Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Third Sunday after Epiphany - January 26, 2020
Isaiah 9:1-4
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
Click here for an audio version of this sermon.
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that...we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.Yesterday we, along with many churches, concluded the annual observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
There is an interesting history in the development of this observance which has an historical connection with our own Order. Fr. Paul Wattson, founder of the Atonement Friars, served an abbreviated (and alas, unhappy) novitiate at our OHC monastery in Westminster, Maryland in 1899, and it is he who is credited with creating and promoting this octave of prayer after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
Over the years the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity seems to have diminished in stature, but the desire of our Lord that we all be one is still very real and continues to demand our attention. What does it mean to be one in faith and in church order? one in service, in ministry, and in witness? one in charity? There are many different takes on this. And we are called again and again to remember that we are already united in that one Lord in whom we have been baptized, despite our unhappy divisions and our perhaps not-so-unhappy varying outlooks and rich diversity.
Still we look around us and we see critical tensions, divisions or breakups within churches. We in the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion are no strangers to this, having lived with internal dissension and schism for some decades. We lately read of the United Methodist Church now breaking into two independent bodies. And we read with no little fascination of contrasting visions and power struggles within the Roman Catholic Church from the top on down. Indeed there is scarcely a church body that has not experienced some such disruption. And even within apparently monolithic households of faith there are open or hidden tensions and widening gaps regarding faith, doctrine, and practice, often circling around issues of the authority and interpretation of the Bible or other sacred texts or regarding particular teachings, traditions or persons. Likely flash points currently focus on issues of gender and sexuality, but it touches everything.
Today's reading from Paul's First Letter to the Church at Corinth therefore seems both a bit ironic in the light of our observance of the Week of Prayer for Unity and also timely. For the Church in Corinth, which Paul was so instrumental in founding and nurturing, was, within perhaps ten years of its establishment, a community rent by divisions, factions, and cliques all claiming allegiance to one or another leader and at odds with each other over issues of sex, marriage, the role of women, right doctrine, food, divergent worship styles, and the role of leadership and finances and power. It was a mess. And it could, with a few tweaks, have been written today.
In some ways, the state of the Church at Corinth was not unexpected. Unlike other churches Paul founded that were homogeneous, with most converts coming from similar religious and cultural backgrounds, the Church at Corinth was big and diverse. As a recent article puts it:
“...the Corinthian Church was crisscrossed by significant differences. It was composed of people who were from an utterly pagan background, who were half-Jewish pagans (that is, converted God worshipers), and who were Jews. There were many poor converts but also a number of high-status and wealthy figures, along with their households.... These diverse Corinthian converts brought into their Christian community all the hostility, suspicion, and misunderstanding that arose from these differences in race, class and gender.” (Douglas A. Campbell, The Christian Century, January 3, 2020)Significantly, the article from which this quote is taken is titled: “Culture Wars at Corinth.”
And it's not all that different from the church of today. Truthfully, how many churches have you ever been a part of or attended where folks of many different cultures or colors or educational levels or wealth or status have worshiped and formed Christian community together? Nor is it different in our society. We hear so much about our own culture wars, about class conflict, about a deeply divided citizenry both at home and abroad. We have become aware of the ubiquitous and enduring negative effects of sexism, racism, class-ism, poverty and privilege as well as of the pain of those whose modest dreams of economic or social progress have been lost and who see their hope fading or gone.
At the same time we mourn the death of civil discourse in our public and private arenas, not to mention in social and other public media, where non-violent speech and patient
listening and reasoned conversation are absent or dismissed. We have become sensitive—some might argue hypersensitive—to any expression of thought that differs from our own. We have come near to the point that whoever differs from us either by appearance or conviction is, by that very fact, considered an enemy, an alien, an other. We are "other-izing" each other to death, both metaphorically and actually.
What does our Christian faith have to say about these unhappy divisions not just in our churches but in our country and in our world? Much, to be sure. And it is hard to know where to start. We could, of course, look to the Gospel teachings and example of Jesus who invites us, with his first disciples, to follow him. But it might be well to look at what St. Paul has to say to that messy church at Corinth, where we began and which crystallizes in a certain place and time this difficult contemporary dynamic.
There are two things, among many, that are worth emphasizing, and here I am indebted to the article I quoted from earlier by Douglas A. Campbell.
The first has to do with love. Michael Curry, our Presiding Bishop, never tires of telling us: “If it's not about love, it's not about God.” He is right. And I think St. Paul would agree. For it is later in this same anguished letter to the Corinthians that St. Paul offers us his great hymn to love. And this, according to St. Paul, is what love looks like: it is patient; it is kind; it is not envious or boastful or proud; it is not rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It rejoices in the truth. It trusts. It hopes. It perseveres.
If we are to live lives of Christian integrity, indeed of human integrity, whether in church or in society, we need to begin here. We need to live into and act out of this stance. This is the key to appropriate relating in all life, as impractical and utopian and counter cultural as it sounds. These Corinthian Christians, no less than we American Christians, need to learn the practice of love. And brothers and sisters, it's hard work, especially when it forces us to see ourselves and our world in a clearer light and commits us to persevere in that walk of conversion, come what may. It is a habit, a practice, one that is both life long as well as life giving.
Secondly, we must expect this of our leaders as well, whether in church or government, from the highest national levels to the most local. Paul reminds the Corinthian church and its leaders that their model and ours is none other Jesus Christ crucified. It's the message of the cross. It's the self-emptying love and humility of the crucified Messiah who stoops down to us, becomes one with us, and thereby transforms and transfigures us and our world.
Pope Francis, speaking to church leaders and pastors, put it this way: “You must be shepherds who smell like your sheep”...because they are close to them and live among them and are not afraid to get their hands dirty. So, too, should all our leaders. And so, brothers and sisters, should we.
St. Paul was not naive. He knows this is a tough pill to swallow. He concludes this section of his letter with these sobering words: “... the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us are being saved it is the power of God.”
That is us—you and me—though we may shrink back, tempted to either run in the opposite direction or dawdle in indecision. Yet we are being saved by love and through love. And this way of life is none other than the power of God at work in the world through us. It is power to live well in a changing church, in changing society, and in a changing world. It is power to live and to risk loving because in truth we are rooted and grounded and enfolded in a Love deeper and wider and greater than we can ever imagine.
I need to remind myself of this regularly, even as I remind you: it is worth the risk. It is a gospel that saves. It is good news.
You can bet your life on it. Many of you already have.
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