Partners

C – 2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: 14 January 2007

Isaiah 62: 1 – 5; Psalm 36: 5-10

1 CORINTHIANS 12: 1 – 11; John 2: 1 – 11

Partners

A Sermon by John C. Bush, Interim Pastor

First Presbyterian Church

Birmingham, Alabama

Several years ago my son went with me on a business trip to New York City. It was his first visit to The City, so we arranged to stay over a weekend and take in the sights, and especially to give him a good dose of Broadway.

We saw three plays that week-end – tickets didn’t cost a hundred bucks back then: On Your Toes – a delightful Tommy Tune musical; The Mystery of Edwin Drood – one of those audience participation productions in which you get to decide how the plot will work out; and Amadeus, which was subsequently made into a movie.

There is a scene in Amadeus in which Antonio Salieri complains that God is unfair. Salieri, you see, has a gift to appreciate good music but possesses only mediocre talent himself. He is in competition for court favors with Mozart, who is vulgar and rude but a musical genius. A marvelous talent which, in Salieri’s view, Mozart squanders. It just doesn’t seem fair to Salieri that such talent should be wasted on a scoundrel when he, Salieri, is devoted to writing music to the glory of God. In his jealously, he vows to destroy God’s pet, Mozart. And that is the plot of both the play and the movie.

It is this kind of jealously of the accomplishments and abilities of others, and the destructive competition that such jealousy engenders, that lies behind the letter St. Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth. In the passage we read, Paul turns to the problem of spirituality and how it is expressed – a very contemporary set of issues. Spirituality and its relationship to how we live in the world and in relationship with others – especially those who are different from ourselves – within the community of faith.

Paul wants us to understand that it is because of the activity of God’s Holy Spirit that we are enabled to confess the faith. Only God’s Spirit makes that possible for us. In the mystery religion of ancient Corinth, the devotees of one of the gods would cry aloud, Serapis is Lord! In the nationalist cult of Imperial Rome the cry was Caesar is Lord! The Christians quietly acknowledge the risen Christ: Jesus is Lord! It is our oldest confession of faith, announced at every baptism and used as a spontaneous response in early Christian worship.

Now concerning spirituality, Paul writes, I do not want you to be uninformed. His first word of advice to the Corinthian Christians is that they be wary of a merely emotional response to the faith. He does this by reminding them of their original devotion to the various cults for which their city was famous. The chief of those cults was devoted to the worship of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, known to the Romans as Venus. Her temple at Corinth employed as many as two thousand male and female prostitutes devoted to that ecstatic ritual. [An aside: the word used for these male prostitutes has been mistranslated in some contemporary English versions of the Bible as homosexual. That is unfortunate and has confusing consequences for our on-going discussions about sexuality. The reference here is not to homosexuality in general – that specific word did not exist in the English language until the middle of the eighteenth century – but to male prostitution.]

Paul’s words here set the stage for what he is going to say about ecstatic outbreaks, such as speaking in tongues, later in this letter.

Paul is clear that God’s Spirit conveys God’s love and grace, but he is also clear that not everything that happens is the work of God’s Spirit. These rowdy Corinthians need to exercise some spiritual discernment and Paul provides some guidelines for understanding their partnership with the Spirit of God.

Within the life of the Spirit, Paul says, there is a great variety of spiritual gifts distributed among God’s people. And it is this variety – this God-given diversity – rather than some particular set of abilities or gifts that he intends to underscore. There is a variety of gifts – but they all come from the same source. There is a variety of tasks to be done but they all serve the purposes of the same God. There is a variety of ways of doing things, but they are all inspired by the same Spirit – and the gift that is given to each one of us is given for the benefit of all of us.

In the world we live in those words are well worth hearing. It a world where diversity is feared or devalued. I’ve been an interested observer of this culture of ours for several decades now, and it seems to me that our society – among the most diverse the world has ever known – is in serious jeopardy from increasing levels of intolerance, fundamentalisms, prejudice, racism and demands for conformity. In my view, a very dangerous trend and one that CNN has been featuring in a series of documentaries on intolerance in America. And it seems these days there is a great, renewed fascination with building walls – between Israelis and Palestinians, between our nation and our neighbor to the south. But, in the words of Robert Frost, Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.

Some churches attempt to make everybody fit the same mold. One of the core values that I find appeal in about the Presbyterian Church – and demonstrated in an especially lively way in this amazing congregation – is an appreciation for the diversity among the people of God. Unity in Christ, and diversity in ways of serving Christ. .

Paul wants us to know that difference – diversity – is a given in the church. And it is God-given. Our task, like that of these ancient Corinthian Christians, is to learn not just to tolerate difference but to accept and celebrate the variety God has given to the church.

The Spirit of God has created for us a vibrant community of hospitality that exists in exciting variety -- the universal and ecumenical community into which we are baptized and into which we baptize, for the church is not a community of accomplishment but of grace. Of our acceptance by God, even before we are able to express for ourselves or understand just what that means. The assurance that God knew us by name before the world began, called us before we were, claimed us for God’s own self before we were yet able to recognize that claim. And there is no more dramatic symbol of that reality than those occasions when we bring our children here to receive the Sacrament of Holy Baptism -- a reality is underscored for us each Sunday as we gather around the baptismal font and the Lord’s Table – both at the center of our worship space.

We recall those audacious words from the baptismal liturgy – words that still stick in my throat as I says them, even after all these years: Child of the Covenant, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, marked as Christ’s own forever.

Partnership in the life of faith is not an easy lesson for us to learn. But it is an important one: we Christians do not all have to be alike. We just have to be able to recognize one another as partners of God’s Spirit, who give to God’s people a variety of gifts, All inspired by one and the same Spirit; who apportions to each as God wills.

What a different place this world would be – our Presbyterian denomination would be, our households would be – if we were more willing to learn the lesson Paul has for us today: that we all are called to be disciples of the Lord with all of our God-given gifts and differences, we bring with us to God’s service in the church and in the world.

NOW TO THE GOD OF ALL GRACE

WHO CALLS YOU TO SHARE

GOD’S ETERNAL GLORY

IN UNION WITH CHRIST:

TO GOD BE PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING

THIS DAY AND FOREVER. AMEN.