The Readings
Acts18:1-4
After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native
of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because
Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and, because he was of the same trade, he
stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue
and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.'
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no
divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same
purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels
among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I
belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I
belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were
you baptized in the name of Paul?
I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and
Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize
also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized
anyone else.)
For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the
gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be
emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those
who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God
The message
We
are starting an exploration of Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians that will take
us through the next 6 or 7 weeks here at St Jacobus. Our readings today report the starting of the
church communities there from the book of Acts and introduce us to the first
Letter that Paul writes to the church there.
I want to start with some
information about the city of Corinth. It was an interesting place and the
Christian Community there was an interesting group of people. Corinth was
completely destroyed by Rome about 150 years before Jesus Birth The
city was rebuilt about 100 years later.
At that time, it was a place for Rome to basically dump unwanted people
(mainly freed slaves and homeless peasants).
Over time it developed into a major urban area with importance for trade
between the Eastern and Western parts of the empire. It also grew to become the
center of Roman culture in Greece. Paul arrives
in Corinth after preaching and teaching in Athens, where he converts a few
people but it basically laughed at: In
Acts 17, we learn “When the people of
Athens heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said,
“We will hear you again about this.” At
that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers,
including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with
them”.
When
Paul arrives in Corinth, he connects with Aquila, a fellow tentmaker. Aquila, his wife and many other Jews were expelled from Rome
sometime around the year 50. This is the group that Pauls’ letter to the Romans
talks a great deal about welcoming back to Rome and the church there a few
years later. The Church in Corinth,
which Paul, Pricilla and others built over 18 months of visiting, teaching and
preaching consisted of several small house churches that would all meet
together from time to time to share communion.
The church here survives despite an extremely divided society between
the rich and poor, powerful and weak and a constant flow of itinerant preachers
who pass through and add or take away from the message Paul and others first
shared. These issues do impact the beliefs
and actions in the church though.
The
First Letter Paul writes to them is occasioned by 2 events, 1:their writing to
him for help dealing with some questions of faith and how to live and 2:
reports from “Chole’s people of serious conflicts and quarrels amongst them”. This letter is actually not very effective in
addressing the issues and causing change (many of the same exact issues on
being united in faith and work, are confronted again in Paul’s second letter to
the Corinthians). 1 Corinthians contains Paul’s only discussion on Glossisia (speaking
in tounges) as well as a strong emphasis on the cross of Christ, Holy Communion
and the death and resurrection of Christ.
Historically, some sections in the book have been used to justify
slavery and the subordination of women.
I
am going to talk about 2 parts of today’s readings. First a little reflection
on Paul’s conversation about Baptism and then some notes on this issues of the
foolishness of the cross. Personally, I
always had a hard time making sense of Paul’s discussion on Baptism. He says I thank God that I baptized none of
you and then lists a bunch of people he did baptize and then admits, he is not
even sure if those are all he baptized.
He also goes on to say “Christ did not send me to Baptize”, a statement
some people have used to say Paul didn’t really think baptism was
important. The people in Corinth were divided by all sorts of factors like
wealth and status. This issue comes up when Paul talks about the Lord’s supper
there, where the rich members ate fests while the poor at the same table had
nothing. In the church, they naturally started to divide themselves based on
the prominence of who Baptized them. Being
baptized by Paul would have certainly been the most prominent so he is glad to
have very few people who could make that claim. The few who could understood
the Gospel and would not. Paul rejects
this way of thinking, encouraging them to see the world in a new way, to see
everyone as equal brothers and sisters in Christ. Who baptized you didn’t
matter, that you were baptized did though. Baptism was also the start of a relationship
with God and God’s people. As a
traveling preacher constantly going from place to place, Paul would have a
great difficulty in helping people live their Baptism on a daily basis (they
didn’t have cell phones, text messages, emails, or any way to communicate over
a distance in less than a few weeks or months back then).
I also want to talk about this verse “the
message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”. This week I read the book “no more shacks”
by Millard Fuller, which tells the story of Habitiat for Humanity’s founding
out of a Christian community and early years.
One passage led me to think about today’s reading There is a report about an incident in
Portland on one of their first projects. Overnight there, someone grafittied
“Habitat for Insanity”. The group
actually embraced the insult saying “if insanity means doing things in ways
that are unexpected, unusual, even unacceptable to large segments of society,
then we cheerfully accept the description”.
After all, they felt it must look insane to people for a group to
announce they want to end the crisis of poor housing around the world. How could anyone be so foolish as to think
they could possibly address such a major and ever present issue. The group commits themselves to moving
forward with their insane idea, that the world housing crisis could be fixed by
faith, prayer and hard work. They knew
it would require them to “stay crazy, be nuts, act abnormal, look out of place,
think off the wall, try the unacceptable, as the world sees it, until we change
the perspective of the world”.
Paul
tells the church at Corinth similar advice.
After all Paul has announced that we are saved by the cross, by Jesus
death and resurrection, He converted and convinced many people. He was also
laughed at, dismissed, accused of crimes or ignored. It was foolishness to
those who did not see or understand what God was doing in the world. It was insane to think everyone was equal before God in a world terribly divided by
almost everything, it was crazy to think that God would forgive our sins freely
again and again out of grace, that a Jew with no wealth, no army and no worldly
victories could be the way to salvation, the completion of God’s plan for our
restoration.
Today,
we are invited to be foolish and insane.
It is nice that we run a food pantry for a local community in need a few
times a month. It is foolish to think we
can create a world where no one is hungry, where everyone has access to the
basic necessities of life. It is nice
that our little, written off church, in a community people claimed wanted
nothing to do with us, is still open. It
is foolish to think we can keep going, that our model can change communities of
faith around the world. It is nice to
get some rent checks from other churches. It is foolish to think we could build
relationships, work together and share the space with all these different
people. We are invited to think big,
crazy, foolish, even insane dreams. We
are invited to pray, trust and work to make them happen.
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