Co-Vid 1 Corinthians 13

 If I spend all day talking and praying Jesus, but do not wear a mask, I come off
sounding like a dentist’s drill or nails down a chalkboard.  And if I can tell you the sins and blessings of the world, dare sickness by being in unmasked, crowded rallies, but if I do not keep social distance, I am a tumbleweed in the wilderness.  If I give till it hurts to my church and my community, but do not take the pandemic seriously, I don’t change a thing. 

Meanwhile, love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love does not act like you are better than anyone else in your community.  Love does not say, “My way or the highway!” Love does not rejoice when others are harmed by your irresponsibility, when death tolls rise, or violence increases but rejoices when justice is done and wisdom is followed.

Yes, pandemics will come to an end.  But love for your neighbor is everlasting.  End of the world predictions, they will come to an end.  There is a limit on the powers of those who claim to have God’s ear, those who have built glorious cathedrals, and even those pastors with powerful TV ministries. 

When I was a child, I said irresponsible things.  And as an adolescent, cared only for myself.  But when I became an adult, I recognized I had to own my stuff and act in a way that remembered others.  For now, we, as individuals, can really only know so much about the way God is working in the world.  But later, God’s fullness in love will be revealed as a beautiful tapestry. 

And now, loyalty to God’s aporetic path, hope in God’s unknown way, and love for God and one another, whatever the circumstance in pandemic,  abide, these three.  And the greatest of these, even in the midst of pandemic, is our love for God and one another.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, February 3, 2019, "What are the new ways we 'glue' together intentional community?"

C Epiphany 4 2019
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.

         

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[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.

Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 27, 2019, "We are connected"

C Epiphany 3 BFC 2019

1 Corinthains 12:12-31a

January 27, 2019

            About fifteen years ago, I went to hear the message of a Viet Nam War veteran, Brian Willson.   Willson related that he had been one of those pilots who was directly involved with napalm drops over Viet Nam.  He had left law school at twenty-seven to go fight “communism.”  During his time in Viet Nam, an unusual event happened to transform him into a peace activist. 

   Unusual because during his time in Viet Nam he related that the military had a policy which did not allow people who performed napalm drops to ever act as later ground reconnaissance.  The policy did not want those performing napalm drops to connect their acts with suffering experienced by civilians on the ground. 

This one unusual time, however, there was a snafu.  For some reason, after dropping his napalm on a village, he was also asked to be part of the ground reconnaissance team to determine the success of their drop.  While performing that reconnaissance, he came upon a dead mother holding her three dead children.  Willson believed the mother’s eyes were still opened, but as he drew closer, he realized the napalm had melted off her eyelids. 

For some unknown reason, tears welled up in Brian Willson’s eyes, and with his commanding officer present, he fell to his knees and shouted in agony, “This is my mother.  And this, these are my children.”  Though his commanding officer laughed, he remembers that as the transformative moment in his life.  So transformative, in fact, that he had become a peace activist.

As a peace activist back in the States in 1987, he had lost both his legs sitting on a train track outside of a military weapons facility, hoping to stop weapons bound for Central America. While sitting on the track, he thought surely the train would stop and that the armaments would not go through.  Other activists had employed this form of protest successfully.  Certainly, Brian Willson thought, the train would not go through.  What he could not know is that the train’s conductor had strict orders to plow through regardless or that the conductor could not see the many people on the track.  Both stories are told.  What is known is that Willson was the only one not able to get up from the track before the train came through.

There Wilson was, on the day I saw him, using two prosthetic legs to get around in the world.  It was a risk he took when the connection to all of life had become vividly apparent to him.  He remembered knowing that truth as a young child, but somehow that understanding had been drummed out of him by the destructive powers of disconnection and death.  Down deep we know this, he believed.  We are connected.

I have seen that transformative moment take place on any number of mission delegations when those going to do the work to bring about salvation realize that they are the ones being saved.  We recognize that God is doing work we would not have realized beyond Billings, or beyond Montana, beyond our country.  And all of a sudden, we are overcome with a love we would have never known.  It may be spoken in a different language, by people of a different color, or just in a way we never contemplated before.  And the activity of God, which looks nothing like we ever expected, loves us in such an amazing way. 

In Paul’s letter to the churches in Corinth we continue to read, Paul tries to reach out to communities immersed in conflict.  One group or person is vaunting themselves up over another group or person because of their spiritual gifts.  They believe that God can only be found within them, in the gift they have been given, or that their understandings and gifts trump everyone else’s understandings and gifts.  Paul turns to them to say, “Don’t you see how much you need each other? How God in Christ is found in different manifestations across your community? For you to claim that you are not connected, that you do not need each other, is to deny the reality.”

We were created as the Body of Christ, and when we deny others access to the goodness of God through our unwillingness to see Christ in each other’s eyes, we lose so many gifts God intends for each of us. 

Paul asks, “How can one part of the Body of Christ say it doesn’t belong or one part deny another part of the Body?”  In this masterpiece of Christian prose, Paul seems to get the eternal conflict of religious life.  We deny the way God has made the world for our salvation.  We deny our connectedness to each other.  We deny that we are the Body of Christ—a Body, Paul writes, where those who appear to be weaker or the most humble are the most indispensable.

Hear the good news:  God wills us to be connected, one to another, brought together in all of our diversity to form a community which will love and cherish each other.  It is almost as if God has said, “You know, this is the way I have made the world—with all of its connection.  It will work in no other way.  If you choose to deny the connections, then the world as a whole will suffer because of it.  Choose to live in the interconnection and the building up of community or inherit the destructive powers of disconnection and death.” 

It is not about God’s judgment but about the consequences of our choices.

I believe it says something about our images of God that we have suffered under the image of this independent, self-sufficient, aloof, male God for so long.  There He is, sitting in His royal throne, looking out over all creation, and making these royal decrees from on high.  How can we possibly feel connected to such a God?  How can we possibly believe that this God wills our connection to one another?

A seminary colleague once said to me, “You know, if we understood God as a pregnant, refugee woman, we wouldn’t have any problem why God loves so much, why God desires, relationship, intimacy, and connection.  We would known why God is full of so much grace.  If we could look at God as an outcast,” my friend shared with me, “we would understand why God desires to share love with us so strongly.”

I would go on to add that we might even be able to understand why we are indispensable in God’s eyes, why the very least of us is considered most precious.  Perhaps we might even wonder how our world might be different if we thought of God as a Viet Namese mother, still clutching her child.  Then we would weep in love.  We would know why God wants us to be connected.

After this service today, we will hold our annual business meeting.  This congregation takes great risks in a day and time when I heard this week that even more UCC churches will be closing in the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference.  And the news for us, financially, will not be good news.  We will have to figure out how we will move forward drawing over $200,000 every year from an Endowment Fund that is still very wealthy. 

But I want to level with you.  I have never pastored a church where lives are being saved every day.  Every day.   . . . A church that acts like it is connected to its community, that sends out people like Laura Keating and Cam Clevidence, that encourages prophets like Margie MacDonald and Emma Kerr Carpenter, that treasures the ministry of Mia Duffy.  You may have heard that Mia colored a turtle and gave it to Jan Hawk last week, knowing that turtles are Jan’s favorite, a ministry of one of our youngest congregants to Jan as she grieved her beloved Bill.

Last week, one of the great prophets in our nation, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, stood to preach his sermon in Milford Chapel at Park Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina in memory and celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

His sermon said that real preaching happens in acts of liberation.  I would say acts of liberation recognizing we are connected.  It is what I see in all of you and what is producing in this church.  Rev. Dr. Barber went on to say,

To preach is to see the people who are crying out and the systems that are crushing them. It is to say, “Somebody’s hurting my people and it’s gone on far too long and we won’t be quiet and inactive anymore.” It is to do something about it. It is to join with others who are doing something about it.

When words are changed into deeds of liberation—that’s preaching. And anything else is just talking.

When the fruit of the lips become actions dedicated to justice—that’s preaching.

When our words call Jews and Muslims and Christians and Sikhs and Buddhists and even people not of faith to come together to work the work of love and work the work of liberation—that’s preaching.

When a call goes out that unites people across the lines of race and class and creed and sexuality—now that’s preaching.

When the Poor People’s Campaign brings Natives and Asians and Black and White and Brown people together, and march together and organize together and go to to jail together for a moral revolution of values—that’s preaching.

When preachers go to the border and serve communion to the officers and communion to those who are holding back the immigrants and then tell them while they’re eating the communion that they need correction and that they’re wrong—that’s preaching.

When nuns lobby for healthcare and when preachers say, “I’m not gonna preach another funeral over somebody who died from the lack of healthcare and said ‘God called him home.'” Instead I’m going to say, “God may welcome them home, but the government killed them.” That’s preaching.

When churches and synagogues and mosques open their doors and offer sanctuary to families that are being ripped apart by ICE — that’s preaching!

And when that kind of preaching is happening, it is transformative. It changes the world. It might get you killed, but that same preaching will get you back up again. And if it doesn’t get you back up, preaching gets folks pregnant. So you might be dead, but those behind you will come forth. Preaching always produces.[1]

God looks at you with tears in Her eyes and proclaims, “Don’t you know how long I have waited for you to affirm your connection with me, so that I could affirm you as so precious in my sight—so precious.”  We are a part of the Body of Christ bringing God’s reign of Shalom to the earth, preparing the way for God’s liberation, and the least, the very least and humble of us, considered the most indispensable part of that Body.  We are connected.

Share that good news you have learned with those who are still living under the destructive lie of disconnection and death.  We are connected. 

Turn to the persons beside you, preach, and say the words, “We are connected.”  Turn to the person in front of you and behind you and say the words, “We are connected.”   Now, Children of God, go out into the world and know yourselves to be the Body of Christ.  We are connected.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=lHqS0wXFy4c&feature=youtu.be. 

Sermon, Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 8, 2015

B Epiphany 5 BFC 2015

I Corinthians 9:1, 16-27

February 8, 2015

Many of you will receive a letter this week talking about a mission delegation I will be on in late March to Chiapas, Mexico.  I will present more about that delegation after worship on Sunday, February 22.  I hope you will attend to learn a little bit more about me and some prospects for the future of our church and perhaps even the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference.

I spent a little under a year as a UCC missionary in Chiapas working with the Roman Catholic Diocese there.  Because that missionary stint was in between my second and third year in seminary, I needed a mentor to receive seminary credit for my experience.  What I got in a mentor was a person full of a sense of humor, courage, humility and kindness in Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia.  Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times, Bishop Ruiz came to and was converted in his ecclesiastical office in much the same way as the late Oscar Romero, the martyred El Salvadoran priest, who you may have seen is now up for sainthood.  Like Romero, Bishop Ruiz was a man of letters who was eventually converted by the poor and oppressed in his diocese.  He loved gadgets and was an avid ham radio operator that spent time learning English and the seven Mayan dialects in his diocese by listening.

I remember sitting beside him at a grand banquet for the diocese to which he invited me.  To my left was Bishop Ruiz.  To my right were a group of several Maya teenage girls who spoke the Chol dialect, given away by their colorful blouses.  They went on and on in conversation with each other, often softening to a whisper as they stole glances at Bishop Ruiz.  When he thought it appropriate, he broke into their conversation with a smile and spoke something in Chol to them.  As they realized he had understood every single word they had said, their faces turned a bright red, their hands came up over their mouths in surprise and embarrassment, and they all joined together in laughter.  With the grace and good humor he always kept, he smiled at them to let them know there were no worries.  When he rose to speak, he spent the next 30 minutes encouraging Biblical literacy in the diocese by explaining the Exodus story to all of the people gathered, sounding not unlike Dr. King. 

Bishop Ruiz mirrored this beautiful spirituality of mission explained by the apostle Paul in one of his letters to the political associations in Corinth—the radical Scripture verse we have before us today.  Paul writes, “To the Jews I became as a Jew . . . to those under the Law I became as one under the Law . . . to those outside the Law I became as one outside the Law . . . to the weak I became as the weak.”  In a society that had become about spiritual ambition and societal advancement, “puffing oneself up”, Paul shares God’s love for diversity and freedom so that all might know Christ’s love and peace.  He becomes and values the people to whom he is in mission.  He learns what it means to be one of them. 

We all know this in the home district, right?  When someone comes into our neck of the woods to tell us what is what in the world there is a certain Montana litmus test.  Or if they are from western Montana, maybe an eastern Montana litmus test?   Or maybe if they live in eastern Montana, what it means to be a part of a downtown church?   It was in your church profile, for heaven’s sake and part of what is one of our identity statements.  You should have seen when our church choir sang, “Downtown!”  Billings First Congregational Church, a historic downtown church.  We all want to know that whoever has come to missionize us values what we value, identifies with us, thinks we’re basically “good” people and strong people and speaks our language. 

As was mentioned in the introduction to the Scripture passage for today, the ancient city of Corinth was incredibly diverse, a melting pot of ethnicity and culture.  It was destroyed by Roman forces in 146 BCE and then refounded as a Roman colony by Julius Caesar in 44 BCE.  At its refounding Julius Caesar repopulated the city with ex-slaves, other surplus populations from Rome, and army veterans.  It was reorganized as a thoroughly Roman city, the urban elites defining the architecture and rebuilding to orient people toward the Roman Temples.  The very wealthy sought to establish unity amidst its multicultural, multi-ethnic groups around the many festivals and forms of homage given for and on behalf of Caesar.  Corinth was a seaport, trade and commerce coming from all over the Roman Empire with an influx of outsiders.  Because of that influx and because so many of its people had been transplanted from elsewhere, however, the whole city itself had air of social rootlessness and a lack of cultural orientation among its many peoples. 

Not unlike the rest of Rome, there was a gaping gulf between the haves and the have nots in Corinth.  Three percent of the population would have been extremely wealthy, living in luxury and owning most of the productive land.  The remaining 90 percent of the population lived in or below subsistence level. 

The Roman Empire was a slave society.  Slaves were so inexpensive that slave ownership went far down the social scale.  It is estimated that slaves in the Roman Empire made up as much as 1/3 of the population.  Slaves were nonpersons, with no legal rights and permanently stigmatized as dishonorable.  Some had it better off than others, but all slaves experienced what might be called a “social death” in losing all semblance of family, society, and cultural identity of their origins. 

With so much of Corinth also re-populated by ex-slaves, those who were now descendants of those ex-slaves would have been systematically stripped of their race and any other previous identity, lacking a common ethnicity and culture in their ancestors’ “social death.”  Therefore, what would have been left is likely a desire for social status as a prominent part of their social ethos.[1]  Where they had once had no status at all, now Corinthians reached, grasped, and exploited their new found status over and against others.  The letters to the Corinthians are filled with Paul enjoining the Christians there not to think themselves having elevated status because of some special wisdom[2] or some special spiritual gifts[3] or even sharing communion without the poor because of their elevated special status.[4]   Imagine that:  a group of Christians who think themselves (church lady voice) “more superior” than others because of their elevated social status.  Isn’t that special?

In contrast to the social, political, and economic ambitions of the Corinthians, much of New Testament literature is laced with language that plays with, at times ridicules, and sometimes even seeks to overturn the widespread slavery system in the Roman Empire.  For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says to the disciples in the farewell discourse, “I no longer call you slaves, but friends.”[5]    In one of the most well-known letters of Paul he writes what we now call the Philippian hymn--that Christ did not count equality with God something to be grasped or exploited but lowered himself in the form of a slave.[6]  Think of how that would have played in the minds of people who heard and saw that Caesar, the focus of so much prose, poetry, and Temple worship, every darn day you see it, the guy at the top of the pyramid, was to be the focus of your life’s ambition.  While in the proclamations of the Christian gospel, Christ had chosen to be divine by living at the bottom of the pyramid—the place of “social death.”  How would that play to people at the bottom of the pyramid?

That is why when I hear of Christians who seek special status, I wonder if that is even in keeping with Christian tradition and Biblical witness.  Paul uses two phrases throughout his letter to the political associations in Corinth which make it clear that the Christian enterprise is not about arriving at some more elevated spiritual status.  Freedom is something not afforded a slave.  So those who had arrived, socially, politically, and economically, valued that word (freedom) not only as moving from a nobody to a somebody but also as someone who was spiritually better.  Freedom was asserted by people of rank asserting their independence from those who might qualify or impinge upon their ability to do anything in the world.  How attractive this would be to people who had long lived at the bottom of the pyramid and now had a chance to advance through their spiritual communities.  Using a slogan twice that was used by people of rank in the ancient world, “All things are lawful,”[7] Paul immediately moves to qualify the statement by saying, “but not all things are beneficial, but not all things build up.”[8]  It is a reminder that even if we think we have special spiritual status, we are called back into how our freedom can benefit and build up the entire Body of Christ, the community. 

When I went to Mexico to serve the United Church of Christ several years ago, I was a rather poor missionary.  Not poor economically.  I stunk at it.  Spiritually, I was a baby.  Even though I knew better, I thought there were some special gifts I would be able to bring Guatemalan refugees, displaced persons in Chiapas, heck even the whole gosh darn State of Chiapas.  Maybe my excellent words would lift them out of poverty and misery and lead to peace across the land?  Maybe my well-read theological treatises might help them to draw closer to Christ and turn the hearts of their oppressors so that they might live in harmony?  I was somewhat amazed that though those thoughts were something I shamed before I headed off in mission, they were still in my bloodstream. And when I had had just had enough Spanish to the point where I was exhausted, left bawling in my bed, I wondered aloud why the people of Mexico did not want my gifts.  Spiritual baby. Not a pretty sight.

About that time, Bishop Ruiz had me hop in his car to take a ride up to the small community of San Felipe.   He told me that San Felipe was celebrating because one of the large land owners had sought to take a home and the land from a family in the community, and, somehow, some way, the title to the family’s property had been lost in Mexico City.  Huh.  Go figure.  When you are wealthy like that, sometimes all things are lawful.  The community had joined with the family to pester and bother and persist in writing the government in Mexico City, until, land o Goshen, the title had finally been found and stop writing us letters! 

In the meantime, the family had found residence with others and decided, what was beneficial and to build up the community, was to give their returned home over for a community center.  What a great day.  That evening was a lovely fiesta in the new community center and Bishop Ruiz came out to his car to find someone had placed a sleeping child, in the back seat of his car for safekeeping.  He turned to me with a wry smile and said, “What are we to do?  We have inherited a child.”

Earlier in the day, we began the celebration with Bishop Ruiz presiding over  Mass.  He led worship from the elevated chancel area.  I tried to be inconspicuous about four pews back as the only white guy.  In the middle of the worship service, the vaunted Roman Catholic Bishop of San Cristobal de Las Casas, he who was called “Tatic” or “Father” by the indigenous Maya, he who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times over, asked us to exchange la paz del Cristo.  I turned to my left and passed la paz with several of the people from San Felipe—all gracious and hospitable they were, making me feel welcome. When I turned back to my right, I was engulfed in a giant bear hug by Bishop Ruiz who whispered in my ear, in English, the first English I had heard in two weeks, “May the peace of Christ be with you, Mike.”  I bawled.  It is what spiritual babies do. 

To the Jews he became as a Jew . . .to those under the Law he became like one under the Law . . . to those outside the Law he became like those outside the Law . . . to the weak and spiritual babies, he spoke beautiful words of English so that I might know we are all free.  But . . .  it really is all about what is beneficial and builds up.  May you hear God speaking in your own language, but may you also learn how to speak the language of others, who have been waiting to hear, far longer than two weeks, God’s peace spoken in their ear.  Amen.

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[1] Ray Pickett, “Conflicts at Corinth,” in A People’s History of Christianity, Vol. 1,:  Christian Origins, Ed. by Richard A. Horsley (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2005), pp. 117-123. 

[2] I Corinthians 2-3

[3] I Corinthians 12

[4] I Corinthians 11

[5] John 15:15

[6] Philippians 2

[7] I Corinthians 6:12; 10:23

[8] Pickett, “Conflicts at Corinth,” p. 130.