Isaiah
9: 1–4 / Psalm 27: 1, 5–13 / I Corinthians 1: 10–18 / Matthew 4: 12–23
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, January 26, 2020.
“DIVISION, SEPARATION, OR
UNITY?”
(Homily text: I
Corinthians 1: 10-18)
Many times
when I have occasion to read the various letters in the New Testament, I come
to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit must have prompted the letter writer to
address some specific problem or situation, for it seems as though most of the
letters in the New Testament are situational. (I guess that’s a fairly obvious
observation to make.)
In the
fullness of time, that same Holy Spirit led the Church to the conclusion that
God speaks in some unique way in these letters, leading the Church to include
them in the Canon[1] of Holy Scripture.
Then, the
train of my thinking often leads me to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit, and
the Church, following the Spirit’s leading, have passed along these letters to
us because we, in our day and time in the Church, may well face similar
situations to those that were addressed by the original writer, writing to a
specific church or group in the early years of the Christian movement’s history.
Put another way, we might say that the Spirit has a message for us: “I’ve seen
to it that the record of what happened early on in the Church’s life has been
made available to you. Pay attention to it, for at some time or another, you,
too, may well have to deal with a similar problem. What’s been made available
to you can serve as a guide to how you should handle the situation.”
All of
which brings me to the topic of today’s Epistle reading, from the first chapter
of St. Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.
The
Corinthian church was, compared to the others that Paul had founded, perhaps
the most contentious, divided and problematic church he had to deal with. Those
early Christians in Corinth seemed to reflect the values and the behaviors of
the pagan, Gentile world in which they lived. To get an idea of the cultural
setting of the church in Corinth, we should spend a little time describing the
nature of the place.
Corinth was
a seaport town, located on the eastern side of a narrow neck of land about six
miles wide. Ships coming from the east would offload their cargo in Corinth,
and that cargo would be carried in carts along a road (the remains of which can
still be seen, I am told) to the western side, where it would be loaded onto
another ship which was headed west. (The reverse pattern also existed.) By this
method, a long journey around the southern tip of Greece was avoided.
Corinth
was, then, at a crossroads, a place where people from all over the known world
were coming, going, or passing through. Many of those travelers carried
elements of their background and ethnicity with them, including their religious
practices and ideas.
Moreover,
Corinth was a Roman city, meaning that it was, morally, a freewheeling place.
It was this aspect of the culture in Corinth that caused many of the problems
in the early Church situated there.
All of the
above is by way of background, a look at the situation in the community of
Corinth.
Now, in the
first chapter of his first letter to this church, Paul writes that he has
received reports that the Corinthian church is badly divided. Divided into
splinter groups, each one centered around a leader in the early Christian
movement. Some claimed to be followers of Paul, some of Peter (Paul uses the
Greek word for Peter, “Cephas”), some of Apollos. Perhaps in a bid to outdo all
the others, some claimed to be followers of Christ. (I’d wager that this last
group is the only one to “get it right”, but I also suspect they used their
claims as a way to show their spiritual superiority over other members in the
church.)
In the face
of this situation, Paul asks them to be united in Christ, that all of them
agree, and that there be no divisions among them.
Why is
unity in the Church important?
As I think
about the possible answers, here are the ones that come to mind:
Idolatry: To put anything before our allegiance to God,
made known to us in Christ, is - pure and simple – idolatry. In fact, making
something, anything number one in importance in the place of God is the basic
meaning of the word “idol” or “idolatry”. That something, when put in first
–-and God’s – place, can be anything. It can be an idea, it can be a cause
(even a very good and worthy one), it can be an object (like a prized
possession). Anything, even very good and worthwhile things, can become an
idol. It seems like the Corinthians were putting their allegiance to a specific
person, a person who was simply doing God’s work as a servant, above their
allegiance to Christ.
Witness
to the world: In chapter
five of the first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul has to admonish these
early Christians for their tolerance of a situation in their midst having to do
with gross moral laxity.[2] He says that not even the pagans among whom they live with tolerate such a
thing, and yet, he says, the Corinthian church seems proud of what was going
on. Paul’s concern isn’t just for the spiritual health of the man and the
church, he is also concerned about the Church’s witness to the world around
them. In many of his letters to other churches, Paul admonishes them, telling
them that they can’t behave like they used to before they came to Christ. Now,
in Christ, he often says, you are a new creation, the old is now gone, the new
has come. He might well have described his message this way, “You are a new
person in Christ, now behave like it!”
Valuing
one another: The Corinthian attitudes whereby they tried to
“get a rung up” on other members of the church had the effect of diminishing
others. But, in Christ, each and every one is important. Christ died for all,
Paul says, making each individual person extraordinarily valuable to God.
Today, some
in the Church seem to want to concentrate on secondary issues, some of which
are good and worthwhile causes. But the risk is that the Church will turn its
attention to those things, losing – in the process – our focus on God. One way
to look at the proper place and relationship of God’s rightful place in
comparison with other things we might concentrate on is to ask this question:
“By placing importance on this or that cause, do we run the risk of turning the
Church into an extension of a social service club, or an extension of a social
action group, or even an ecological advocacy group?” The danger is that the
Church will become divided, split into special interest groups, perhaps even
with the danger that the Church will lapse into a Corinthian-like quest for
moral superiority.
“Keep the
main thing, the main thing,” Paul would, most likely, tell us. That main thing
is Jesus Christ. Whatever else we might want to think about doing in Christ’s
name must have some compelling theological understanding for undertaking that
work. That’s what makes the Church different from the secular world around us,
for we are called to make sense of the world and its ways through the lens of
Jesus Christ.
[1] Canon is a word that is used in a number of
different ways. In connection with Holy Scripture, it refers to those books
that are included in the collection of writings that are considered to be
scriptural. The word itself comes from the Greek, where it originally meant
“rule”.
[2] The specific situation involved a man who
was sexually involved with his stepmother.
