1 Corinthians 1:1-3
0 Amens
We’re going to talk about a number of things today- but 1st, I want to ask you- you all are part of a church that meets in a pub. I have an idea that you probably think differently about church than a lot of people might. So let me ask you- What goes into making a successful church? What does a church look like when it fails, and what does it look like when it succeeds?
The reason I ask is that today we start the book of 1st Corinthians... Why 1st Corinthians?
Corinth was a city much like Portland- not the biggest around, but one of the coolest... It was a Roman colony at a Greek crossroads with a diverse population and a reputation for openness to all kinds of things sexually, for philosophical learning and even pretension and for good wine from nearby vineyards. It was intellectually active, materially prosperous, morally liberal...
Probably a little too liberal. When Plato referred to a prostitute, he used the phrase "Corinthian girl." There was even a Greek slang word that referred to sex outside of marriage- 'korinthizomai"
Before it was destroyed by the Romans because of a revolt, The Temple of Aphrodite was there with over 1,000 temple prostitutes. And by the time Paul wrote this letter, that practice of marrying sex with religion and paying a temple prostitute to help you "worship" had re-established itself.
One historian said: "The ideal of the Corinthian was the reckless development of the individual. The merchant who made his gain by all and every means, the man of pleasure surrendering himself to every lust, the athlete steeled to every bodily exercise and proud in his physical strength, are the true corinthian types. In a word the man who recognized no superior and no law but his own desires." SO, basically, a lot of joggers, a lot of strip clubs, everybody trying to make money and putting Question Authority bumper-stickers on the back of their, uh.. chariots.
But Paul loved the city of Corinth so much, and these people so much, he risked his life to plant a church there. And after moving on to plant other churches in other areas, he heard back from the people of Corinth that they were having some problems. This was the report: divisions among them, some weird and crazy sexual immorality among them, drunkeness and selfishness and lawsuits and all kinds of other things among them. Rather than being a part of, loving, and so transforming their city, the Corinthians had simply put a religious sheen on an old way of life...
So Paul writes them a letter. But not this letter. We've lost Paul's first letter to this church. And while it's only speculation, maybe the reason is that when he first heard what was happening there, he was so angry, so upset that he probably ended up saying some things he shouldn't have. The people write back with some follow-up questions and this letter is Paul's answer.
So- What do I hope will happen in our community as a result of walking through this book?
My hope is this: I love the city of Portland, and I hope you do too. We don't go through this book because I think that as a community, we're anything like the Corinthians and I want an excuse to take a pastoral whack at you. I want us to walk through this book with a view towards- "what does health and balance look like in a church community? What do we desperately need to avoid if we want to be the kind of community that loves Portland in a transformative way?"
There's this idea out there that the early church had it right, we've got it wrong and if we can just get back to the way they used to do it... and I gotta tell you, whenever I hear someone talking like that, I want to ask them: Have you even read 1st Corinthians?
Within just a couple of years of being founded, this church of about 50-60 people had devolved down into this Jerry Springer-styled free-for-all with these guys suing those guys, that one over there getting completely smashed, drinking all the communion wine before anyone else can even get there, that guy sleeping with his stepmother and no one with the nerve to say anything about it at all for fear of sounding "judgmental." Don't believe me? Just wait- we'll get there.
But this book isn't just about correcting what's wrong- it's also about what's right- it's about love, about unity, about the gifts that God gives to a community like ours and what it means to be a community that worships well, believes rightly, sticks together come hell or high water and 1st and foremost over everything else- points people to Jesus. My hope is that by spending time in this book, more and more, those words will describe this community, this church that I love so much, Evergreen. And that by being that type of community, we'll begin, more and more, to make a difference here in this city we love so much, Portland.
So- to start us off we're going to pray... And then we'll get into this.
Prayer: Bob (and others?)
VS 1
This was a usual 1st century salutation: Who it's from, Who it's to, and right off the bat, Paul establishes something. He didn't always start his letters this way, but with this one? Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus. Sometimes, Paul would call himself a "slave" of Christ Jesus, or just say "Paul." But with this letter in which he's going to have to say some hard things, he wants them to know- he has the authority to say them. He says "and from our brother Sosthenes. Sosthenes was someone the Corinthians would know- he had been the leader of the synagogue there in Corinth when he met Paul, and through Paul, met Jesus. Acts 18 tells us that as a result, he took a pretty good beating from a crowd of people who were opposing Paul. At this point, he's travelling with Paul, and probably serving as his amenuensis, basically his admin assistant who actually wrote the letter as Paul dictated.
VS 2-
This is just one verse, but it's packed full of concepts- and with this one sentence, Paul basically sets up the whole letter and lets them know just where he's going...
He's very specific: Whose church is it? What do you think it means to say “This is God’s church”? So- Where does the concept of “ownership” of a community come in?
It's God's church- It's not Paul's, even though he founded it and served as its first pastor. It's not the Corinthian's, even though they were the people who made up the community... It's God's church. Paul didn't die for it. The Corinthians didn't create it- Jesus did. And if the Corinthians had just recognized that, most of the problems Paul dealt with in this letter would have been avoided.
So, evergreen... While this is "your" community in many ways, we can't lose sight of the fact that ultimately: This is God's church- I want us all to have ownership of it, but understand that in the final analysis it's not mine. It's not yours.
What that means is that we get a lot of leeway to work out what community looks like for us as people living in this time and place, but when it's all said and done, Jesus is the real pastor here. And what we do is determined by what He says- for instance- not up to us whether we baptize people or not, whether we worship Jesus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We use the Bible, not Dianetics and we pray, worship and serve not get drunk, dance naked around a pole and sacrifice chickens to the gods of voodoo.
Why? Because it's His church, and those are the things He tells us it should be all about. So- We worship Jesus. We do it in a way that feels like us, we try to use creativity and art in how we do that... but the worship piece itself and the Jesus piece, and the Bible piece... those are necessary pieces.
He reminds the Corinthians: They are called to be God's holy people, and in giving them that little reminder, he sets the stage for some serious talk later in the letter, which they might have been uncomfortable in hearing.
See, what we do as a community to and for and with each other matters. And what we do alone matters- What I do in the privacy of my home, on the internet, or even in my mind, matters, because I'm part of a community- one part of a whole. And what happens to and in me affects other people around me more than I think or maybe would like to admit.
So, in this letter, Paul is going to bring up some things that were happening with the Corinthians, sexually. Both some really freaky things and some pretty run-of-the mill kinds of things. And as we walk through this, some of you might possibly get your toes stepped on.
I want you to hear this- Sex is not the biggest deal in the world, and sexual sin is certainly not the sin to end all sins... but it's not nothing. It's too central to who we are as human beings, it's both too life-giving and transcendent as well as potentially damaging and hurtful to say "It doesn't matter." It does, as we talked about last fall (and if you weren't here, go to the website and get the MP3s), sex is great, it's a gift from God, and as its designer, He's got definite ideas on how to use that gift so as not to hurt others and hurt ourselves. We’ll get to that later in the book… But, Paul says, we were made holy by means of Jesus.
And that gives me great hope. Because when I hear that I am part of a community called to be a holy people, and I think about my role in making it such, I know I'm probably part of the problem, not necessarily the solution. But...
But... “He made you holy.” Past tense. There's a sense in which what I do matters, but what Jesus has done matters even more. I may screw up, but Jesus didn't. And God has made me, you, and "all people everywhere who call on the name of" Jesus, holy. God gives us a righteousness we could never earn enough brownie points for, crediting our sin to Jesus, and His righteousness to us.
And now, our job as a people is to simply learn how to live out in experience what's already true of us is position. In our forum discussion on this passage this week, we talked about it this way- Holiness is a lot like marriage.
The moment I said "I do" to Amy, I was married. I WAS her husband. I also had zero idea of what that really meant. I'm still learning- really learning.
I AM her husband. I am learning how to be her husband. I'm learning to become in experience what I am legally and by commitment...
It wouldn't be out of line for someone to call me on being a jerk at some point and say "Dude, you are her husband. Act like it."
It's the same with holiness... It says we've been called to be holy. Positionally, we've been "made holy by means of Christ Jesus."
In the same way our sin was accounted to Jesus, His righteousness was accounted to us... So- we are holy people, not by any merit of our own at all... Now, we just have to learn how to act like it.
And when we fail, we don't lose God's love. We didn't get it by being good, how could we lose it by being the opposite- by failing ethically, or morally or any other way? Now that doesn't mean that we don't work to fail less...
We all fail. But together, we’re trying to help each other live life in the way of Jesus. That means we encourage each other, teach each other, love each other and sometimes, we correct each other.
But we always try to do all those things with exactly what Paul mentions next…
VS 3
Grace. In a normal Greek salutation, someone would say "greetings" (charein)- but Paul changes "charein" to "charis"- grace.
Grace brought them together- the grace of God leading them to forgiveness, to community, to healing and wholeness… and if grace brought them together- grace was the only thing that would keep them together- that would bring them the relational peace that we’re going to see in the coming weeks that they were lacking...
If there’s anything we need as a community to strive for, it’s that we would understand God’s grace to us, that we would show God’s grace to each other in how we speak, how we treat one another, and that we would work hard to embody that grace to the city of Portland. And it’s in doing that that we as a community safeguard the peace we’ve experienced these last four years together and hopefully will experience for many, many more.
Let’s pray…
Jesus left us a visual symbol to picture how He took and dealt once and for all with our sin- by giving his body and blood on a Roman cross, He gave us an incredible example of servanthood, He beat the power of sin and death at its game, and He took the place of punishment for you and for me. And as we saw just last week on Maundy Thursday, He gave them this picture of communion, of the bread and the cup to remember that by. This is what our unity is based on- what binds us together- Jesus, and what He’s done for us. I invite everyone to come and take part- whether this is the first time or the hundredth, if you want what Jesus offers, community, relationship with God, wholeness, life… this is for you.
Read MoreThe reason I ask is that today we start the book of 1st Corinthians... Why 1st Corinthians?
Corinth was a city much like Portland- not the biggest around, but one of the coolest... It was a Roman colony at a Greek crossroads with a diverse population and a reputation for openness to all kinds of things sexually, for philosophical learning and even pretension and for good wine from nearby vineyards. It was intellectually active, materially prosperous, morally liberal...
Probably a little too liberal. When Plato referred to a prostitute, he used the phrase "Corinthian girl." There was even a Greek slang word that referred to sex outside of marriage- 'korinthizomai"
Before it was destroyed by the Romans because of a revolt, The Temple of Aphrodite was there with over 1,000 temple prostitutes. And by the time Paul wrote this letter, that practice of marrying sex with religion and paying a temple prostitute to help you "worship" had re-established itself.
One historian said: "The ideal of the Corinthian was the reckless development of the individual. The merchant who made his gain by all and every means, the man of pleasure surrendering himself to every lust, the athlete steeled to every bodily exercise and proud in his physical strength, are the true corinthian types. In a word the man who recognized no superior and no law but his own desires." SO, basically, a lot of joggers, a lot of strip clubs, everybody trying to make money and putting Question Authority bumper-stickers on the back of their, uh.. chariots.
But Paul loved the city of Corinth so much, and these people so much, he risked his life to plant a church there. And after moving on to plant other churches in other areas, he heard back from the people of Corinth that they were having some problems. This was the report: divisions among them, some weird and crazy sexual immorality among them, drunkeness and selfishness and lawsuits and all kinds of other things among them. Rather than being a part of, loving, and so transforming their city, the Corinthians had simply put a religious sheen on an old way of life...
So Paul writes them a letter. But not this letter. We've lost Paul's first letter to this church. And while it's only speculation, maybe the reason is that when he first heard what was happening there, he was so angry, so upset that he probably ended up saying some things he shouldn't have. The people write back with some follow-up questions and this letter is Paul's answer.
So- What do I hope will happen in our community as a result of walking through this book?
My hope is this: I love the city of Portland, and I hope you do too. We don't go through this book because I think that as a community, we're anything like the Corinthians and I want an excuse to take a pastoral whack at you. I want us to walk through this book with a view towards- "what does health and balance look like in a church community? What do we desperately need to avoid if we want to be the kind of community that loves Portland in a transformative way?"
There's this idea out there that the early church had it right, we've got it wrong and if we can just get back to the way they used to do it... and I gotta tell you, whenever I hear someone talking like that, I want to ask them: Have you even read 1st Corinthians?
Within just a couple of years of being founded, this church of about 50-60 people had devolved down into this Jerry Springer-styled free-for-all with these guys suing those guys, that one over there getting completely smashed, drinking all the communion wine before anyone else can even get there, that guy sleeping with his stepmother and no one with the nerve to say anything about it at all for fear of sounding "judgmental." Don't believe me? Just wait- we'll get there.
But this book isn't just about correcting what's wrong- it's also about what's right- it's about love, about unity, about the gifts that God gives to a community like ours and what it means to be a community that worships well, believes rightly, sticks together come hell or high water and 1st and foremost over everything else- points people to Jesus. My hope is that by spending time in this book, more and more, those words will describe this community, this church that I love so much, Evergreen. And that by being that type of community, we'll begin, more and more, to make a difference here in this city we love so much, Portland.
So- to start us off we're going to pray... And then we'll get into this.
Prayer: Bob (and others?)
VS 1
This was a usual 1st century salutation: Who it's from, Who it's to, and right off the bat, Paul establishes something. He didn't always start his letters this way, but with this one? Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus. Sometimes, Paul would call himself a "slave" of Christ Jesus, or just say "Paul." But with this letter in which he's going to have to say some hard things, he wants them to know- he has the authority to say them. He says "and from our brother Sosthenes. Sosthenes was someone the Corinthians would know- he had been the leader of the synagogue there in Corinth when he met Paul, and through Paul, met Jesus. Acts 18 tells us that as a result, he took a pretty good beating from a crowd of people who were opposing Paul. At this point, he's travelling with Paul, and probably serving as his amenuensis, basically his admin assistant who actually wrote the letter as Paul dictated.
VS 2-
This is just one verse, but it's packed full of concepts- and with this one sentence, Paul basically sets up the whole letter and lets them know just where he's going...
He's very specific: Whose church is it? What do you think it means to say “This is God’s church”? So- Where does the concept of “ownership” of a community come in?
It's God's church- It's not Paul's, even though he founded it and served as its first pastor. It's not the Corinthian's, even though they were the people who made up the community... It's God's church. Paul didn't die for it. The Corinthians didn't create it- Jesus did. And if the Corinthians had just recognized that, most of the problems Paul dealt with in this letter would have been avoided.
So, evergreen... While this is "your" community in many ways, we can't lose sight of the fact that ultimately: This is God's church- I want us all to have ownership of it, but understand that in the final analysis it's not mine. It's not yours.
What that means is that we get a lot of leeway to work out what community looks like for us as people living in this time and place, but when it's all said and done, Jesus is the real pastor here. And what we do is determined by what He says- for instance- not up to us whether we baptize people or not, whether we worship Jesus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We use the Bible, not Dianetics and we pray, worship and serve not get drunk, dance naked around a pole and sacrifice chickens to the gods of voodoo.
Why? Because it's His church, and those are the things He tells us it should be all about. So- We worship Jesus. We do it in a way that feels like us, we try to use creativity and art in how we do that... but the worship piece itself and the Jesus piece, and the Bible piece... those are necessary pieces.
He reminds the Corinthians: They are called to be God's holy people, and in giving them that little reminder, he sets the stage for some serious talk later in the letter, which they might have been uncomfortable in hearing.
See, what we do as a community to and for and with each other matters. And what we do alone matters- What I do in the privacy of my home, on the internet, or even in my mind, matters, because I'm part of a community- one part of a whole. And what happens to and in me affects other people around me more than I think or maybe would like to admit.
So, in this letter, Paul is going to bring up some things that were happening with the Corinthians, sexually. Both some really freaky things and some pretty run-of-the mill kinds of things. And as we walk through this, some of you might possibly get your toes stepped on.
I want you to hear this- Sex is not the biggest deal in the world, and sexual sin is certainly not the sin to end all sins... but it's not nothing. It's too central to who we are as human beings, it's both too life-giving and transcendent as well as potentially damaging and hurtful to say "It doesn't matter." It does, as we talked about last fall (and if you weren't here, go to the website and get the MP3s), sex is great, it's a gift from God, and as its designer, He's got definite ideas on how to use that gift so as not to hurt others and hurt ourselves. We’ll get to that later in the book… But, Paul says, we were made holy by means of Jesus.
And that gives me great hope. Because when I hear that I am part of a community called to be a holy people, and I think about my role in making it such, I know I'm probably part of the problem, not necessarily the solution. But...
But... “He made you holy.” Past tense. There's a sense in which what I do matters, but what Jesus has done matters even more. I may screw up, but Jesus didn't. And God has made me, you, and "all people everywhere who call on the name of" Jesus, holy. God gives us a righteousness we could never earn enough brownie points for, crediting our sin to Jesus, and His righteousness to us.
And now, our job as a people is to simply learn how to live out in experience what's already true of us is position. In our forum discussion on this passage this week, we talked about it this way- Holiness is a lot like marriage.
The moment I said "I do" to Amy, I was married. I WAS her husband. I also had zero idea of what that really meant. I'm still learning- really learning.
I AM her husband. I am learning how to be her husband. I'm learning to become in experience what I am legally and by commitment...
It wouldn't be out of line for someone to call me on being a jerk at some point and say "Dude, you are her husband. Act like it."
It's the same with holiness... It says we've been called to be holy. Positionally, we've been "made holy by means of Christ Jesus."
In the same way our sin was accounted to Jesus, His righteousness was accounted to us... So- we are holy people, not by any merit of our own at all... Now, we just have to learn how to act like it.
And when we fail, we don't lose God's love. We didn't get it by being good, how could we lose it by being the opposite- by failing ethically, or morally or any other way? Now that doesn't mean that we don't work to fail less...
We all fail. But together, we’re trying to help each other live life in the way of Jesus. That means we encourage each other, teach each other, love each other and sometimes, we correct each other.
But we always try to do all those things with exactly what Paul mentions next…
VS 3
Grace. In a normal Greek salutation, someone would say "greetings" (charein)- but Paul changes "charein" to "charis"- grace.
Grace brought them together- the grace of God leading them to forgiveness, to community, to healing and wholeness… and if grace brought them together- grace was the only thing that would keep them together- that would bring them the relational peace that we’re going to see in the coming weeks that they were lacking...
If there’s anything we need as a community to strive for, it’s that we would understand God’s grace to us, that we would show God’s grace to each other in how we speak, how we treat one another, and that we would work hard to embody that grace to the city of Portland. And it’s in doing that that we as a community safeguard the peace we’ve experienced these last four years together and hopefully will experience for many, many more.
Let’s pray…
Jesus left us a visual symbol to picture how He took and dealt once and for all with our sin- by giving his body and blood on a Roman cross, He gave us an incredible example of servanthood, He beat the power of sin and death at its game, and He took the place of punishment for you and for me. And as we saw just last week on Maundy Thursday, He gave them this picture of communion, of the bread and the cup to remember that by. This is what our unity is based on- what binds us together- Jesus, and what He’s done for us. I invite everyone to come and take part- whether this is the first time or the hundredth, if you want what Jesus offers, community, relationship with God, wholeness, life… this is for you.
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