I know this is long overdue, but here’s my sermon notes on 1 Corinthians chapter 1 (in my defence, I’ve been really busy editing my next book). As per the original post, way back in July, if you prefer you can listen on Youtube.
READ: 1 Corinthians 1: 1 – 2: 5
DIVIDED
I’ve been given the title of Division week, as we look at chapter 1 of this letter. But to a great extent Division isn’t just the topic of this week’s sermon or merely a summary of this particular portion of Paul’s letter; Division is a central problem that Paul wants to address.
Some would like to believe that it’s only as the Church has gotten further away from events that took place 2000 years ago that division has crept into it. They naïvely believe that if we were all closer to events that took place in Jesus’ time, then we wouldn’t argue about what had happened and what it means. But that’s simply not the case. The early church had issues and challenges, too; we wouldn’t have most of the New Testament if it didn’t.
In this case, it’s the church that dwells and meets in the homes of the city of Corinth that are having the problems—big problems.
“I’ve received news people … and it’s not good” (v11). “I’ve got messages from Chloe’s Household and they’ve told me about all these arguments you been having”.
It’s important to note a couple of things here:
Firstly, 1 Corinthians isn’t the first letter in this conversation. Paul has already written once, (see 1 Cor 5: 9). This is, at least, Paul’s second letter—and Paul is writing in response to a letter (or letters, or messengers) that he has already received from the believers that meet in Chloe’s home. So it’s important to remember that Paul is in dialogue, throughout this letter, with the arguments/theology/opinions of his conversation partners.
I’m saying that, because it’s all too easy to stop mid-argument and then take something Paul writes and as being Paul’s expressed opinion. When actually, there are numerous points in this letter where Paul is merely echoing and engaging in the opinions of those he is talking too. And because of this, there are points in this letter, like in chapters 11 and 14 (for example) when Paul appears to contradict himself within the space of a few verses—but he’s not, he’s dialoguing. Tread with care.
Secondly, Paul’s got this news from Chloe’s house church[i], which makes them sound like they’re a bunch of snitches, who are reporting on the problems that all the other house churches are having—and nobody likes a snitch. But they’re not. The problems they raise probably existed in Chloe’s house church as much as the other house churches, and the most likely explanation for their letter is not to tell-tales, but to seek clarity.
I don’t know how long Chloe’s letter was—but it was certainly no post card. It would have been full of all these differences of opinion and the divisions they’re causing. And it’s these issues that Chloe’s household have raised in their letter, which flow through Paul’s response in 1 Corinthians.
It’s not just what we read at the start with the “team Paul/Apollos/Peter/Jesus” debate [which I’m not going to look at today—leave ‘til chp 3]; but there are also disputes about Food offered to idols, Lawsuits, Sex, Marriage, Head coverings, how they treat the Lord’s Supper, the use of Spiritual Gifts, Chaotic meetings, and certain people speaking during the church meeting. Even the Resurrection of Christ is under hot debate.
It’s also worth adding, that they’re writing to Paul because Paul was instrumental (alongside two other Jewish believers called Priscilla and Aquila) in establishing the gospel in Corinth (as you can read in Act’s 18). Paul spent a year and half there before leaving for Ephesus. But as a result of his work, the majority of the Christian’s in Corinth were from a non-Jewish background—they were Gentiles; people who had lived, worshipped, worked and traded most of their lives within the dominant (main-stream), Greco-Roman culture of their time; the church is still young, and it’s still finding its feet as to what it means to follow Christ.
CULTURE WARS
You see, there’s a culture war going on in Corinth. And this isn’t just about morality—although moral issues crop up. But the values and customs of the surrounding culture.
Corinthian culture was a hot bed of Roman and Greek ideas. One of those ideas was that the weak should be ruled by the strong, the unsophisticated should be ruled by the sophisticated, and that the ignorant should be ruled by the wise. And in turn this produced this hierarchy of who has authority and who should not—who should be honoured, and who should not—and who had freedom and who did not.
Within Corinthian culture, there were real limits and duties placed on you. Some people had status and choice—others had neither.
So the church are wondering how they are to flesh-out God’s Kingdom, God’s ideal for humanity, whilst they are still “trapped” (in a sense) within the structure of the main-stream culture around them, and the labels that that culture uses, and the roles that that culture assigns to different classes of people in order to define what level of status and function you had within society.
And Paul is sensitive to this—he is in most of his letters. He’s no stranger to these tensions. He understands that he can’t just click his fingers and these authority structures disappear. And to a degree, Paul doesn’tattempt to change the surrounding culture. He does something subversive instead, and declares that what the church needs to do is to be a model of something alternative—it needs to present what God’s Kingdom is like—and therefore it models a very different idea of authority and different way in which that authority operates: to the extent that the Kingdomreverses everything, and that people don’t hold authority over one another other—instead, all of us submit to and serve one another.
There’s a little motif/formula that Paul uses to describe this alternative culture and those who form it—and it pops up in the different ways in Paul’s writings; “In Christ…”, “or amongst the Lord’s people…”, or “as the body of Christ”…
As an example, Paul writes in his second letter (2 Corinthians 5: 17) “This means that anyone who is in Christ has become a new person. The old life has gone; a new life has begun”
We often read that as if it’s only a spiritual, internal thing—just about our desires and morals. But it’s also about status—and its immediate context in that letter is about how we view and assess one another’s worth.
“In Christ”—within the Kingdom of God—your status is not what it was Corinthian culture. “In Corinth” your value depends on whether you are a slave, or a master, or a man, or a women. But, as Paul says elsewhere, “In Christ, there’s no longer slave or free, male, female, civilised or barbarian… we’re all one in Christ” (Gal 3:28). And it’s this “In Christ” culture that the church should be exhibiting as it meets together in one another’s homes and as it moves beyond from that into their life in the wider society.
So for Example: take the Master and Slave relationship. Paul would say, that within the culture around you, your still going to be seen as a master or a slave—Corinthian culture (or Thessalonica, or Ephesus, or Galatia) will stick those labels on you and view you through those labels, and there’s nothing you can do about that. But “in Christ”, that slave—master/master—slave relationship takes on whole new meaning and it looks a whole lot different! You love and serve one another, and you don’t see each other as being either inferior/superior, but as siblings, co-heirs in the kingdom. Or, as Paul says later in this letter (3:16), that they recognise “all of you together are God’s Temple”
This is obviously great news if you’re in the lower ranks of society. And for that reason, Christianity was popular amongst the people from the lower classes of the Greco-Roman society, like slaves and servants (many historians, like Rodney Stark, have noted this, but Paul himself points it out in verse 26 of this chapter).[ii]
However, there are some within the Corinthian church who are not playing ball. Some people are just copying the Corinthian Culture and translating it into the life of the church without even questioning it. They don’t like this change in status; they don’t like this idea of this inversion and equality of rank within the body of Christ. Obviously, these are the people who have the most to lose—they’re those who have authority, rank and wealth in the Roman culture around them.
And to add to this issue, it’s those who are wealthy and have status within their culture that are also the ones that own the very households that the churches are meeting in—households that have Christian slaves/servants. But they expect, when the church does meet, that things should run as usual; they should still be hosts and keep to the social norms, and that those in the lower tiers of society should keep their place, as well.
And it’s this friction, this value system, this obsession with status and honour in the Corinthian culture, that is the problem behind a large number of the issues within this letter.
They have an idea of authority, and how that authority should be exercised with the church, that Paul consistently takes issue with. And although Paul is sensitive towards those who have little choice in their society, he is blunt and sharp in his critique of those who do have authority, and who, as a result of their obsession with status, are damaging and abusing the body of Christ.
SUMMARY OF PAUL AND CHP 1
If I could summarise and paraphrase Paul’s critique of the church in Corinth, if I could take his heart behind the entire of this letter and also summarise some of his points in chapter 1, it would sound like this (And I’ll let you decide if it would be applicable, in some quarters, to the church today):
“You have all these gifts, and skills, and knowledge. But your problem is that you’ve been blessed with far more than you care to acknowledge and you reflect your culture’s values and not the Kingdom of God.
“You’re allowing what the world find’s sophisticated, and powerful, and beautiful to dictate not only how the church operates, but also who the church celebrates!
“You’re obsessed with status and spectacle. You’re obsessed with looking good in the eyes of the world and becoming “somebody”. You’re obsessed with those who sound good and have great “worldly” credentials: those who are wealthy, and powerful and “impressive” according to the world’s wisdom on what is worthy of your admiration and devotion.
“But church, the authority and value structure of the Roman Empire [or Britain, or America] is not the model of authority and values within the church. We’re supposed to cross-shaped. And sadly, instead of trying to exhibit the crucified God, instead of allowing the cross of Christ to flip all your thinking about authority upside down and inside out, you’re just mimicking the very patterns and values of the Empire that crucified him.
“There are some important things that you’re forgetting church…
- 1. Your forgetting that the majority of the church is formed from people who never attained your world’s standards of perfection; and that’s not a bad thing!
- You’re forgetting that your status in the world had nothing to do with your status in God’s Kingdom—it was all God’s grace and God’s initiative to bring you into his Kingdom. (v30) God alone made it possible for you to be in Christ. It wasn’t a promotion that you earned, because you were already brilliant in the world and God was seeking out the best of the world. The opposite is true; God choose you because you were weak and unimpressive. He hasn’t called you to look glamorous and sophisticated, but to demonstrate how ridiculous those notions of human value and worth really are. You are nobodies, called to show those who think they’re somebodies that they’re actually nobodies, as well, and that it’s only when we allow ourselves to be caught up in the extravagant love and purposes of God that we become somebodies at all.
- Most importantly—you’re forgetting that the news of a crucified God doesn’t sound great to most people’s ears! The cross is scandalous. It is horrible. It is ugly. It is shameful and disgraceful. The cross of God is the opposite of everything your culture worships and craves and sees as beautiful and powerful. But it’s only this cross, it’s only this “foolishness” of God that exhibits what real power and live-giving wisdom and true beauty really look like.”
THE SCANDAL OF THE CROSS
I love that before we even get into the nitty gritty of this letter, Paul purposely focuses us on the cross and it’s grossness in the eyes of the world.
I think the modern church has forgotten the scandal of the cross. Like the Corinthian church, we often clamber after significance and authority. Like some ancient expectations, we’re led to believe that if God shows up and does something on the world stage, then it will be glamourous, extravagant, powerful and large. That if God does something within or through our churches then it will be something that the world will applaud and celebrate, and that it won’t be able to resist. When God moves, we believe, it will be enticing, coercive, and “impressive”.
But when God did show up, in the flesh, it was actually very tame and small scale by comparison. The world at large missed it, no one wrote about it in their local press or their history books—it was only through a handful of followers that the world heard about it afterwards. [Always surprises me when people say it couldn’t have happened because no one really wrote about it—what do expect? A man got crucified, that’s not news]
We expect God to make a big entrance. But God didn’t turn up in glitz and glamour like royalty, with an entourage of servants and an army behind him. Jesus didn’t ride into Rome, the centre of the Empire and the known world at that point, and cause a big commotion and get coroneted as Emperor. Instead, “He made himself nothing, and humbled himself in the form of slave, and then humbled himself further by dying a criminal’s death, being executed on a cross”(Phil 2).
It sounds like nonsense; it is nonsense. To quote one of my favourite theologians, Tom Wright; “The Christian good news is all about God dying on a rubbish-heap at the wrong end of the Empire…” [iii]
I remember my friend, Steve Kershaw on Good Friday morning saying to me, “What is God doing on a cross?” And that’s the key question.
To the Jews, this idea of a crucified God was a scandal—a stumbling block. God wasn’t supposed to come and die—God (or God’s Messiah) was supposed to come and be impressive and powerful in battle and knock the Roman Empire out of town. A Crucified God, isn’t God. A Messiah who can’t save himself, can’t save others, either.
To the Greco-Roman world, this idea of God is gibberish. A weak God—who can be killed by Roman execution, isn’t impressive or worthy of honour and glory. It is one thing to die with a sword in your hand during battle—to die a glorious death would be praise worthy. To complete some great feat, and become legendary would be better. But to die, a perceived victim, in such a horrible, disgusting, humiliating and disgraceful way, that’s something else entirely.
You see, crucifixion was gross, unsophisticated and shameful. Paul’s culture got that. People didn’t talk about crucifixion in polite company, it was grotesque; it would be like me talking about dog muck while you’re eating your breakfast. But Today we miss that shock—we’ve sanitised it and romanticised it; and we’re not happy when people go to extremes to remind us how horrible it was;
Way back in 1987, there was uproar when a photographer/artist called Andres Serrano exhibited a portrait called Imersion (it has another name). It was a photo of a 13-inch plastic crucifix immersed in jar full of urine. Understandably, religious groups went berserk. There were charges of blasphemy against Serrano, and protests outside wherever this work was displayed. Some people said the portrait was “a grossly offensive, scandalous and insulting of treatment of Christianity’s most sacred and holy symbol”. Some people said that “Serrano wasn’t an artist, he’s a jerk”. Eventually, a group of Christian’s did manage to get close enough to it to smash it’s frame and slash it to pieces with a knife; and in defence of their actions one of the attackers claimed that they had done so because “the image mocked his God.” [Which I find interesting, not only because of the point I’m making here, but because he didn’t think that violently brandishing a knife didn’t also mock the crucifixion?]
In his defence, Serrano denied the charges of blasphemy and said that he, as a Christian, equally finds blasphemy very distasteful. He goes onto to say, in a number of interviews, that the church has become desensitised to the cross; we’ve commercialised it. And the fact that we are not horrified when viewing such an image, does Jesus a disservice. The purpose of his work, he states, was to bring people closer to the ugliness and stench of what Jesus had to endure.[iv]
You may agree, or disagree. But the crucifixion was scandalous; it still is. And yet Paul puts this example as the centre-piece of God’s wisdom and as the model for the church. The cross is God’s foolish plan—but it inverts all our thinking about authority and power, and what it means to be impressive.
What God modelled on the cross, was not beautiful, or sophisticated, or wise in the world’s standards.
What God modelled on the cross, was the opposite of what makes somebody a celebrity by today’s standards.
What God modelled was a self-emptying posture. It looks like weakness and humility and servant hood. The cross stinks of death, not self-preservation. It speaks of service, not self-promotion. It speaks of sacrifice, and not power-plays. And to Paul, this “weakness” of God is far stronger than any human strength. This folly of God is more beautiful than all human wisdom.
UPSIDE DOWN
Again, I think the modern church has forgotten the cross. I wish the church was full of more scandal. Not in the sense of the immoral and the criminal—which there’s too much of. But scandals that emerge from a church that is upside down to the priorities and values of the world—scandals because the Church is cruciform/self-emptying in its nature. Wouldn’t it be great to read about a kind of church that gives its life away, and not about one that’s greedy? Wouldn’t it be great to hear about the controversy of a mega-pastor who paid for some lifesaving medical equipment and not about one who bought a brand new private jet? Wouldn’t it be amazing (to quote a prayer that Bruce said a few weeks ago) that people came away from church not saying how great our building was, or our music was, or preaching was, but that they walked away saying how great God is? Wouldn’t it be great if people weren’t loyal to brands and style, but to Christ?
What if, for the world to see God, the church has to stop being so full of itself and start to empty itself out for others?
Corinth needed to learn that—it’s divisions stem from their desire to be on top, or to look the best. And we need to learn it, too; because, we too can talk too much about looking great and sounding great, instead looking foolish. We too grasp for power and prestige, instead of being prepared to carry our cross and to lay ourselves down for others.
ENDNOTES:
[i] As an aside—it’s worth remembering that detail when we get to that famous verse in chapter 14, about women being silent in church! We’ll look at its context when we get there, but before we misunderstand that verse to be some universal rule forbidding women to speak or lead, it’s worth considering who Paul identifies as the leader of that particular gathering, and it’s worth remembering that it is Chloe that Paul has chosen to be in communication with about these issues.)
[ii] See Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (HarperOne, 1997).
[iii] N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, “1 Corinthians 1.18-25, God’s Folly” (SPCK, 2012), p.13.
[iv] For a range of articles re’ Immersion, cf: www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Portraying-Jesus-in-urine-is-art-not-blasphemy-A-response-to-Serrano-s-immersion, www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protestors, www.icon-icon.com/en/design-art/immersion-aka-piss-christ-andres-serrano-0, www.next.liberation.fr/amphtml/arts/2011/04/19/andres-serrano-i-have-no-sympathy-for-blasphemy_730482, www.quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=n;view=text;xc=1,
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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