Breaking Out of the Performance Box

 

There is something dangerous that happens when the strange becomes the familiar. When the strange becomes familiar, it is easy to think that answers are so simple, that messages are commonsense and that we know what something means before we hear it; because, we just do.  Anyone that questions that logic, who can point out a contradiction in the original message and how we live now, is just not with the programme.

The Sermon on the Mount would be close to 2000 years old. It has been reflected on and spoken about for 2000 years. That’s a long time and it is long enough for the strangeness that would have been in the atmosphere of the first hearers, to become logical commonsense now.

After all, we know that the poor are blessed because the Kingdom of heaven is theirs, it is just commonsense that we are salt and if we lose our saltiness we are worthless, every Christian knows that Jesus fulfilled the law, we know that anger towards someone would be subject to the same judgement as the sin of murder and we know the dangers of sharing oaths.  

All of this is familiar isn’t it – it is not a strange message. And as a result, the learning for us is really an affirmation, isn’t it? Even if the affirmation is the ongoing challenge.

But, there is a danger in that, that danger is that we fail to see what the message was challenging the original hearers to do and what the message is challenging ourselves to do today. We become spiritually blind to the message of the scriptures even if sermons and commentaries are so on point. Our blindness is what Jesus is speaking into throughout the gospels – “He who has ears, let him hear”. “He who has ears, let him hear.” Are our ears open enough for us to see the truth in the challenge?

Because there is a real danger, a danger to our own salvation because the Sermon on the Mount was not just a message of wisdom bringing sense to the Torah, the Laws of Moses, it was a call to a whole new way of life. And, in order to see this, we need to make the familiar strange again so that the blinkers covering our own eyes are removed. Because if we acknowledge that the Sermon on the Mount is close to 2000 years old, we have to admit are not living this whole new life.  The challenge continues today.

So, I want to ask you? Do you find the Sermon on the Mount strange in that it is challenging you to see your whole walk with God differently? Do you find the Sermon on the Mount, strange in that it is telling you that what you see as normal is completely abnormal in the eyes of God?

Have you found the last few weeks challenging it that you have been encouraged to see the Father, the Law and the way we treat others differently?

if we all go on living like we live now – we risk something. We risk walking a hypocrite life – a life where our faith is a performance not a way that is focused on bringing the reality of God’s Kingdom to this earth.

Now before we jump into the scriptures, I just want to provide a little bit more context into why I am suggesting that we need to make the words of Jesus strange to us again in order to see our own blindness to his message.

I have a background in an academic field called sociology. In short, sociology is the study of community. It basically argues that issues that happen in society, in families and to individuals are caused by how that society forms itself – particularly in the way it sets up rules, structures and institutions and how a social group determines success.  Note it is a study in how society forms itself, in how we as humans establish what is normal and how a social group would function.

Back in the day when I was teaching sociology, I would ask students, a typical sociological question, a question that determines what a social group values. This question, in a New Zealand context, is what does it mean to be a successful New Zealander – the answers are pretty predictable

*  To own your own home

* To have a successful job

* To make reasonable money

* To have a family

* To have social status in your community

The list goes on

I would then point out that not everyone would achieve these goals, and that for some people these goals are simply not achievable from the onset. For others, these goals may be ripped out from under them with unexpected changes. I would use Wainuiomata in the 1980s as an example, before the 1980s there were enough factories to employ fathers from every home, when the factories left, new jobs were not created. This led to what sociology is most interested in – different sets of behaviours, actions and reactions.

I would then point out that people may respond to their situation in a number of different ways; I am just going to focus on two here. The first would be to innovate. To accept that the markers of success but find alternative ways to meet these. “I want these goals, I can’t get them in the usual way, I’ll start a drug business.” The second would be to rebel; to say – “stuff it, I am going to make my own goals and reject these”. And I would say to my students, Christians fall into both of these camps.  Because Christians are not called to live by the ways and values of the world, but many find ways to do this, just with a Christian spin.

Ideally, if Christians were doing what they were called to do, they would be in the rebellion camp – setting up new markers of social success, but in actual reality Christians often sit in the innovation box. They accept the markers of success in New Zealand society, and just work hard, finding innovative ways to support each other into achieving these goals while still seeing their accomplishments as a result of their hard work.

Now, I am not saying having a home and a job is a bad thing. But I am saying some of us in this room are comfortable with where we sit as New Zealanders. We have a home, job etc. And having someone tell us that these are not markers of Kingdom success will be quite a challenge. There are others in this room who struggle with the markers of New Zealand success because no matter how hard they work and try the markers are just out of their reach, they will never own a home, have a successful job; some may not even have a family. They will even, today, feel like outsiders because they are not like the one’s in this room who just seem to have made it in New Zealand today.

In the Sermon on the Mount, it is this group of outcasts that Jesus is talking to. Those who struggle to achieve success in the eyes of the Roman and Jewish world. Jesus was talking to the outsiders confirming a new way of living while telling Pharisees, get out of the ritual of getting these goals differently and get with the righteous living programme.

He is actually telling both groups, the answer is not to innovate and try to fit into the box of the worldin another way – the answer is to create another box altogether – the answer is to live in righteous rebellion to the markers of worldly success. This is what will unite the Kingdom of God with this world.

So, are you prepared to make the familiar strange to yourself, even if it challenges you to your innovative core? Are you prepared to move the markers of success in your life from those determined by Aotearoa New Zealand to those determined by God?

Because, if you are, then you will find yourself living your faith differently – it won’t be about status and how others see you, it will be about your heart, your attitude and how God sees you. Because if you have taken the last few weeks to heart, you will know, your faith is not a performance – it is a heart way of living.

Mathew 6:1-8 from The Message: Jesus says:

"Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.

"When you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in action, I'm sure—'playactors' I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that's all they get. When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.

"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need.

Moving to Verse 16, finishing at 18, Jesus goes on to say:

"When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don't make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won't make you a saint. If you 'go into training' inwardly, act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn't require attention-getting devices. He won't overlook what you are doing; he'll reward you well.

In these verses, Jesus has moved on from the wisdom of righteous living found in the Torah, to the enacting out of religious practices. He is not moving away from one part of the message to the other, he is giving the consequences of the first part of his sermon. If you understand the principles of God’s Kingdom (what we call the Beatitudes). If you understand the place of the Law and how to enact the principles of the Law then you will know that your faith needs to be more than a performance.

Jesus is directly challenging and talking into a societal marker of success found in the  social groups of his time and one that continues into our own culture today – that is the marker of social status. The social status of being seen to be religious and holy, particularly within the community of faith.

You see being seen as religious and holy was not one of Roman success but of Jewish success in living under the oppression of Roman rule. Today, being seen as religious and holy is not one of New Zealand success, but one of Christian success and an innovative way to achieve the social status all New Zealanders strive for.

But being seen as religious and holy is just that. It is being seen. It is a performance, particularly when the praise of others is what feeds you (even when you do, in your own righteous way, relabel that praise as encouragement).

Jesus gives three explicit examples of religious performance – generosity, prayer and fasting. And I would have it a guess that if he was preaching to the Church of today, he might add to that list, worship, purchasing of Christian books, movies etc and attending Christian events. 

Now none of these things he is saying not to do, and even when he says do these things in private, is he saying that these things must be done in private, what he is saying is – what feeds you when you do this – is it your desire to be recognised by others? Is it your desire for praise by others? Or is it about your relationship with your Father? Because if this is not the first desire then you are living in the wrong box – get yourself into the righteous rebellion box, because that is where it all starts.

None of us in this room are immune from wanting to be in the box of comfort that comes with the recognition of others. And, don’t get me wrong, it is good to encourage. But, for those of us receiving the encouragement where is our heart at in our initial actions?

I want to give a really personal example here which came with the lesson to me that even though my intention was good, my heart was in the wrong place – my intention was Godly, but I was doing what I did to get a thank you from a human, not a holy hug from God.

Please, before I go any further, realise that this story is about me, the others in this story are no longer with us and it would be wrong to try and guess who was involved. The person that needed a heart change was me.

Quite some time ago, Eric and I gave substantially into an area in our church family. We are talking thousands of dollars. It was a very specific area and the recipients experienced the reward of our investment directly. They never knew how much money it cost Eric and I and we never have told them – after all, we were following the principle of giving without making a spectacle of it. Near the end of this time, we received a complaint that what we had given wasn’t up to expectation. We never received a thank you. It hurt deeply and put me in a position of anger and also promising myself to never give again.

I am sharing this story, not because the people in this story were in the wrong. Remember, no one knew how much we had given and we never asked for thanks or an acknowledgement. But the lesson in this story was for me and it was a very deep lesson. I had given in the hope of a ‘thanks’. I never got it. But it wasn’t up to the recipients to thank me. My heart was in the wrong place in terms of giving.

I had to learn a very powerful lesson and I remember talking with Pastor Paul at the time – it was a lesson of grace and mercy. I learnt that grace freely given, is given in expectation of nothing worldly in return and just as grace is freely given to me, I am to extend it to others. Mercy freely given, is given in expectation of nothing in return, and just as mercy is freely given to me, I am to extend it to others.

I learnt, that giving with even the hope of human acknowledgment was not giving under the call of God and the cross. I was challenged by God to accept that there will be ministries and families that Eric and I will be called to bless and that we should never expect a thank you in return, but savour the thank yous when they come. But never stop giving, never stop praying, never stop fasting, never stop worshipping or buying Christian teachings just because we haven’t had a thank you or two. Because, we are blessed to be a blessing.

I learnt a powerful Sermon on the Mount principle. Because of the initial expectation of the giving, that being a thank you, I became angry. The sermon tells me that holding anger towards others brings God’s judgement. I learned never to hold an oath towards others as a result of my feelings, as experiences would mean that at times, I simply might not be ready to be a person of my word. And I learnt, that I had to get the righteous living towards God and others right in my life first to ensure that all my practices of faith, even when in public, would be reflective of my relationship with my Father. If I could not get my feeling towards others right first – my faith was simply a performance.

And what about you? Is your Christian faith a performance or is it a heart transformation? What are the markers of success in your life? More importantly, what are the markers of success in your Christian walk? And then even more importantly, is how has God blessed you blessing others?

Finally, I personally think it is time that we as a Church begin to consider how we enact our vision for our Valley:  

We exist to provide a local place of worship, to help establish Wainuiomata as a Christ centred community by promoting Biblical values and positively impacting the lives of those around us.

Because enacting this vision would see how challenging our conceptions of social success. We would move from personal markers of homes, jobs, social status and even the expectation of a particular type of family to the principles behind Sermon on the Mount – one that demonstrates clearly to Wainuiomata in our actions that we put God above all others, and we treat our neighbours how we ourselves would like to be treated – forgiveness is our doorstop, mercy the keys to our whare and grace the doorway.

The Gospel Truth: Standing Up to Fake News

Have you ever contemplated this: how easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds?

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

Many people argue that the most important Chapter of the Bible is 1 Corinthians 15. While Chapter 13 is one of the most loved, in its focus on love, Chapter 15, focuses on a gospel truth – the resurrection. You see while love hung on the cross as a sacrifice for us, love always brought the resurrection of our Christ, and the resurrection of ourselves.

With love comes the hope of the resurrection. Love opens the door to us for the hope of a resurrected life lived in harmony and unity with our Father, his Son and his Holy Spirit.

Chapter 15 is a long Chapter. So to get to the gist of it, I am going to read from the paraphrase: The Street Bible:

He [Paul] drums up the core principles: the Liberator died to wipe out our mess; then he came back, alive and kicking. There were witnesses and Paul was one of them. If Jesus didn’t come back from death, then pack it in team! Without that, it’s all a big game: we’re just a club like any other (only sadder). But he did come back to life and blew apart Adam’s death-chains that hold us back from limitless lfe. He’s in charge and he’ll pick off his enemies until it’s only the big one left – death itself. Then he’ll kill death! All because he came back to life. Like a seed only grows when it’s been buried in the earth, so we’ll die and get a new lease of life. We don’t know the details yet, we can’t draw a diagram, but it’ll happen.

I’m telling you, guys, our mortal bodies don’t get to heaven. You can’t have something that ages, rots and dies living somewhere timeless – it doesn’t work. But the secret’s out. Some of us won’t snuff it, but all of us will get a body-exchange. No coded warning: some angel will get the nod; then a blink later he’ll blast his trumpet and the dead will come back alive permanently; we’ll rip off our mortal clothes to be kitted out with our new, designer immortal bodies. Then the old line ‘Death’s drowned in Victory’s Ocean’ will have come true. Like Hosea said it:

Death, you’ve lost your edge – how come?

Death, your bullets are blank – how come?

Death’s ammunition is our mess – he just packs it into bullets that comply with Moses’ Rule Book, and then fires it all back at us. But thank God, our Boss, Jesus the Liberator, has emptied the bullets by clearing up our mess, so the bullets are duds and just ricochet off us. We win!

So, my good mates, don’t shift. Don’t get blown off the road. Go for it 100 percent – you’re working for the Boss and you know it’s worth breaking sweat for. It’s not a waste of time. Hang in there.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

Chapter 15, the resurrection chapter, is a powerful chapter. Powerful, not only in its message, but also powerful in terms of the context that Paul is speaking into.

You see Paul is directly speaking into a context of fake news. He is telling them – here are the facts. This is the gospel truth – believe it in its fullness. In all of your chaos, you have overthought the gospel. You have been misled by the philosophies of others. And by doing this, you have removed the hope out of the gospel truth. The gospel didn’t stop at the cross, it only just started there.

Paul is directly speaking into this fake news and shining a light on it.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

We learn from the opening verses of Corinthians 1, that the church was overthinking the gospel, rather than just believing in facts, the Church had spilt. People had started to take sides on who gave the correct teachings of Christ and the way of the Church. The Corinthian church had become a church divided by conceptions of Truth.

And, it appears that, all of these conceptions centred around a divide in the Greek world – a divide that is also in the western world, the culture of our world today – and that is the divide of the body and the spirit. Often this divide has the spiritual as meaning more, and of more value, than the physical. This is simply not true.  

It is possible that some of the church at Corinth had started to rethink what was meant by resurrection. Some may have concluded that true resurrection occurs when our spirit is set free from our bodies. Some may have even concluded that in death, our body is gone, there is nothing more. Some may have thought that the resurrection had already occurred, there was no resurrection to look forward to. Some may have even questioned the resurrection of Jesus – maybe they doubted it, maybe they thought he broke free from the prison of his physical body.

Afterall, let’s be honest – if you think about it, if you really, really, think about it, I mean it you spend a good deal of time thinking about it – physically coming back from the dead is a ridiculous concept, isn’t it?

Aside from the story told to us in the Bible – how many of us know someone other than Jesus who has come back from the dead after three days – just think about it. Resurrecting a physical body is just ridiculous.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

Paul puts his counter-argument to the fake news spreading in the Corinthian Church through three key sections. In the first 11 verses, he focuses on the historical event of Christ’s resurrection, in verses 12 to 34, he points out that the only hope for the Corinthian church is in resurrection and from 35 onwards, he challenges the Corinthian church to live a resurrected life. So, let’s look at each aspect.

The historical event

Paul is quick to point to the facts of the resurrection of Christ. Paul does not argue for a doctrine or philosophy of resurrection. He points to the facts. It is a fact that Jesus died. It is a fact that his body was physically buried. Jesus did not just disappear. He died on a cross and to ensure that he was dead, a soldier pierced his side. His death is a physical fact. Furthermore, his death was a very public death. Everyone that was there would have seen it.  His body was buried by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. They physically picked his body up, laid it in a tomb and closed the tomb. Three days later the tomb was found empty – fact.

The risen Christ appeared to more than 500 people including Paul. When Paul was writing this, many of these people would be still alive and would still able to testify to what they had seen.  So, just as his death is a physical fact, the physical resurrection of Christ is a fact. A side fact to all of this, is that we know from scripture, that the disciples did not expect Jesus to come back from the dead.

It is a belief in these facts which brought the church into existence. It was the reality that some people in Corinth believed in these facts, that the church in Corinth existed. If these facts are not true, the church in Corinth existed on foolishness, and we today would as well. The church exists because of the resurrection.

Yes, if you really think about, talk about it, and debate it, concepts like resurrection seem extraordinary, impossible and improbable. But the gospel is built on facts, not philosophies or thinking.

The gospel does not give us guidelines for our life; it does not tell us what we have to do; it is not a set of rules – instead it tells us the truth that Jesus died for us, he died for our sins, and in order to give us a new life, he was resurrected from the dead. The new life, our new life, comes in the resurrection

Because Christ rose from the dead so we too will rise.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

Now that Paul has established the facts around the physical resurrection of Christ, he goes onto his next point.

The Resurrection, Our Only Hope

Paul asserts that while love was nailed to the cross, our sins were atoned at the cross, that our point in hope is within the resurrection moment – the victory moment. Death, the ultimate enemy, could not hold him down – he is risen. Death will not hold us down, as we too will join into the resurrected moment.

So our hope, Christian hope goes beyond death. For us, the day may end in a sunset, but we are looking beyond the sunset to the sun rising – and there is a double pun there because I am also talking about looking beyond the s.o.n. set to the s.o.n. rising.

Without a belief in our own resurrection, our own physical resurrection, our faith, our point of hope, is useless. Without the resurrection moment, and the hope that it brings, we have no assurance of the revelation moment, when we are reunited with each other, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

If we have no hope for this future – we are fools – because we suffer for nothing in this moment. Every time we confess the name of Jesus, without hope of the resurrection, we speak without the power that it brings.

Jesus died for our offences, our sins, in his resurrection is our justification. The victory is in the resurrection, not the moment of death on the cross.

And, if Christ did not rise, then our faith is pointless – he would not be able to advocate for us; we would not have a hope in a future – it would be all pointless. A dead saviour cannot take away sins, rescue us from the God’s wrath, or develop a relationship with us

Resurrection is where our hope is planted, to not believe in the resurrection either of Christ or of the church is to believe in something without power. There is no point in believing in falsehoods, the Christian life is only the best life when it is based on the truth of the gospel.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

So, Paul establishes through facts, the gospel truth of the resurrection, he then goes onto pointing out the hope of the resurrection for believers. He then moves into the final part of his discussion on resurrection from verse 35:

The Resurrection Life

This final bit still hits the fake news creeping into the Corinthian church yet again. This comes back to the physical and the spiritual. And a concept that some of us even fall into now, of thinking about resurrection as something solely spiritual. When we sing of the hope of the resurrection, many of us have a spiritual picture in our minds, we do not see in our minds a resurrected physical body. We have fallen into the trap of thinking that our God, the God who created us physically, only cares for our spiritual selves. This is not true. The reality is, as Paul would remind the church of Corinth, resurrection is very physical.

It is important to realise that whenever the resurrection is mentioned in scripture it is about the physical standing up of the body – it is about the physical body being stood up. The Greek word for resurrection, anastasis means just this ‘to stand up’. Now commentators are very quick to point a simple truth out (a truth that doesn’t involve too much thinking) – a spirit simply cannot be stood up, float up maybe but for a spirit to do something physical is impossible.

Added to all this is that we are so often caught up in this debate about the physical and the spiritual, and what matters most to God is that we miss the real focus. The real point of difference that we need to focus on, the real difference we should be focused on is our current body and condition which is subject to death, it is mortal, and our future body and condition which is immortal.

Paul reminds us that by one man’s sin (Adam’s sin) we were made unrighteous, by another man’s obedience (Jesus’ obedience) we have been made righteous. Death is not the final word on our lives and while most of us in this room will die – we, along with those that have left us in death, will experience a resurrection moment.

It will be physical, but one thing we know is, our mortal bodies are flawed products. They break on us, we get sick, we experience plan and most of us have our own disabilities. Our bodies are broken.

Paul is quick to remind the Corinthian Church, though, that bodies are not prisons and that in our resurrection we will inhabit a new body, one that is immortal without the flaws of our current condition.

It is a little like we are seeds, and in our death we are planted, but in our resurrection we become the plant the seed was destined to be. Or for the younger of us, it is like we are like Marvel Superheroes, our human condition is broken, but in our metamorphosis into a superhero, we realise our immortal and ultimately perfect condition.

It a tough bit of theology, but it is key: resurrection is a fact in the gospel, it is our hope, and in our hope we will be resurrected anew.

What helps me understand this is knowing that in his own resurrection, Jesus was not recognisable immediately to his disciples. It tells me something deep happens in a resurrection moment. And it must – after all, once you have physically conquered death, you must be transformed.

And it is while we live in this hope and expectation, that we live in preparation of our resurrection moment. And the best way to prepare is to live a life in service to each other, in the way of love knowing that hope springs eternal.

How easy it is to lose all hope by simply overthinking God or letting other people sow doubt in our minds.

Let us hold onto the gospel Truth of the resurrection – it is physical, it is real and it is our hope.

Are you prepared to believe these three key messages:

1) The act of love on the cross is followed by the hope that is found in the victory of the resurrection.

2) That if we dismiss this simple truth, we reject the reason for our being as a Church.

3) That if we accept this simple truth, the promise is that we too will both physically and spiritually be resurrected into immortality so that we can commune with our Father, his son and be in the presence of his Holy Spirit.

Communion – An order of life and love not service

 

Imagine this – instead of having communion in the context of a church service, we had communion at the conclusion, or end, of one of our shared meals. Imagine having communion after a culture night, when we celebrated the differences which contribute to the oneness of who we are as a church. Our tables would still be filled with the dishes of the meals shared and prepared, dirty plates and half-filled glasses – there would be nothing clean about it and then someone would say:

‘Now that we have finished feasting for our bodies, let us remember the one who gave his body for us so that we could have complete wholeness. Now that we all have had enough to drink, let us raise our glasses in remembrance of the one who spilled his blood for us as a living redeeming sacrifice.’

How easy would it be for each of us to take communion out of the cleanness of the church service, the lace cover cloth, the communion trays and pre-cut bread, and have it as one the final course of a full-blown meal? How comfortable would we feel in this context? And what would it reveal about ourselves, and our church and the way we do life together?

I want to suggest that over time, communion has become more and more sanitized. Jesus never said, have a ritual set apart in a church service called communion. He did call us to a ritual of communion, but he demonstrated, and the Corinthian Church demonstrated, that ritual would be ingrained in everyday life and love. Let’s look at the context of the first communion.

What we do know is that the first communion between Jesus and the disciples did not happen in a church or in a synagogue. In fact, it was honoured at a traditional time – the feast of the Passover. And the Passover feast always happened in the order of life and love not the order of service. The Passover meal was one that happened within families and between families, in people’s home. And this was the case with the first communion.

Mathew 26 and Luke 22 have the disciples asking Jesus – “where do you want us to make preparations for the Passover?” Jesus responds, go ahead into the city to a certain man (a man who is unnamed, a random man of history an unnamed significant man). Jesus says – go to this random but significant man’s house and tell him – we will be sitting at your table this Passover.

It was during this time, a time of seven days, and at the conclusion of a meal – the Passover meal, when the table would still have the remits of Passover – the bones and head of a roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs, along with glasses of wine in front of each of the disciples. From this table, not a clean table, Jesus would pick up a piece of unleavened bread, bread that we learn in Deuteronomy 16:6 symbolised the affliction of the Israelites as they fled Egypt.

Jesus would pick up the bread of affliction, he would proclaim in the breaking of the bread that he would carry the affliction of brokenness for all of us and he shared it, each disciple breaking off a piece. He would pick up a glass of wine from that same table and speak into it, this wine, an added addition to the Passover meal would now carry the symbolism of blood and a new covenant. 

The first communion was an order of life and love. Communion was more than something to be built into an order of service for Sunday worship, but into a love for our God and each other – a remembrance event to be had at the table, not the alter.

It is important to remember this as we approach today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, because these verses will make so much more meaning and sense if we read them in the context of the church Paul was writing to – not the church today.

1 Corinthians 11: 17-34. From the Passion Translation

Now, on this next matter, I wish I could commend you, but I cannot, because when you meet together as a church family it is doing more harm than good!

I’ve been told many times that when you meet as a congregation, divisions and cliques emerge—and to some extent, this doesn’t surprise me. Differences of opinion are unavoidable, yet they will reveal which ones among you truly have God’s approval.

When all of you gather as one church family, you are not really properly celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

For when it comes time to eat, some gobble down their food before anything is given to others – one is left hungry while others become drunk! Don’t you all have homes where you can eat and drink?

Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?

Are you trying to show contempt for God’s beloved church?

How should I address this appropriately? If you’re looking for my approval, you won’t find it! I have handed down to you what came to me by direct revelation from the Lord himself.

The same night in which he was handed over, he took bread and gave thanks. Then he distributed it to the disciples and said, “Take it and eat your fill. It is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.” He did the same with the cup of wine after supper and said, “This cup seals the new covenant with my blood. Drink it — and whenever you drink this, do it to remember me.” Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are retelling the story, proclaiming our Lord’s death until he comes.

For this reason, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in the wrong spirit will be guilty of dishonoring the body and blood of the Lord.

So let each individual first evaluate his own attitude and only then eat the bread and drink the cup. For continually eating and drinking with a wrong spirit will bring judgment upon yourself by not recognizing the body. This insensitivity is why many of you are weak, chronically ill, and some even dying.

If we have examined ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, it is the Lord’s training so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my fellow believers, when you assemble as one to share a meal, show respect for one another and wait for all to be served. If you are that hungry, eat at home first, so that when you gather together you will not bring judgment upon yourself. When I come to you, I will answer the other questions you asked me in your letter.

Let’s put these verses into context, with the understanding that Paul is talking about communion as an order of life and love, not an order of service. If we try to relate these verses to our ritual of communion today – they just don’t seem to fit, and to be perfectly honest can lead to some, like me, misunderstanding the purpose of these verses.

So, let’s break this passage down; in short there are three sections: the first section deals with the church at Corinth as it prepares for Communion, the second focuses on Communion itself and the third is about the needed response in preparation. Now I want to suggest that many of us read these verses with a focus on Communion and our Response, we don’t focus on the Preparation verses. There is a very simple reason for this, the preparation verses clearly position the Lord’s table in a different way than we are used to.

It is clear that Communion is more than what we are used to here – there is no way in our church that there is going to be those who miss out of bread, because others are taking their fill first, and there is certainly no way that some are getting drunk on the Ribena Juice while other miss out.

Reading these verses in their fullness suggests, that Communion happened during a much bigger meal. A sharing of people coming together to share food and take communion together. Paul makes it clear, it is no ordinary meal, if it was you could have it in your home, it was a communal meal.

Commentaries would tell us that a common practice of the early church was something called a love feast. This is a time for the church to come together in brotherly love to celebrate differences and the fact that the cross brings unity and healing. Bread would be broken and wine drunk – but not to exclude others or in an act of drunkenness but in an act of understanding that Christ’s body had become the bread of affliction and his blood, the new Covenant. The church became one with Christ at the cross in all its diversity.

But Paul was dismayed at the Corinthian church; instead of coming together in love, they had allowed the divisions that divided them to come to the Lord’s table. And we know from the beginning of the letter that these divisions were real – some said they followed the ways of Paul, others the ways of Apollos, some said that sexual indulgence in the church was normal and okay, some accused others of having debt against them, others refused to lower themselves and their beliefs because those who were young in their faith.

These differences do not appear at our communion table today, because we separate it from a meal and have it as an order of service not of life and love. We also do communion very privately, even if we take the elements together, we really don’t engage in testimony and discussion over the elements.

But this doesn’t mean we are any better; that the human condition today has improved since the time Paul wrote this letter, just look at our children and shared lunches. Back in the day, when I was growing up in state housing in Westport. Mum would always make the best cinnamon buns complete with fresh whipped cream or whitebait fritters made to Grandad’s secret recipe. When we took our plate to school we had strict instructions that the food was not ours, it was food to be shared first and foremost.

Other kids would bring a variety of dishes, but three things were apparent:

1) The most popular kids always got the first choice and their fill, while the poorest and most rejected kids were lucky to get something at all;

2) Some families would bring the best plate possible to school, but as soon as the lunch started, they would quickly grab their plate and hide it to take home complete with food still on it;

3)  Shared lunches did not foster unity but showed where divisions of power and inequity existed.

We could take from this that the church at Corinth was no better than a contemporary classroom of kids; but I want to suggest that both demonstrate two very real issues with our broken human condition – the first being a sense of entitlement. There are times in which some feel entitled to be first at the table, entitled to be seen above others and entitled to be acknowledged. The other issue with our broken human condition that leads to division at moments of shared communion is the flipside of entitlement, and that is a blindness to inequity. When you feel entitled to something, and you use that argument you are more likely to be, in that moment, blind to inequity. Blind to those less fortunate or different to who you are.

This is exactly what was happening in the preparedness of the love feast, at the Lord’s table of the Corinthian church – division meant that some felt more entitled to a place at the table and the food  and drink being served. This entitlement led to inequity and some missing out because of the conditions set by the entitled.

Paul would say “Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?” If you want a table of entitlement – set it up in your own homes, because at the Lord’s table there is a seat for everyone. And, if everyone is treated as equal then gluttony and drunkenness would be non-existent because everyone would be sharing. After all, reading Luke 22, Jesus even broke bread and shared communion with Judas.

I would suggest that we cannot judge ourselves better or worse than the Corinthian church as we prepare for the table of Communion. But I would say that any divisions that exist in our church and we do have division and difference, then the way we manage these conditions don’t happen in the order of a church service, where we are all nice to each other, the way we manage division and difference happens in the order of life and love.

So, do we do life and love together?

Thankfully, we are not working with the tricky verses of last week, verses about gender, worship, the head and whether I should have long or short hair. Thankfully, these verses make plan simple sense when it comes to a common sacrament of the church yesterday and today. Thankfully, we can forget about context and just focus on content. Thankfully, communion is something we have never had doctrinal arguments about.

Hmmm, realistically just as communion divided the church in Corinth, over the centuries the church has become more divided over communion. My father got to have his first communion at the age of 12 in a denomination which believed that children should not have communion until they understood it and that the bread became the body and the wine became the blood.

My very first experience of a church as a child was a denomination which refused to have communion. Not because it disagreed with communion but because it was a denomination which drew in the broken often those who had been once part of other churches. It order to reduce arguments about difference, leadership made the decision that it was best to focus on unity than doctrines which caused disunity.

I can’t help but think that the way we do communion in our own church, and in others, has been a direct response to issues such as how do you ensure that everyone is able to take part, you cut the bread up, how do you ensure no-one gets drunk, you use Ribena juice, how do you ensure that there are no arguments, you restrict those who speak and predominately do communion in silence.

Now, I am not saying that the way we do communion today is wrong, but I am saying that if Paul was picking up on anything in the Corinthian church, it was often that the practices of worship – starting with communion have the risk of dividing us – and showing a deep human scar that exists in the brokenness of our being: “Don’t you realize that you’re showing a superior attitude by humiliating those who have nothing?”

A few months ago, I suggested that the whole of the letter of 1 Corinthians was a call for love. A deep love. An agape love – a love that demonstrates the compassion and deepness of the love of God for his creation. When I put communion into the context of the church of Corinth, I suggested that this occurred in a time of shared feasting. A common feast and act of worship called the Love Feast, the Agape Feast.

Today, we do communion very differently, and one suggestion that I have made is that we have potentially made communion too white, and too pure. I have also suggested that we do tend to be inward in communion. In the last communion, Lisa reminded us that communion was a call to common unity. I want to suggest that the only way we can achieve common unity is through deep and intentional acts of life and love and getting to know each other.

I want to finish with a hint I made when I started, and that for decades, I have misread these verses because I focused on content. These are the verses I have for too long misread:

So let each individual first evaluate his own attitude and only then eat the bread and drink the cup. For continually eating and drinking with a wrong spirit will bring judgment upon yourself by not recognizing the body. This insensitivity is why many of you are weak, chronically ill, and some even dying.

You see when I have read these verses I have focused only on one relationship, that of myself with God. There have been many times that I have not had communion because I have not been in a good place with God. But if I read these verses in the context of this chapter, in the context of this letter – the attitude Paul is asking us to evaluate is the attitude that we may have towards each other. Attitudes of entitlement, attitudes of selfishness and attitudes of being blind to the inequities in our church. Attitudes of judgement and bias.

Paul calls the Church to Corinth back to the first principles of life and love – to come to the communion table, whether it be at a feast, or with little square bits of bread, to come to the table when there is division only leads to our church being sick both spiritually and physically. The call to life and love is real – but are you, are we, ready to walk in the way of love. 1 Corinthians 13 is harder than we think.

No reira tena tatou, tena tatou, tena tatou katoa.

 

 

What's Love Got To Do With It?

 

You must understand, though the touch of your hand makes my pulse react
That it’s only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract
It’s physical
Only logical
You must try to ignore that it means more than that

Oh, oh, oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it?
What’s love, but a second-hand emotion.
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken.

These are the words sung by Tina Turner in 1984 as she spoke into a world where hearts are broken and love had become an emotion, not an action. It’s a world very similar to that of Paul’s. And, when it comes to love, I want to suggest that the whole letter of Paul is a call to love in the purest sense. That the full letter is about understanding that love is more than a feeling. It was more than eros, the Greek word for passionate love, and it was more than philia, the Greek word for affectionate love, it was also more than philautia, the word for self love and it was more than mania, the Greek word for obsessive love. I want to suggest that Paul is calling the Corinthian church away from love as a feeling to love as a verb; to a love that represents the cross, agape, the Greek word for selfless/universal love and pragma, the Greek word for enduring love.

But before you say it is all Greek to me, lets return to the scriptures and, instead of reading them in the Greek of Paul, we will read them in the New Living Translation. 1 Cor 6:12-20.

You say, "I am allowed to do anything"—but not everything is good for you. And even though "I am allowed to do anything," I must not become a slave to anything.

You say, "Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food." (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.)

But you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.

Don't you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?

Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!

And don't you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, "The two are united into one." But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Run from sexual sin!

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.

(1Co 6:12-20)

When Royce first asked me to preach on this passage, my response was two-fold. First, I find it hard to preach on hot topics which can tend to sway people into religious/ritual-bound practices or complete liberalism.  Second, I warned Royce that I could not preach on these passages without mentioning the French philosopher Foucault. When it comes to philosophers, Foucault is not on the top ten list for Christian thinkers. But, he can help us get a bit of understanding of classical Greek and Roman culture. Especially, around the time of the church in Corinth.

You see there is a fascination today with the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. One that tends to paint them as the clean, pure and the white of the marble statues left behind today erected to honour the Gods and heroes of Ancient Greece and Rome. We don’t see the mess of this world, the mess that the church of Corinth was up against. One that Foucault would write about in his book: The History of Sexuality.

In the ancient world, Corinth was to Athens what Auckland is to Wellington. While Athens and Wellington are seen as capital cities, both Corinth and Auckland are, let’s face it, more important. They the true capitals of commerce, trade and travel. Corinth separated Sparta from the main body of Greece; all transport, north and south, had to pass through Corinth. And it had massive seaports to which sailors flocked.

It is said that the Greek goddess of love, beauty and pleasure, Aphrodite was born near Corinth. Aphrodite’s temple in Corinth had over 1000 prostitutes donated by the citizens of Corinth, men and women, to serve Aphrodite through erotic acts of lust, sex and sexual pleasure 24/7.  It was thought that by having sex with one of Aphrodite’s prostitutes you would be serving the goddess herself and having sex with her.

The Greek geographer Strabo writing about 20AD talked about how the wealth of Corinth was built on sex, lust and prostitution. He describes streets filled with sailors lusting for sex and states a common proverb of the Greek world “The voyage to Corinth isn’t for just any man.”

In a more contemporary source, Dave Stotts in Drive Thru History points out that a common adjective of the Greek world was to “Corinthinese.” To Corinthinese meant to fornicate. So, if we haven’t got the point now, sexual indulgence was a reality of the Greek world. Sexual indulgence was the norm of the Corinthian world.

And in this world was a church – a church made of real people trying to escape the corruption of their own culture.

We know from Chapter 5, that this is not the first time that Paul has written to the Corinthian church about sexual immorality. He tells us in verse 9 of Chapter 5 that he had previously told them to not associate with people who indulge in sexual sin.

We also know that Paul is not telling them to not associate with the culture outside of the church. Again, he says in Chapter 5 that he wasn’t writing about non-believers and if he was then they “would have to leave this world to avoid people like that.”

Paul is writing about the sexual immorality that is occurring within the church. Paul is writing about love playing out in the church in all the wrongs ways.

You say, "I am allowed to do anything”, “All things are lawful for me” was a popular Corinthian proverb. In the Romo-Greek world, it singled that one’s body was one’s own possession.  It was not owned by Caesar or any Parthenon God. It was your’s for your shaping and for your pleasure.

So, at this point, what has love got to do with it? This saying ‘I am allowed to do anything’ is simply referring to Philautia, self-love, I am allowed to love myself. I am allowed to satisfy myself. I am allowed to feel good.

It is then not by chance that Paul would then say “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food”. He was referring to the pleasure element of the culture of the time – food gave pleasure, sex gives pleasure. We satisfy the appetite of the stomach with food; and sex in Corinth is treated in the same way – as satisfying an appetite of sorts.

And, at this point, what’s love but a second hand emotion? These are the feeling loves of eros (lust), philia (affection) and mania (obsession). They all feed our own feelings, our own desires. They give us pleasure. They are emotions, they are feelings.

And then Paul comes out of left field and goes straight to the point – you have been called to a different kind of love; why? Well logically our bodies are no longer our own.

They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by His power, just as He raised our Lord from the dead.

Don't you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?

Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!

This is deep. It reminds us about a different freedom, the freedom that is found at the Cross and the resurrection moment. And just as God raised Christ from the dead, he is resurrecting us and will raise us in turn not as spiritual beings but as a completely physical creation in which his spirt will dwell because our bodies are the temple of his Holy Spirit. We don’t have to have sex with one of Aphrodite’s prostitutes in order to be joined to God, our bodies were made for God, as temples where his spirit dwells.

This is big – remember, Paul starts off “I’m allowed to do anything”. I could reinterpret that as “I am free to do anything”. And in that, Paul is saying, in pursuing a freedom of love of self and feeling love, you have become a salve to yourselves. You have taken on the shackles of slavery again. Tina Turner was so right “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken”. Because the type of heart she is referring to is one in which love is a feeling – whether it be in self love or passionate love. And when we restrict love to the feeling words, we shackle ourselves to the world again and that old saying is so, so wrong, while sticks and stones break our bones, the words of others and ourselves in our doubts do so much damage. Love, as a feeling, as an emotion cannot be sustained.

What’s love got to do with it? Everything Tina. The reality is, sexual immorality is not confined to the Corinthian church alone. I started this sermon with a reflection on the variety of Greek words for love, many of them have connections to words today in English. Our English words whakapapa back to the Greek – erotic, affection, mania all have direct connections to Greek words, others such as lucidity, pragmatic and friend also link back to the Greek words for love. But as I suggested at the beginning of this sermon – there are two kinds of love – love as a feeling and love as a verb.

When I look at our culture today, what I notice more and more is a focus on the feeling of love rather than the action of love. I think we are no different than the Corinthian church in that we frame sex, and I am being frank here, but not frankie (who has been fixed), we frame sex as something to first and foremost give us pleasure. And we frame even our marriages around the feeling of love, not the verb of love.

What does this do? I would like to suggest that cultures that frame intimate relationships around feelings of love are gardens of risk. Why, because it is so easy, just as it was in the Corinthian church, to pick up the adage that “I’m allowed to do anything” and enter into relationships of sexual immorality. It is so easy to, and it’s allowed, its legal, it is so easy to choose to lie with a prostitute so that we get that feeling back, that arousal back. It is so easy today to enter into affairs. It is permissible to satisfy ones own sexual appetite – after all, if your partner’s not giving it to you, you can look elsewhere. 

Paul would go on to say:

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.

These verses that are so often miss-interpreted as framing sex as a dirty and wrong. But we have to read these closely and in the context of Chapter 5, Paul is saying that sexual immorality is a sin, not sex. And most importantly Paul has the mirror on the church, not on the citizens of Corinth.

These verses are not to be picked up to judge those outside of the church but to reflect on ourselves, our behaviours and our indulges. Paul is so deeply reminding the Corinthian church, that Christianity is more than just spiritual. It is more than a religion of rituals. Christianity is deeply physical. Hear me here, Christianity is deeply physical.

In the beginning, God created physically the earth and everything on it. God created man and woman; God created the bodies of Adam and Eve. And then, to show his deep deep love for us, God physically came to us through his son Jesus. Even the deepest of Atheists agree that Jesus is a true physical human of history, they just disagree that he was the son of God. Then, a display of his deepest agape, compassionate love, Jesus died physically for us on the cross. And to top it off, Jesus the son of God, resurrected from the dead, came physically back to the disciples and held out his hands to doubting Thomas so that Thomas would know that this was Christ in the flesh.  

All of these acts, point to a faith that is just as much physical as it is spiritual. Paul is reminding the Church at Corinth – God bought all of you – the physical and the spiritual at the cross. God bought all of you. So, realise “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.”

We have to realise that the Church of Corinth was a church of real people trying to escape the corruption of the world they lived in. We have to realise that the culture of Corinth was corrupt even by today’s standards, but it would not have seemed corrupt by the Corinthians at the time. It would have been seen as normal. This is the way we live in Corinth: “I am allowed to do anything.”

And when I remind myself of that very reality, that the people of Corinth saw their culture as normal for them. The church of Corinth was made up of Corinthian people who would have come out of the culture of Corinth. It is so easy to understand how sexual immorality would have slipped into the church and how the church would have accepted it. Paul’s challenge to them is to not make love a second-hand emotion, understand that God has bought all of you, he dwells within you. Focus on the actions of love you demonstrate to each other as the body of Christ, not on the emotion of love.

When I remind myself of this reality, I can’t help but think, what would Paul’s letter to us be? Not the church of Corinth, but the church of Wainuiomata? We too have been called to escape the corruption of the world that we live in. We too have been called to not put love as a feeling first, we too have been called physically and spiritually to united first with God. We too have been called to demonstrate within our own valley, a church built on agape love – love as a verb, a selfless, compassionate love. Yet, we too like the church at Corinth will find ourselves craving to satisfy our own love of self and the love of appetite whether it be sexual or just winning the fight against the person who wrongs us.

But just how well we do this, well God will be the judge of that? In the meantime, let us strive to live the answer to the ultimate question – what has love got to do with it? Everything, we respond, everything, in our comings and goings, in our interactions and thoughts, at all times and in every way.

I want to finish with a true story, retold in the movie ‘The End of a Spear’. In this movie Nat Saint and his fellow missionaries were killed by Waodani indigenous peoples in a misunderstanding of welcome ceremonies. Decades later Nat’s son Steve would find himself being a missionary with the Waodani in a desire to help them see freedom in Christ and their own culture and not be dependent on Western model of Christianity. In a very true, and moving moment, the leader of the Waodoni says to Steve that he can’t accept Christ, he is the one that killed Steve’s father.

At that moment, Steve picks up a spear, he wants to set right the death of the father, he wants to heal the pain inside of a father lost. He wants to satisfy the appetite of passionate revenge. And then Steve realises deeply and says aloud “My father’s life wasn’t taken, he gave his life.” It is similar to another gospel story, one we all agree with:

Koia anō te aroha o te Atua ki te ao, hōmai ana e ia tāna Tama kotahi, kia kāhore ai e ngaro te tangata e whakapono ana ki a ia, engari kia whiwhi ai ki te ora tonu.

For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

 

A Divided World Doesn't Need a Divided Church

 

I don’t know about you, but every three years an event happens in our country that I just can’t wait to be over. It starts with an announcement – on this day, this year, New Zealanders will be able to choose who represents them – who has the interests of our country at heart. And then it starts, first it a few announcements, but it is not long before it dominates everyday discussion; it is not long before people enter into arguments about who we should follow. We are all picking sides, going round saying ‘I’m on Winnie’s side’, ‘I’m for Luxon’, ‘Hipkins is my man.’ And the pious and religious of us take an upper hand – ‘I’m in the Messiah Group.”

Okay, I am bringing the example of our election to demonstrate just how divided we can be at times in the pursuit of following a leader. But it happens in the church as well and I want to suggest that in a divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

But the reality is the church is divided. There is a reason why we have so many dominations in the world – disagreement and the pursuit of the leader for the moment has led to Christ’s church fracturing into ‘I follow this doctrine and this leader.’

In all of this, I wonder how Paul would have responded given his message to the Corinth. A member of Chloe’s family had alerted to him to the same divisions happening in the church of Corinth. We don’t get to read Chloe’s letter so we have to infer from Paul’s letter that the church in Corinth was messed up. Chloe’s letter must have said early on, that members were taking sides and people were looking for leaders who personally reflected them and their opinions rather than coming together in diversity and unity with the understanding that it is the one Christ which brings us all together.  

To give these verses a bit of a contemporary feel we are reading today from The Message, 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 verse 10-25

I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I'll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common. I bring this up because some from Chloe's family brought a most disturbing report to my attention – that you're fighting among yourselves! I'll tell you exactly what I was told: You're all picking sides, going around saying, "I'm on Paul's side," or "I'm for Apollos," or "Peter is my man," or "I'm in the Messiah group."

I ask you, "Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul's name?" I was not involved with any of your baptisms – except for Crispus and Gaius – and on getting this report, I'm sure glad I wasn't. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas's family, but as far as I can recall, that's it.)

God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center – Christ on the Cross – be trivialized into mere words.

The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written, I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb – preaching, of all things! – to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle – and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself – both Jews and Greeks – Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."

(1Co 1:10-25)

Just reading these verses, I feel that Paul would be in tears at the contemporary church, we are so divided; we are messed up and we are driven by personalities. And if history tells us something, we have a duty in this church to not let our opinions and feelings come in the way of the power of the cross for reconciliation. We have an obligation to, using the words on Paul, “learn to be considerate of one another.”

You see the Bible tells two stories – the first story is the story of ourselves – God’s creation. This is story repeats itself over and over across the pages of the Bible. This is a story of a people who repeatedly bite the bait of the accuser and enter into division. We see this in the garden where Adam and Eve separated themselves from the creator, we see it with the brothers Cain and Abel and later Ishmael (from which the nation of Palestine will come) and Isaac (who would later have his name changed to Israel). We see the story of division occurring pretty much in every chapter of Judges, and later, in the splitting of the nation of Judah from the nation of Israel. We see division in amongst the sects of Israel at the time of Jesus – the Pharisees, Essenes and Sadducees. We see it here in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and we see it in the world today.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

The second story of the Bible is one of reconciliation through covenant promises by a Creator God to his Creation. This message of reconciliation is finally realised at the Cross. This is a simple truth. But it is hard to accept – just as Paul points out some demand miraculous demonstrations and others philosophical wisdom. It just doesn’t have the wow factor. The wow factor that comes often with celebrity and fancy leaders.

It is so easy to be swayed to leaders who reflect our individual differences. If one of us happens to be given the gift of healing, it is so easy for those of us who find power in miracles to see their gifting in place of the cross. If one of us can give a good reason for why we should do what we do, it is so easy for those of us who find power in the intellectual to focus in on their teaching, rather than seeing the way of the cross is simple if we set our eyes upon Jesus.

You see while the church in Corinth was spilt into those who followed Paul, those who followed the Greek Apollos and those who followed Peter, the disciple that walked with Jesus. Paul, Apollos and Peter all shared the gospel Truth of Jesus. The problem was the people of Corinth had begun to follow the personalities, styles and opinions that reflected their own differences.  

And, this is the message that Paul was giving the church in Corinth. He wanted to encourage them to focus in on the gospel that brought them together in the first place. Now hear me here ‘brought them together’. You see the church at Corinth was different to the church we read about in Acts. The church in Acts, was very much a Jewish church. Yes, the message had begun to be preached out to the ends of the earth; but the church we read about in Acts, is one that started first within the territories of Judah and Samaria.

Paul, was not called to share the gospel with his own people. Paul tells us directly that God called him to preach the good news to the Gentiles – to the Greeks, Romans and all other outsiders. The church at Corinth reflected his calling. It was a mix of cultures – Jew and Gentile.  When Paul says:

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle – and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself – both Jews and Greeks – Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.

When Paul says this, he is not giving a metaphor of division. He is saying while the Jews among you seek miracles, and the Greeks among you look for philosophical wisdom, while the Jews among you see the cross as an anti-miracle and the Greeks as illogical, the reality is God has called you together. God has called you together to be as one. Paul is talking to two different cultures who wouldn’t really be together because of their differences and Paul is directly addressing the cultural aspects that make these people different – when it comes to practicing religion, Jews are distinctly spiritual while Greeks are distinctly intellectual. Paul is saying – put aside your cultural difference and come together at the cross.

And in churches today, God is calling for diversity and he is also calling for unity. He is calling us to be “learn to be considerate of each other, cultivating a life in common.” He is calling us to be as one.

Now it is important here to realise that when God calls us to be as one. He is calling us to be as one mind but not one opinion. This is important to realise. There are so many churches today who have harmony in opinion, and as such, would claim to be in unity because everyone gets along and agrees with each other. But this is often because the types of Christians going to these churches are the same – same culture, same socio-economic conditions, same political party affiliations.

Like the church at Corinth, we are not one of these churches. We are a church of diversity with a lot of differences – cultural, economic, political, the list goes on. But this will mean that we will become more prone to what Paul is talking about in his letter to Corinth; as a Church we are prone to having differing views about how church should happen and what the church should stand for.  This can put us at risk of siding with groups and opinions that reflect our differences and allow division to creep in.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

So how do we do this; how do we avoid division? I want to remind us first and foremost that one mind does not mean one opinion. God is not telling us that we should all have the same opinion. But to be of one mind is to meet each other at the cross – not in the argument and not in the miracle.

To meet at the cross means coming together in the middle. This is not an act of compromise, it is an act of active listing and compassion. It is the first step we need to take to be considerate of each other. It is actively acknowledging in yourself, that in the conversations that we have with each other, your mind needs to be open to the thoughts of others.

This is incredibly hard for the typical Christian. For many of us, because we know the answer lies at the cross, we think that everything else we believe must also be true. Instead of active listening with the heart, we have a sense of spiritual constipation, we sit there listening, nodding and giving the occasion ‘yes’, but we are busting inside, waiting for the person to finish in order to talk over their truth with our own. In my book, that act in itself is not one of consideration.

If we want to live in diversity and unity, we need to demonstrate the heart of Jesus, the heart of compassion. We need to remember that the simple truth of the cross is the one thing that unites us with each other and living in diversity is acknowledging and celebrating our differences rather than trying to make each other in our own image.

Now I want to remind us, that we don’t have the opportunity to read Chloe’s letter but we know that one core issue concerned leadership and who was following who. But we also pressure leaders to be like us, and I wonder whether this was happening in Corinth as well. You see, how we position our leaders and the expectations we have of leaders to be our spokespeople can also bring in division and split people. When you want a leader to share your opinion, and you then ask the leader to proclaim your opinion as the opinion that a congregation should take, then issues creep in. I think this must have been happening in Corinth – just look at the mess of this church, issues like sexual immorality, ill treatment of the poor and the suing of each other would not have occurred in silence. 

In our world today, the last three years globally have been a real test for Christ’s church. In amongst the pandemic, we have seen at a global scale the fracturing and division of Christ’s church over the truth of Covid-19, the politics of Covid-19 and the reaction to Covid-19.

I want to suggest that our church, in particular, has been through a testing time. Particularly because of the diversity in our church. Remember diversity will mean that a variety of opinions exist. And, just because the cross united us, it doesn’t mean we all had the same opinions and beliefs on Covid-19 and the response taken. In amongst this, I am aware that some of us wanted our leadership to take a very firm position, which thankfully they didn’t. They walked the middle ground, this is not a luke-warm ground but a ground that allows diversity to have a place. It’s a ground that in our contemporary world is missing from so many issues.  

On this middle ground, we need to be openly talking about these issues together, learning to be considerate of each other, not aiming to be of one opinion but of one mind. We need to know that our unity comes in Christ alone, not in ideas or personalities.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

I want to give a practical, and personal illustration on how the church can inadvertently take a position which diverts the world from understanding that the Christ is the cornerstone and, in fact, the reason for the Christ. And I will hopefully show you exactly what I mean when it comes to the church, unity, division and the reality that our unity should come at the cross.

In 2007, there was a change to the Crimes Act. The change was intended to protect children and give the state the power to intervene when there was concern for a child’s welfare. This change was given a different and politically loaded name by a Christian Lobby Group called Family First. It was called the ‘Anti-Smacking’ Act. Family First started a massive campaign both in the national media and in churches. And the church was spilt into two groups, possibility three – one group was ‘I follow Mike McCrossen’, the Family First CEO, the other was ‘I don’t follow Mike’ and there was, no doubtedly a ‘I follow Christ’ group as well.

I will be honest with you – I was in the I don’t follow Mike group. But I happened to be in a church that was very much preaching from the pulpit that we should all follow Mike. Why, because according to the Mike, and therefore the church (you see the I don’t follow Mike group was tiny), it is a fundamental right that parents must be able to smack their children.

This was not my perspective, due to my own childhood. I stood for the children who were experiencing physical abuse daily. Near the end of the campaign, churches in Aotearoa NZ marched on parliament grounds. At this point, I realised that only one church in the Wellington region that was open to me even expressing my opinion was St Andrews on the Terrace – the most liberal church in Wellington. This moment in our history, didn’t have me questioning my faith, but did have me contemplate doing my faith alone and disengaging from the churches around me.

All I wanted to know was if the church would protest to protect the children of Aotearoa; I still don’t have an answer here – but I don’t think the answer is found in a protest. Now I realise that while leaders spoke in support of Mike in front of congregations, that not all Christians marched on parliament that day; there were Christians who just kept their opinions to themselves because they didn’t feel that they had a voice.

And all I ask, is what message did the church give New Zealand and the children of Aotearoa in that protest, was it about Jesus, the one person who unites us? And that maybe instead of taking sides the church should have reconciled within itself. There are a lot of survivors of abuse in churches, including our church, imagine if instead of a protest and taking the side of a leader and spokesperson, we actively sought to meet each other at the cross and listen with our hearts. Imagine the reaction that would have come out of that action – a protest or a hug in amongst the tears of hearing each other’s testimony. Hugs bring healing in ways that a protest can never achieve.

A divided world doesn’t need a divided church.

We are blessed. We have a very diverse church. We haven’t always been as diverse as we are today, but we are diverse. And even though I couldn’t go, I want us to remember the table that Glory set for us a few weeks ago on our Culture Night. The diversity in our church is real. Let’s continue to celebrate it, and what better place to celebrate our diversity than at a table, in a feast of diversity and unity. Let us not pursue the road to one opinion, but let us become of one mind and learn to be considerate of each other, cultivating a life in common. Let us work together, in likeness of Christ – who died for us in our diversity to fulfil the promise made to Abraham that all people will come together in unity because of God’s covenant; God’s promise.

Let us demonstrate to this world a different way of living. After all, a divided world doesn’t need a divided church.