The Wealth of Fellowship

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1 Corinthians 1:1-9

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.

 

The Proper Attire for God's Feast

Text: Matthew 22:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

A Trinitarian definition of righteousness would sound something like living in the love of the Father freely given to us through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit.  Righteousness, this right relationship to God, is given to us freely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ made real in and among us through the fellowship building work of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, the incarnate Son of God has done it all for us with respect to getting humanity, indeed us, right with God and therefore God has placed his Spirit, himself and his way of relating, into a particular community of people, including us, that stretches across every place and time and race and nation.  This is what Paul means by the fellowship with/of Jesus Christ in our reading from 1 Corinthians.  Jesus Christ is in his church, in his body, and that means that we are organically different than any other communion, community, group, or organization on earth.  We are where God himself is.  We are his temple.  It has been the pattern of the church throughout history to lose site of this or just be flat blind to it and be something other than God created it to be.

Jesus told his disciples “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13).”  “This is my command: Love each other (Jn 15:17).”  He said this because this is who he is.  God is the Trinity, the communion of self-giving and reciprocating love within mutually constitutive relationships, i.e., the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who gives himself for and to us.  In the giving of himself to us he creates a community, a communion, a fellowship that is to be in his image.  The question the Gospel asks is primarily whether we will participate now in our future glory by reciprocating God’s love to God and to one another.  Let this loving communion permeate worship and our relationships. 

To draw an analogy to the parable of the wedding feast this is what it is to be properly attired for the wedding feast.  There is a proper way to come to the feast and a proper attire.  Salvation is the kingdom of heaven given to us now, growing in our midst as the proof that Christ will come with the fullness of the kingdom when the Father says its time.  Salvation is Jesus Christ present in our midst…the fellowship with/of Jesus Christ…in the Holy Spirit.  We are the living body of the living Lord Jesus Christ.  The wedding feast that the King has prepared is here, right now, in our midst, the question is will we participate in it. 

This parable explains that the Trinity has prepared a feast for us and has invited us to it.  The Trinity has placed his salvation in our midst right now and we are invited to come and feast, to come and participate.  There is an immediate consequence if we do not, the obvious thing being that we just don’t get the feast.  We opt out of living in the life of God through communion with/of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit opens us up him.  

Jesus spoke this parable to the chief priests and the Pharisees in Jerusalem just after his triumphal donkey ride into town days before he was to be crucified and it angered them to the point that they began to plot to kill him.  The chief priests and Pharisees were the temple authorities and a particular sect of the Jewish faith known for being rigorous in observing rules of conduct that would keep them from transgressing the laws of the Old Testament.  They were not representative of all Jewish people or of Judaism as a whole back then or today.  The chief priests and the Pharisees back then were blinded by their assumption of religious authority and the false faith they had created.  They knew the Scriptures and therefore should have known who Jesus was, but thier desire to have power and control over the things of God had gotten the best of them. 

In this parable Jesus indirectly refers to them as the “invited ones”, the ones who had received the invitation prior to the feast being ready.  These “invited ones” knowing the Law and the Prophets should have been waiting with great expectation for this feast to occur.  So, it is mind boggling to see what their response was.  When the wedding feast is ready and the summons sent, these invited ones just don’t want to come.  Again the king sends his servants with a more adamant summons, “the food’s on the table.  You don’t need to bring anything.  Come.  Celebrate.”  This time they just didn’t pay attention.  Went to their farms and businesses to do what they do.  Too busy for the feast I guess.  Yet, there were some who took notice of the messengers and treated them shamefully and killed them.  So, the king destroys them for their insolence.  The response of the “invited ones” makes no sense.  It’s like expecting God to do something all your life and then when God does, you don’t want it.  The point of this parable to the chief priests and Pharisees was the kingdom of heaven is here, at hand, with and in Jesus Christ…and they gobsmackingly don’t want it.  They were living in expectation of that kingdom and here it was.  God was acting with the fulfillment of his promise that he gave through his prophets.  “Ho hum,” they said.  “What’s going on in our lives is more important than your silly little kingdom.”  Some got belligerent.

Well, to unyoke the burden of the analogy from the shoulders of the chief priests and Pharisees, let me push closer to home.  We, too, are the “invited ones”.  The word in first Corinthians that we translate as “called” is the same word Matthew uses for “those invited” both originally and after the king sent the servants out into the streets with a blanket invitation. Paul uses the word to describe himself, the people in the Corinthian church and all believers as the called ones, the invited ones…called to be an Apostle…called into the fellowship with/of the Son.   This fellowship with/of Christ Jesus that is in our midst is the wedding feast, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven, indeed Salvation.  The loving communion that is in our midst by God’s very self being here with us and in us is what God promised for ages through his prophets and what he promises to bring in its fullness some day hopefully soon.  The church is to be a communion where we love one another sacrificially and build one another up in love.  The relationships that we have in this congregation should be the primary person-building relationships that we have in our lives.  The love we give to and receive from our sisters and brothers in Christ should be what defines us as persons.  The self-giving, cross-based bond of love in our midst and how we share it is our small taste of salvation now freely given to us, to everybody, good and wicked.  When we shake each other’s hands in the warmth of the bond of friendship in Christ and say “The peace of Christ be with you” we are living in our salvation.  How deep are we willing to let this communion become?  The bond in Chrisit of this church is freely given to us.  That is why we say salvation is freely given.  God freely gives us himself so that we may participate in the ever-new, ever-renewing bond of love as it exists in the church under his Lordship exercised in the way of the cross.   He lives for us and we live for one another in him.

We are the “invited ones”, called by the king through his servants to come share in the feast.  How do we respond to the invitation?  In the past, this question has been directed to those outside the church as to why they don’t participate in it.  I think it is more rightly directed to us in the church.  Do we respond with not wanting to come to the feast meaning do we come to church not really wanting to participate in the bond of love, not really wanting to leave the comfort zone and get involved in the lives of our sisters and brothers in Christ who sit “you in your small caorner and I in mine” from week to week?  Do we come just because its our moral duty or just wanting a little spiritual direction to get us through the week or the next two or three weeks depending on when it’s convenient for us to get back and decide we missed the place?   After all, things do get busy around the farm and the business and the kids keep us hopping.  Or, do we have our own idea of what church ought to be and how Christians out to be and oddly kill the communion with good intentions?

The church, where salvation is manifestly present on earth, involves the relationships we share here and now; relationships which are the means through gift of the Holy Spirit of how Jesus builds us up in love to be persons in communion in him.  Our response, our participation in the feast, involves loving God with worship and taking time to get to know him and his ways through prayer and studying and ruminating upon the Scriptures privately and together and all this so that we may love each other and those outside this fellowship as Christ loves that the testimony of Christ Jesus might be authentic.   This is what it is to be enriched as Paul says, “For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.” 

If we are going to feast, then we’ve got to be properly attired.  God is here.  Giving himself for us to partake of, but we have to let him build his loving self in us by molding us to actually visibly care for one another.  It is amazing in the church as a whole how we just don’t get it that being a fellowship that loves one another is all we are called to be and strive for.  We seem to know this instinctively, but we will come up with anything and everything for the church to be and do other than strengthen our bonds of love.  We’ll focus on getting people saved or fun and fantastic programs to get people in our pews.  But, to look across the room at these people we hardly know and say “I’ll be the best friend you’ve ever had just because of what Jesus has done for me and I can’t help it…,” well, that’s not so easy.  It means we must change in accordance with the transformation Jesus is working in us in the power of the Holy Spirit or we miss the feast.

The love of God is freely given to us through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit to be our bond, but honestly, too often we prove ourselves simply to not want it at all.  Getting saved don’t count if we have not love for one another.  So, beloved friends, let us guard our unity in Christ, our bond in Christ with every ounce of prayer we can muster.  Let’s love one another deeply from the heart.  Let’s build this congregation around building one another up in love.  We don’t need all those programs we think churches are supposed to have.  We have each other and there is one really wonderful feast going on here.  That’s all we need.  Let’s just be the church.  Amen.