Welcome to Corinth 2008

Welcome to Corinth 2008

1 Corinthians 10:1-5, 12-21

February 24, 2008 Pastor Garrison

It’s a great city situated at the crossroads of international commerce. It’s citizens pride themselves in intellectual pursuits and their superior knowledge. They entertain themselves with sports and the many luxuries and pleasures of life enjoyed by those who live in a large, wealthy metropolitan environment. The city is known for its party and night life and the free and promiscuous lifestyles which often thrive in such an environment. New York? San Francisco? Paris? Hong Kong? No, it’s none of these. Actually it is a description of the first century city of Corinth.

Located just off a narrow isthmus west of Athens in modern-day Greece, Corinth was a center of international trade and shipping. Being near Athens, the center of Greek culture, its population was educated and well-to-do. The skyline of the city was dominated by the famous Temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. So famous was the city for its pleasure-seeking environment that the phrase “to live like a Corinthian” implied “diving into days of drunken, promiscuous living.” (John Burke: No Perfect People Allowed, p. 19)

It was into this environment that the Apostle Paul came in the early 50’s of the first century and began preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The environment in the western world in which we are the church today has striking similarities to first century Corinth. The description of the city I opened with could fit almost any thriving city in the world today. We live – we are - the church in a culture not unlike the culture Paul found in Corinth. Brothers and sisters, welcome to Corinth 2008.

By the mid 50’s Paul departed Corinth and returned to Jerusalem and then Antioch. He had spent about a year and a half in Corinth establishing a church in that city, but in just a few short years things were not going too well.

A cursory overview of 1 Corinthians reveals some of the issues Paul was dealing with. He had heard through “some members of Chloe’s household…” that there were quarrels and divisions in the church, he addressed the propensity for the Greeks to be full of themselves because of their self-perception of possessing superior knowledge. With the Temple of Aphrodite and its one thousand temple prostitutes, sexual sin was a major issue with the Corinthians. Paul condemned Christians bringing lawsuits against other Christians and gave teaching on the sanctity of Christian marriage. He warned against idolatry, gave instruction on the Lord’s Supper and worship. This letter includes Paul’s analogy of the church to the human body – many parts, but one body – the great love chapter of the Bible, I Corinthians 13, and teaching regarding the resurrection of the dead.

Part of the problem was that the people who came into the church in Corinth had been part of the culture of that city and change didn’t come easy. So many of the teachings of Paul and of Christ were antithetic to the culture in which they had lived. They had trouble separating their new life in Christ from their old life in that pagan environment.

They were what you might call chameleon Christians. You know what a chameleon is don’t you – one of those small lizards that changes colors depending on its surroundings. That ability is one of the creature’s defense mechanisms.

Some of the people in the Corinthian church had become kind of chameleon-like. They talked the talk, but they had difficulty understanding that following Jesus meant more than knowledge about Jesus – it was also about new life and living another way. Much of what Paul is addressing in this first letter to the Corinthian church is about this difference between right belief and right practice, the difference between knowing about Jesus and living like Jesus.

What I find so exciting about this letter is this. Since the culture of first century Corinth and our present day western culture have so much in common, we can learn so much about how to live, love, grow and serve Christ in our world from what Paul tells the Corinthian church. We have to understand that we are separated by 2000 years of human history, culture and technological advances, but the basic principles are the same. Some things never change.

It is the fate of every generation to think that it can create a better world than the one created by previous generations. I am of the generation known as the Baby Boomers. Most of us grew up in the 50’s and the 60’s and we were no different. The Boomer generation was going to bring love and peace to the world. The love turned out to be free-love – sexual promiscuity and helped bring about such things as HIV-AIDS. Peace for many ended up being imagined worlds created by mind-altering drugs. We Boomers thought we had all the answers and in hind-sight we probably created just as many problems as we solved.

In chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians, Paul reminded the people of their history - of the Exodus from Egypt and how God moved with them in a very visible and present way, in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Can you imagine that? What would we do, how would we act if we had a real visible image of God with us all the time – God actually moving with us in all we do every day and providing for our very lives with food and water? What an awesome experience! But what did the Israelites do? They complained when they got tired of eating manna everyday. They complained when there was not enough water. They complained when it took Moses too long to come down off the mountain. They thought they could do better so they took matters into their own hands and built an idol – a golden calf. “The people got up early the next morning to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings,” we are told in Exodus 32:6. “After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry.”

Paul says we need to be careful. The Message paraphrase says it this way, “The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. … We are just as capable of messing up as they were.”

We like to think we have made it. We are a progressive people. We like to think of our American culture as the one everyone needs to emulate. Frankly, we feel pretty good about ourselves don’t we? Just like the Corinthians. To which Paul said, “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” Don’t get too comfortable there. You’re just as vulnerable as anyone else.

One of the problems Paul cited in his letter to the Corinthians was worship of idols. It was rampant in the Greek culture – the many gods and goddesses such as Aphrodite. “…flee from the worship of idols,” he emphatically told them.

What is an idol? In Biblical understanding, an idol was a false god often depicted in an image possibly carved in wood or stone or molded out of silver or gold. Some of the Hebrew words which our English Bible translates as “idol” had deeper meanings such as “an empty thing,” “a nonentity,” “a terrifying thing,” a shameful thing,” or a “horrible thing.” Often the Hebrew word used was related to the cultic rituals which were associated with the image or object.

An idol is something created by human effort. In making idols people reduce God to something which they can use and control.

Now on the surface this really doesn’t seem like it should be a major issue for us in the twenty-first century. I mean, I don’t think many of us have images of wood, stone, silver or gold which we worship or in which we place our faith and trust. But maybe we have some made of paper or plastic, shiny metal or of bricks and mortar. Our modern idols are those symbols of power, pleasure, or prestige that we so highly regard – those things to which we give credit for what only God can do, those things which take control of our lives and draw us away from what is true and right - just like those idols in first century Corinth.

Our idols look a little different – we depend on technology – computers, Ipods, cell phones. We depend on money and plastic credit cards to get us those things which we think will make us happy. And although we might think we aren’t tempted to visit temples dedicated to pagan gods and goddesses, there is one new temple which has opened recently in our area and it is drawing worshipers by the thousands and its temple treasury is growing by millions of dollars each day. It’s the temple known as the Hollywood Casino where its worshipers bow down to the all-powerful slot machines. Welcome, my brothers and sisters to Corinth 2008.

The challenges we face in living out the Christian life today are not new. The context is different, but the issues are the same. “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience,” Paul said, “And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted he will show you a way out so that you can endure.” That is something no idol can do for us.

The danger with a message like this one is that I might come across like one of those preachers who makes it sound like Christians can’t have any fun, that Christianity is all about rules and all those don’ts. But that’s not what I want you to take away from this today. I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but in every one of his letters in the New Testament, Paul, within the first several sentences, says something similar to this: “May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.” His whole message is not about following rules – in fact he frequently talks about the freedom we have in Christ and what that means. It’s all about finding the blessings of God’s grace and the peace of Christ which passes all understanding. It’s all about learning to love as Christ loved and exchanging despair for hope.

Shortly we are going to participate in a time of communion. We will share together the bread and the cup, symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood. In chapter 10 Paul talks about the Lord’s table in contrast to what he calls “the table of demons.”

I think what he is talking about here is that if we are serious about following Jesus we can’t be chameleons. We can’t call ourselves followers of Jesus – take on the color of a Christian – and then turn around and take on the color of the culture around us. It’s a call to consistency and integrity in our life of faith. It’s a call to surrender our all to Jesus and His way. It’s a call to turn fully to the One who alone can show us grace and give us peace.

It is much too easy, however, to become a chameleon. Like the real chameleon, we also can take on different colors depending on the situation in which we find ourselves. Like the real chameleon, one of our defense mechanisms can be to change colors depending on the situation in which we find ourselves.

Think about it. It’s much safer to become one of the crowd rather than be the one who stands out from the crowd. It’s safer to laugh along with the guys telling the off-color locker room jokes than it is to walk away. You want to be part of that crowd so you join right in. It’s much easier to join in the gossip chain than it is to say, no, leave me out of this. You don’t want to lose your friends so you keep the story going not too concerned about who is being hurt in the end.

Of course, Paul was writing to the church at Corinth. He was writing to Christians and much of what he was addressing had to do with how the Christians were treating one another and how they were living out their faith within the body of Christ. Are there times, even here within the church, when it is easier to be a chameleon than living the way of Jesus? Do our colors ever change depending upon the situation in which we find ourselves even here in the church? Did you ever say something to one person because you wanted to be agreeable and then find yourself saying something different to another for the same reason?

Have you ever sent out an email in which you said something you might not be willing to say to a person face-to-face – or would take a different tone if you were speaking to the person face-to-face? I mention these two because I know I’ve been guilty. How about you?

Paul is calling us to a consistency and an integrity of faith where we seek in all things to model the example and teachings of Jesus. Everything else he says is really nothing. There is no power for grace and peace in carved or molded idols. There is no power for grace and peace in our idols – technologies, money or temple Hollywood. Paul goes so far as to call them the work of demons which seduce us away from God.

Why is it important to give our all only to Christ – or as Paul says, to eat only at His table?

First, when we act like a chameleon, changing colors according to our environment, we only confuse ourselves and others as to who we are and who we worship. If you mix your colors, eventually the originals lose their distinctiveness or you come up with something entirely new. If yellow represents teh Christian life and blue represents the cultural life, when you mix them you get green – something entirely different which is not recognizable as yellow or blue – as the Christian life or the cultural life.

Paul confronted this confusion among the Corinthians with these words in verses 23 - 24: “You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ – but not everything is good for you. You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ – but not everything is beneficial. Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.” In Christ God has given us freedom of choice, but not every choice we make is necessarily good for us.

The problem with being a chameleon is that it is a defense mechanism – its all self-focused – it is a means of protecting ourselves from the results of our poor choices. But in the end those consequences will surely find us. It’s only when we set our lives in a firm direction, on a firm path, the path of following in Jesus’ steps, that the grace and peace of God will become evident to us. And the way of Jesus is the way of love. Paul ends chapter 10 with these words: “I don’t just do what is best for me; I do what is best for others so that many may be saved.” The key is love – love for God and love for others.

Secondly, when we act like a chameleon, we are making Jesus into something we think we can manipulate, good when we need Him, but something to put aside when He gets in the way. In doing so we bring Jesus down to our standard rather than allowing Him to raise us up to His. When we do so, we make him no different than those idols.

Are you leading two lives, changing your colors just like a chameleon when it is beneficial for you to do so? Are you trying to follow Jesus and the crowd? You can’t do both at the same time. You can’t have it both ways. Paul makes it quite clear, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”

Shortly we’re going to have the opportunity to come to the table of the Lord. We’ll eat bread and drink a cup of grape juice. But what we are about to do has so much more significance than just a simple meal. If you look carefully at the scripture you’ll notice Paul says the bread and the cup are “a sharing” in the body and blood of Christ. Some other translations use the word “participation.” There is something much more significant happening in the communion that just a reminder of Christ’s body broken and blood shed for us.

“When Jews celebrate the Passover memorial, there is more than the recalling of a past event. Each Jew who celebrates the Passover becomes himself a participant in the Exodus event, the deliverance from bondage becomes his own experience. Instead of simply calling the past to mind, the past is brought into the present and its benefits made operative.” (In the Church of Christ by Everett Ferguson)

“By repeating the actions of Jesus in breaking the bread and distributing the cup, we participate in what he did; by the symbolism they bring those past events into the present and make them a living reality.” (Ferguson) When we eat the bread and drink the cup we are sharing in Christ’s sacrifice and its benefits. We are participating in Christ’s body and blood, that is, we are identifying with his life and death. In chapter 11 Paul said it this way, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Coming to the Lord’s table and eating this sacred food is more than an act of remembrance. It is an act of commitment. When we eat the bread and drink the cup we are, in effect saying, “Jesus, you are my Lord. I commit myself and my living to you.” We are identifying our life with the life and teachings of Jesus. And we are also identifying our life with the lives of all the others who share the meal with us. We proclaim in this meal that we are the body of Christ, brothers and sisters together in the faith.

There is a story about the nineteenth century Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorwaldsen. One of Thorwaldsen’s greatest achievements was the sculpting of the figure of Christ for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was later offered a commission to carve a statue of the Roman goddess Venus for the Louvre. His response to the offer was this. “The hand that carved the form of Christ can never carve the form of a heathen goddess.”

Can the hands – your hands and my hands – which have touched the bread and the cup, the symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood do any less than offer our full allegiance, our full selves to the One who died that we may live?

What was true in first century Corinth is true also today. To partake of the bread and wine is to reaffirm our spiritual relationship and fellowship with Jesus Christ and also with one another. In receiving the bread and wine we also receive the living Christ once again into our hearts and lives. We are one in Him and united in spirit, allegiance and service to one another. To divide our allegiance with any other is a betrayal of our commitment and vow of Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

We cannot offer our allegiance to Christ and then also to those idols – those things – which are antagonistic to God and the purposes of God. To come to the Lord’s table with divided loyalties is to come in the unworthy manner Paul speaks of in chapter 11. Christ wants our full loyalty. We must come to the table loving the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. “Whatever you do,” Paul writes, “do it all for the glory of God.” Let us commit our complete loyalty to Jesus Christ. Let us prepare ourselves to come to His table. Amen.