A Jazz Gospel

When we last left Paul and Silas, our intrepid martures—witnesses to the Gospel work of God—the good people of Thessalonica were gathering a violent mob to do who-knows-what to these men. They were angry enough that they drug Jason and his companions out into the street, and eventually to jail, just because they thought that he might be harboring Paul and Silas. Needless to say, it was better for their health to leave town.

So, they continued down the Grecian coast. To a place called Berea, known in Scripture as one of the most welcoming and hospitable places Paul visited. Then to the famous encounter at Mars Hill in Athens, where the response was not angry hot like Thessalonica, or lovingly warm like Berea, but dispassionately cool. “We are curious about your ideas and will hear you again.” Paul didn’t stay long there. In fact, he didn’t really stay too long in any of these places.

Until he got to Corinth. Here, Paul had a very different experience. For about a year and a half, he stayed in this community. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be wondering together why that might be. What drew him to stay, and then to write several letters back and forth with the church in Corinth. The story begins here…

Acts 18.1–4

¹ After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ² There he found a Jew named Aquila from Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³ and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. ⁴ Every Sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.

Corinth is an interesting city. It is located on an isthmus, a narrow strip of land that connected the large Peloponnesian Peninsula with the rest of Greece. Since it was the only land route in or out of the peninsula, it was a pretty important route. And that made it a fascinating crossroads of people and ideas and cultures…similar to a certain Kansas town that you might know about.

• Corinth was a gathering place for intellectual and philosophical diversity, home to various Greco-Roman schools including the Platonists, Stoics, and Cynics. Not unlike a community with three significant universities, one a land-grant flagship school of the state of Kansas, another an American Indian University known nationally as one of the top ones of its kind, as well as a Christian liberal arts school in the county.
• Corinth was a gathering place for cultural diversity, developing an architectural and artistic school that carried the name of the city. You might imagine a city with a wide diversity of music and cultural influences, from Murphy Hall and Lied Center and Bottleneck and Grenada and Americana.
• Corinth was a gathering place for sports diversity…the Corinthian games or the Isthmian Games (named for the Isthmus of Corinth) rivaled the Olympic games earlier in its history. Perhaps you could imagine a town proud of its sports history, home to one of cathedrals of college basketball, building a special building to house the original rules of the sport, spending half a billion dollars to renovate its football stadium, and plenty of money on parks, Rock Chalk sports complex, and a youth soccer and baseball facility.
• Finally, Corinth was a gathering place for religious diversity, including a massive Temple to Apollo and several smaller temples…

That diversity made for a fascinating church experience. According to what Biblical scholars teach us, in addition to the Greco-Roman gods and faith practices, there was a thriving Jewish community. Some time before Paul arrived, many of the Jews in Rome had been kicked out of the city. And at least some of them ended up in Corinth. Acts tells of a couple named Aquilla and Priscilla, who were among those victims of religious persecution in Rome. They met Paul because they had all been trained as tentmakers, and they were swayed by his arguments about how Jesus and their Hebrew faith were intertwined.

But that diversity wasn’t always a healthy thing. Or to be more specific: Paul seems to value diversity…it’s divisiveness that is problematic. When diversity turns into factions and division. Which is what happens in Corinth. We have some of the correspondence that Paul had with the church after he left, and starting in 1 Corinthians 1.10, it seems that their diverse experiences and ideological commitments have turned ugly, causing dissention and arguing. Some of the church members say that they are more ideologically connected to Paul, while others say that they align more with Peter. Still others say that they follow another church leader named Apollos, and of course there are those know-it-alls who say, “well, I don’t know about you, but I belong to Jesus.” And the whole thing has caused folks to try and one-up each other, allowing political connections and ideological differences to drive a wedge between them.

One could argue that the Corinthian congregation was the first “purple church.” So, as long as we are making modern day connections to Lawrence, perhaps we can draw similarities to a certain purple congregation of Jesus-followers on the corner of 14^th and Kasold Drive here in town. Where some folks might say “I belong to Brian McLaren” while others say “I belong to Eric Metaxis.” Some say “I follow Nadia Bolz-Weber” and others “I follow the Babylon Bee.” And, perhaps there are others who insist, “and I belong to Jesus.” We think that our political divisions and divisiveness is unprecedented, but Paul might beg to differ.

But for Paul, this commitment to various factions within the church was absolutely infuriating. Instead of seeing it as a complement to his leadership, he is exasperated that the Corinthians weren’t paying attention when he tried to get them to understand what was really important. Church is not supposed to be a hierarchy of who you follow or who you identify with or who baptized you, says Paul. Instead, he writes [in I Corinthians 1]:

¹⁷ For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel—and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. ¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The Greek is a play on words. He writes that what is important is not logos sophia, words of wisdom, but logos stauros (stow-ros), words of the cross. For Paul, it isn’t about which ideology or faction has the most flowery or persuasive language. It is all about the cross. All about this life of service and sacrifice and identification with the Jesus-power that we read about last week. The Thessalonians didn’t get it last week. The Athenians didn’t get it either. And even after Paul stayed with the Corinthians for 18 months of teaching and preaching and explaining this to them, they were still divided into factions: by who had the wisest sounding words…who had the best soundbites…who had the coolest tweets, retweets, and memes. Forgive the anachronism, but then and now, Paul’s message to them and us is the same: stop spending so much time focusing on the things that divide us, and join together beneath the sacrificial power demonstrated in the cross. Logos stauros. The words of the cross. That is how we find unity in the church.

Here in a few moments, we will acknowledge that truth again, through our Martus commissioning. About 18 months ago, we commissioned Anne Munsterman, Dawn Trent, and Wendy Wheeler, as folks who have shown and continue to show us the way of service and sacrifice. Today, we add two more: Stacey Lamb and Danny Trent. Now, if you put these five people in a room together, I’m going to guess that they will not agree on everything…ideologically, politically, how they interpret Scripture, what are the priorities of the Church. But that doesn’t keep them from all five serving next to each other at the mobile food pantry on Saturdays. That doesn’t mean that they don’t show up early and stay late, watching and witnessing and serving. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t figured out a way to witness to the power of the cross. The way that Danny does it and the way that Stacey does it will be different. Yet, they are fundamentally the same. Paul would be proud.

Today is Jazz Sunday! Mostly what that means is that our musicians get to pull out some awesome, jazzy arrangements of some great sacred music! But this morning, I want to think a minute about the theology of jazz.

Jazz music is heavily reliant on individual improvisation. In a jazz song, there will a trombone solo for 12 bars, followed by a saxophone solo for 12, followed by a trumpet solo, and so on. And those solos might sound vastly different from one another. However, they are all based on the same 12-bar chord progression…the same sets of notes that become like building blocks for each soloist to do their own thing. But usually before and after those solos comes a section that the whole band plays together. The shared introduction, or the head of the tune, followed by the shared conclusion sometimes called the “out” head. Each song includes some shared music, along with individual solos.

My mentor pastor in Topeka, who for a time served as an interim associate pastor here, was Joe Kutter. And Joe would always say that jazz music perfectly symbolizes the Church, especially Baptist churches. Because there is definitely room for individual improv. Each of us serves in our own way. We have different priorities. Different callings. Stacey uses her creativity to put together and invite folks to a church event. Danny helps us see profound wisdom in the book of II Chronicles. Their solos will sound very different, using their own style and skills. But they are following the same chord progressions, tapping into the work of the same Spirit, witnessing to the same work of God even if they do it very differently. And then, in the end, we see that the whole time they are playing the same song. Under the head who is Christ, their song rings out, and the energy swells, and together we celebrate that God has called us together to this shared work of Church!