1 Corinthians 1:10-18

10Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. 11For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 12What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” 13Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

18For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  THIS IS HOLY WISDOM, HOLY WORD.  THANKS BE TO GOD.

Desire

             That opening hymn (“We Are One in the Spirit”) has deep emotional ties for me.  It conjures memories of childhood, singing accompanied by a guitar at church retreat or the chapel in the woods at summer camp.  There and then, we really felt one—with each other, with nature, with God.  The notion that “they” would know us by our unified love seemed as realistic as it was idealistic.  What happened?  The data shows that others don’t identify Christians with love, and we know there is plenty of division within the Christian household.  Have I now simply grown up and encountered “the real world,” whatever that means?   I know we are speaking of the language of lyric, of poetry, and yet closing the distance between that of which the hymn sings and that which we experience in our daily lives reveals a fundamental yearning within us.

             Whenever Paul writes to communities he cares about, it’s clear their struggles pain him.  So it is with love.  It hurts when our families suffer division, once close friends come apart, or our communities experience strife.  I don’t think I need to spend too much time speaking of the divisions in our country.  Sometimes I wonder if repeating that narrative only perpetuates it, and I find myself wearying of it.

             Not all divisions are so serious, though even minor ones can have an impact.  My spouse and I were at an event at our son’s school in the fall.  The public schools do these fundraisers to support art and music, so they put on a “lapathon” where the kids run around the field.  There’s music and snacks and plenty of photo opportunities for parents.  You can imagine the volunteer efforts it takes to pull such an event off, and so while grateful for this I experienced this strange dimension of exclusiveness and division.  The lead volunteers all showed up in coordinated outfits, little multicolored tutus and high socks, wigs or colored hair.  I’m not sure what the point was.  Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t believe the rest of us were ever let into it.  It was harmless of course on one level, but on another it all felt a little like the school cliques we remember too well, the cool kids’ club for adults.  Why go to such lengths to model that to the children?  Why nurture that kind of culture?  What’s the upside?  Now again, this does not create a serious division, but its triviality is part of the point.  These small acts collect, accumulate, and contribute to deeper fissures that grow between us.  I’m not talking about positive markers of identity, but the little ways we signal that we don’t belong to each other. 

             When Paul sees what’s coming between the Corinthians, something compels him to call for unity.  Was he merely naïve, an eager convert to this new movement, mistaken that somehow this time it could be different?  Perhaps, but Paul had seen division.  He’d been a propagator of it, persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus.  Could it be that something about that experience corroded him from within and led him to seek a better way, one that didn’t involve obliterating the other as a path to a pure and faithful community?  What was he after?

             It may be easier to begin by eliminating what Paul was likely not talking about.

I don’t believe in calling for unity Paul was trying to suppress difference.  This isn’t modern sensibilities about diversity creeping into interpretation.  The evidence is right there in his writings.  His most memorable image in Scripture is of the people constituting the body of Christ, each member with its particular form and function.  The body does not thrive by overcoming the problem of difference but by relying necessarily upon the gifts that difference brings (Rom. 12:45, 1 Cor. 12:12-27).  Similarly, Paul writes of spiritual gifts:  “there are a varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit,” diversity within a greater unity, gifts given “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:4).  

             Paul is not after uniformity.  For all the misunderstood depictions of him as rigid and exclusionary, Paul made it his life mission to be sure people who didn’t follow certain laws or customs could be allowed into the new Christian movement.  His was not a ministry of keeping people out, and the fact that others have made that precisely their ministry by misusing his writings is an ironic tragedy indeed.   

             Wait, Paul calls for everyone to be in “agreement” (v. 10)!  The question is whether Paul is calling for agreement on every individual matter or agreement in a deeper sense on the purpose of being together?  Similarly, when he speaks of being “of the same mind” is he advocating groupthink or could being of the same mind be more like being on the same page, again, “united in the same…purpose” as he puts it? 

             In today’s passage Paul recognizes that people have lost sight of the purpose at the heart of the movement.  He writes, “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters” (I Cor. 1:11).  There’s your proof, by the way, that there were women leaders in the early church.  “What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (v. 12-13).  The early Christians seemed to be pledging their allegiance to particular teachers, and Paul was concerned this was trumping their primary allegiance to and identity in Christ.  Before we judge them, let us remember we too choose our religious communities by taste, preference, and pastor.  Why else do they call it “church shopping?”  Let us not lose sight of where we place our allegiances.   

             Paul is not criticizing different teachers.  He, in fact, affirms the necessity of the different roles different teachers play.  He uses this lovely agricultural metaphor: “I planted, Apollos watered,” but he’s careful to include the crucial third element, “but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6).  All of it this work is contained within a larger unified whole and purpose. It is telling that Paul uses the imagery of baptism.  For Christians, Baptism is a unifying experience that points to a unifying change of state or recognition of a state of being – having died and risen with Christ into a new life and understanding of self and community.  Remember, Paul contends elsewhere that baptism eliminates the distinctions between us:  “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  You may be moved by Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Bethany, but you belong, together, in Christ.

             A brilliant spiritual woman, named Ilia Delio, expresses what is at the heart of baptism.  Delio brings together in a blessed union of science and religion.  She has a doctorate in pharmacology as well as one in historical theology.  She carries forward the work of Teilhard de Chardin, a priest and paleontologist in his own right.  Teilhard believed humanity was moving toward a new consciousness and new unity.  Think of it moving toward the recognition of the ultimate unity which underlies all our divergences.

             To mature spiritually is to recognize and live into that unity, both within the fractured community and the fractured self.  For Delio baptism is the key image.  She says that when Jesus emerged from the waters of his own baptism, he rose as the ihidaya, which is Aramaic for “the single one” or “the unified one.”[1]  In fact, Delio says this was one of the earliest titles for Jesus among some of his followers, “the unified one.”  This unity wasn’t about getting along with everyone as we know from Jesus’ life.  Rather, it was about having a unified or integrated purpose.  Another word she uses is “enlightened.”  Delio writes, “According to Jesus, this enlightenment takes place primarily within the heart.  When your heart becomes ‘single’ –that is, when it desires one thing only, when it can live in perfect alignment with that resonant field of mutual yearning we call ‘the righteousness of God,’ then you ‘see God.’”  Actually, she says, “God is the seeing itself.”[2]

Notice, Delio doesn’t say the heart aligns itself with God, this abstract other.  Rather, she says the heart becomes aligned with the “resonant field of mutual yearning.”  Have you ever been a part of a group where you yearned together for something?  It could a sports team when you were young, or a cast of a play, or a team at work, a family, a cause.  That field of mutual yearning is the common ground from which communities and groups grow in true unity.  Another word for that field is simply Spirit.  When we are aligned in our mutual yearning, we say the Spirit is present.  We are in Spirit. 

I think the assumption is that if we can just again align our yearnings all unity will be restored (or maybe reached for the first time).  It’s like our guest spoke about a couple weeks with Nonviolent Communication.  Nonviolent communication is about learning to recognize the yearning or need behind any expression of another, no matter how ill-packaged or off-putting, there’s a yearning there.  But I actually think there’s a step before trying to match up everyone’s yearning.  I think we have lost touch with the yearnings deep within us and therefore the first project is to find the unified self within, as Jesus embodies when he breaks through the waters of baptism.  He is singular, though not narrow, in his yearning.  Are we even aware of our deepest yearnings?  Today we have more options than ever before to distract us from listening to that which is stirring and swirling within us, but until we are truly in touch with the voices deepest inside us calling for our attention, then we have no chance in unifying them with another.  We cannot meet others in the resonant field of mutual yearning if we know nothing of the inner landscape ourselves.

Have I lost touch with that child who resonated so deeply with that hymn, when I felt what I was singing?  Have you? 

Do you know how “We are One in the Spirit” was written?  It’s right there in the hymnal:  “A parish priest at St. Brendan’s on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s was very involved in the local Civil Rights movement and needed something for his youth choir to sing at ecumenical, interracial events.  Finding nothing, he wrote this song in a single day.”[3]  Maybe the priest knew the only place we were united was in the Spirit, in our shared yearning, and he knew meeting in the field of yearning was enough, enough for them and enough for us to hold onto until that day when our greater unity will be restored.  Amen. 

[1] https://cac.org/be-whole-hearted-2017-04-20/

[2] Ibid.

[3] PCUSA Hymnal Glory to God, “We Are One in the Spirit,” No. 300.

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