Today is our Annual Meeting, and today
we get the traditional Annual Meeting letter that Paul sent to the
church in Corinth. Annual Meetings are a time to reflect on the past
year, as well as a time to look forward and dream of what is to come.
And in some places they are a time for arguing, conflicts,
grandstanding and ugly politics. Which makes me wonder if the
lectionary committee selected this reading from 1 Corinthians for
that very reason.
While I don't for a minute think we
have those issues and factions here that were prevalent in Corinth, I
do think it is something we need to be aware of. In all reality, we
are human, and humans tend to congregate around other humans who
share the same interests, goals, concerns etc. We as a group
congregate here at St. Luke's because we are Episcopalians, we love
good liturgy and the Episcopal church strives to make room for all
people. And within our congregation are people who group together
based on more tightly defined interests or social interests (altar
guild, quilting group, men's breakfast) or personality traits. We
have different groups; we need to ensure that those different groups
don't become different factions.
When first reading this passage from
Paul we might get hung up on the first sentence:
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.
Does anyone else hear their mother in
there telling us to play nice, quit fighting and reminding us that
family is all we've got so we had better love each other?
I don't think that's what Paul is doing
here, though. I don't think Paul is trying to get everyone to play
nice all the time. Conflict can be good and healthy – sports and
debates being prime examples; not to mention that Paul was never one
to shy away from it. Conflict can open our eyes to new ideas and new
ways of being.
Notice that Paul brings his rant
against various factions back to baptism: baptism, one of the great
sacraments of the Church; baptism, that event by which we are adopted
into the household of God; baptism, by which we are buried with
Christ, reborn by the Holy Spirit and by which we share in Christ's
resurrection. Baptism washes away our old identity and bathes us in
a new life and a new way of being. If we recognize that we have all
been born anew into one body, then we must recognize that there is no
place for factions. And this is exactly where the Corinthians were
having problems.
They had all been baptized, but they
failed to understand that their old ways of being needed to be
relinquished in favor of living as one body. They failed to live
into the theology of dying to their old lives and living into their
new lives. In short, they weren't actually living what they
proclaimed at their baptisms.
So Paul going off against the faction
problem in Corinth didn't really have to do with factions. The
faction issue is really a secondary issue. It's the presenting issue
to an underlying problem. Like Miriam's headaches were the
presenting issue to her brain tumor, the Corinthian factions were the
presenting issue to their refusal to let baptism change their lives.
Their faction-based quarrels were not
simply over who baptized whom; they were, in essence, over the
fundamental issue of who should be part of the Church and who was not
part of the Church. It was, in some sense, one of the first fights
over orthodoxy.
In his Homilies on the Epistles of
Paul to the Corinthians, St. John Chrysostom says as much. He
wrote that their quarreling wasn't trivial, but that it could be
broken down to a fundamental issue:
Even those who said they were of
Christ were at fault because they were implicitly denying this to
others and making Christ the head of a faction rather than the head
of the whole Church.
Christians today are having the same
fights and it looks like this: You can't be a Real True Christian ™
unless you do or believe X, Y & Z. And it's there that they deny
Christ to others.
Unless you had a Believer's Baptism,
unless you vote for the right candidate, unless you drink no alcohol,
unless you believe the earth is 6000 years old, unless you believe in
a literal world-wide flood, unless you believe in the rapture, unless
you home-school, unless you have never been divorced, unless you do
and believe these things you cannot be a Real True Christian ™.
And that list of unlesses is practically unlimited.
Not only is it practically unlimited,
but it's also tailored to the specific requirements and agendas of
each specific faction. You could probably even call it a form of
idolatry.
Setting up these factions as a basis
for determining whether or not a person is a Real True Christian ™
is exactly what Paul was addressing in Corinth. When we do that, we
deny Christ to others and begin to worship an idol rather than the
head of the whole Church. And in this case, Jesus was as much of an
idol as Baal. Because idols, remember, approve and condemn those
very same things which we ourselves approve and condemn. How
convenient.
As we get ready to move into our Annual
Meeting where we reflect on last year and look forward to the coming
year, let us keep this passage from Corinthians in mind. Differences
between us are to be expected. Arguments may happen. But let us
never devolve into factions where we hold that if you aren't part of
our group you are not a Real True Christian ™. And let us never
allow this place to become a faction of the wider Church where we
proclaim that unless you do and believe exactly like us you can't be
a Real True Christian ™. This is what Paul was saying to the
Corinthians, and this is what Paul is saying to us.
What should define us isn't whether or
not we are labeled as Real True Christians ™.
What should define us is how we choose
to live into our baptismal covenant, how we allow our baptism to
define our lives, and how we work to proclaim Christ as head of the
Church – not as head of our faction.
This is what should define us and this
is how we should move forward in 2014.
Amen.
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