I’ve often heard people wish that the present-day Christian Church could be more like the Church was in the first century, right after the time of Christ and during the lifetimes of the apostles. My friend Jeff has the perfect response to the desire to go back and be like the early church. He asks people who say that, “Have you ever read I Corinthians? Why would you want to be like that?”
Our text for today, I Corinthians 1:10-17, addresses division and partisanship in a local church, but it rings frighteningly true for the evil spirit which has seized America in the past year. Of course divisions by political party and by social class and by race have differences from the spiritual divisions which plagued the church in Corinth, but I think any honest believer will admit that much the same sort of human sin can do its ugly work in both secular and church politics.
My friend Mark Alfano has written an article on what he calls “communities of trust.” He examines the structure and dynamics of small communities of people in which reciprocal relationships of trust play a large role. The benefits of such communities include mutual care and protection as well as other practical benefits.. But the paper concludes with the worry that the drawbacks of such small communities may be unavoidable. Alfano says, “They can become insular and walled-off from the surrounding community, leading to distrust of the out-group.” That sounds like an incredibly apt description both of the divisions in the ancient church at Corinth and in contemporary American society.
In verse 10, Paul simply tells the Corinthians to cease their divisions and seek a unity of mind and purpose. As anyone who has experienced a church “fight” or recent political debate can tell you, that is much, much easier said than done. My friend is rightly skeptical of whether it is even possible.
The only possible answer I see to the ubiquitous and obvious divisions between human beings is to find unity of mind and purpose in an allegiance higher than and superseding any merely pragmatic social arrangement for mutual benefit. That is, if I am part of a “community of trust,” whether a church or a club or some other social unity, only because I find it helpful to myself in some way, then I will inevitably place my own interests and the interests of my immediate small community above those of others outside the group, leading to isolation, distrust, etc.
Paul’s answer goes back to what we see in our Gospel lesson for Sunday, from Matthew 4:12-23. Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow Him. Jesus Himself is the center of that small community of trust we typically call the “disciples.” But the text makes plain that, while Jesus asks these people to follow Him, His concern is much larger than the immediate group gathered around Him. He dubs them “fishers of people” and, in the closing verses of the text, they join Him in a ministry of sharing good news and healing people in a wide area which crossed several political and social boundaries.
At the center of Christian faith and Christian community is a person unlike many public leaders who utilize for their own political ends the natural human inclination to divided and insular community. Jesus constantly points His followers beyond their own interests and immediate concerns to the needs of others, including those outside one’s own community. The Spirit of Jesus is the only source of true non-partisanship in our world, the only hope of any larger unity.