The apostle Paul first visited the city of Corinth in the year 50. He had been preaching and teaching the story of Jesus for about fourteen years. Most of that time in Palestine, but shortly before he came to Corinth he established two other churches in Greece, one at Philippi and the other at Thessalonica, two significant Roman cities.
The Greek city Corinth had been destroyed by the Romans in 146 before the Common Era, and Julius Caesar revived and repopulated Corinth around 44. He settled Roman freedmen and emigrants from other parts of the Empire to relieve the strains of over population in Rome. Corinth, between two major Mediterranean seas, developed rapidly into a busy, trade city. By the time Paul arrived, it was a thriving, wealthy, Roman colony.
Because of its location it attracted people from all over the Empire and they brought with them their various religions. And while there were many religions in Corinth, scholars tell us, the city was not very “religious.” One scholar writes:
Corinth’s reputation for wealth without culture and for the abuse of the poor by the wealthy was … well known… [A] second … century … [writer] call[ed] wealthy people’s behavior disgusting, coarse, and objectionable … and detail[ed] the groveling of the abject, wretched poor for the smallest morsels of food.
Understandably, the transitory nature of ancient commerce, with sailors relishing life in a city and then moving along, contributed to Corinth’s becoming known as “Sin City.”
(J. Paul Sampley, “I Corinthians,” The New Interpreters Bible)
Corinth sounds like, what most of us probably envision, when we think of wealthy cities in ancient cultures.
Corinth, like most cultures around the Mediterranean, practiced patronage. Everyone had someone to whom they were indebted, from the lowest peasant, all the way up the societal ladder to the wealthy and powerful. Scholars of the historical Jesus tell us that Jesus’ “problem” was that he refused to buy into the patronage system. Paul, just as Jesus did, preached against it.
Paul stayed in Corinth for eighteen months, preaching, teaching, and establishing house churches. He visited Corinth a second time in the spring of 58 and stayed for three months. Our reading this morning is dated in the winter of 53-54 and was written from Ephesus where Paul planted another church.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians to encourage them to live out the love which called them to follow Jesus.
These new Christians gathered in the homes of those who were wealthy and who could provide, not only homes that were large enough to accommodate their meetings, but who also were wealthy enough to provide food for their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. Paul talked about the way the wealthy treated their fellow Christians who were poor.
What were the problems? Well, there were divisions among them. Sounds like churches today, doesn’t it. And it reflects Elaine Pagels and Karen King’s premise in The Gospel of Judas, that there was probably as many Christian sects in that time as there are today!
Corinthians were known as a contentious, argumentative people, and these new Christians were no exception. Paul encouraged them to be united in mind and thought. He wrote that some said, “I follow Paul,” others said, “I follow Apollos,” or “… Cephas,” and still others said, “I follow Christ.” Paul wrote, “Is Christ divided?”
In a more practical consideration, Paul knew that discord and division would weaken the church. He knew, just as any good organizational behavior expert knows, people need to be reminded of the goals and purpose of the organization.
First, he encourages them; tells them they are a holy people. He reminds them that those who follow the teachings of Jesus are set apart. He tells them that God calls them to a new wisdom. They are all more than they were.
What is this wisdom Paul writes about? It is the same wisdom Jesus talks about and Paul means it in the same way Jesus meant it. There is the wisdom of the world, conventional wisdom, and there is God’s wisdom.
Conventional wisdom says rich people are better than poor people.
… powerful people have more privilege than others.
… educated people are more worthy than uneducated people.
… noble birth gives the right to oppress those who are of common birth.
And in Corinth conventional wisdom says rich people get to come to the party early and eat all the best food before the poor people arrive.
Paul’s wisdom, Jesus’ wisdom, God’s wisdom says,
Everyone is equal, and all believers are to love one another.
When people of faith create a community of believers, there is no more rich or poor, there is no more status of power, there is no more privilege for a few, all are equal participants in God’s love, in God’s kingdom.
God’s wisdom is inclusive and
God’s wisdom makes conventional wisdom foolish
God’s wisdom leads us to love one another
God’s wisdom leads us to love one another
This is a hard lesson to learn when we are steeped in the conventional wisdom of our culture, whether it is in the first century or the twenty-first century.
I want us to look at our second reading today, from Howard Thurman. You know who Howard Thurman was, don’t you? Ebony Magazine called him one of the fifty most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and Life Magazine named him one of the twelve best preachers in America. The genius of Rev. Thurman, for me, is in the way he made his sermons and his writing “accessible.” He wrote great theological and faith reflections in language that appealed to everyone.
In our reading today Thurman asked the question, “How does the individual know that his obedience is to God?” And he answers the question, “… he finds the answers themselves, in the life and teachings of Jesus.” And he goes on to say, that when his personal behavior is out of harmony with Jesus’ life and teachings he quickly knows, because it somehow seems out of step with the spirit of Jesus’ words.
Thurman describes how he gains this wisdom, this knowledge of how God wants us to be.
Slowly his mind becomes my mind, and then the amazing discovery that the mind that is more and more in me is the mind that was more and more in him. The mind that was in him becomes more and more clearly to me to be the mind that is God…
Now, listen to the words of Spanish philosopher Michael de Unamuno, who says the same thing, in different words.
… the starry-eyed heavens gaze down upon the believer, … a divine, gaze, a gaze that asks for supreme pity and supreme love, and in the serenity of the night he hears the breathing of God, and God touches … [our] heart of hearts and reveals God self to [us]. … individual consciousness emerges from us in order to submerge itself into the total Consciousness of which we form a part … And God is simply the Love that springs … [into] consciousness.
We will know God’s wisdom through our conscious effort to listen for God’s wisdom. We will know God’s love and will love others the same when we choose to love as God loves. That is what Universalism is all about. Learning to love as God loves.
We do, though, have to make it a conscious decision, to choose to love this way.
How are we alike and how are we different from those early Corinthian followers of Jesus?
Well, we are fortunate enough to have Jesus’ stories written down for us. They probably had some of Paul’s sermons and some of Jesus’ stories written down for them. But they did not have anything that compares to our easily accessible Bible. The first book major book printed in the Fifteenth Century, you know, was the Guttenberg Bible. No one ever complains about the value of the printed word!
Our culture may be different, our value of human life may be different, and our world view is surely different, but are we different in our need for love? Are we different in our need for compassion, for justice, or peace?
Paul wrote to the Corinthians to encourage them to live out the love which called them to follow Jesus. Are we living out our love that calls us to follow Jesus?
Amen and blessed be.
The Readings
1 Corinthians 1:1-13, 20-29
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
Where are the wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
READING II
From “The Creative Encounter” by Howard Thurman
How does the individual know that his obedience is to God? Can he trust his interpretation of his finding, his residue of religious experience? .... The Christian finds the clue to his answer, yet even more than this, he finds the answers themselves, in the life and teachings of Jesus.... He may say, “I do not know what God requires. I’m not sure I can depend upon what seems to me the definite or definitive will of God. I am a creature of error, but I can know Jesus through the gospel and I share in the claim which is made for him that he is the word made flesh. He is in reach, and he can give me a tested series of formulae for the guidance of my own life....
Any personal behavior, then, that is out of harmony with his life and teaching becomes exposed to the swift judgment of what seems to me now to be his spirit. Slowly his mind becomes my mind, and then the amazing discovery that the mind that is more and more in me is the mind that was more and more in him. The mind that was in him becomes more and more clearly to me to be the mind that is God. All of this may be achieved without any necessity whatsoever of making a God out of Jesus.