At face value, this passage from 1
Corinthians appears to be one of Paul’s most angry moments in which
he calls the Corinthians a bunch of babies and for that reason it is
not often preached on. I've been in the pulpit ministry for
seventeen years and usually use the lectionary. That means I've had
at least six opportunities to preach on this passage and this is only
the second time. Most preachers will preach on verse six “I
planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth” and talk about
natural church growth all the while avoiding the fact that Paul is
indeed calling the Corinthians a bunch of spiritual babies. But,
looks are deceiving and there is certainly more going on in the
passage than an apostolic dressing down of some trouble makers. So,
let's have a look.
The Bible scholars who study ancient
Greek rhetoric have something else to say about it particularly the
message that comes across when we pay attention to how Paul is saying
what he says. But first, let me define rhetoric. Rhetoric is the
skill of crafting the structure that a speech
should follow so that the hearers, knowing its structure, can
find it easier to follow and understand what the speaker is saying.
Unfortunately, today we think of rhetoric as what preachers and
politicians do to side step an issue; all rhetoric, no content. But,
it was different in the ancient world. Pencil and paper were in
short supply and people had to rely on the ability to listen so rhetoric – the rules of structuring communication – helped people
to hear, remember, and pass along information.
Well, according to the experts, Paul’s
rhetoric here, his structure of argument, in these first three
chapters of 1 Corinthians has been a masterful way of confronting those in Corinth who thought they should lead the Corinthian congregations because they were super smart, super wise, rhetoricians, and philosophers. These were likely
the folks who were saying, “I follow Apollos” because Apollos
himself was known to be a very skilled speaker, a skilled rhetorician
and that was a good thing. He wasn't just some stump preacher using
big flashy words to rally people or coerce them into a faith
decision. Paul, on the other hand, had the reputation of being a bit
rudimentary or crude; a bit of a Luther. Luther was quite often what
we would call vulgar.
We don’t pick up on it in our
English text and its mostly because we just aren't taught rhetoric
anymore, but in the Greek the rhetorical structure Paul uses is that
of a skilled philosopher’s diatribe. By saying it the same
arrogant and dismissive way that philosophers back then said things
to appear knowledgeable Paul has in essence said to the “wise-crackers”
in Corinth that the weak foolishness of Jesus Christ and him
crucified is the heart of true wisdom, that the way of the cross is
the simple rule by which we must live our lives. So Paul here with
his rhetoric (and grasp my analogy) is grabbing those “wise”
Corinthians by the ear as if they were disobedient, little children
and then skilfully he twists their ear lobe to lead them where they
should go by showing them he can do the rhetoric thing too. Then,
with a handy bar of soap he rhetorically washes their mouths out
saying, “this is God’s wisdom. God himself through the prophets
long ago said that this wisdom, his wisdom, would be a stumbling
block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. And you so-called
wise Corinthians are just lumping yourselves into the camp of those
who are fools in God’s eyes with your quarreling and divisiveness over who has the power.
'I follow Paul'. 'I follow Apollos'. Who
cares. Apollos and I, we’re both just slave gardeners. I planted
you. Apollos watered you. But, it is God who gives the growth. But
you’re not growing in the wisdom and way of the cross. So, it doesn't matter how smart you are. You are still infants. I fed you with milk, not solid
food. You weren't ready for that and you still aren’t. Your
jealousies and your quarrels prove it.” Thus said Paul to the
Corinthians.
Kicking back to last week's message, Paul emphasized in chapter 2 that it
is the Holy Spirit who teaches us who God is and does so by giving us
the mind or mindedness of Jesus Christ. Another way of saying this
is that the Holy Spirit teaches us who God is by bringing us to Jesus
Christ and him crucified. The God we know has revealed his very
heart to us as Jesus Christ and him crucified that we may be
reconciled to God, that we may share in the loving communion of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as Jesus the Son does. The Corinthians
seem to have totally missed this one and were rather more impressed
that they had the Holy Spirit in their midst who was giving them all
kinds of spiritual gifts. They totally missed that the new humanity
created in Jesus Christ is about the love of God, the
self-sacrificing, self-giving, apparently wasteeful, unconditional love of God being
fashioned among human community.
We talk about, and sing about, the
Trinity as God in three persons blessed Trinity. God is three
persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – who give themselves in
love so selflessly to each other that they are one. This type of
relational union is inconceivable for us because our fallen nature is
that we withhold ourselves from one another so selfishly that we can
never really know another person no matter how well we think we know
them. It is possible to look someone in the
eye after sixty years of marriage and say “I don't know what it's
like to be you. I can predict your actions, but I still don't know
you.”
Paul says at the very end of chapter
two of 1 Corinthians, “But we have the mind of Christ”. This
doesn't mean some sort of weird psychic thing where we know
everything there is to know of the personal thoughts of Jesus of
Nazareth. Rather, it means we have his mindedness, his drive. We know
personally what motivated him – the Father's love for him and his
love of the Father and we share in that through the gift of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit – and this knowing is changing us at the very
core of who we are. In, through, and as Jesus Christ, God has not
done what we do in withholding ourselves from one another. Rather,
God has freely shared and indeed given himself to us. By the gift of the Holy Spirit who
gives us the mind or mindedness of Jesus Christ and brings us into
union with the Son and into communion with the Father and the Son,
God has given us himself so that we may know his great love. As Jesus of Nazareth God shared
himself with us and with the gift of the Holy Spirit indwelling us
God has indeed given us his very self. Unfortunately, in our fallen world the Son had to die to do this.
Therefore, the God we know is Jesus Christ the Son crucified who has
died that we might share his relationship with the Father in the Holy
Spirit.
Turning back to the Corinthians, God
had given them his very self just as he has given himself to each of
us, yet they were spending this gift not on growing in Christ, not in
living and loving in the way of the cross, but were instead cliquing
off into groups which were competing for control in the different
churches. There were wise people, rich people,
tongue-speaking-prophesying people all competing for who was going to get
control and have their way in the church. You’d think
God would be quite angry with them. We expect God to say to them, “I
gave myself to you but you’ve trampled it like hungry pigs
following the slop bucket.” Paul indeed goes in that direction and
rather angrily calls them a bunch of immature infants not ready for
solid food...and he was right. They did indeed have bad table manners,
especially around the Lord’s Table. The rich feasted while the
poor stood back and watched. Paul is legitimately angry with them
after all they are adults. Yet, I think God sees them differently.
Dana and I have a few pictures
floating around of William and Alice in their first attempts at
eating solid foods or rather mush. I think I was the first to feed
William spaghetti and he got it all over himself, the table, the
chair, the floor. Ice cream was another huge mess. Alice too, she
did and still does get herself covered in everything she eats.
Learning to eat solid food is a major achievement and we don’t get
mad at our babies for not being able to eat decently and in order.
Rather, we laugh. We smile. We take pictures and float them around
Facebook. We clean them up. We discipline them when we know they
know better. We love them. I like to think that this is how God was
seeing the Corinthians, small children with messy faces who need to
get cleaned up after this meal and try again next time. I also like
to think that this is the way the Trinity sees us as churches and us as
individual Christians when we are blowing it with respect to living
by the standards of the cross and instead are still walking in the
ways of the world.
To close, this is a difficult text to
preach for it is easily misunderstood and taken wrongly by those who
hear it. The Trinity is in our midst trying to create human
community that is in God’s image, community in which people do not
withhold themselves from each other but rather in unconditional
indeed sacrificial and often apparently wasteful love give ourselves
to one another that we grow together to be more in the image of Jesus
Christ so that we may give our Christ-like community to the community
around us in unconditional indeed sacrificial and often apparently
wasteful love. The sharing of loving community in the image of
Christ is our goal not the continuance of an institution. Sometimes
we get the spoon right and we don’t spill our porridge in our laps
or drop our peas on the floor in this respect and most of the time we
look like a sloppy baby at dinner time. Nevertheless, God our Father
still loves us greatly. He cleans us up and gets us ready to try
again. Amen.
