Poem/Reflection for 3rd
Sunday after Epiphany January 26, 2020
St. Andrew's
Church, Nags Head, N.C. Thomas
E. Wilson, Supply Clergy
21st
Century American Corinthian
In the Epiphany Season this year, the readings from the Epistle will usually be from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth. Today I want to focus in on one verse. “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.”
So, how foolish were the Corinthians? Let’s start at the beginning, the first King of Corinth was the mythical figure of Sisyphus. In the myth of Sisyphus, for his arrogance and habitual telling of lies, he is condemned after his death to spend all eternity in Hades and roll a huge boulder up a hill and then when he got almost to the top, it would slip out of his grasp and roll down to the bottom again. He must then start the whole process all over again, over and over and over. The justice of Hades was that he was condemned to do after his death what he, by his arrogance and lies, made others do in his life on earth.
By the first century A.D, Corinth is a flourishing port city for shipping and trade in the Mediterranean. Paul comes to that city and works with fellow Jesus followers to build a church community. He leaves to go to other communities and the new leaders start to find their own way. The problem was the arrogance of the people (remember Sisyphus), and they start fussing about which spiritual gift is the best gift, who is the most holy or important, and who is exempt from mere rules. Scholars think that Paul wrote 4 letters on this subject. 1st Corinthians being the 2nd letter and 2nd Corinthians being a combination of 3rd and 4th
Some people never learn, for later, some forty years later, there will come, at the end of the 1st Century, letters from Clement the Bishop of Rome calling the Corinthian Church to account. Listen to part of that 1st letter:
Every kind of
honor and happiness was bestowed upon you, and then was fulfilled that which is
written, "My beloved ate and drink, and was enlarged and became fat, and
kicked." Hence flowed emulation and envy, strife and sedition, persecution
and disorder, war and captivity. So the worthless rose up against the honored,
those of no reputation against such as were renowned, the foolish against the
wise, the young against those advanced in years. For this reason righteousness
and peace are now far departed from you, inasmuch as every one abandons the
fear of God, and is become blind in His faith, neither walks in the ordinances
of His appointment, nor acts a part becoming a Christian, but walks after his
own wicked lusts, resuming the practice of an unrighteous and ungodly envy, by
which death itself entered into the world.
Even those
who do not share our faith have heard this report so that your thoughtlessness
has brought the name of the Lord into disrespect, to say nothing of endangering
your own souls.
Clements’s letter sounds a little like it could have been written to this time in our national life where we are so filled with our own arrogance, our foolishness, that we have forgotten what Paul referred to as God’s wisdom of the cross; the self-emptying of Christ on the cross.
The Corinthian Church is divided into at least four different groups, each proclaiming themselves as the true followers of Christ. There is the nostalgia group that longs for Paul to return and answer all of their questions. They see him as the last good leader, even though he has moved on and been gone for several years. There is a faction that says, “we belong to Apollos.” Apollos is a bright young boy from Alexandria (Egypt, not Virginia) not old like Paul. He is full of energy but with some ideas that are different from Paul. He has moved on and this group misses him terribly Then there is the traditionalist group that says “We belong to Cephas,” Cephas is another name for the disciple Peter, the legend who had the advantage of knowing Jesus when Jesus walked the earth, and this group believes that his physical knowledge of Jesus makes him a sentimental favorite to knowing what the rules need to be. Peter may have visited there once, and left a strong impression. Then there is the group of ultra-spiritual who proclaim, “We belong to Christ.” This group says they have all the answers because they are more in touch with the deepest levels of the spirit.
In my experience of being a church member or employee, I have known, or been a part of each of those different groups. I have been the bright young boy with all the answers, right when I first got out of seminary. I have been “the last good rector.” I have been the “expert” determined to “fix” any broken person, thing or practice. I have been the insufferably spiritual. The reality is that when I am the most anxious, I am still tempted to change into any one of those costumes. I remember one church where I was called, one of my predecessors had later been elected Bishop. I went to him in frustration over the divisions in that church and he laughed and said he had the same problem when he was there, and his third predecessor back was the “last good Rector.”
The divisions in myself were not just chronologically but continuously simultaneous. I am a person who is a Corinthian person with all sorts of divisions within me and my task is to find a way that I can negotiate a peace treaty within me, with the love of the cross as the overarching metaphor. Is my metaphor to be the wisdom of Sisyphus or the foolishness of Christ. Every person I know, or have ever met, is a "Corinthian" person.
In this church in Corinth, there are at least those four groups, and who knows - maybe more, ruled by their arrogance in being right. The quarreling divisions are filled with accusations, charges and counter charges of who are the true followers of the Way.
Paul writes to remind them that there is a “foolishness” which Christ taught by his example on the cross, giving blessings in the face of curses, forgiving those who hurl insults. This “foolishness” was trusting in redemption, not revenge. However, trusting in God’s power, not their own, is seen by members of the battling Corinthians as weakness. While the arrogant of Corinth see an easy shortcut by playing fast and loose with the truth, Paul sees that as a betrayal of trust. The people who trust only in their own power see other faithful members of the church who disagree with them as “all-day suckers,” while Paul sees a brother or sister who loves God, who follows Christ and demonstrates the true gifts of the Spirit.
The Corinthian church existed in the 1st Century AD, but it still comes back to life in the life of every church over the centuries facing change. The reality is that every church is a "Corinthian" church, full of divisions; the difference is how we can love and respect each division to find the gracious community that is called together. Every community is a "Corinthian" community. Every town is a Corinthian" town. Every state is a "Corinthian" state. Every nation is a "Corinthian" nation. As we go further into Outer Space I believe we will find that every world is a Corinthian world. The thing is that we are always facing change and we can find hope in Paul's letter; “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.”
21st Century American Corinthian
Discussions reach and exceed “Yur Mama!” stage,
where we stop listening to each other and sneer
insults at the other, or plan to for rest of the year,
as a way of filling the space between us with rage.
We share a same earth, air, gravity and even sky,
given graciously to us by the same God and creator,
not to mention that some of us share a same savior,
yet we’ve set deep red lines; where love goes to die.
Can we just stop for a moment, and learn to be kind?
Opening our ears instead of mouths, hearts not bile?
Hands not fists, dropping an instinct the other to rile?
Replacing it with a knowledge our futures are twined?
Paul, we hear once more, speaks to us from the past
into present, so shadows of the cross might be cast.
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