The Last Corinthians

Seeing with resurrection eyes

East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church, Craftsbury, Vermont

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the partnership of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

What I think is Knoxville, Tennessee, from the sky

In today’s epistle reading, we have the first words of the first letter from Paul to the Corinthians. While scholars have debated some of Paul’s letters as authentically Paul, there is virtually no debate that this is truly Paul talking. Scholars also debate, along with the Church in Paul’s time up to our time, how much Paul really speaks for Jesus. It has been common in recent decades for some Christians to say that “I don’t follow Paul, I follow Jesus,” to which Paul today would say, “Good! You read the rest of my letter.” (We will continue stepping through the opening pages of 1 Corinthians this month.)

Paul did not consider himself Lord. Rather, in these opening verses he refers to Jesus Christ as Lord, kyriou, no less than five times in nine verses, like he’s trying to hammer it home: Jesus Christ is our Lord.

But that’s the only hammering here in these opening words. Hear again the encouragement, the love, pouring out of this authentically-Paul. Don’t listen to analyze, just listen to the energy and the emotional tone: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Cor 1:3-4)

So much grace and love and gratitude. Not only is Paul filled up with the grace of God, he sees his brothers and sisters in this faraway place filled up with it too. Not only does he see them filled up with a common grace in a generic way, like “You have a lovely church,” he sees and notices their specific gifts, “For in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind… you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 1:5, 7)

What a word of encouragement I could only hope to give. But while we’re here, let me say it: since before I moved here to Vermont, I have felt and been so loved by God through Craftsburians. Not only because the grace of God flows generally through you, but specifically how it does: through the intelligence and education some of you have, to the deep knowledge, wisdom, and experience in working through hard problems of the world many of you have, to the loving patience some of you have demonstrated in really hard life situations, to the persistence to get things done when you know it is what our community needs, to the steady faithfulness of showing up to Bible study to keep learning more (including our dear Fielda, who kept being a student all the way through her 102 years). This just scratches the surface of the ways you have shown the gifts of God and the love you have shown to me and my wife in our young marriage, which we have not and cannot repay. Truly, you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul would go on to tell his Corinthians, “He will strengthen you to the end, that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the partnership of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Cor 1:8-9).

But here’s a funny thing: can you believe that this true, authentic Paul is writing a letter to his haters? Can you believe this is a letter to people who are bitterly fighting and some of whom bitterly detest him? Maybe now I’m jogging your memory about the context of this letter, unfurled in the coming chapters, that this is a group who have serious problems and divisions about idolatry, sexuality, spiritual gifts, ecstatic experiences in worship, and especially over their favorite teachers—Apollos, Cephas, Paul, and in a future letter, some “super apostles.”

But first things are first for this first letter to these Corinthians (and I wonder how many people in history have thought that “First Corinthians” was their church name, like “First Presbyterian”). The first things are overwhelming love and grace from Paul, even to his haters, a smidgen of the love and grace God pours out to his haters through, yes, our Lord Jesus Christ. Because while there would be time to get into the details of the disagreements and clarify what is to be done about certain issues, Paul begins by seeing these Corinthians through “resurrection eyes.”

If we follow Jesus, we are also called to see our enemies through resurrection eyes. Yes, work through right and wrong, justice and injustice, and do so with passion, but also see our enemies through resurrection eyes. After all, Jesus tells us even more explicitly to pray for our enemies than our friends (Matt 5:44). In fact, one could read the Gospels and think that Jesus told us to love our enemies more than our families, who we are to “hate” (Matt 10:37). (Perhaps some of us have solved the problem by making our family our enemies, then we can finally love them like Jesus wants us to.)

We often hear that Jesus is countercultural, and it’s true. I believe that still the most countercultural thing we can do today is to love and pray for our enemies, whoever they might be to you. I know we all have different perceptions of our enemies. We may have specific people in mind or bigger groups. Yet if we cannot write our enemies with a letter that opens with the same authentic love of Christ that this authentic Paul writes, then we may need more time in prayer.

This isn’t to say we are not called to work through issues and, if you feel called to do so, to stand up for what is right and to name what is wrong. However, as one preacher reminded, “God can speak through rocks and donkeys,” meaning, he doesn’t need you to be his spokesman on every issue; God can do more work through a rock and a donkey than a Christian filled with pride. Let the preacher himself understand!

I was inspired by what Pope Leo shared yesterday about the Vatican’s approach to diplomacy; since the Vatican is a country, it actually has diplomats and such. Pope Leo says—and my Presbyterian ancestors are rolling over at me positively quoting a pope—that in the midst of what is happening today, “Our diplomacy is born of the Gospel. It is not tactics, but reasoned charity; it seeks neither winners nor losers; it builds no barriers, but restores authentic bonds. The Pope’s diplomats are called to be invisible, fortified bridges that offer support when events seem difficult to contain, and bridges of hope when goodness wavers.”

This is not just for the Pope’s diplomats, but this work is something any of us can do, even if we have no diplomats and are a nation of one person, to be invisible bridges that offer support when events seem difficult to contain.

That said, we all feel called to different things in this moment. I know so many of your gifts, but I don’t know what each one of you is called to do or be in the body of Christ in today’s America, whether that is to be loud and vocal or to be the invisible bridge and glue. But in the eyes of the broken, bloodied, and resurrected body of Christ, all people are broken, bloodied, and in need of his love. In resurrection eyes, we are all captured in some way by powers and principalities, all captured by psychological and spiritual forces who work on us far beyond our comprehension, including algorithms that give each of us different information catered to our specific egos.

Our instincts are still so often to scapegoat and sacrifice one person or one group or another. Sacrifice the protestor; sacrifice the agent who is the symbol of state power, like a Roman centurion; sacrifice the immigrant; sacrifice your neighbor; sacrifice the Constitution; sacrifice the country. Why and who are we sacrificing each other for, and towards what end, we don’t really know. We give our reasons for it, but I suspect our reasons are window-dressing for our psychological need to get rid of our problems in a broken world—where there is still scarcity and suffering and injustice and pain—by getting rid of people.

But the one Paul calls Lord Jesus Christ five times in nine verses is not one who does this. Lord Jesus Christ wields his authority perhaps because he knows that some people really need authority to respond to, like the Roman centurion, ancient Judea’s version of an ICE agent or any law enforcement officer, who asked Jesus to have mercy and heal his servant, saying, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me” (Matt 5:8-9). Not every Roman centurion had a heart to heal those under their authority. Some would mock and beat Jesus on the way to the cross.

But nevertheless, Jesus died for centurions, for those the centurions had authority over, for the Pharisees in their pride, for his pious hypocritical followers in their pride, for you and me. That is why he is fit to be called Lord. He sacrifices himself so that we don’t have to sacrifice each other. This is why John the Baptist, in our gospel reading today, said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29, 36) The Lamb is not one who sacrifices; the Lamb is the one who is sacrificed. To see the world in resurrection eyes is to see that this is our Lord, a sacrificial Lamb. When all else is failing, we can trust in the Lamb because he is a God of the true law, not the tyranny of the law, but the fulfillment of it by giving of himself, not abusing his lordship.

So while it’s not why the letter is called “first Corinthians,” these Corinthians were the first Corinthians—that is, the first of a long line of churches who don’t know what the future holds and cannot get on the entirely same page. They aren’t all on fire for God in the same way. They aren’t all upright citizens. They did not have it all figured out, and they did not all love each other perfectly.

If they were the first Corinthians, we are the last Corinthians, this body of Christ, standing not at the end of history, but at the uncertain horizon. To both those first and we last Corinthians, may we be encouraged, if not by our gifts and not by our love, be encouraged: God is faithful. Jesus Christ is Lord. Remember this, and he will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on his day. Amen.