Knowing God, Unity,and the Cross (I Corinthians 1:10-2:5)
The place of the cross around our church It's been a few weeks now since loyal city employees spent a few days taking out the trees around our church. Those Japanese fruitless plum trees had become something of a nuisance. Paul spent hours and hours raking leaves. The berries fell on the sidewalk and were annoying scrunching underneath our feet, and they were a danger too when things got slippery. So though no one particularly likes the idea of chopping down a tree these were eliminated and now we are waiting for the pistachio trees to be planted in their place.
I've sure noticed how striking our church building looks without the row of trees in front. Our building has this stark beauty about it without the trees. Though I'm for the planting of the new trees I rather like the way it looks without any trees at all.
People who come and visit us here at FMC often comment on how beautiful our meeting place. People admire the architecture, the deep brown of the pews, the curious shape of the building, the stained glass windows, the organ pipes, and more. We all recognize that the building is not really the church, the people inside are, but still the building does communicate.
Our text from Paul's letter to the Corinthians has a lot to do with the cross. When I started attending our church back in 1985 one of the things I noticed was the ``minimalist'' way in which the cross was used around our church. We don't follow literally the dictates of number 321 in our hymnal, ``Lift High the Cross!'' The cross isn't immediately and obviously visible around our campus. In some churches it is there, big and obvious, in a prominent place on the church façade, or big and obvious within the sanctuary.
We are far more subtle. You see it here on the stand that holds the old Bible. It's small and natural in one of the stained glass windows. On the church sign outside, over on the corner, it's integrated into the old General Conference Mennonite Church symbol. And we often have this cross from India right here on the communion table in front of me. There's an intriguing cross in the Fellowship Hall, in the PIM worship space, that Denny and Bob donated. I guess if you add it all up the cross is tastefully visible around our church campus. But it doesn't just jump out at you, at least not in my judgment.
Paul writes to the Corinthians Paul was instrumental in starting a group of small house churches in Corinth. Corinth, a port city in modern day Greece, was a cosmopolitan city where Paul, on an early missionary journey, settled in with Aquila and Priscilla, a couple of tentmakers. They were Jews, and had been kicked out of Rome. They found a place in Corinth which gathered up disparate folks from many different places. Here folks without a strong sense of ethnic identity could settle in and try to make a name for themselves, and money too.
Paul was in Corinth for eighteen months, and then moved on. But in due course he received news, some through letters, from his old friends in Corinth. They ask questions, and they raise concerns in Paul's mind. He may have written them more letters but we have preserved in our Bibles two of them that we know as I and II Corinthians.
Now these young Christians in Corinth were living in a lively Greco-Roman culture. They were living in an environment distinctly removed from the world of the ancient patriarchs, prophets, and the world of Jesus, for that matter. They faced the question, what about our culture is okay and acceptable for a Christ follower to take part in, and what about our culture is categorically unacceptable? This basic issue got sorted through in a series of case studies.
In the letter to the Corinthians Paul tackles questions around marriage and sexuality, eating food sacrificed in the temple of gods, and trying to climb the social status ladder. He invites the Corinthian Christians, who are mostly Gentiles, to creatively see themselves as true heirs of the Jesus story and to, together, sort through what faithful living might look like in their own time.
It's like this. We live in a consumer society. The other day in the Business section of the Bee opinion writer Michelle Singletary asked herself the question, ``do I want this on my tombstone: Michelle, she was a consumer?'' How much consuming is okay and just a normal part of being a member of this society, and when does it go too far?
Or take the NFL. We are getting into the really exciting time of the year, these big games leading up to the Super Bowl. But wait a minute. Aren't these just a bunch of glorified gladiators, dressed to do battle every week? People are paying them absurd amounts of money to play this violent game. Fans spend huge sums of money on tickets and gambling associated with the game. So is this kind of conspicuous consumption of the valuable resources of time and money on such aggressive entertainment really okay for the Christ-follower to be involved in. Maybe if you don't spend any money and only watch on tv. Or maybe it's okay if you only watch the fourth quarter. Or maybe only if the tv is on mute. Or maybe if you limit yourself to just one game every two weeks.
In the particular verses we read earlier Paul speaks to the problem of divisions within the church. People were apparently picking their favorite leader and aligning themselves with that individual. ``I belong to Paul.'' ``I belong to Apollos.'' ``I belong to Cephas,'' he quotes them.
Maybe it's like if we were to say ``I listen only to Willard Swartley,'' or ``I follow only Rick Warren,'' or ``I belong to Marcus Borg!'' Now, obviously, I assume that Paul would agree that everyone is different and we have our leanings and opinions but Paul seems to be worried that things in Corinth have gone too far. The factionalism itself, the divisions themselves, are ruinous. And so what Paul does in these verses is to talk about the cross, the place of the cross in the Christian's life. Paul calls his readers to adhere to the ``message of the cross'' (1:18) even though, he would admit, it is mighty crazy, dumbfounding, in fact. As a matter of fact, for many people this ``Christ crucified'' idea is nothing but sheer foolishness.
Knowing God Paul wants his readers to consider how they may ``know'' God. We might say, well, I see the snow capped Sierras and the yawning Pacific Ocean, and thus, seeing God in nature like that, I know something of God. Paul seems to say that such knowledge of the creation can carry you a certain distance.
We might add that feelings and experience, the warm buzz inside, that can teach us, and help us to know God. Maybe knowledge can teach us a lot about God. Becoming very wise and understanding about the world we live in.
But what Paul does argue is the better way of knowing God was confounding then and it is confounding now. We just so naturally are attracted to places of influence, glitz, and power. We're attracted to the silver-tongued speakers, the persuasive politicians, the glamorous entertainers, the sharp-tongued commentators, the intellectual giantsin other words, towards people of sway and power. But God, Paul says, chooses to be known in death on a cross, with all its attendant implications. And this is stunning to Paul's listeners because no Messiah is to suffer such a shameful death. And for us too, we don't want to turn to some back-alley blood stained, course and rugged cross.
And for Paul this ``knowing'' about the cross is not just sort of gathering up some information up in the brain somewhere. The kind of ``knowing'' that allows one to maybe admire a smooth gold cross, lifted high and beautiful over a lovely sanctuary filled with lovely well-dressed people. That is the kind of cross that you can stylize and make look pretty standing in front of your church, or perhaps in miniature form, around your neck. But knowing the cross for Paul is not just gaining information about Jesus' crucifixion, it is bringing this cross into our own being, deeply embracing it, committing ourselves to this Christ, the crucified one, and this way. We become bearers of the cross ourselves.
Unity and the cross Now let's return to Paul's concern about the different factions the Corinthians were dividing into. Some follow Apollos! Some follow Cephas! Paul thinks that it is the cross, this foolishness to the wise that can become the basis for unity, a unity strong enough to stretch around all the competing loyalties.
Now this unity stuff is really tough for me. I resonate with the way Paul talks about the cross, its utter foolishness yet its power. A power rooted not in glitz or might but in love and humility. Clearly, Paul is speaking of the cross as a way of being, a way of living, and not referencing it in substitutionary atonement language that would see it only as a tool to appease the wrath of an angry God. But I wonder, with my suspicious mind, are other Christians whom I am supposed to be united with, are they imaging the same cross I am? How do we have unity in the cross if we are not talking about the same kind of cross?
One of the challenges to unity is that the stories which have shaped us, within the Christian community, are so different. Part of this is just a function of the generation we are part of. If you grew up in the Depression, and you remember the taste of dirt between your teeth, and now you've reached a place of relative comfort, and your descendants have gone to college, that's one world to have experienced. It's different from those who've grown up with technology at their fingertips, whose fingers can nimbly text, and who remember iconic moments like ``I did not have sexual relations with that woman'' and a triumphant speech in front of a ``mission accomplished'' sign. We could go on and on. The world of Woodstock and ``the times they are a changing'' is different from being shaped by the disco 80s or the collapse of the Iron Curtain. And this is without even mentioning the difference that arises from people coming together who have grown up in different parts of the world.
Paul dares to think that the cross is strong enough to speak into our world, no matter our time and place. I think he would argue that the cross confronts, debates, challenges the things in which we might boast. This could be our sense of national pride. It could be our sense of religious pride and understanding. It could be any triumphal sense we have lurking within that we sort of have things figured out. The cross confronts our pride and our power and calls us to walk a narrow path
Koyama's crucified hands We know God best, and we experience a deeper unity, when we are bonded together in the way of the cross, the way of the crucified One.
I wish to conclude by sharing a thing or two I've been puzzling over from the book No Handle on the Cross by Kosuke Koyama from Japan. Koyama, now in his 80s, is from Japan and did his doctoral work at Princeton. For a time he was a missionary in Thailand. Later he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
In this little book he spends time thinking about the cross. Jesus said to ``take up the cross'' and here in Corinthians Paul advocates for the foolishness of the cross. Yet, Koyama says, we are tempted to put a handle on it, and carry it around like a businessperson carries a briefcase or a lunchbox. We want to domesticate it. Control it. Understand it. Systemize it. Organize it. But the cross, in actuality, is awkward and clumsy to carry. You can't pick it up easily. You can't tame it.
And then, having stared for a time at an artist's rendition of Jesus on the cross, he focused on Jesus' hands, nailed to the cross. The hands were slightly cupped, open in a way but also bending, towards the nail.
He contrasted these hands to others he had seen, none of them bad, just different. There's the open hand, completely welcoming and invitational. And there's the closed hand (in a fist) that shows determination and commitment, but the crucified hand is somewhere in-between, not completely open, not completely closed. He says, ``in its'weakness' and `foolishness' it (the crucified hand) becomes far more resourceful than all the `lunchboxes' put together.'' (Koyama, No Handle…, p. 26)
We are again on the cusp of a mystery. Our challenge and our call is this, that in taking the cross up for ourselves we move towards a greater, stronger unity with others and we come to know in a deeper more mysterious way, the heart of God.
