“United or Untied?”
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
“All power
in heaven and earth is given to Jesus Christ by Almighty God, who raised Christ
from the dead and set him above all rule and authority, all power and dominion,
and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to
come. God has put all things under the
Lordship of Jesus Christ and has made Christ Head of the Church, which is his
body” (G-1.0100 PCUSA Book of Order).
These are the words are from the very first paragraph of the
Constitution of the Presbyterian Church USA.
These words not only make up the foundation upon which this Church’s
Constitution rests, they most importantly declare right
from the beginning the central claim of the Christian faith – that Jesus Christ
is Lord, and that he alone is Head of the Church.
Everything we are as Presbyterians,
from what we believe to how we govern this particular denomination, finds its
starting point from this confession about the One who live, died, and was raised
from the dead. Without this starting
point, without this confession, the Church would not be the Church of Jesus
Christ. And yet, even with this central
claim the Church continues to find itself struggling over exactly what this
means for the Church’s faith and life, ministry and mission. We would like to be able to claim that we are
united in all aspects of being the Church, but we know from history and from
the current situation today that this is not the case. We are becoming less united and more untied
as we battle over social causes, divide ourselves into theological camps, and
align ourselves with church leaders all the while claiming that my group is the
bastion of the Gospel, of truth and justice, not yours.
In October, I went to a Presbytery
meeting to discuss the report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity,
and Purity. The Task Force, composed of
people from both liberal and conservative theological camps, spent five years
discussing the ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church. The purpose of the meeting was to go over the
report, hear from one of the Task Force members, and discuss the Task Force’s
recommendations in small groups and in the full assembly. During the discussion time in our small
group, it was apparent that we were a diverse group,
and that there were people who were clearly passionate on both sides of the
issue. But, what disturbed me the most
during the whole day was a discussion I had with someone walking back to the
main meeting room. The man I spoke to
was not on my side of the issue and he let me know it, but that was not the
problem. The problem was when we started
talking about how the church might proceed in a way that builds unity and holds
up the viewpoints of all parties. It was
then that he proceeded to tell me that he was not interested in my viewpoint or
maintaining unity of the church. The
issue over ordination standards was too important to allow anyone from my side
to have a voice.
Have we
really reached a point in the Church that the “I” has become more important
that the “we?” Are we really willing to
allow party factions, social agendas, and theological discord to rule the day
and bring the church to the brink of schism?
I believe it is time for the Church to prayerfully and repentantly
reconsider our priorities, our devotion and our loyalty. It is time that we begin to mindful about
where we place the “I” of our faith and life, ministry and mission, because
when the “I” is in it’s proper place, there is unity, when not, things come
untied.
In our text for this morning, Paul is
confronting just such a problem in the Corinthian church. They have started to misplace the “I” of
their lives. They were starting to become
untied over inappropriate personal attachments to their favorite preacher and
church leader. They were allowing their
own agendas, theologies, and loyalties to wreak havoc on the church through
petty bickering, gossip, arguments, and jealousy, and now they found themselves
on the verge of schism. Some claimed
they were united around Paul, after all he was the
missionary founder of the Church in
But Paul quickly cuts through the
rhetoric and exposes the folly of the church’s division and misplaced faith
with a biting and convicting question, “Has Christ been
divided?” The answer to this question is
paramount for every church to remember.
It is a warning of the damage that is caused when we misplace the “I” in
the life of the Church. Since Christ
cannot be divided, then we the Church must stop trying to find reasons to do
so. Each time we, as members of Christ’s
body, seek to diminish the church and fracture the life and faith, ministry and
mission of the church, we pull Christ’s body apart and
do damage to our Lord. There is only one
person who was crucified, one person who was raised from the dead, one person
who is Lord of all and head of the church – Jesus Christ. Not you, not me, but him alone.
The Church of Jesus Christ is already
seen by the world as a battleground for personal ideologies, agendas, and
ambitions. Christ has become a commodity
to be possessed and haggled over, another ally to be had for our own definition
of truth and justice. When the Church of
Jesus Christ begins to define itself by the names of leaders, certain
doctrines, or good causes, when the Church of Jesus Christ takes the Gospel and
turns it into a proof for what “I” believe, a talking point for “my” agenda, a
political and social platform for “my” cause, then we not only do a disservice
to the integrity of the Church, but we make a mockery of the very faith we
confess.
The Gospel
of Jesus Christ confronts all of us with the Truth, with God’s word that gives
shape and direction to what we believe and what we do as a Church. It confronts all of us, liberal or
conservative, Covenant church or Confessing church, male or female, young or
old, to continually reexamine our own theological ideologies and agendas to
seek the greater Truth that is beyond ourselves. It confronts us with the fact that we may be
wrong in our particular viewpoint and someone else may be right, but whatever
the case may be, we cannot ever be careless of where we place the “I” of our
lives. We cannot ever allow our
loyalties and our devotion and our allegiance to issues and causes to become
stronger than our common loyalty and devotion and allegiance to Jesus Christ
and his church.
James McCord, President of Princeton
Theological Seminary, who spent much of his life trying to heal divisions in
the church throughout the world, asks this question to the people he is
speaking to, “If you have a choice between being a heretic or a schismatic,
which would you chose?” His answer, “Choose heresy
every time. After all, a heretic
is simply a person guilty of a wrong opinion, but a schismatic is guilty of
tearing apart the body of Christ.” And
yet, our inclination is towards schism, toward separating ourselves from
others, toward dividing the body of Christ.
True authentic unity comes when we put
Christ as the central focus, not just of what we believe or what we do, but
most importantly of who we are. True
authentic unity comes not by cutting out the bad weeds of the church, not by
dismissing others out of hand, not by removing from the church all those who do
not hold our viewpoints; true authentic unity comes when we remember that we
all are baptized into Jesus Christ, our one Lord. And the source of the strength of our unity
comes not from our tenacious grip on doctrine or tradition or ethical truth,
but from our identity as Christ’s own, as brothers and sisters made one with Christ
and one another in the waters of baptism.
Throughout the ages, the Church as
been on the front lines of cultural change, sometimes behind the curve,
sometimes ahead of it, and we are always called to seek peace and justice in
all aspects of life in this world, that is our purpose and our mission. But our primary purpose and mission as the
church is to be witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the
earth. He alone was crucified and was
raised from the dead, not our agendas, not our issues, not our ideologies, and
not our pastors or church leaders.
Christ alone calls us into being and gives us our faith and life, our
ministry and mission as his disciples, as his body, not the Presbyterian Church
or Reformed Churches, or any other church for that matter.
As the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
continues to debate over important issues, as we always have done, and always
will do, we can never lose sight of our interrelationship and
interconnectedness with all others who carry Christ’s name, with all others in
this world who have been baptized into the same Lord that we have been baptized
into. We can never lose sight of the
fact that their Gospel is our Gospel, their mission is our mission, and their
Lord is our Lord.
We do not
have to be uniformed in our theologies or beliefs or even in how we govern our
church, but we must always be united and never untied.
We must
always remember that we are part of a larger body, a church body that stretches
beyond the borders of our nation, beyond the culture and traditions of this
country, beyond the time and space in which we live. We must always remember all those who around
this world who worship the God we know in Jesus Christ and the work they do in
Christ’s name, for only together, united as one, can God work in us and through
us to bring peace, justice, and reconciliation to the world and hasten the day
of God’s coming kingdom. Amen.