Sermons

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Stick Together!
September 30, 2001
Last in a series on I Corinthians
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I Corinthians 16

Last May, I invited you to set out with me to read someone else’s mail. In particular, mail in the form of a letter to a bunch of young Christians, place called Corinth…written to them by the Apostle Paul. At each step, we have tried to figure out how Paul’s words from many years ago, inspired by Holy Spirit, might be God’s Word for us today. Now, on the last day of September, we come to the end of the Corinthians’ mail…at least this letter.

We are going to read from Chapter 16, verses 1-9.

We have three children. As our kids have grown older, they, like all kids, have wanted more and more independence. I remember some of those turning points, asking if they could go to the store, or to the pool…by themselves.

Gradually over the years, we allowed more and more independence…but not without first passing on a jewel of wisdom that had been handed on through generations of Baumgartners…one of those things that when it first came out of my mouth, I thought “Omigosh, that sounds exactly like my dad!”

My response was this: “Yes, you can go to the pool by yourselves…but stick together.” Now, there was plenty that answer DIDN”T say…and in fact, it seems to leave open all sorts of other things like, “you can fight, you can argue, you can do whatever…just stick together.”

But you know, this isn’t so far from what Paul actually says in First Corinthians. Paul teaches, he asks questions, he chews them out…but always, always, always, he is concerned that the Corinthians stick together. He always has both eyes on the unity of the church.

The theme of the unity of the church is so strong throughout I Corinthians…that you expect this letter to end with a huge crescendo, a powerful call to unity…in fact, we’re all set up for it. Last week Jeff looked at chapter 15. Chapter 15 is Paul’s writing about the resurrection. As Chapter 15 closes, Paul’s language soars, it elevates into the beautiful, thundering conclusion, “O death, where is thy sting?…But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And you think, charging into chapter 16…here we go…hold on!

And Paul disappoints us. He lists out a bunch of housekeeping details. Here’s what’s in the final chapter:

a) SCINTILLATING instructions on a financial offering to be collected for the church in Jerusalem.
b) EXCITING! Paul’s plans for travel…his itinerary.
c) a reference letter of recommendation for some church leaders.
d) greetings from some other churches.
e) Paul’s farewell.

Pretty tame, huh? Pure mundane. When I read it, I thought about the Apostle Peter. You remember the story of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took James and John and Peter up the mountain, and there they saw this incredible thing, God’s glory descend on Jesus, and saw him standing there talking with Moses and Elijah. And how Peter was so moved, he blurted out and said, “Hey, Jesus…I’ve got an idea! Let’s just stay up here! I’ll put up a structure, a booth for you, and one for Moses and one for Elijah…and we’ll just stay up here and soak up all this God-presence, all this spirituality floating around!”

We don’t have Jesus’ exact response, but we do know what it must have been, because the very next words are “As they went back down the mountain…” Back to the real world, back to irritating people, back to messy lives, back to the nitty gritty. The spiritual high means little if it doesn’t transform the mundane.

Paul will not leave the Corinthians…or us…to soar on the beauty of his theological articulation from chapter 15. He takes us right back to the nitty gritty details of the every day, and what comes through those mundane details is…guess what? The unity of the church. It comes out at every turn:

Paul doesn’t just talk about a collection for his international television ministry. Instead, he encourages the mostly Gentile Corinthians to take an offering that will reach outside of themselves, to be personally delivered to another part of the church of Christ, half a world away in Jerusalem, to a Jewish Christian church very different from their own…and in doing so reminds them that the church is WIDE, it’s DIVERSE…yet it’s the same church.

Paul doesn’t just relay his travel plans for the sake of publicizing his itinerary. Instead, he says “I’m intentionally planning my travels…so I can come be with you.” Why? We’ve read why for the last five months. Beginnings of splits, schisms, disagreements, resentments…Paul is very concerned that this church work together…and he is going to invest himself in the process.

Paul doesn’t just send reference letters for some buddies. He is holding up some leaders who are apparently being criticized…Timothy and Apollos and Stephanas. Paul knows that a church unified in Christ must also have leadership that has godly wisdom and models servanthood.

Paul doesn’t just send greetings from other churches…but he also subtly reminds the Corinthians that their little fellowship is not the whole church. He sends greetings from churches in Asia (Turkey) and from Aquila and Prisca’s church…they are all a part of each other, all connected.

Paul is concerned that the church, the whole church…pull together. Not agree on every single thing…but that it be unified around the core of the gospel, God’s forgiveness in Jesus, his death and resurrection.

If Paul came to modern day America, I think he might just shake his head. To see the thousands of different churches and denominations. But more than that…for Paul, it would be inconceivable to hear people talk about their individual relationship with God without also talking about the church. It would be nonsense to him to hear people say, “I’m a Christian,” but not be involved in the community of faith. He would think it an oxymoron to observe “lone ranger Christians,” those who say, “Hey, I’m living out my faith by myself, privately.”

Oh, Paul wouldn’t expect the church to be perfect…but he would expect it to be together, living out a unity in Christ in the nitty gritty of life. When that takes place…God has the opportunity to do some amazing things.

I’ve been reading about one of these amazing things this week. In light of the terrorist attacks of September 11, I’ve felt moved to revisit other dark times in history, to see what we might learn. One of the very darkest times (which I’ve read a great deal about), of course, was the extermination campaign of the Nazis against the Jews in World War II.

I picked up a book that’s now 20 years old called “Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed,” by Philipp Haillie. The subtitle is “The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There.” It’s an absolutely amazing story.

It tells of how this one little poor French mountain village, Le Chambon, organized around a church and a pastor…to help save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death…even with government informers and occupying Nazi SS troops nearby. To do this, the village had to work together. They had to take great risks. And it was wildly, almost mysteriously successful. They never even thought they were doing anything special, just being the church. But at least one reason it worked…was the deep roots and relationships of those within the church…built up and strengthened for a number of years before Germany ever conquered France.

At one point in the story, the three village leaders (two pastors and a teacher), were arrested and taken to a nearby prison camp. There they were thrown in with men from the French Secret Army, and a number of hard-line communists who had been rounded up. Within a few days of the three leaders’ arrests, villagers from this very poor village began traveling to the prison to deliver gifts of food and clothing for the three men…dozens of packages to a prison where food and clothing was very scarce. Soon their bunk house had so many gifts, it looked like a grocery store.

The other inmates were incredulous that a poor village could sacrifice so much for their friends. One man, in fact, confronted the three and said, “I’m the chief of a large communist cell in a nearby city…and I haven’t gotten a thing from my comrades there.”

And the eyes of this hardened leader lit up, and he said: “So it’s like that in Le Chambon, is it?”

“Yes,” they said, “it’s like that.”

It’s like that in the church of Jesus Christ. The church, together, in unity that comes not from shared ethnicity or politics, but a unity that comes only from the cross of Christ.

I love that picture of the church in hard times, coming to act together … relying on the bonds built through the previous years. Hard times seem to either pull people together, or more often drive people apart…they promote criticizing and bickering or avoidance of others.

I don’t know if the terrorism of this month, or the threats of war or more terrorism for the future, or the struggles of the economy mean we are being pushed towards another very hard time. But if they do, I hope that the way we have been living as a community, the way we do live as a community… will serve to draw us together.

The way we listen to one another, our encouragement of people, our prioritizing of relationships with others, our willingness to notice and celebrate things that are good, our serving together in Christ. You don’t build those kind of roots by just showing up on Sunday morning once in awhile, and leaving before you get to know anyone, or anyone gets to know you. It comes from being together…really together. And I hope that in hard times, others would look at this community and say “Wow. Look at how they love! So it’s like that at Bethany, is it?” Yes…it’s like that.

For the entire book of I Corinthians, Paul has tried on different pictures, different metaphors for the church. The church as a field, the church as a building…the very powerful image of the church as a body, in all its diversity, yet working with one purpose.

But there’s another picture of the church that has pervaded many of Paul’s letters…as he talks about his “brothers and sisters in Christ.” That’s the image of a family. I think I like this one the very best. I like it because I understand it. I like it even though I know very well how absolutely dysfunctional families can be…and yet still there is a strong bond there, an identity as a family.

The church has that kind of identity, built around the person of Jesus Christ. This morning we baptized little Clinton, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit…and then put the sign of the cross on him…we welcomed him into this identity, this family. And so, as Craig Barnes writes, “In the end it doesn’t really matter how flawed the church family is. Even a dysfunctional family can mold our lives in wonderful ways -- as long as it is regularly interrupted by the Savior.”

We read last March the first words that Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ…” Since then we’ve read most of the words in the whole book. It seems fitting that we would end with his last words.

Writing to this unwieldy, sometimes unloving, often argumentative and occasionally arrogant community of faith…a group that Paul has corrected and threatened and begged and tongue-lashed…his final two sentences are these: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.” And lastly, in his most direct expression of his own feelings, he ends with “My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus.”

Now, if I had to step back and try to sum up, to paraphrase the whole book of I Corinthians…I don’t think it would be so hard. It would sound something like this: “You, you Christians…Go follow Jesus with everything you have…and whatever you do…stick together.” Amen.