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When I was a child, we had a Jewish family in the neighbourhood. One of the sons was my age and we frequently played together. He was an imaginative and brilliant kid. I remember a couple of times being at his house after school during Hanukkah. Sunset would come and it was time to light the menorah. They would invite me to stay for that. I thought it was really cool that my friend could read the Hebrew prayer. It was a different alphabet and all that. They lit the menorah and received their gifts. They didn’t have a gift for me per say as I was unexpected. What they did have to give me was a little bag of gelt, foil-covered chocolate money. That was pretty cool.
There’s a lot of tradition as to why a little bag of chocolate money is given to children on a particular day of Hanukkah and I won’t go into for time’s sake but it is safe to say that it’s meant to be a blessing, an enriching blessing you could say. It’s a way of remembering or sharing in the temple lamp oil that never ran out centuries ago when Jerusalem was under siege by Greeks and for eight days the Maccabees held them off and eventually defeated them.
That little bag of chocolate money meant a lot. It makes a kid feel rich. But more importantly, it made me feel included, included in friendship, somewhat in the family, in a tradition, in a faith. The gift of that little bag of chocolate money stuck with me. I have always tried to put a bag of it in my children’s stockings at Christmas.
This passage from 1 Corinthians reminded me of that bag of chocolate coin when I started to work with it. I’ll try to flesh that out for you. Our reading here is the opening of the letter in which Paul says what he’s thankful for in the congregation. To let you in on a little secret, Paul wrote most of his letters to address a particular problem in the congregation to which he was writing. Almost without fail, you can find the solution to the problem in the part of the letter where Paul says what he’s thankful for concerning them. It’s sort of a way of saying “You’ve already got everything you need to solve this problem, if you focus on the solution rather than the problem.”
In Corinth the problem was disunity. Their fellowship in Christ was being torn asunder because of a leadership vacuum. Paul had been there planting house churches for roughly a year and a half. When he moved on, he didn’t appoint leaders hoping, I guess, that the Holy Spirit would. They were very charismatic in Corinth. Several factions began to declare themselves the leaders: the patrons who owned the houses where the churches meet; some philosopher-types who thought they were the wisest; some very spiritual women who spoke in tongues and prophesied; and name-droppers who claimed allegiance to certain apostles. Paul goes one to show that this factiousness was resulting in sexual immorality, suing each other in pagan courts rather than solving disputes among themselves, disorderly worship, and their communion celebrations had become simply parties in which the rich feasted and the poor had to stand back and watch.
Let me give you a taste of church in Corinth. To begin with, there wasn’t one big church that met in a big building downtown, with pews and a preacher, a fellowship hall, and Sunday School classes. There were many small congregations that were 20-30 in number. They likely consisted of a few families inclusive of servants along with friends of the families meeting together in the house with the largest accommodating space. There would be a teacher or two or three who jumped from meeting to meeting like Paul did. Their worship services would have been rather spontaneous, led by the Holy Spirit’s prompting and included: prophesying, sharing of a word, praying for each other, speaking in tongues, and singing songs they likely wrote themselves usually adding Christian themed words to familiar tunes. They likely just went around the room and everyone shared something – a psalm, a hymn, a spiritual song, a testimony, a thanksgiving, a request for prayer. Then they shared a meal which included Communion at some point.
Everyone was permitted to participate regardless of ethnic roots, gender, or social status. Even slaves got to participate in the same way as their masters. They became as close as family, the family of Christ. Paul called this the fellowship of the Son and therein lay their true wealth. It’s what made them into the image of Christ. Their spiritual giftedness facilitated by their openness to the Holy Spirit was the proof that Jesus was in their midst strengthening them. Unfortunately, it was being torn apart and made ugly due to people trying to take over and run the show.
In his Thanksgiving, Paul points out their strengths and the things they should focus on to return to unity. He is thankful for the grace of God in Christ in their midst. Grace is a term that comes from the world of monarchy not the courtroom. It means to be permitted to come into the presence of the monarch (in this case God) to receive his favour and promise to act on your behalf. God’s presence, blessing, and protection is theirs in their fellowship in Christ. They have been made rich, enriched – given a bag of chocolate coins if you will – particularly one, in their ability to share openly in what Jesus is doing in them and in their lives and two, in their knowledge of God and what God is doing through Christ Jesus through the presence and powerful acting of the Holy Spirit in their midst. This enrichment, their giftedness is the real, evidential, historical proof that establishes that Jesus Christ is raised and ruling and will return. The Corinthians are not lacking in anything. Jesus will continue to fortify them with his presence and work in their midst to the end that they will be found blameless when he returns.
Paul closes his thanksgiving with an assertion that God is faithful and it is this faithful God who has called them into the fellowship of the Son, his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. This final assertion – the God who is faithful has called them into the fellowship of his son – is the zinger. This is what they need focus on to get them past their present problems of disunity.
The Greek word for fellowship is koinonia, hence my little bag of chocolate coins. As I reflected earlier about receiving a little bag of these things as part of my Jewish friend’s family’s celebration of Hanukkah, how it made me feel enriched, included in their friendship, family, tradition, faith. My family and our participation in the Christian had been rent asunder by the divorce of my parents. That little bag of chocolate coins was more than just a little bag of chocolate coins.
Chocolate coins – Koinonia – the wealth of fellowship. Congregations can overcome any obstacle, if we focus on the wealth of our fellowship, our love in Christ for one another. As Paul says towards the end of the letter in Chapter 13, the Love chapter, “Love never ends”. This is what I’m thankful for in being the minister of four small churches. It’s that we know and love one another. Granted all roses have their thorns, yet we still love one another regardless. It is often said in larger churches that “Ain’t nothing going to change around here until a few so and so’s die.” In a small congregation when someone passes it changes everything. Everybody grieves.
Though we are small in number, we have a wealth of fellowship, a wealth of love in Christ, that is undergirded by the presence of the Holy Spirit. We lack nothing as long as we engage in the love of Christ. When I first got into ministry nearly 30 years ago, Congregational Redevelopment was the hot area to be into. Consultants would go to churches and tell them what they needed to do to be more attractive to people who don’t attend church. They’d say things like “get rid of the dusty plastic flowers” or you need to have more contemporary music and so on. I even did a doctorate on how to turn a church around. My conclusion was that all a person need find when they come to a church is inclusion into a wealth of fellowship; a group of people who love each other deeply and who will include them in it. If that’s the case, they’ve found Jesus. If not, they’ve stumbled upon something else. Like Paul, I give thanks for the wealth of Christ-like fellowship in our churches. Amen.
