Text: 1 Corinthians 1:3-18
I was fortunate enough to receive my college education at the hands of Mennonites. The result of this was that I learned a considerable amount about Mennonite history and Mennonite ways. One such thing was that in the more traditional branches it is of utmost importance to be in agreement. This insistence on unity goes way back to when the Protestants and Roman Catholics parted ways during the Protestant Reformation. The Mennonites find their roots within the Reformation among a diverse group of Protestants known as the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were thus called because they believed that infant baptism was sacrilege for only adults who can make a decision to follow Jesus Christ should be baptized. This belief about baptism as well as their pacifism in the days when Islamic Moor's were invading Southeastern Europe led to hundreds of Anabaptists being tortured and put to death by Christians usually on charges of denying the Trinity (No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!). These persecutions are remembered to this day. In most every Mennonite home today one will find a book entitled The Martyr’s Mirror which records the deaths of all Anabaptist and Mennonite martyrs right up to the present.
As a result of persecution the early Anabaptists began to live in tight-knit communities based on models of community found in the book of Acts. (If only we Presbyterians could be so courageously faithful.) These communities were so close-knit that they even began to share their wealth. One drawback we might presume was that in order to preserve unity in these communities the Anabaptists began to adopt dress codes and rules and regulations which would help to keep them separate from the world. You see, it was those Christians who lived by the ways of the world whether Protestant, Reformed, or Roman Catholic who were trying to extinguish their communities through torture and death. So, in the early days and even still today Mennonite’s tried to preserve unity by agreeing to live by rigorous rules and regulations.
I was fortunate enough to receive my college education at the hands of Mennonites. The result of this was that I learned a considerable amount about Mennonite history and Mennonite ways. One such thing was that in the more traditional branches it is of utmost importance to be in agreement. This insistence on unity goes way back to when the Protestants and Roman Catholics parted ways during the Protestant Reformation. The Mennonites find their roots within the Reformation among a diverse group of Protestants known as the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were thus called because they believed that infant baptism was sacrilege for only adults who can make a decision to follow Jesus Christ should be baptized. This belief about baptism as well as their pacifism in the days when Islamic Moor's were invading Southeastern Europe led to hundreds of Anabaptists being tortured and put to death by Christians usually on charges of denying the Trinity (No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!). These persecutions are remembered to this day. In most every Mennonite home today one will find a book entitled The Martyr’s Mirror which records the deaths of all Anabaptist and Mennonite martyrs right up to the present.
As a result of persecution the early Anabaptists began to live in tight-knit communities based on models of community found in the book of Acts. (If only we Presbyterians could be so courageously faithful.) These communities were so close-knit that they even began to share their wealth. One drawback we might presume was that in order to preserve unity in these communities the Anabaptists began to adopt dress codes and rules and regulations which would help to keep them separate from the world. You see, it was those Christians who lived by the ways of the world whether Protestant, Reformed, or Roman Catholic who were trying to extinguish their communities through torture and death. So, in the early days and even still today Mennonite’s tried to preserve unity by agreeing to live by rigorous rules and regulations.
Interestingly, the Mennonites had and still have a Biblical way to deal with someone who does something to transgress the rules of the community and disrupts unity. They enforced what they called the Ban. The Ban was basically excommunication from the community without the transgressor being able to leave the community. No one, not even family, was allowed to speak to the person until that person repented of the transgression. Transgressors were even forced to eat at separate tables even at home. Being banned was a very shameful thing to happen for everyone had to know that you were banned. The Ban was very effective in preventing division within the community for it peaceably kept transgressors and dissenters within the community all the while silencing them to keep division from spreading. We could critique the Ban on the basis that it withheld from a person the basic right of free speech. But for the most part, it was a humane institution, one, because the people agreed to live under it and two, because the community rules were well understood.
I have lectured on the Ban not without a purpose, but because it is not just Old Order Mennonites and other Anabaptist communities who practice it. Every family, group of friends and organization has some form of the Ban they set in place whenever somebody does something which is different from what is deemed acceptable. We are all guilty of banning other people for reasons which range from the trivial such as, “I just don’t like the way that person eats their fruit;” to more serious reasons which would include such things as physical or verbal assaults. Yet, the way we ban people is different from the Mennonite way. First, too often in our communities and groups of friends the rules which would result in a ban are not clearly laid out. Second, we typically have no formal agreement among everybody to have a ban placed on someone for breaking those nebulous rules. Third and even worse, the way the rest of the community finds out that we've banned somebody is usually through the channels of gossip.
The result of our kind of informal, non-biblical, and unChristian ban is widespread division. Too often we will ban a person or a group of people for no better reason than they are different from us in matters of opinion, belief and personal habit. And then, when the banned person or group recognizes that they have been banned, they will usually counter by gathering a group by means of gossip and in turn retaliate with a ban of their own. The end result is that people who were once friends are suddenly bitterly divided.
Sadly, too often this informal, non-biblical, and unchristian form of the ban rears its butt-ugly head in the church. We have all seen and been party to sisters and brothers in Christ who were once friends yet suddenly stop speaking with each other. Some unspecified rule involving personal enfranchisement, money, opinions, beliefs, traditions, dreams of the future, etc., is transgressed and it is almost unknowingly transgressed. The other person gets suddenly inexplicably very angry and begins to talk behind that person’s back and successfully gets enough people angry enough to impose an informal ban. The banned person perceiving that they have been banned then tries to find out why, except nobody is talking. So the banned person gets angry and starts to form their own little group in order to retaliate with a ban. Finally, a swat team of outside mediators is called in to try to make peace because it is painfully obvious that everybody wants their seating assignments changed.
Something similar was happening in Corinth. To give a little history, Paul planted several small house churches there and they all regularly met together in one of the wealthier patron's houses to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Paul stayed among them for only a year and a half and when he left he apparently left no one in charge. I guess that Paul must have presumed that they would be able to discern those called to leadership since the Holy Spirit appeared to be so active in their midst in that they lacked no spiritual gift. In this vacuum of leadership small groups of people began to compete for ultimate power. (Let us not forget the philosopher Nietzche's maxim that ultimate power corrupts ultimately.) There were the "name droppers" trying to grasp power by the influence of who baptized them - Apollos, Paul, or Peter (Cephas). Some of the really clever ones simply claimed, “We follow Jesus.” There were the wealthy patrons who owned the houses where they met and who were also leaders in the community. Yet, wealth and power in the world does not entitle one to power in the church. There were the "philosophers"; wise Gnostic types who thought they had cornered the market on "wisdom" yet they could not see God's wisdom of the cross. There was also a group of "spiritual" types who were mostly women who thought that because they spoke in tongues more than anybody else they had the spiritual power to lead. Paul had to tell them to be quiet, cover their heads, and desire to prophesy for they were looking like the priestesses of Isis in the temple down the road who also spoke in tongues a lot and there was prostitution and men castrated themselves to serve Isis like her brother Osiris.
Paul became very angry at the Corinthian church. So angry that he said he was thankful that he had not baptized more than a handful of them. His anger most likely arose because the Corinthians were mistaking the Christian church for any other type of societal organization of their day such as a philosophical school, a Pagan temple, a trade guild, even local government. They did not get it that the church is new humanity in Christ. That the Church is his body and is indeed the new temple where God resides as the Holy Spirit dwells in it. Under these conditions baptism was not portrayed as a sign that one had died with Christ to the old life and been raised with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to the new. Baptism to them was nothing more than an initiatory rite into some form of new Pagan religious institution. As a result of this, the Corinthians were quarrelling among themselves over who was the greatest and it got so bad that they were banning the "least of these" among them from the table at the Lord's Supper while they feasted.
Paul responded to them by saying that Jesus did not send him to baptize but rather to gospelize, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ seeking to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ in his cruciform nature. The Gospel was the message that because of Jesus' incarnate being, his faithful life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension to the right hand of the Father to reign in power on earth there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all Christians are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28) and indeed in him reconciled to God. We need to place emphasis on the word one, on the unity in all this, our unity with God and with one another.
Well, these were not wise words by that day’s standards. Rather, they were foolish words. How preposterous it was to invite all people regardless of their station in life into a community and a way of life whose founder was crucified as a criminal, and even more so to say he was then raised from the dead. It was just plain ridiculous to say that all people are equal and at peace in the fellowship of that man, Jesus, who appeared to be nothing more than a charlatan. The gospel did appear to be foolishness.
Paul would have us to be gospelors like himself. People who live in unity in the new humanity that God the Father has created in and through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church is an institution unlike any other and our primary responsibility is to attend to our unity in Christ putting all other things aside. Rather, we should be inviting those whom we consider to be different from ourselves into a united fellowship where we are all in agreement. A fellowship in agreement is not a fellowship where we agree on all matters great and small. Rather, we are to be a fellowship in which we all speak the same word of love, the love of Christ, in the way we love one another. There is a place for discipline in the church, for banning one could say. But, our informal, non-biblical, unchristian and indeed evil ways of banning one another has absolutely no place in the church, the body of Christ, the temple of the living God. Disunity, schism has no place in the body of Christ. Why should we crucify him again?
Ignatius of Antioch was one of the first of the second generation early church bishops to be martyred by the Romans. He was arrested somewhere in Turkey and taken to Rome and all along the way the "circus" stopped in towns where he was made to fight wild beasts as an example of what happens to Christians who proclaim a "Lord and Saviour" other than Caesar. He eventually died in the Roman coliseum. On the way he wrote seven letters, one to Polycarp the young Bishop of Smyrna and one of his tutelage in it he writes:
"Having obtained good proof that thy mind is fixed in God as upon an immoveable rock, I loudly glorify [His name] that I have been thought worthy [to behold] thy blameless face, which may I ever enjoy in God! I entreat thee, by the grace with which thou art clothed, to press forward in thy course, and to exhort all that they may be saved. Maintain thy position with all care, both in the flesh and spirit. Have a regard to preserve unity, than which nothing is better. Bear with all, even as the Lord does with thee. Support all in love, as also thou doest. Give thyself to prayer without ceasing. Implore additional understanding to what thou already hast. Be watchful, possessing a sleepless spirit. Speak to every man separately, as God enables thee. Bear the infirmities of all, as being a perfect athlete [in the Christian life]: where the labour is great, the gain is all the more."
Unity, there is no work better than our attending to our unity in Christ following his one and only commandment that we love one another so that others will know that we are his disciples. Amen.
