? Is any of it relevant?
I believe those are the wrong questions to ask, and I believe Corinth and the work of Saint Paul among those people show us why. For starters, the example of Corinth helps us to remember that there was never a time when the church was truly unified. Any notion that we need to “get back” to the way things were in the original church – not like there ever really was a single, original church – breaks down when someone reads that placard in Corinth or hears this letter. Paul died – was martyred, in fact – having tried in vain to get people behind this crazy notion that God not only stepped into the world but died, rose again, and in so doing redeemed all creation. But if you go to Cornith now, all you’ll find are Christian stores. And you’ll find at least 20 different Christian churches, including the amazing cathedral located in the town centre where Kristen very nearly got into a wreck because people in Greece drive like maniacs!
If you go there now, you'd swear that the placard in the ancient city was wrong. In his lifetime, Paul WAS considered a failure, but that was never the point. The cross, after all, is a stumbling block, it’s foolishness. It looks like the end, a failure, but it’s the means to life. You have to lose, so you can win – as Elton John once sang.
Brothers and sisters, Christian churches are terrified of losing, of failure. They’re terrified of losing members and pledges – or as a clergy colleague says, “butts in the pews and bucks in the plate.” In their panic that look at their neighbors to see what’s working for them, ignoring what’s actually going on in their own communities. They try to find the perfect program or gimmick to “bring in the young people,” the perfect minister to preach sermons that will captivate everyone and offend no one. They try so desperately to solve the problems they face from the outside-in that they never actually talk to people and meet them where they are. They forget exactly what Paul said to the Corinthians, that it’s Jesus and Jesus alone that matters. Nothing else. The harder they try to hang on, the faster they die – or to paraphrase Princess Leia, “The more they tighten their grip, the more folks slip through their fingers.”
That’s because the answer – and yes, there is an answer – is Jesus. It really is that simple. It’s not all that other stuff that identifies us, causing division – this is what happened in Corinth And it’s not programs or worship styles or any other outward stuff. It’s Jesus and the simple invitation to know and follow him. The Gospel for this week tells the story of how Andrew, Simon Peter, James, and John came to follow Jesus. And in case you weren’t paying attention, he didn’t promise them anything. No gimmicks. Just an invitation to follow him. That’s all it is, really. It’s actually that simple. An invitation. Sure, an invitation to come to church on Sunday – when was the last time you invited someone in your neighborhood, or even a complete stranger to come to church with you – but even more so an invitation to be in relationship with other people - which is what "fish for people" means, not to hook folks and bring them into the church doors! It's just about being in relationship with people and seeing where Jesus shows up in it; after all, the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and when two or three fully alive humans get together, you better believe Jesus is in the middle of that, and you can count on something amazing happening, even if we can't see it with our eyes!
But it’s not up to us. It wasn’t up to Paul to fix Corinth and make it work there, and it ain’t up to us to fix anything now in our own church communities. Just let the Gospel be enough. Let Jesus be enough. It might look or feel like failure. But like Paul, you have no idea what seeds you’re sowing, what God will do long after you’re gone. In the end, God always decides, and that’s really all that matters.
