Sermon: We're All In This Together

First Presbyterian Church

January 26, 2025, Epiphany 3C

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

 

We’re All in This Together

 

 

It was a nearly unavoidable song not that many years ago, when the Disney Channel first aired its infectious little show called High School Musical. First it was the television musical, then it became an actual high school musical, and now you can find television shows about productions of the high school musical. And wrapping it all up was the one inescapable, irresistible song that represented the show’s climax: “We’re All in This Together.”

That title happened upon a phrase and idea that has been batted around endlessly, it seems. You could go out and google dozens upon dozens of quotes that either use that phrase as a basis or comment upon the idea. While I don’t want to think about Lily Tomlin’s spin – “We’re all in this together alone” – I have to acknowledge, if this quote is accurate, that Johnny Cash might have put the best spin on the quote in his version: “We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all.” 

I’m pretty sure the Apostle Paul was not much for song and dance, and I doubt he played the guitar or sang songs about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But he’d be able to appreciate at least the basic sentiment found in this pithy little saying. Being the eloquent preacher and letter-writer he was, however, it befitted Paul to find a clever and illustrative metaphor to demonstrate just how thoroughly we, the followers of Christ, really are all in this together. Borrowing a metaphor found fairly often in Greco-Roman philosophical rhetoric, Paul came up with the theme of today’s reading: the body of Christ.

That Paul chooses the body as a metaphor for the innerworkings of the people of God is striking and informative in ways that the apostle himself might not even have imagined. 

As noted just now, it wasn’t uncommon for teachers and writers in the Greco-Roman world to use such a metaphor to describe communal life, though no other biblical author makes use of it. Philosophers and political figures were particularly fond of the body metaphor in that culture. For a politician, for example, the metaphor of the body might well be used to suggest that every member of a society had his or place to fill. A body needs a head; that place was to be filled by the “elites” of society – the wealthy, the military elite, those in power. A body also needs hands and feet; here pretty much everybody else in society, those charged with the hard or dirty or dangerous work of society was to fulfill his or her role. Needless to say that metaphor never really has gone away even it if might be expressed in different ways.

Paul, though, takes a different angle on this metaphor. For Paul, what matters is the utter interdependence of the body – the degree to which the body needs everything in good working order. Parts of the body that might be regarded as weaker, or less “respectable,” are treated with greater care and covered or protected more carefully. In Paul’s scheme of the body, no part can claim to be independent of all the other parts. The eye can see all it wants to see, but without feet and legs to move, or hands to hold or to pick up, the eye is powerless. The head is useless without the rest of the body.

Many of us know what it is for our physical bodes to fail us or betray us. We see what needs to be done but we just aren’t capable of doing it physically. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. And so it goes with the body of Christ, the church; when one member of this body suffers, we all suffer with that member.

Paul wants us to understand, in verse 13, that in being baptized in Christ we are baptized into this one body, no matter the differences between us. Indeed, following on the first part of this chapter we heard last week, the differences we bring to the body are not accidental; they are necessary, they are by design, both in a given local congregation and in the church universal – we need all those different experiences, all those different backgrounds, for the body of Christ to function rightly and bear witness to the good news.

This is where it gets tricky, though. We are not always good at dealing with difference. We don’t always care for diversity, even as we need it. New Testament scholar Brian Peterson puts it bluntly in noting that “We often confuse unity with uniformity, because it is much easer to gather with people who are like ourselves than it is to reach across the divisions which mark our culture.”[i] We are more comfortable with a church where everybody looks like us, talks like us, is about the same age as us, reads the Bible in the same way as we do – or for that matter, votes like us, roots for the Chiefs like us, and all sorts of other things that may have very little to do with the life of the church. It’s a natural inclination, but it isn’t really all that Christlike. 

In verse 13 Paul refers to two of the great divisions he knew to be at work in the church – “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.” Admittedly, “Jew or Greek” is not a huge dividing line in the modern church, and while slavery certainly does exist in the modern world still, such a dividing line doesn’t run through the modern church in quite the same way it did for Paul’s Corinthian readers. We do, though, have lots of dividing lines among us in the church today:

Black or white, or Asian, or Hispanic, or Native American…

Or how about Democratic or Republican?

Maybe rich or poor?

Native-born, naturalized citizen, immigrant waiting to be citizen?

Straight or gay?

How about married or single?

Progressive or mainline or evangelical or fundamentalist?

How are we, as the church, the body of Christ, at truly living in the diversity that makes us work? Or are we still inclined to hole up in like-minded enclaves of homogeneity?

Whether we acknowledge it or not, when any part of the body of Christ suffers, whether they look like us or think like us or sound like us or have anything in common with us other than Christ, we all suffer, and we don’t bear witness to the gospel the way the body of Christ is meant to do. And to the degree that we stand by and let that suffering continue, we are complicit in damaging the body and its witness.

Having worked through this body metaphor, Paul now returns to the diversity of spiritual gifts, or manifestations of the presence of the Spirit, that he had discussed earlier in this chapter. Again, the list is incomplete, but Paul now places those gifts in the context of the church as God appoints people to contribute: apostles, prophets, teachers, doers of powerful deeds, healers, helpers, leaders, speakers of various tongues. And just as the body would look rather ridiculous if it were nothing but an eye or a foot, so the church becomes rather ridiculous if it consists of nothing but apostles or preachers or teachers. 

But as Paul closes this thought, he actually “teases” us with something even better, a better, “more excellent” way for the church to live or for the body of Christ to function. 

The diverse and distinctive appropriation of gifts is characteristic and even needful in the church, and the diversity of members matters profoundly as well. And yet, there is something else that matters more than all of these, or more precisely is the very thing that makes this distinctiveness and diversity work. What is it that makes the body of Christ what it is meant to be? What is it that brings all those diverse gifts and abilities and manifestations of the Spirit together in a way that enables us truly to bear witness to the Christ we say we follow?

But that's for next Sunday. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #409, God Is Here!; #318, In Christ There Is No East or West; #306, Blest Be the Tie that Binds

 

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[i] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a,” Working Preacher (workingpreacher.org, 24 January 2016 2^nd reading), accessed 21 January 2016.

 

 

Sermon: Just As the Spirit Chooses

First Presbyterian Church

January 19, 2025, Epiphany 2C

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

 

Just As the Spirit Chooses

 

 A few years ago the internet humor site Unvirtuous Abbey posted a cartoon image that suggested the Apostle Paul at work writing one of his letters to the various churches under his care. The captioning of this image, however, took a creative slant: the imagined text of the letter under construction began thus:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, to the churches of the United States of America – grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ: I don’t even really know where to begin with you guys…

 

It’s a funny line, and easily evocative of just how far much of the church in this country have strayed from being Christlike in any discernible way. The truth is, though, this isn’t that far from how the actual Paul began some of his letters, and how he was compelled to speak to the churches in other letters even when he was able to keep his opening more cordial. For example, in the letter to Galatians Paul barely manages to get through a fairly doxological opening statement before turning to chastisement in verse 6: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…”. Things were evidently that bad.

As for the letter we are reading today and in the forthcoming weeks, Paul actually manages to get though not only the formal greeting, but a nice blessing as well, before turning to the matter at hand at the beginning of this letter: “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” Paul elaborates that the Corinthians have apparently devolved into factions around one leader or another in the larger church – Paul, Cephas (or Peter), Apollos (the evangelist introduced in Acts 18), or even – in a super-self-righteous move – Christ. Paul quickly admonishes the Corinthians for this, but the correction of this division will go much deeper and in fact constitute the bulk of this letter. There are many things going wrong among the Corinthians, and Paul is setting out to address them.

Paul’s work in his travels was frequently made more challenging by the difficulties of churches made up of diverse groups of people and the disputes, disagreements, or contests that too often arose between those groups. For example, by the time Paul is making his travels, the congregations to whom he preaches and writes are usually composed of both Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. At times the Jewish party would contend that the Gentiles needed to take up practices associated with Judaism (most notably the act of circumcision for males) before they could be fully accepted into the fledgling group of Christ’s followers. To put it more briefly, they felt that Gentiles should become Jews in order to become Christians. Paul, despite his own thoroughly Jewish heritage, argued against that claim, agreeing with those who called that an unnecessary burden.

The conflict Paul addresses here in today’s reading is a different one, not necessarily based on Jewish-Gentile dividing lines, but one that caused tremendous strain in the church at Corinth no less. In this case, this local church was struggling with the effects of spiritual pride and even a kind of competitiveness, in which some claimed that their specific and distinctive spiritual gifts made them spiritually superior to others. This kind of spiritual elitism never ends well, and Corinth was no exception.

After much chiding and critique earlier in the book on this and other matters, Paul now turns with chapter 12 to address “matters pertaining to the Spirit.” “Spiritual gifts,” the term you see in verse 1, is certainly part of the matter, but not the full extent of what Paul wants to address. 

First, Paul is compelled to remind his readers – a great many of whom in Corinth were Gentile converts to The Way – that all of them had been equal in ignorance before following Christ. The lot of them had been, as Paul describes, duped worshipers of powerless, speechless idols. Even as followers of Christ now, Paul challenges them to understand that they have much to learn, particularly about the Holy Spirit.

For example: no one who is speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit could ever utter the phrase “Let Jesus be cursed!” You can’t do it. To be sure, there are times when even we followers of Christ speak decidedly not under the influence of the Spirit! But that’s a different story. Similarly, but not quite the same way, one cannot make the claim that “Jesus is Lord” except by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even being able to make the confession “Jesus is Lord” is evidence of the work of the Spirit. 

Understand what it means: anyone who confesses “Jesus is Lord” is doing so by a gift of the Spirit. There is no one who confesses Christ is Lord that is not gifted by the Spirit. If that’s the case, no one has any business claiming that any other believer has no spiritual gift. We all do. That’s how we can even be followers of Christ at all, by the gift of the Spirit. You didn’t think you earned your salvation, did you?

With that understanding, Paul turns to the issue of differences in spiritual gifts and other workings of the Spirit. One of the common threads of what Paul has to say is that difference or variety or diversity is inevitable and indeed is “baked into” the way that the Spirit “gifts” the followers of Christ. Each of us receives different abilities or talents or gifts, and that itself is a very intentional work of the Spirit. 

Paul sketches out only a few of these possible gifts or abilities in verses 7-10. By no means is this a complete list, but Paul mentions the speaking both of wisdom and of knowledge; faith; healing; miracles; prophecy; discernment; and the speaking and interpreting of tongues. And as Paul notes, the Spirit allots these gifts to the children of God quite according to the Spirit’s own choosing, and nothing other – “just as the Spirit chooses,” as verse 11 puts it.

Paul here is urging the Corinthians to understand that this dispersal of the gifts of the Spirit was absolutely no cause for pride. There is no basis for any claim that having any one spiritual gift made you in any way superior to or more important than any of your sisters or brothers in Christ. 

I have been called as the interim pastor of this church for a little more than a year and a half, after eight+ years at my previous call. I believe I do have some gift for the speaking of wisdom or knowledge, perhaps a way of describing preaching. Hopefully those three years I spent in seminary helped develop that gift to some degree. But if I were ever tempted to think that this specific gift was somehow “more special” or more important than other gifts, … well, let’s just say that many weeks or even months in this vocation have really caused me to wish I had a gift for healing or miracles instead. 

What Paul needs the Corinthians (and us) to understand is that we need all the gifts. This church can’t survive on preaching alone. Nor can it survive on any one of the gifts the Spirit might bestow. We need them all, both our own church here and the greater church around the world. And when we turn inward, when we start failing to welcome others into our church, or when we start drawing lines to keep some out and include only certain people, “folks like us,” then we are cutting ourselves off from some of the very gifts or manifestations of the Spirit that we absolutely need to survive, for the common good.

And it’s not even about our surviving, in the end. Our church, local or universal, is not put here on earth to serve ourselves. These flourishings of the Spirit that are made manifest in us are here to show God’s glory to those all around us. We are here to bear witness to the gospel, to be the vessel by which that good news is given to all the world around us. And those gifts of the Spirit are scattered out among us for that very end; giving glory to God that the world might see.

Beyond the matter of not indulging in pride over one’s spiritual gifts, there is also the matter of not dismissing what one contributes to the body as somehow being unimportant or not really mattering. If everybody in a congregation is determined that because their gift isn’t for preaching or prophecy it isn’t important, the church misses out on those less flashy gifts like faith or discernment and suffers for it. All the gifts are needed. 

This is part of the church “being an epiphany,” participating in showing Christ to the world. When we all pull together using each of our distinctive gifts for the work of the kingdom of God, we become a revelation of God to the world, through the working of the Spirit. We show Christ to the world. We show the world what it looks like when the Spirit is working among us. Or, when we start elevating some gifts and demeaning others, when we start indulging in pride about our own spiritual abilities, or when we cut ourselves off from the gifts we need in the church because we don’t like the people who have them? Or when we hold back the gifts God has given us for whatever reason? We fail to bear witness to God’s Spirit, and in fact do damage to that witness among the larger church.

Right now, this congregation is doing alright - better than many other congregations, believe it or not. It takes every spiritual gift that is present among the people of this or any congregation, and then some, to keep things afloat. We don’t have space for anybody to decide that their gifts or abilities don’t matter; we need them all. There is no one whose gifts or talents or abilities don’t matter. We need them all.

The abilities we bring to the body of Christ are not an accident. The Holy Spirit is working in us, each of us, all of us, so that we might bear witness to God and to the gospel of Christ to a world that desperately needs to be reminded of that story and to hear that witness. Being prideful about some gifts or dismissive of others is failure to show Christ to the world. We have no margin for error; we need all those manifestations of the Spirit to do our job in the world. 

For gifts of the Spirit, and the opportunity and obligation to use them together, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #292, As the Wind Song; #308, O God, in Whom All Life Begins; #733 We All Are One in Mission

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Sermon: Star-Struck

First Presbyterian Church

January 12, 2025, Epiphany C

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Matthew 2:1-12

 

Star-Struck

 

 

Having passed through all of Advent, from its unsettling look at the end times through all of its anticipation of the birth of a Redeemer, the call of John in the wilderness and the prophecy of the unwed mother Mary, and finally through the manger at Bethlehem and the song of the angels to the shepherds, and through all twelve days of Christmas, there is one more part of the story to tell. 

Our story so far has come from the gospel of Luke. The details found here in the gospel of Matthew are quite different. All of the business about John’s unlikely birth and angels visiting Mary and the journey to Bethlehem are absent; instead, late in Chapter 1, it is Joseph to whom an angel speaks, warning him off of divorcing Mary over her pregnancy and confirming just who this child Jesus would be. Joseph follows the instructions of the angel and marries Mary, and then Jesus is born. 

As Chapter 2 opens, the story shifts to Jerusalem, where an unstable king is visited by foreign dignitaries asking about the birth of his successor – to Herod, what else would the “king of the Jews” be? He consults his advisors in a panic, gets an answer from them about where this was happening, and then tries to con the visitors into betraying this new child’s location to him so he could eliminate the threat to his throne. These visitors, most likely astrologer/astronomers from Persia, make their way to Bethlehem following this strange star, and there they find the child, probably about two years old by this time (and in a house, not a stable). They pay their homage, leave their strange gifts, and then…head home, “warned in a dream” to go a different way and avoid spilling the beans to Herod.

If Luke’s Nativity story is all sweet and romantic, Matthew’s narrative has more elements of conspiracy thriller, with intrigue and double-dealing aplenty. One can understand why Luke’s account is so much more popular. Nonetheless, the account of these magi and their visit is compelling, and presumably we do need to be able to take some sort of instruction from it. But what?

In tandem with the psalm we read earlier, we could speak of how Jesus fulfills the prayer of the psalmist for a good king and what that should be (especially when contrasted with the double-dealing Herod). Or we could talk about the meaning of those odd gifts, or how these magi were the first non-Jewish persons to behold the Christ child as far as we know – they are us, so to speak. But maybe there is something else. Maybe, in the case of this story, we need to look up. 

These wise men (and there’s nothing that says there were three of them in this scripture) were prompted to take this journey by the appearance of that star. As noted above, these men were most likely a cross between astronomers and astrologers, and watching stars was certainly part of their business. But to be provoked into such a journey certainly suggests something powerful and compelling in what they saw, and how it matched up with their studies and learning. They were prepared for its appearance, and were ready to act accordingly when it appeared. 

What this star did just isn’t normal. To speak of a star, or frankly any kind of heavenly body, that not only rises, but then moves ahead of the travelers and finally stops over this particular house in Bethlehem…that’s not how heavenly bodies work. Something different was happening here.

And it’s not as if these particular sky-watchers should have been the only ones who could see it, right? Any number of observers probably saw this thing going on if they watched with any sort of attention. But no one else was moved to make such a journey.

Only these particular magi, we might say, were star-struck.

Only they were prepared to see the sign, and ready to act upon what they saw. 

Might we learn from these people?

We Christians (which these magi were not, we should remember) will sometimes use the term “followers of Christ” or “followers of God” or some variant thereof to describe who we are or what we are to be about. That implies that we are watching, observing, looking and listening to see where Christ leads us, one assumes. 

Are we, though?

Are we truly alert and ready to act when we see, for lack of a better word, a sign from God? Are we truly motivated, charged, energized to get up and follow, to act, to move should we see and hear such a call? What would it take for us to be so prepared and so ready to act?

The trip on foot and by camel from Persia (what we now call Iran) to Palestine is neither short nor easy, and yet these astrologers took it, seemingly without flinching or hesitation, all to pay homage to a child-to-be-king of a foreign nation. What does it take to get us inspired to act? What does it take to get us to do the work of the church, to carry out Christ’s work in God’s world? 

Are we truly watching and listening for the Spirit to do something in our lives, to lead us into something that might even be challenging and difficult? 

Maybe what we need to learn from this final part of the story is that, after all, we could stand to be a little more star-struck.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #152, What Star Is This, With Beams So Bright; #147, The First Nowell; #150, As With Gladness Men of Old