What’s up in Corinth?

Sermon by Jamie Howison on 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 and Matthew 4:12-23

It might be easy to imagine that a church community founded by St Paul at the height of his innovative and dynamic ministry would all run wonderfully smoothly. I mean we do know something of how conflicts and differences of opinion can emerge in the life of a church community, but that must be on account of the times in which we live. Or you look at the sheer number of Protestant denominations worldwide—which the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimates as being in the range of 47,000 denominations—to say nothing of the various Anglican and Orthodox bodies and the range of expressions within the Roman Catholic Church—and you imagine that this is all related to matters of history and theology in the worldwide church. But clearly, one might think, the church of the New Testament that formed right in the wake of Christ’s resurrection and ascension must been marked by unity and shared vision.

Not so much. In several of his letters, we see Paul wrestling through matters that are divisive, and no more so than in his Corinthian correspondence. In today’s reading we heard him say, “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 the same purpose.” He’s not just speculating on the matter of potential divisions, but rather addressing head on the fact that there are disagreements and divisions; that the community there is not in a position of agreement, but is increasingly fragmented, “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” There are problems.

Corinth was not an uncomplicated city. The old city had been destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC and stood desolate for a century. In 44 BC the city had been rebuilt by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony, and in the time between its re-establishment and Paul’s planting of a church there, Corinth had prided itself on being a Roman city on Greek soil. As N.T. Wright summarizes things, Corinth “celebrated its Roman style of buildings, its Roman culture, its special links to the capital of a worldwide empire. And it prided itself on its intellectual life.”

This was an intellectual life very much indebted to the Roman way, and one in which various visiting teachers—which is essentially what Paul was—would be able to voice their particular views and perhaps build something of a following. There was a smorgasbord of such views in the air, and no matter how a teacher like Paul might have appealed to a higher call, it was all too easy for their views to get tangled in with other views and even set into a kind of competition, one with another.

We can see how that has surfaced in Corinth, when Paul asks the following:

What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

What has happened here is that while Paul planted the original Corinthian church, he’s been followed there by a fellow named Apollos and also at some point by Cephas or Peter, and rather than the people understanding that there is only one baptism, he’s now heard that people are beginning to put up dividing lines around who was baptised by who. A kind of a pecking order, perhaps, which was doing real damage by creating those dividing lines in what should have been a single, united community.

“It's a sobering thought,” N.T. Wright comments,

that the church faced such division in its very earliest years… Right from the start, Paul found himself not only announcing the gospel of Jesus but struggling to hold together in a single family those who had obeyed its summons.

And so in this opening section of the epistle, having asked this rhetorical question concerning who baptised who, he rather bluntly states, “I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.” This then is followed by a remark that modern translations tend to place in parentheses, but which in the original Greek is simply a case of Paul reflecting as he writes. It goes as follows:

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.

You really get a sense that he is writing a long-hand letter, without any possibility of pushing any delete button to back up and correct himself! I only baptised Crispus and Gaius… oh and the household of Stephanas… and I don’t think I baptized anyone else… You can almost see the wheels turning, which is a good reminder that we’re dealing here with a very real person writing with quill in hand! But that all leads us to his most significant point:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

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.

My calling, he’s saying, is to proclaim the gospel, and to do that in a way that is not all about eloquence after the manner of so much of Roman thought, but instead to simply presses on the message of the cross, which will strike the so-called wise ones of this world as being utter foolishness… but to those who truly hear and receive it, the message of the cross is in fact a power that will save us from the disaster of our own lives.

This will be even more fully fleshed out in the section of the epistle that will be read next Sunday, when Paul hammers into the matter of what he calls “God’s foolishness” and “God’s weakness.” That section is one of Paul’s most compelling and challenging teachings on gospel, so ready yourselves to really hear him out!

For now, hear these comments from Nancy Lammers Gross, Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Wrestling with what Paul is really driving at in today’s reading, she writes,

The cross of Christ is emptied of its power when the gifts of a few are celebrated as most or singularly important. The cross of Christ is emptied of its power when our loyalty is to preacher, teacher, local congregation, nationality, or culture first, and not to the gospel message of the unearned, unmerited, undeserved love of God in Jesus Christ.

Or put differently, what matters is not this teacher or that teacher; not Paul or Apollos or Cephas; not high church or low church; not this style of worship book or that style, but rather unearned, unmerited, undeserved love of God in Jesus Christ for us. For us, right here and now, and for any and all who God calls and touches with the spark of grace. What matters is the scandal of the crucifixion, by which the whole world is meant to be saved. All else, Paul would say, is commentary.

A Reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians

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 the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

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.

The Word of the Lord