Trinity
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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January 2002
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 20, 2002)
“We Belong to
God”
Dr. Van Kemper
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
SERMON
This morning we begin a three-week visit to the
ancient city of Corinth, where we shall encounter the first-century church
through the apostle Paul’s epistle known as First
Corinthians.
Many scholars believe that what we have in our
New Testament as First and Second
Corinthians is actually an assemblage of several communications that Paul
sent to the Christians at Corinth. It
appears that some of his letters must have been lost or survived only in
fragmentary form before being collected into the Canon in the form we have them
as First and Second Corinthians.
Without going into the details of the debate, it seems most likely that
what we are reading this week from Chapter 1 of First
Corinthians is actually the salutation and thanksgiving of Paul’s second
letter to the folks at Corinth. One
of the most obvious clues to this possibility is found in Chapter 5, verse 9,
where Paul says, “I wrote to you in my letter ...” and then in verse 11 goes
on to say, “But now I am writing to you ...”
So,
if what we have here is Paul’s second letter, then it may have been
written in response to a letter sent by the Corinthians, which was in turn their
reply to Paul’s first letter. Although
the Corinthians’ reply letters were not included in the New
Testament Canon (and have been lost since ancient times), we still know
quite a bit about Corinth and its church – thanks to Paul’s own comments in First
and Second Corinthians, the bits of information scattered throughout Acts
and other epistles, and other data in ancient secular texts and discoveries from
archaeological excavations.
Corinth
was a prosperous urban community in ancient times.
Capital city of the Roman province of Achaia, which covered southern
Greece, it was a commercial and political center of considerable importance in
the first century. Its location on
the edge of the Aegean Sea gave it advantages for trading throughout the
Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire. In some ways, Corinth served a role in
the Roman world similar to what Dallas now serves in the North American Free
Trade area extending from Canada to Mexico.
In fact, Corinth was precisely the kind of “international” city that
Dallas strives to be – if the Olympics had been held in the first century,
Corinth certainly would have been a successful bidder to host the games.
Corinth
was a large city with an ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse
population – and in this way also is like our modern Dallas.
People came from all over the world to live and work in Corinth.
Migrants, refugees, and new neighbors from around the Roman Empire found
their way to Corinth. There was a substantial Jewish community in Corinth (Meeks
1983:48), but the city was dominated by Roman power and influences.
You
may remember the story of Priscilla (also called Prisca) and Aquila (mentioned
in Acts 18; Romans 16:3-4; 1 Cor. 16:19; and 2 Tim. 4:19), the Jewish couple who
had befriended Paul in Rome, who shared his profession as tentmakers, and who
were expelled from Rome during the period of the Emperor Claudius. They ended up in Corinth where they were involved in the new
Christian church there. In fact,
some texts (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19) suggest that it was meeting in their house.
The
available evidence suggests that the “house church” in Corinth was
predominantly Gentile, although some Jews – like Priscilla and Aquila – had
converted to Christianity and were active in the congregation.
A few prominent persons – like Erastus (Romans 16:23) – participated
in the church, but most of these first-century Christians were ordinary citizens
of working class status.
Like
other first-century Christians throughout the Roman Empire, the people at
Corinth had a “high level of cohesion and group identity” (Meeks 1983:107).
These folks were well aware that they were part of a large movement throughout
the Empire. As Christians, they
recognized that they were a minority in the urban setting of Corinth. Among the many and diverse religious groups in the city, they
were just one of many churches (or public meetings, which is the underlying
meaning of the Greek word ekklesia,
from which we derive our word “ecclesiastical”).
Despite
the power of Rome, in Corinth Greek was the lingua
franca, the language that everyone learned to use for commerce. But among
family and friends, many languages were spoken, including Hebraic languages
native to Palestine, as well as Latin from Rome. In such a context, it is no
surprise that the Christians at Corinth were interested in “speaking in
tongues” (1 Cor 14:14). They probably had a multilingual worship service that
reflected the different cultural backgrounds in their church.
Paul’s
letters to the church at Corinth convey only one side of a picture of a church
with plenty of issues. According to what Paul reveals in his letters, they had
financial worries, they argued about the Lord’s Supper, they debated the issue
of idolatry, they discussed the proper roles of men and women in the church,
they had serious arguments about the issue of divorce, and they even had to deal
with a major case of sexual misconduct. Sounds
like their church could get on board a time machine and fit right into Grace
Presbytery here in Dallas! No
wonder that, even two thousand years later, we can see ourselves when we read
Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.
Indeed,
it is this mirror of our own church life that I want to focus on this morning.
And this focus is clearly set out in verse 2, where Paul extends his
greeting “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified
in Christ Jesus, called to be saints...”
Notice
that Paul does not say anything about “my” church or “your” church in
Corinth. He is very clear that the
church belongs to God, not to the apostle who established it or even to the
people themselves, who are “called to be saints.”
And
just what does it mean to be “called to be saints”?
Through God’s calling and Christ’s work of redemption, those who
believe are saints and the church is the holy people of God.
“Holy” in this sense does not refer just to a state or quality of the
believers, but to Christ’s setting them apart for God.
As we will see on the next two Sundays, Paul had a reason for pointing
out to the folks at Corinth that they were being set apart for God.
From the outset of this epistle, he feels the need to emphasize their
sanctification.
Then, in verse 7, Paul goes on to comment that the
folks in Corinth “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” . . . Much of
Paul’s preaching in Corinth and in other cities concerned the power of
spiritual gifts bestowed on those who take up the cross and follow the path of
Jesus Christ.
It is very timely to speak of the varieties of
spiritual gifts on this particular Sunday morning, since later in this worship
service we will celebrate the ordination and installation of new elders and
deacons. When later we read
responsively the “Litany of Gifts,” you may recognize some of the words as
those the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth two thousand years ago (Cor.
12:4ff.).
In
verse 8, Paul wrote, “He will strengthen you to the end, so that you may be
blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What an odd concept for new Christians, for a new church with so little
history and so much to look forward to. Of
course, we need to remember that those first-century Christians believed that
the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” would arrive very soon, perhaps even in
their own lifetimes. They were not
worried about the future, about building up the church for generations to come
– far from it, as Paul might have said. For
the folks at Corinth and in other first-century Christian congregations, the
operative moment was right now. They
were not concerned about their legacy, but with their own salvation.
Now,
of course, we have a different understanding of the significance of “the
end” and “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We know that two thousand years have passed since Paul’s time.
We know that the church has endured and spread around a world much larger
than Paul could have conceived. We
know that we have responsibilities not only to our ourselves right now, but also
for the church of generations to come.
And
this brings us to the heart of the matter, as expressed by Paul in verse 9:
“God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord.” When all is
said and done, God is faithful. Not
because of who we are or because of what we accomplish in our
lives, but simply because our God is a God who is faithful, a God who can be
trusted even in the toughest times.
Paul’s
God, and our God, is the God of Abraham, Moses, and all the prophets; the
God of the exile and the return to the promised land; the God who sent Jesus to
demonstrate the power of love and the importance of righteousness and justice in
our daily lives; the God who brought Jesus to the cross to be the atoning
sacrifice for all human sin; and the God who raised up Jesus on the third day to
demonstrate power over life and death.
So,
when Paul declares that this God is a faithful God, the folks at Corinth need to
take seriously his declaration.
And
something else . . . This faithful God is the one who does the calling of the
people into fellowship with Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is not a matter of offering up sacrifices in order that God responds,
as with so many Greek and Roman religions of the first century. For Christians, God is there first, even before the people
have begun their worship.
And
into what have we been called by this faithful God?
The answer Paul provides comes in the form of one of his favorite words
– koinonía in the Greek –
translated here in the NRSV as “fellowship,” but elsewhere in the New
Testament rendered as “community,” “partnership,” or even
“participation.” Paul
understood koinonía as a designation for various community
relationships that come into being through (common) participation in the life of
the church. This sense of
“community” is seen in reciprocal giving and taking; thus, it is visible in
the sharing of the Lord’s Supper, in the shared offering of our time,
treasure, and talent for the work of the church in the world, in the sharing of
the caring responsibilities for our members; and in our shared witness to the
neighbors who surround us. Working
together and being together are key elements of Paul’s concept of living as
saints “in community.”
In
forming a church, in being in community, we are responding to God’s call. And
this call is manifested not to us just as individuals, but to us as a
collectivity – as a koinonía.
So, we have been called to be a community of believers in this place –
here in Oak Cliff – just as surely as the Corinthians were called to be a koinonía
in Corinth two thousand years ago.
No
matter what happened to the folks at Corinth, that congregation was God’s
church. That particular koinonía no longer exists – except in our access to it
through Paul’s letters.
And
what of the koinonía here at
Trinity Presbyterian church? I can imagine that, some two thousand years into
the future, there might still be Christians here in Oak Cliff.
I can’t say whether Grace Presbytery will still exist or even whether
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will still exist.
And whether Trinity Presbyterian Church is still a living congregation or
just marked by an historical plaque, I am certain that this building will
have seen its last days long before the year 4002 – despite the best efforts
of Saint Virgil of the Hammer and other saints on future building committees.
In
the end, we need to heed the words spoken by the apostle Paul two thousand years
ago “to the church of God in Corinth.” And
we need to take Paul’s words to heart for ourselves, here “in the church of
God in Oak Cliff.” The future of
Trinity Presbyterian Church is not what matters; what matters is that we
recognize that God is faithful and will strengthen us to the end, no matter what
the end may be or when it comes.
And now, I want to ask you to take a hymnal from
the pew rack, and open it to Hymn #400.
You will see that this is a hymn originally
written in Spanish and then translated into English. If you know Spanish as well as English, take a moment to look
over the Spanish text, which differs in some subtle ways from the English
translation. Whether you choose to
sing in Spanish or in English, the message is the same: whether we are living or
whether we are dying, “Somos del Señor, We belong to God.”
Amen.