23 January, 2011: "Quarrels Among Us"

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

“Quarrels Among Us”
When Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Specialist Casey Sheehan who died in Iraq, “resigned” from her role as the face of the anti-war movement nearly four years ago, she did so with painful commentary on the state of the so-called peace movement. Citing infighting and jealous turf wars, she wrote:

I have … tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life … It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions…One of the things that pushed me over the edge was that people on the left were calling me names. How many kicks in the teeth do you have to endure?

When we stand for peace, or for unity, or for one God, we often get caught up in rhetoric and ideology and forget what is most important. This plays out even in movements, as we hear from Ms. Sheehan, that profess to be for peace, and against war. It plays out on the national stage of a so-called “United” States, in rhetoric, vitriol, and escalating violence as we have seen so recently in Tucson. And it plays out within our own Christian church, with the extremes of so-called progressive Christianity and more fundamentalist denominations at times at each other’s proverbial throats. There are serious and painful quarrels among us.
Perhaps unbeknownst to many, this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This week of the year was initiated by the World Council of Churches to promote ecumenical dialogue, as well as to embrace the diversity, not disunity, within the myriad of Christian denominations. And whether or not we agree on how important this work is, how much we think it matters to the world of the poor, exploited and war-torn, the truth remains that if we cannot practice the central message of our faith, which is love, with our Christian brothers and sisters, where can we practice it?
Many of us understand Paul, particularly in this first letter to the Corinthian church, as the author of moral diatribes against sexual immorality that seem far-fetched to our modern ears. We are often challenged to bring his words and the specific, ancient context of them into relevance today, even if we do learn that Corinth was the Las Vegas of the ancient world: “What happened in Corinth stayed in Corinth,” except apparently when Paul heard about it.
In these first few verses of this letter to the Corinthians, however, we learn that Paul is also addressing disunity in the church. He is addressing this first and foremost. Instead of following Christ, we learn that Paul’s church of missionized gentiles and Jews were becoming followers of persuasive men within the church, fracturing the unity of the church and distracting it from its true head: Jesus Christ. In his argument to the church of Corinth, Paul appeals to the members to set aside their love for human knowledge or “cleverness” for a kind of holy “foolishness:” the foolishness of the cross, the foolishness of faith. Men such as Apollos and Cephas whom he refers to were apparently guilty of siphoning off allegiance to Jesus, and the cross, for themselves. No doubt it seemed to them and many others in the church “foolish” and irrational for a man such as Jesus to die for their sins, as though an attorney would die for their defendant. Paul agrees that it does seem foolish indeed. Yet the message that this cross and the event that happened on it is to Paul nothing short of the “power of god.” Paul wanted those in the Corinthian church not to be persuaded by the rational voices of the time, but to believe in the awesome and mysterious grace that had been offered to them through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: the gift of salvation. The ability, after all, for those who believed, who were baptized, to be cleansed of their sins through the event of the cross was the whole point, the most spectacular gift of Jesus’ life, the Good News! To see his former congregation beginning to fracture around the persuasion of human words and wisdom, the illusion of rationality, the distraction of rhetoric, when the greatest miracle of all time was there for them, there for their salvation, was too distressing for Paul to behold.
“Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”
We in the “progressive” Christian church may find ourselves nonplussed by these persuasive words of Paul. Not only is this not perhaps the face of Christian disunity today as we experience it, but Paul’s atonement theology, that Jesus indeed died to save us from our sins, is one we have questioned for decades, and have largely replaced.
It is a theology of individual spirituality, not of communal spirituality, and not one that addresses the very political nature of Jesus’ crucifixion. We in the UCC in particular embrace an understanding of the cross that is very different, that reveals God’s power of love over the human power of domination and violence. Jesus loved humanity enough to surrender to the violence of domination precisely in order to reveal its very limitation, and to teach us a different way.
So, what do we do with Paul? Do we throw him away? Is it not more important to discard his theology of atonement, to focus on the problems of poverty and oppression than disunity in the Church? Is it not more important for religions to get along with one another than the warring factions within the Christian communion?
Whether or not Paul’s message was based on a different emphasis of the cross, and limited to the baptized, whether or not we consider Christian unity of paramount importance, we are still convicted by his words. We are still vulnerable to losing track of what it is that is most important while we profess to a religion of love. And we also may need to open ourselves up to the notion that our baptism calls us to participate in a daily dying to our sins of exclusion and division.
Our baptism may not mean we are automatically cleansed of our sins, as Paul would have professed, but it calls us on a regular basis to die to that which is not love. We may not believe that in baptism we participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection in the same way that Paul believed, but the “power of God” is still present for us in the message of the cross, it is not? The power of God to transform our hearts and our souls when we allow ourselves to be open, the power of God to replace violence with redeeming love, the power of God to allow us to, over and over again, to be born to a different reality than the one in which we live. This is the Good News. Paul said, “I came not to baptize but to preach the Good News” and to that we can say “Amen!” In other words, “I came not to cause division but to share the good news of communion, of resurrection, of redemption, of hope, of healing, of shared resources, of new life in a world that is filled with death and loss.”
What might this look like, for us, to be in this spirit of Paul?
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer of Eagle Harbor Congregational Church on Bainbridge Island honors this week of Prayer for Christian Unity every year by calling the pastoral leaders of all the other Christian churches on Bainbridge, including the Catholic Church, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, to find out how they are doing. She offers for them to share what they would like Eagle Harbor church members to help celebrate in prayer, and what they would like help with praying for. She then shares this “report” during her Sunday sermon this week. It is a simple gesture, to overlook what divides us in the way of theology and political beliefs and find common ground in the joint practice of prayer. Does doing so bring the churches closer in belief? I don’t think so, nor do I think Dee thinks so. But does it bring us closer as sons and daughters of God, and as followers of Christ? I think so.
This is, in essence, the message of Paul. Are we willing to be Christians first, and the members of the United Church of Christ second? As humans first, and partisans a distant second?
That does not mean we don’t honor our differences. We are not, as the saying goes, “holding hands and singing Kumbaya” while ignoring deep divides. When Pastor Dee picks up the phone each year to reach out to the leaders of the LDS church on Bainbridge, neither party has any illusions about what divides them. But they and their respective congregations are brought closer around what is arguably more important: the wellbeing and dignity of the other, and faith in that which is greater than all of us.
But it does mean to stretch our necks out. We all have felt that Obama’s speeches that preach unity over division have been prophetic. That they come from the mouth piece of what we can only know is the establishment might make us cynical, but they strike a chord in us nonetheless. We can still take the words to heart. It feels risky, and yes, foolish, to stick our necks out to those we consider our enemies, to be vulnerable in a world that appears to be nothing but cruel.
And perhaps if we flex these muscles within our Christian communion, where it may seem the most unlikely to succeed, it may also work to flex these muscles in all areas of our life, both public and private. We can take these lessons of listening first to our mutual humanity to all areas where we face strife and division.
For sure, Paul’s understanding of the cross and who stands to benefit from its good news might be different from ours. But we would do well to remember that what seems wise and strategic to us will likely not bring us new life. The divisions that we fall prey to are exactly that which we must let die on the cross. It is the foolishness of a radical inclusive love that does not take sides, and that places our trust in the love of Jesus Christ to heal wounds we don’t know how to heal ourselves that will bring us new life. May we learn to give up these quarrels among us and in the spirit of foolishness, of radical love and transformation, allow ourselves to enter into a new life with Christ.