Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:1–13
Before we dig into Corinthians, I want you to have some images in your mind.
Anyone know where this is? This is the Wakarusa River, down by Baker Wetlands. I took this on one of our birding adventures with the Blue Team. I am sure that most of you have seen the Wakarusa somewhere, as it comes from the spillway at the Clinton Dam, and then winds south of town toward Eudora. It is a substantial river that gets wider and deeper as it heads east.
I’d be surprised if many folks know this one. This is Mud Creek, which flows south from Lake Dabanawa up north, past the airport, and then this is near the Lawrence River Trails up in North Lawrence. You can see how different it is than the others…living up to its muddy name.
How about this one? It’s a little more obscure, but this is Baldwin Creek, up in the northwest part of town. Over by Martin Park, and back behind Rock Chalk Park. It is a pretty and clear little creek that meanders this way and that with some beautiful twists and curves, and often some steep bluffs next to it.
Does anyone know where all of these streams end up? Here!
Each of these creeks and streams all dump into the Kansas River, or the Kaw. All of these are part of the Kaw watershed. If you dump your water bottle into one of these streams, the water will end up here. And that is the image that I want us to start with today. Each of these different and distinct streams…all part of the same system.
Hang onto that as we venture once more back into Corinth. A couple of weeks ago, we flew through Chapter 12, on the way to Chapter 13, but now the narrative lectionary circles back to take a deeper look.
1 Corinthians 12.1–13
1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2 You know that when you were gentiles you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
4 Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, 5 and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of powerful deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Sinai
A group of God’s people huddled together, not sure what to do next. They had just escaped the Egyptian Empire, and the oppression of slavery by them. But now they were not sure what was going to happen to them next. They were in the wilderness, without food or water or reliable shelter. Moses had led them out of Egypt, but the people weren’t sure where he was leading them next. At least in Egypt, they had enough to eat and drink and a roof over their heads.
That is when God showed up…with a bang! Huddled together in their tents, they could see the power and majesty of Mt. Sinai. Covered in thick cloud and smoke, crashing with thunder and lightning. But God was more than the bang. God’s presence came through the presence of the Torah covenant. A set of commandments that taught them how to be God’s people. How to worship. How to treat one another. And how to treat others outside of the community. After generations of mistreatment at the hands of Egypt, it would be easy to lead with fear about other people. Outsiders. Strangers. But the Torah commanded exactly the opposite. The stranger must be welcomed in. The outsider must be shown hospitality. The outsider other would be allowed to become a part of the community, not shunned or feared. “Love your neighbor as you would love yourself,” said the Torah teaching. Even if they are different. Especially if they are different.
What God seemed to be saying here is that those differences are part of the way that God works. Diversity seems to be God-created and God-ordained. Like streams that are all different, but are all connected as a part of the same watershed. No two are exactly alike, but they all play a part in a larger system.
It’s like the Torah was saying: There are many different voices, but the same Spirit of God connecting them all.
Pentecost
A group of God’s people huddled together, not sure what to do next. Jesus had just left them, after what had been a tumultuous and amazing few weeks. He had been killed, but then arose, and then showed up to continue teaching them and encouraging them. But now, he was gone again, and it led to a bit of anxiety amongst his followers. Who would lead them now? Peter? John? Any other options? These were the questions they whispered, as they watched the floods of people enter the city. It was Shavuot, the day where God’s people celebrated the coming of the Torah teaching at Mt. Sinai. The day that God’s people were instructed how they would be community together. Those huddled in that upper room in Jerusalem wondered if God would ever do anything like that again.
That is when God showed up…with a bang. Sounding like the sound of a ferocious wind, and looking like tongues of fire on each of them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they rushed out into the streets! As they celebrated the coming of God in wind and flash and fire, God showed up in wind and flash and fire. But the most amazing thing is that the disciples began to tell about Jesus, to each of these ethnically and linguistically diverse pilgrims…in their own language! The miracle that happened was not that all of these diverse people all learned how to speak in the language of a Galilean fisherman. It wasn’t as if the Parthians and the Medes and the Cappadocians all learned how to become less diverse and learn some one true cultural unified language. To the contrary, the miracle is that all of these Galilean fisherman transformed into something much more diverse. They all told the same story, but they told it in cultural and linguistically particular ways. Each one of them spoke through the same Spirit, but they did it through a multitude of voices.
What God seemed to be saying here is that those differences are part of the way that God works. Diversity seems to be God-created and God-ordained. Like streams that are all different, but are all connected as a part of the same watershed. No two are exactly alike, but they all play a part in a larger system.
The message of Pentecost message was just that: There are many different voices, but the same Spirit of God connecting them all.
Corinth
A group of God’s people huddled together, not sure what to do next. They were a group of Jesus followers in the city of Corinth, and they had been inspired to start a community by a man named Paul. But then he left, and went to start other communities of Jesus-followers. And quickly, things started to get ugly. With this power vacuum, people started breaking up into factions and choosing some leaders over others. Not only that, but they were beginning to rank each other by the gifts that they brought to the church…what each one was good at and which were the real gifts…the more important gifts. All this meant they were at each other’s throats, and the whole experiment threatened to fall apart. In the midst of the anxiety, they got word that they needed to all meet together, and so there they huddled, eying each other suspiciously across the room.
And that’s when God showed up…with a bang! Paul had sent a letter to be read to the community, and it didn’t mince words. They were to quit all this foolishness of division and divisiveness. They were meant to be different, but together. In fact, Paul wrote, it is like a body. Each part needs to do its part, or the body won’t work like it is supposed to. The diversity was baked into the way that the community was supposed to work. Like ex-Egyptian slaves, learning to love the other as they love themselves. Like Pentecostal preachers, learning a new language to a diverse set of people. Like a body, God created the church to be particular and together. It is interesting that Paul wrote another letter to another community of Jesus-followers in the region of Galatia, with a slightly different message: there is no Jew or Greek. No male or female. No slave or free. That’s not what he told the Jesus-followers in diverse Corinth. Here, he told them, in essence “embrace your Greekness or your Jewishness…embrace your gender…embrace your class…see what it brings to the diversity of the body and represent with pride! It isn’t as if one gift is more important than another…the church needs all of them! If we don’t have all of these pieces, the whole thing becomes impoverished. Each voice has value and importance!”
What God seemed to be saying here is that those differences are part of the way that God works. Diversity seems to be God-created and God-ordained. Like streams that are all different, but are all connected as a part of the same watershed. No two are exactly alike, but they all play a part in a larger system.
Paul’s message was just that: There are many different voices, but the same Spirit of God connecting them all.
Lawrence
There was once a group of Baptists huddled together, not sure what to do next. They lived in a culture that demands a way of being that requires that others need to be wrong in order for you to be right. Someone else needs to be taken down a notch so that you feel better about being lifted up. It is that way in politics. In zero-sum assumptions about money and wealth. In violence that is baked into the cultural system. They had just been through a pandemic, which hastened the transformation of the Church that had already been changing. It was getting smaller, less embraced by the larger culture, and dependent on fewer resources. Some members of the larger Church were terrified, afraid of losing what they once had, blaming their leaders for the smaller attendance and other cultural shifts, and like those Corinthians, at each other’s throats.
Huddling Baptists, do I have good news for you today! God is still showing up…with a bang. Just because our church and the Church look different doesn’t mean that it is broken or wrong. And for God’s sake, we shouldn’t start pointing fingers and blaming people if things look different than they once did. Just like those God-followers at Sinai…and those God-followers at Pentecost…and those God-followers in Corinth…I would suggest that this is the time when God shows up in a big way!
Let me turn once more to this image of various streams, all part of the same watershed. Sorry if I’m overdoing the image here, but it seems to fit well. In the Torah welcoming of stranger. In the Pentecost ethnic diversity. In the Corinthian unity in diversity. And now in the Church. Let me acknowledge that I am not the first to use this image. In particular, Richard Foster wrote a book 25 years ago that uses this metaphor: Streams of Living Water. And his point in the book is to understand the various streams of the Church through history, and today. Each stream, or tradition, or lens for looking at the faith, has value…and it has limitations. But all of them matter!
Let me show you what I mean:
Contemplative Tradition: Spending time with God in prayer and meditation
Holiness Tradition: Having pure thoughts, words, and actions, and overcoming temptation
Charismatic Tradition: Welcoming the Holy Spirit while nurturing and exercising spiritual gifts
Social Justice Tradition: Helping others who are less fortunate
Evangelical Tradition: Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and reading the Scriptures
Incarnational Tradition: Unifying the sacred and secular areas of life while showing forth God’s presence
Like streams part of the same watershed, the same system of drainage, these are all important traditions. The message of Torah. Of Pentecost. Of Corinthians.
Many voices. One Spirit. Metaphor of stream with various branches. This is the way that Jesus followers have always been. So, over these next six weeks, we are going to take a week per tradition and do a deeper dive. It will help us:
- Understand our own personal journey and think about how we might name it as our journey
- See the strengths in others
- See the limitations in our own
- Value the diversity that is the Church.
Every stream is flowing together toward the same goal! The same Spirit moves amongst us all.
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