C Epiphany 4 2019
I Corinthians 13
I Corinthians 13
February 3, 2019
At a former church where I
was not serving as the pastor, the congregation was listing the number of
missions and ministries to which our church had given money or to which
individual folks in our church had given time, money, and effort. They were many and varied and represented
almost every individual’s pet project.
The facilitator was trying to help us develop some focus for our mission
and ministry, some common goal or unified plan.
By the end the facilitator was exasperated by the unwillingness of our
group to come together.
After
our time working together had come to an end, I overheard a church member
sidling up to the facilitator to snidely say, “See, you’ll never get us
together with all the different things we have going on.” And maybe the church member was right.
Sometimes
I think one of our downfalls as Christians is that we would rather be right
than loving. We stand out in the forest,
all alone, proclaiming ourselves to be right rather than doing the hard work of
evangelization to bring others on board and build community, or engaging others
who might disagree with us or prove us to be wrong. We would rather avoid conflict than be in
real relationship.
We
never invest for fear that we might find something out about ourselves and why
we believe as we do. We never take the
chance that we might be transformed by another, or that we might have the
leadership gifts to transform others. It
is almost as if we are an Olympic judge at one of the ice-skating events or
even the audience. We want to shout our
desires, needs, wants, and critiques from afar as others do the skating. When we all should be out on the ice skating. The Russian judge is always giving me low
marks.
In our Scripture reading
for today, Paul addresses the early churches he founded in his second
missionary journey to the seaport city of Corinth. Paul
sees in Corinth, a church deeply divided over issues like leadership, sexual
immorality, personal conduct, spiritual gifts, and questions concerning the
resurrection. In one of his opening
letters to the people in Corinth, 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, he undercuts all
claims to greatness by saying what we preach as Christians is Christ
crucified. Christ did not win. He was not successful. He was brutally tortured and executed. This is not Paul romancing Christ’s
suffering, or as might be heard popularly, suffering for our sins. This is undercutting the Roman pyramid which
only sees people as valuable and divine if you are on the top of that
pyramid. Creator places no value in
striving to be top dog, bending to the frame of the pyramid. Preaching Christ crucified means that the
gospel’s value is not in carrying the day or being on the side of the
winners. God in Christ is not about
being successful or winning.
In Paul’s time, around the
year 50, these folks called “super apostles” had arrived with a gospel that
created a hierarchy of being in Corinth and distrust among the community. Armed with mystical and spiritual powers like
speaking in tongues, some Corinthians had elevated themselves to the top of the
spiritual pyramid. As it was in Egypt
with Hebrew slaves, so it was in Rome as an occupied people. Paul believed that love did not allow for
this hierarchy of being or this spiritual pyramid. Pyramids always have this structure with a
few running the show at the top while there are many on the base doing the real
labor.
Paul writes to try and
break the arrogance of those who claim to be greater because of their
gifts. He suggests that faith is a
journey in which we can only prophesy, know, and see in part or dimly—there
should be a humility which recognizes that we cannot know it all. And knowing it all, or having superior
knowledge, is not what Paul values. Love
should be the stuff that transcends whatever differences there are to hold the
community together. The opposites of
love are arrogance and violence, a power over.
Notice that Paul does not write, “Love wins,” a common misunderstanding
that leads us to hopelessness in the face of violence and trauma. No, Paul writes, “Love endures.”
When Paul wrote to the
churches in Corinth, he saw plenty of diversity--with all of that diversity
jockeying for position as to who would win out in the end. Rather than squash their diversity for
something a little more orderly, he praises the great diversity he sees among
them. He does not want them to be a little
less diverse so that they can be a little more unified. No, Paul wants them to find their unity on
the far side of diversity.
Paul
defines love as the willingness to work through diversity to find their unity
or their common cause, for the building up of community. That’s why the first word Paul uses to define
love is “patient.”
If
you have special gifts alone, who cares?
If you have spiritual powers alone, who cares? If you are willing to sacrifice to show your
devotion alone, who cares? If you are
not engaged and invested in one another, who cares?
This
chapter, the love chapter, begins with Paul remembering a Jewish tradition
instituted by King David. David ordered
that loud music would be played to connote the presence and habitation of God,
the Ark of the Covenant, being restored to the Jewish people. Musicians playing nebels (medium-sized harps)
and kinnors (a type of lyre or stringed instrument), kettle-drums, cymbals, and
pipes would accompany the Ark of the Covenant in a processional of joy and
thanksgiving.[1] The instruments were to be played in unison
as the procession continued.
When
the Temple in Jerusalem was dedicated, musicians played cymbals, nebels (those
medium-sized harps), kinnors (those lyres or stringed instruments), and
trumpets.[2] The book of Nehemiah relates that musicians
playing cymbals and kinnors having psalteries (a psaltery is like a dulcimer)
were also a part of the rededication of the Temple when Jewish people returned
from Exile. Having been a percussionist myself,
I was interested to learn that the cymbal player was rightfully considered the
head musician in this musical ensemble.
The
point is, in these celebrations to announce and process with the Temple as a
representation of God’s presence in their midst, the cymbals are never played
alone but always accompanied by other instruments, singing, and words of
praise.[3] Biblical scholar Anathea Portier-Young believes Paul is deliberately using imagery
from these Hebrew Scripture celebrations to talk about the “building up” of
God’s dwelling place among the community much like the Ark of the Covenant was
built up, the Temple was built up, and the walls of Jerusalem were built up
once again after the Babylonian Exile.[4]
Paul
writes to those churches in Corinth, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and
of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” The problem is not that cymbals are noisy or
clanging. The problem is that they are
playing all alone. A signpost that
communities are being built up in love is when trumpets, lyres, harps,
dulcimers, drums, cymbals, and voices are all raised in praise together—when
the whole band is playing, when the whole body is interdependent, when they are
truly one in the spirit of the song.
Love
holds the whole structure of the community symphony together. While we use the word “justice” in
Judeo-Christian tradition to define God’s activity in overarching systems and
structures, the word we use to define God’s activity in community is
“love.”
Love
is engagement and investment in people who are different than we are. Love is, brace yourselves, glue. Love is glue.
Don’t think too hard about the ingredients that go into glue or the
meaning of the sermon will gross you out or lose meaning altogether. Love is glue.
When
love is defined as engagement and investment in one another, nobody gets to
stand on the sidelines, hold a judge’s scorecard, mumbles or critiques, even
applauds, without talking about themselves.
We all recognize that we are into this Christian enterprise for one
another. Love is standing across from
someone in all their faults and foibles, greatness and goodness, joys and
sorrows, beauty and scars, and not turning away. You recognize that you are connected. You are glued.
My
belief is that if we can recognize our connections to one another, slow down to
invest and engage, play our instruments together in the grand symphony of
community (I got cymbals!), we might actually find that there are others in the
struggle who are celebrating our joys to multiply them, sharing our struggles
to divide them. So that when I play my
cymbals, they are not noisy or clanging, but part of a beautiful symphony that
is held together in love. And it is
music to God’s ears.
Rabbi
Sandi Eisenberg Sasso wrote a children’s book some years back that had a small
community sending a man and woman out to the four corners of the earth in
search of God. The man and woman went to
the mountain top to find God. They went
to the deepest ocean in search of the Almighty.
They coursed across the driest desert.
They entered the deepest and darkest of caves. The man and woman returned unsuccessful in
their search for God. They did remark,
however, that whenever they worked together, they began to see God, “wherever
we are.” The man and woman saw God in
the “in-between”—in between the two of them.
Rabbi Sasso titled the book, “God In Between.”
Last
week our congregation decided to go forward with the risky enterprise that is
this church. I have spoken often about
how Sunday worship is an important part of our life together but may be fading
as the most important form of intentional Christian community in this day and
age. Ed Gulick affirmed he senses that
for his own life. The question for our
discernment then is how we can then express intentional Christian community in
a myriad of ways. To practice love, to
express love between us so that we are strengthened and encouraged, I want us
as a congregation to be thinking what are some of the new paths, the new ways
we can practice and express intentional Christian community? For I get a charge out of this congregation
when I see the incredible joy experienced during the Passing of the Peace, when
we share in a Sunday potluck welcoming strangers, or when we share pie, cake,
eggs, or vegetables with one another out in the narthex. Not what replaces that but what augments
that, supports that, offers more diverse opportunities for intentional
Christian community. Help me with
that. Let us all discern how that might
be for the future of this blessed church.
I am no super apostle, and I need your collective wisdom.
For I am . . . alone—a
noisy gong or clashing cymbal. But love
is glue. We are . . . together—the Body
of Christ. We are . . . together—a
beautiful symphony. Hear in that
definition of love the hard work it takes to knit together community among a
diverse group of people. We are . . .
together—the place of God’s spiritual joy.
We are . . . together with each other and along with the plants, trees,
sea, sea creatures, and animals, the manifestation of the divine in the world,
God’s epiphany. And weeeeeeeeeeee, burst
forth. Thanks be to God! Amen.
[1] 2 Samuel 6:5; 1 Chronicles
13:8
[2] Under King Solomon, 2
Chronicles 5. King Hezekiah also had
these musical instruments play in service of the Temple (2 Chronicles 29).
[3] Anathea Portier-Young,
“Tongues and cymbals:
contextualizing I Corinthians
13:1,” Biblical Theology Bulletin (Fall 2005).
[4] Ibid.
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