Church at Corinth
Acts 18:1-4; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Mark 9:34-35
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Today we heard heartfelt words from three young people
committing to a lifelong relationship with God . . . and . . .
with a sometimes dysfunctional family called “church.”
Specifically, Park View Mennonite Church.
Now, let me be clear.
I love my church family.
It’s beautiful.
And complicated.
And unified.
And divided.
And harmonious.
And conflicted.
And if it’s occasionally dysfunctional—
in other words, if it’s
flawed, wounded, kept from living to its fullest potential—
that doesn’t diminish its inherent beauty and goodness.
We are a both/and community.
We are a community of human beings.
So we can’t help but reflect human frailty, inadequacy, sin.
And . . . we are the body of Christ,
knit together by God’s Spirit,
and capable of immensely good work in this world,
the work of healing, restoring and re-creating God’s shalom!
Nowhere is the complexity of the body of Christ more clearly seen,
than in scripture.
Some people are put off by all the human ugliness
that we see in holy scripture, including among God’s people.
Not me.
The mere fact that scripture includes such stories
is evidence of its authenticity.
It dares to be real.
And not just tell stories with good PR value.
In this worship series,
we’re noticing how the church on mission, or church in motion,
often becomes the church in com-motion.
And today Sunday we celebrated baptism
into this church on the move.
So it’s appropriate we have three short scriptures,
telling us about three significant arguments
among followers of Jesus.
But these are not equivalent arguments.
In fact, scripture talks about them very differently.
The first one is presumed to be both necessary, and good.
The second one is condemned, and the parties in the disagreement
are told to “just stop!”
and shut down the argument.
The third is also not deemed helpful,
so the issue at hand is reframed and redefined.
The first one (the good one) is a struggle over truth and integrity.
The second one is based on identity politics.
The third one is over power.
Maybe let’s start with the two negative arguments.
_____________________
An argument based on identity politics,
can never be productive.
The whole premise is that I’m right,
because I belong to this group,
and therefore you’re wrong,
because you belong to that other group.
Sound at all familiar?
Only something we see every single day in our culture.
In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul calls out the church in Corinth
for dividing up along party lines.
The Paul Party.
The Apollos Party.
The Peter Party.
You can never win an identity argument.
You’re either with us (which is good)
or you’re against us (which is evil).
There is no gradation of right or wrong.
There is no collaboration, no compromise with the adversary.
The only success is getting your way,
and being utterly dismissive of the other.
To this, Paul says, “Enough already! Just stop!”
We are all in the service of a greater good—
the Gospel of Christ.
Start by trusting that the other parties
have the same end goal in mind.
_____________________
Then, in the Gospel of Mark,
we heard a few verses of a famous argument
between a couple of the disciples.
It was an argument over who would sit on Jesus’ right and left hand.
Who would be greatest in the coming Kingdom.
Who would have the power and influence.
In Mark’s version, at least, Jesus didn’t come right out and scold them.
He didn’t silence the argument.
He sat down with them,
and had a conversation that reframed the whole issue.
He didn’t fault them for wanting power.
Instead, he redefined power.
And it’s summarized in this one line,
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Sometimes, for arguments to turn from being divisive,
to being life-giving,
the goal is not to shut it down,
or dismiss the argument as having no point.
The goal is to shift and redefine the point.
Jesus wasn’t saying his followers had to
give up seeking influence,
or stop seeking power to lead.
Instead, Jesus redefined power.
Power is serving.
It is listening.
It is sacrificing personal status
for the sake of communal well-being.
It is laying down claims to positional authority,
and instead seeking moral authority.
_____________________
And now, turning to arguments that are good and necessary,
if we desire to be faithful as God’s people in a complicated world.
Engage in a whole-hearted and honest struggle
for truth, beauty, justice, love, and integrity.
I said the same thing in last week’s sermon,
when I mentioned the Jewish rabbinical tradition
of arguing in good faith over scripture.
That’s what Paul was doing in Corinth, according to Acts 18.
He lived with Aquilla and Priscilla,
tradespeople, who had the same skillset Paul had.
So they made tents by day.
And every Sabbath, Paul would go to the synagogue to argue.
It says, in v. 4, that he “would try to convince Jews and Greeks.”
We aren’t given the benefit of the details of the argument.
But I think we can be sure,
the argument was over interpretation of scripture,
specifically Torah.
And there is nothing wrong, at all,
about arguing over biblical interpretation.
That’s what the church should be doing.
There is a good kind of fighting in church,
a good kind of struggle.
But well-meaning Christians often make an easy mistake—
one of two easy mistakes.
Some will say,
“Let’s just stop talking about our disagreement,
so we can all get along, and have peace in the church.”
Others will say,
“Let’s just go our separate ways, so there’s no need to argue,
and we can all get along, in different churches.”
Paul was not in the synagogue arguing for a separation
between Judaism and Christianity.
And Paul was certainly not just wanting to end the argument.
Paul, to his dying day, remained a Jewish rabbi who followed Jesus,
and sought, fervently, to convince others to do the same.
And as for Paul’s fellow Jewish rabbis
who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah?
I don’t know of any evidence that Paul ever accused them
of not believing in the authority of Torah.
They had a different interpretation,
and Paul believed that interpretation was mistaken.
And they felt the same about him.
But both sides, it seems to me,
started with the assumption that their opponents
also trusted the Torah as authority for faith and life, and
also were struggling to find truth, beauty, justice, and integrity.
And they believed their adversaries were
worthy partners in the same struggle.
So they also believed it was worth coming to the same synagogue
week after week,
and staying in the struggle . . . together.
Now, I grant you, that’s putting the best possible spin on it.
We know that the shared struggle didn’t actually last.
There were outbreaks of the conflict that got ugly.
On both sides, to be sure.
And there was, eventually,
a schism between Jews and Christians that could not be healed.
And I am under no illusion that we Christians have done any better,
since that first schism.
We are still splitting.
Because holding a sustained argument is hard. Very hard.
And frankly, sometimes relationships can be more fruitful,
when the right amount of space,
and healthy boundaries are kept between us.
So I’m not suggesting there is never a time
to be in separate church bodies.
For instance, I would never propose reuniting our congregation
with our buggy-driving Old Order Mennonite
brothers and sisters in Dayton.
But I do consider them siblings in Anabaptist faith.
I do trust that they, using the same scripture we have,
are struggling, in good faith, to answer the question
of how we live faithfully in a broken world.
And I do enjoy having meaningful relationships with them,
and remaining in creative conversation about faith issues.
It takes effort, but there are still things we can discuss in good faith.
_____________________
So to all of you old-timers in the church,
and I count myself among you,
and to all newly baptized disciples,
let us stay in the struggle,
the struggle for truth, beauty, justice, love, and integrity.
And let’s not walk away from each other,
when an honest argument comes up.
Let’s assume the best in the other,
and let’s trust that by struggling together,
God will lead the way forward.
—Phil Kniss, April 28, 2024
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