The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on pilgrimage to Israel, and I found that if you go on pilgrimage to Israel with a certain kind of company, you will have all sorts of Biblical experiences. You can step into the Jordan River and re-experience baptism, not exactly where Jesus did it because that’s in the middle of the desert and doesn’t make for a good photo, but in a more picturesque area where there are thousand year old olive trees. You can cruise in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. You can see something called the Jesus boat which is a 2,000-year-old fishing boat, dredged up from the lake floor, that could possibly have been the sort used by Jesus and his disciples. You can even stop in at one of the numerous restaurants on the shore and eat Peter’s fish, a particular sort of fish that the owners assure you was the kind that Simon Peter was catching that day when Jesus called out to follow him. It’s all very authentic, assuming Jesus and the disciples had their own deep fryer.
A biblical experience that has authentically survived the millennia is the one we hear described in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today. The newborn Christian church at Corinth is divided. Factions are forming around different individuals, and power struggles are emerging. Paul begins his letter by summoning the Corinthians to live up to their identity in Christ. In particular, Paul calls them to unity. He appeals to them in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and, as New Testament scholar, J. R. Kirk, points out, we must not skip over this too quickly. The name of Jesus is not only the authority by which Paul calls this church to account, it is the name that makes the Corinthians one church. When Paul later asks, “Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” the obvious answer is no. We were baptized into the name of Jesus. Accordingly, the very basis of his admonition, the name of the Lord Jesus carries with it the diagnosis of their problem and its solution.
The problem is that they are claiming other peoples’ names as their identity markers. The solution is to be united in their common identity in Christ. To put it in another term, the Corinthians are plagued by party spirit. We get a hint at the divisions, even in the fact that one group is reporting to Paul about everyone else. Chloe’s people, who are, perhaps, Chloe’s household, or maybe those who meet for worship in Chloe’s house, bring word to Paul that the church is fracturing. Each group has rallied through a particular leader, and the debate in Corinth revolves around the knowledge and power that each of these teachers embodies. One group in Corinth has rallied to Apollos, an early leader under Paul and the Corinthian church. Elsewhere in the scriptures, Apollos is described as an eloquent man who is powerful in public debate, and such rhetorical force might have formed the rallying point for the Apollos party. It seems to lie behind Paul’s insistence that true proclamation of the Gospel does not require eloquence.
Then we have the place of Cephas, who is traditionally understood to be the apostle Peter, and his position is a bit murkier. It may be that Cephas or his followers introduced theological tensions in Corinth by bringing a sort of law-focused Christianity closer to its Jewish roots. The Corinthians, then, were flocking to smooth rhetoric that lived up to the days’ worldly display of wisdom and Apollos to a Jewish theology proclaimed by Cephas that seemed to have a stronger biblical pedigree, and to their own history, roots, and founder in Paul.
In response to this partisan bickering, Paul brings them back to the story that defines us all as the people of God, the crucifixion of Christ. Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? The answer is no, of course not. We are the people of Christ. Kirk reminds us that the cross transforms the value of our actions and our status. Because of the cross, we must learn to view the world differently. And so, as we start reading about the problems confronting the church in ancient Corinth, we will find ourselves invited to a conversion of the imagination, what Paul himself speaks of as being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Paul invites his readers to participate in the story of the cross, a narrative in which all that we think we know about the world, its values, its knowledge, its wisdom, its virtue, is reconfigured by God’s great act of salvation in Christ. The message of the cross, he is saying, is not something that only applies to becoming the people of God, something that can be compartmentalized and referred to only on questions of faith, or on Sunday mornings. It gives shape to the entirety of our lives and the entirety of our life together.
Now it was hard for me to read about the goings on at Corinth without immediately thinking of the state of affairs in our country and of the horrible events that occurred just over a week ago now in Arizona. Of course, no single public figure can be held responsible for the actions of an obviously troubled individual, but I think that there is something to the immediate blame that was placed on the tenor of our national debates. Every day, we are pulled in different directions by voices clamoring for our attention, claiming to represent the right beliefs, the correct way, the only truth. As divisions emerge in our political landscape, the rhetoric grows more passionate, more bombastic, and sometimes violent. Those who don’t agree with us are painted as lesser than us. Their humanity is stripped from them and they become a faceless enemy. It is any wonder, then, that this dis-incarnation can be taken to dangerous extremes, can provide a sense of justification for those who would inflict violence on those they despise.
As we are pulled in increasingly polarized directions by the voices of our politicians and commentators and critics and people in power, let our touchstone be the voice of Jesus in the Gospel today, calling out to us to follow him. Jesus did not eloquently call his disciples, nor did he promise them power or membership in an elite group. He simply invited these young fishermen to follow him, to pattern their lives on his commandments, to love God, and love neighbor, to have a conversion of the imagination, to be renewed. I think that invitation is before us again today. So let us follow him.
Amen.
