Our task this morning is to reflect on what
is probably a very well known passage from Paul’s letter to the
Corinthians. Forgive me if some of what
I say is familiar to you but I hope that even if this is the case it will be a
springboard to thinking afresh about what it means to be the Church of God and
therefore how we live together.
It is believed that the motivation for this
letter to the church in Corinth was to address issues relating to people’s
behaviour. Even so Paul does this in
rather a clever way because his moral guidance comes within a framework of our
relationship to and within Christ. Or to put it another way, ethics and
theology are closely connected in Paul’s writing.
Within this letter we can see Paul’s aim to
help organize and nurture a community,
and the life of that community. It is important then, as we hear today’s
reading that we do not hear it as isolated individuals but we hear ourselves
addressed as the church.
Chapter 12 is in essence Paul’s perspective
on corporate worship. However, this is
not just about what happens on a Sunday morning, because as we know, being here
today should be part of what equips and enables us to live the Christian life
other days of the week too. The final words
of the dismissal of our act of worship today are ‘go in peace to love and serve
the Lord’; as well as bringing ourselves and our resources in worship to God,
we come to put ourselves in God’s hands, to be received as part of the body of
Christ, to be blessed and to be given, or sent, to the world for its
blessing.
Paul is seeking to bring the disorderly and
self-centred worship practices of the Corinthians under control so that the
church as a whole may be built up. The
aim is the same today, that our worship builds us up for the life of discipleship,
the call to follow Jesus and become his true sisters and brothers; daughters
and sons of God. We belong to Jesus and
together with him belong to our heavenly Father and to each other.
It is with this in mind then that we
reflect on what this ancient text has to say to us today and I’m focusing on
three aspects of the text.
Firstly, it is the Spirit who empowers all
Christian confession. We too live in an age of competing spiritualties, but
Paul was clear that the Spirit inspires the confession of Jesus as Lord; it is
the Holy Spirit at work for all those who profess faith in Jesus and the same
spirit who binds all Christians in the unity of faith, whether we agree with
them or not! So this has something to
say about how we manage disagreements in the Church, because the option to walk
away from each other is an illusion.
Disagreeing well, which Archbishop Justin has encouraged, is hard,
really hard because we disagree about some very deep things. But to persevere with respect and humility
means we can create a culture where it is possible for differences to be
reconciled at least to the point of living together peaceably.
Secondly, Paul outlines something that we
could call first century church organization theory. The manifestations of the
Spirit may show variety but they have a common source and common aim. These manifestations, such as wisdom,
prophecy and healing are gifts of God
given through the Holy Spirit for the purpose of the common good; they are not ends in themselves but are given to
encourage and build up the whole community.
At the end of the chapter he returns to the idea of Spirit inspired
callings for individuals: apostles, teachers, prophets, but again he focuses on
their purpose to create the divine community.
It would be interesting to read through these gifts and ponder which
ones you see in evidence in our church community, and indeed which ones you are
drawn to or feel uncomfortable about.
And thirdly, there is the body analogy: the
notion of diversity and interdependence.
Probably the image we are most familiar with because the phrase ‘the
body of Christ’ comes up so often in our services and as a phrase to describe
the Church. I want to draw out, from
this analogy of the body, the implication that we must recognize that the
privileged and powerful are bound together with the less fortunate and
weak. One of the issues in the
Corinthian church that Paul sought to challenge was that those who were more
powerful, either through wealth or status tended to act in a way that
ostracized and despised others. In
pointing to the importance and indeed necessity of all parts of the body, Paul was driving home the message that all are valued and have a part to play
in God’s economy. Especially in these
days where many people feel vulnerable about their place in British society it
is particularly important that we are genuinely welcoming and inclusive.
All that we have considered so far is
pertinent to the future; we all desire that more people should come to know
their belovedness in God and become part of the body of Christ on earth. But our present experience is no guide to the
future. What do I mean by this: firstly
I am confident that God will continue to be at work in the world and will draw
people to into the Divine love. I also
believe that the Christian Church will continue, but possibly not in all its
current expressions.
The picture of social and cultural life
changes across the centuries and we are living at a time of particular change
and those of us of a certain age and with many years of faith find it hard to
accept that Christian faith is not the backdrop to daily life. Those coming in to the Church of the future
will create different norms and expectations, to say nothing of different ways
of doing things. In fact, this is not
really in the future; there are places and communities where Christian faith is
being expressed in very different ways now.
The question is, can we respond in love
rather than fear, to new ways of being a community of believers? If the Benefice is accepted to become part of
the Partnership for Missional Church programme it will mean change: change in
our attitudes and ways of doing things and change can makes us afraid. Fear is one of the main agenda items of the
systems of our world and the news is usually full of stories of fear. There is a spiritual truth about questions
that originate from a place of fear: they never produce answers created in
love. Fear is like a spider plant, it
produces a lot of other fears.
But the heart of Divine life is love,
perfect love, and perfect love casts out fear.
We are a diverse community with a profound calling: to represent Jesus
to each other and the world, and engage in God’s rescue plan. We couldn’t ask for a better contemporary
metaphor of this than presented to us in the story of the rescue of the boys
from the cave in Thailand. Lives in
jeopardy requiring a rescue plan that is as dangerous as it is daring. A rescue plan that necessitates specialized
skills and extraordinary levels of expertise, bringing together a diverse and
dedicated group of people with one particular purpose - to reach the boys and
get them safely back to their families. This
sounds very much like another rescue plan I know of, one where love overcomes
fear and individuals find their true home in community.
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