1 Corinthians 1:10-18

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Grace Dean
6 years ago
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1 1 Corinthians 1: Now 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. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 12 What I mean is that each of you says, I belong to Paul, or I belong to Apollos, or I belong to Cephas, or I belong to Christ. 13 Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. 18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1

2 Stop Following Me What was the point of it all? That s what I was asking myself as I sat in the back row of the church. The church was a nondescript little building with cement walls and a tin roof. It was located on a dry dirt road half way up a hill overlooking the city of Quito, Ecuador. I had come to Ecuador along with my wife Sandy and four other members from my church in New York. We were short-term missionaries, serving for just one week. It was the first mission trip I had ever been on. This was August of It was Sunday morning, the last day of our mission, and we were attending the Sunday worship service at our host church. In fact, we would have to leave in the middle of the service to catch our flight back to New York. We had some interesting experiences on the trip, some of which I may one day share in another sermon. Some of what we experienced challenged my beliefs, while other things challenged me to reconsider what I did not believe. While our base was in Quito, we actually spent most of our time in a tiny village on the outskirts of the jungle [SLIDE]. We had done some good, to be sure. We helped paint the church there, which much like the one in Quito, was four cement walls and a tin roof. The sound of the rain on that roof was spectacular. We were in the jungle. It rained a lot and heavily! We also got to know the local children and played with them. And we attended many worship services at the church with the local townspeople. But as I sat in the back of the church in Quito going over the week s events in my mind, I was asking myself, What was the point of it all? I had gone on the trip at Sandy s urging, more out of curiosity and a sense of adventure than a desire to serve. In the weeks leading up to our departure, I had repeatedly asked her what exactly 2

3 we would be doing. She never gave me a concrete answer. She didn t know. No one in our group seemed to know what we d be doing. It was a vision trip. It was meant to give us a vision for serving the church in Ecuador and to broaden our understanding of the church, I suppose. Honestly, though, I didn t feel that I had made much of a difference. My being there had not changed anything. Had I not gone on the trip, the church still would have been painted, the children still would have played, and the worship services still would have taken place. The only vision I had that Sunday morning as I sat in the back pew of the church was boarding a plane and returning home. Then the worship service began. The praise band began playing. They were actually pretty good. The band was made up of Korean missionaries and native Ecuadorans. A Korean husband and wife led on guitar and keyboard, while the rest of the band guitar, bass, and drums were local teenagers. The drummer was actually quite good, much better than the quality of his drum kit, which looked pieced together with spare parts. There was also a tambourine player, but who pays attention to the tambourine? The song they were playing was a fast, lively one. The band was in good form the singer emoted the melody while strumming the rhythm on his guitar, the keyboard player harmonized, the bass player anchored the sound, and the drummer crashed his cymbals with excitement while pounding out offbeat rhythms. I was enjoying listening to them, but then something distracted me. It was the tambourine player. During our week in Ecuador I had become acquainted with him. I wouldn t say that I got to know him because he wasn t someone you could get to know easily. Santiago was about 15 years old, but it wasn t the awkward teenage years that made talking with him difficult. Santiago was learningdisabled not severely so but it probably made him self-conscious and compounded his natural shyness, so that people he didn t know well made him uncomfortable. I tried speaking to him a few times but he didn t seem interested in 3

4 talking to me. Because Santiago, like me, played the drums as well, I had even given him an extra pair of drum sticks that I had with me to see if he would open up to me, but he accepted the sticks without saying anything. While Santiago could play the drums, he wasn t playing at the worship service that Sunday morning. I imagined it was because the other drummer was much better. So at the start of the service, when I saw Santiago with his tambourine, I felt a little bit sorry for him. I imagined him wanting to play the drums but being relegated to the less important role of tambourine. I mentioned a minute ago that I was distracted by Santiago on the tambourine. It wasn t what he was playing that drew my attention, but how he was playing. The tambourine is a percussion instrument. It supports the rhythm. It isn t a featured instrument. I have never heard of a tambourine solo. But Santiago was shaking that tambourine for all it was worth. He was leaping up into the air, spinning his body in circles, slapping the tambourine against his waist, and shaking it with unbridled joy as he raised his arms with abandon. He was playing that tambourine like it was the most important instrument in the world. And it was. For him. Just as I turned to look at Sandy, to tell her to watch what Santiago was doing, she whispered to me, Look at Santiago! I have had a few moments in my life to witness God s grace in action in the moment and this was one of them. All my thoughts of wondering what the purpose of this mission trip had been, of what difference I had made, were instantly resolved. My question What was the point of it all? was answered. All the other experiences painting the church, playing with the children, getting to know people, and even the ways in which the trip caused me to reevaluate what I believed or did not believe all paled in comparison to this moment of grace, seeing Santiago worship with childlike joy. That vision is seared into my brain. I will never forget it, nor the lesson of joyful humility that it taught me. I wanted to be like Santiago. I wanted to follow his example. 4

5 In the passage that we read from 1 Corinthians, we see a church that is divided over whose example to follow. Some claim to follow Paul, others Apollos, others, Cephas or Peter, and still others Christ. Paul is concerned that all of these different and competing factions within the church are diluting and compromising the central message of the faith, which Paul calls the message about the cross. First, it might help us to have a bit of background [SLIDE]. Paul is writing this letter to the Corinthian church from Ephesus, which will one day receive its own letter from Paul addressed to the Ephesians. While in Ephesus Paul has heard disturbing news from people associated with a woman named Chloe. Chloe was most likely a wealthy Christian woman since her people probably refers to her slaves or her business associates. The disturbing news is that there are quarrels, or arguments, among members of the church in Corinth. Quarrels in the church, Christians arguing with each other, imagine that! The arguments are all about the status and authority that people claim for themselves based on who they acknowledge as their spiritual leader. Paul was a well known evangelist who had helped to found the church in Corinth. So it s not surprising that some acknowledge his leadership. Knowing of his prominence as one of the original twelve disciples, some claim Peter as their spiritual head, even though it s not clear that Peter ever visited Corinth. Others claim to belong to Apollos, who was a Jewish convert to Christianity known for his eloquent speaking. The final group acknowledges Christ as their spiritual leader. It is with this last group the Christ followers that Paul seems to side, even against those who acknowledge him, Paul, as their authority. How easy it would have been for Paul to side with those who claimed to belong to him. How great the temptation! Yet, remarkably, Paul resists that temptation [SLIDE]. Has Christ been divided? he asks. Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding no! Paul is saying to the Corinthian church, Stop following me. Follow the one who sent me. 5

6 In refusing this temptation to exert power over the church faction that claims his name, Paul is imitating Christ. Christ, too, was tempted to use his power for selfish ends. That is what Satan tempts Jesus with just before Jesus begins his ministry. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each tell this story. Jesus has just been baptized by John. The Spirit drives him into the wilderness for 40 days of fasting and prayer. He is starving. He has not eaten. Then comes Satan to tempt Jesus to use his power for himself, to satisfy his hunger. If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread. You re hungry, Jesus. Why are you suffering when you don t need to? Don t you know who you are? Don t you know what you can do? Jesus did know who he was and what he was capable of doing, and he also knew that his power was not to be used for himself but was to be used in service and in sacrifice on behalf of the world. Paul was certainly not without an ego. In some of his letters he does quite a bit of boasting. But when it came to the big picture, Paul knew where he stood in relation to Christ. He himself belonged to Christ, so how could anyone belong to Paul? As tempting as it was for Paul as a leader to allow the Corinthians to cite him as their spiritual authority, it must have been tempting as well for the Corinthians to want a leader, someone of flesh and blood. They had never seen Christ, but they had seen Paul. They had never spoken face to face with Christ as they had with Paul. Christ could not answer their questions or ease their concerns or encourage their faith as Paul could. Like the Corinthians, many Christians look for spiritual guidance in other Christians whom they consider to be more mature in their faith. For some people it s a celebrity pastor who writes books and blogs and tweets. For students in seminary it s often a favorite theologian, living or dead, or a favorite professor. For youth it s often a well known worship leader or their youth pastor. There is nothing necessarily wrong with having a spiritual mentor, someone to offer guidance and instruction in the Christian life, provided that the object of worship remains Christ and not the mentor. But even the best spiritual mentor will fall, will have moments of weakness, will disappoint. Christ will not. 6

7 Paul knew well his own frailties as a leader and as a human being. Rather than hide them, he celebrated them [SLIDE]. In verse 17 he writes, For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. Paul knew that he was not the world s greatest speaker. In his second letter to the Corinthians he acknowledges criticism of his public speaking when he writes, For they say, His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible (2 Cor. 10:10). By contrast, Apollos is said to be an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures (Acts 18:24). That is how he is described in the book of Acts. No doubt Paul s speech suffered by comparison with the eloquence of Apollos, and yet Paul celebrates that his calling lay not in baptizing but in proclaiming the gospel. We think of Paul as a writer of letters since that is primarily how we learn of him, in the thirteen letters of the New Testament that bear his name. But Paul was also a church planter and a pastor. He founded the church in Corinth, among others. At seminary there was even a course called Paul the Pastor, which focused on Paul s pastoral duties. As a pastor, his ministry consisted of much more than letter writing. In fact, writing letters is what he did when he had to leave a church that he had helped found. Paul s proclamation of the gospel was something he did much more in person, with his weakness of speech, than he did in his writing, where he was strong. For Paul, his weakness was God s strength. Paul says that his lack of eloquence in speaking is so that the cross would not be negated, not be emptied of its power. In other words, Paul s powerlessness magnified the power of the cross. That sounds so strange to talk of the power of the cross [SLIDE]. For the Romans, for whom the cross was a form of execution, the power of the cross lay in its ability to instill fear in a population. It was a public form of execution intended to send a message: stay in line, don t challenge the emperor s authority or we will nail you to a tree. But for Paul, the power of the cross lay right there, in Christ crucified, in Christ s willing sacrifice for a world that did not understand the nature of the sacrifice. 7

8 The proclamation of this message was why Paul was so concerned about the divisions in the Corinthian church. If Christians are arguing among themselves who is a true apostle and who isn t, or who is a greater member of the body of Christ, then they are contradicting the message of radical love and humble sacrifice that they are called to proclaim. Amid all the disputes that Christians have with one another, we would do well to remember this [SLIDE]. Now Paul is not saying that Christians should never disagree. That would not be realistic or even healthy. And if that were the case, we d be in real trouble because the history of the Church is one of continual discussion and debate. That is how truth emerges. Truth emerges in conversation. We learn more of God s truth as we engage with others with whom we don t see eye to eye: Western and Eastern Christians, Protestants and Catholics, Presbyterians and other Protestants, liberals and conservatives. What Paul is saying is that when all those nonessentials are stripped away, that one thing remains: the message about the cross. On that matter, in proclaiming that message, there should be no divisions, and the church should be united in the same mind and the same purpose, as Paul writes in today s opening verse (1:10). That message, which to some is foolishness, is to all who have been gathered into Christ, the power of God. The Church s purpose of proclaiming that message is one that we all share. Some will proclaim it like Apollos, with eloquence in the public square, in books and blogs and seminary classes, but it is not a message that requires great eloquence. Some of us will proclaim it from the pulpit, with or without eloquence, but it is not a message solely for pastors to deliver. Some will proclaim it with the humble way they serve the church, but it is not a message that is confined to the church. Some will proclaim it with daily acts of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, and love. All the better! [SLIDE] And some will proclaim it in unexpected and grace-filled ways, like shaking a tambourine with joy in a little church on a hillside in Ecuador. Now that is an example worth following! 8

1 Corinthians 1 in ASL

1 Corinthians 1 in ASL 1 1 Corinthians, Chapter 1. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Sosthenes. Verse 2. I am writing to God's church in Corinth, to you