Belonging to Christ - 1 Cor 1: 10-17

Of all of the bickering I’ve seen over the years, perhaps the worst is church fights. You know the kind of argument I’m talking about – where we pray that more people join our side then the other, where the name of Jesus often gets pulled in, as if Jesus would ever have a part of any of this, and the chill of our attitudes towards each other fills the pew. The type of fight where we leave the church, our Christian family, because we don’t want to be part of another argument, or worse, because we didn’t get our way. Even with all of the teachings contained in the Bible, we do not fight well in the church.

We also seem to argue about the silliest things – what color the carpet should be, who should play what part in the upcoming pageant, or whether hymns or praise and worship songs nurture our soul. Whether to serve decaf coffee after church. The list goes on and on. But underneath our pettiness I think there are some deep theological questions being worked out.

In today’s passage of scripture Paul is pleading with the people of Corinth – people he has spent well over a year with. Paul dwelt among them as a tent-maker, while telling people about the love of Christ. Eventually those people would come together and form a worshipping community. But after Paul left the people began to quarrel. The entire letter of 1 Corinthians is addressing the issues of the community as reported by someone on the inside. We don’t know if this person had the most truthful account, but we do know that they felt compelled to tell Paul, and that they were from the house of Chloe.

And what were they arguing over. Baptism. It seems to be the discussion topic that never gets old. When to baptize a person. Should it be believer’s baptism? If so, at what age? If it’s an infant baptism, will we allow for a second baptism later? Should you be sprinkled or dunked? Should it be done inside of the church walls or out in nature? And that’s before we even get to the questions around what baptism means. While the topic is full of heated-debate topics, I don’t think I’ve ever heard one about who baptized someone.

But alas, this is where the Corinthians issue lies. It has to be important to Paul because it is the fist he addresses, after a loving introduction, before going into a lengthy discussion on other topics. He wants them to remember it. What are the roles or rhetoric? People remember what they heard first and last, and tend to fade out somewhere in between. So Paul jumps right in to discussing what he was appalled to hear – that people are claiming allegiance with the people who baptized them. Some are saying that they belong to Apollos and others Paul, or Cephas. I wonder if in this community, even those claiming to belong to Christ really understood what they meant or if they were simply trying to one up the last person.

So Paul asks the big question: What – has Christ been divided into parts? Paul will go on later in this epistle to speak about the body of Christ being composed on many parts, but here is a picture of vicious deconstruction. The people were ripping into each other, and essentially claiming to be associated with the workers of Christ instead of with Christ himself. The whole point of the gospel had become moot in the midst of the quarreling. Salvation had been displaced.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the car this week, as I drove to and from Lancaster for a clergy gathering. Along the way I saw more than a few reminders of how our Christian quarreling has grown today. All I can say is that boy, can we offend well. I saw two billboards that caught my attention – the first had printed in big numbers the day of Christ’s second coming, May 30^th of this year. The other was a billboard located between two major medical facilities, reminding people, none too gently that when they died they are going to be accountable to God. But in between these billboards was one of the best radio commercials I’ve heard in a while. It can be essentially summed up like this: Christ tells us to take his message of love and hope to the ends of the earth, but we can’t even take it to our neighbors because we cannot love well. We are so caught up in Christian propaganda and getting people saved, that we miss the message that people are sending us – that they are craving love and acceptance. And then the kicker, how can people ever believe in the love of Christ, if they cannot even see our love for them.

I wonder if Paul was thinking the same thing when composing this letter. How are ya’ll ever going to be able to share Christ’s message with those around you – those people going to the pagan temples, the people begging on the streets, those oppressed by the government, the people around who are having children they can’t take care of just in hopes of having someone love them unconditionally. How are we ever going to reach out to a world, if we are can’t even love those amongst us in our community?

A popular Christian song from a few years ago claims that “loves not a fight, but its something worth fighting for.” I don’t want you to leave here today thinking that people who care for each other don’t fight – talk to anyone who has been in a marriage or family unit and they will tell you that just isn’t true. But I think we need to re-evaluate what we are fighting about and how we communicate with grace.

We need to take the time to asks ourselves, what are we really fighting about and is it all that important? In other words, are we fighting about harm that another is causing us or bringing upon themselves? Okay. We need to discuss that. But are we hurt because things didn’t go the way we planned or over something as trivial as who baptized whom, or who we pledge our allegiance to over certain issues, maybe that could be handled a better way then a community wide quarrel.

It’s at this point in the story, that I’m really curious about this mystery informant from the house of Chloe. Had they tried to handle things on their own or did they run straight to Paul? We’re they looking to Paul for wisdom or heavy-handed reform? This epistle was crafted before the Gospels were formally written, but surely some of Christ’s teachings about love and forgiveness had found their way across Paul’s lips and onto the ears of those he taught while he was in Corinth. Did Paul teach them how to handle family drama well or did this informant from Chloe’s people just forget about that?

The thing about church fighting that makes it so dangerous is that it is contagious – like in any family. Something may start small, but as more and more people get pulled in, things quickly escalate and spiral out of control. Hence our example in today’s scripture passage. We may stop and scratch our head and ask, really Corinthians, you’re fighting over this? But then I think we need to stop and ask ourselves what would people in the future, or maybe even in the present, say in our church’s dirty laundry was hung out for everyone to read and comment on? What would be their reaction? In the line from another song, “Do you know what’s worth fighting for, do you know what’s worth dying for?” Because really everything we do, especially the things we get into big fusses about, have the potential to hurt another person, killing them slowly. Our words and actions have power that we rarely acknowledge, yet we fling them around so carelessly. And maybe that’s where history can get so sketchy, when we engage in and escalate conflicts that in the scheme of things, aren’t worth fighting and dying for. We need to take time to ask ourselves, if this is something that would be written about me, about us, in history books for the future, would I be proud of it? Was it something worth it?

Often we loose perspective and small things become really big things. Other times, drama needs to be dealt with in order for wholeness to emerge. This wholeness is for any and all people involved, not just the person who feels that they have been hurt. And I think that’s what Jesus is trying to communicate when he teaches about going in private to the one who has wronged you. There is no need to make a big scene, because really that is just going to make everyone look foolish and hurt the other person without really bringing you peace, or the community rest. If one on one doesn’t work, take another person, unassociated, unbiased, and if at all possible unknowledgeable about the grievance. Talk to each other. Listen to the other side of the story, and don’t necessarily walk in to such a conversation with an agenda or a demand. If healing still doesn’t come, bring a few other sets of ears, and as a last resort, bring it before the community.

We tend to flip this around today, right? Bringing it to the community first, either by our actions, silence, or flippant words. We want people to be on our side, but a church family isn’t about sides. It isn’t about claiming Paul or Apollos or Cephas. It’s about being in union with Christ. Like an unbroken circle, where we are working with each other towards a common cause. For the power of the cross, the heart of the Gospel, can become so clouded to those watching us, and even to ourselves, when we do not have conflict in love. When we want people to think that our side is right or wise, there isn’t much room for God’s wisdom, rooted in love and compassion, to intervene into our hard hearts and heads.

The funny thing about this epistle, is that by the time it arrived to the Corinthians the problem may have been resolved, or at least glossed over. But maybe Paul needs to still address it to get down to the deeper issues – the deeper questions – am I really Christ’s even if I’ve never seen Jesus? What does it mean to belong to God through Christ? Am I sure of my own assurance in salvation?

So today, I would ask us each to think of a conflict we have had in the church. Has been resolved? Is it worth fighting and dying for? If not, let it go. Apologize if necessary. If it is, pull the person aside after the service and talk to them, listen to them, and seek wholeness together. For if we are a fractured and disconnected community, how will we ever be able to communicate love beyond these walls? Amen.