In one of the churches I pastored, they had a wall dedicated to the many pastors who served in that church over their 200 plus year history. And since I love history, I would often take time to look at those framed pictures of pastors over the years.
One of the things I discovered about professional photography was that it wasn’t until the 1950s that people started to smile for pictures. In the late 1800s, there was a preacher who looked really mean. I would take the confirmation class to look at that picture and then ask them, “how would you have liked this guy for your pastor?”
One of the pastors of that church that people liked to point out was the father of Norman Vincent Peal who became known for writing the book, The Power of Positive Thinking. Sometimes church members would point out to me their favorite pastor on that wall. I wonder what people might be saying about my picture. Or maybe not.
I served a church where people inside the church as well as outside the church said how much they loved a pastor who was there in the 1970s. People mentioned him during church meetings, when I visited shut-ins, and in casual conversations.
One of the leading members in the community who wasn’t a member of the church said to me at a community event how much he loved this pastor because he had officiated at their wedding when he was here. It almost became comical how many times people would say to me how much they liked him. The other funny thing about this is that he’s a good friend of mine and while I was the pastor there, he was always very supportive of my ministry.
But I did run into one long-time church member who didn’t like him, and she wasn’t shy in telling me why she didn’t like him whenever his name was mentioned. But still. A 99.9% favorable rating is pretty good!
There is nothing wrong with being drawn to a particular pastor or leader in the church. The problem is when we forget to keep our main focus on Jesus Christ and the shared mission of the church which is that we are all called to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Which brings me to our appointed I Corinthians scripture reading today. The Apostle Paul wrote this first letter to the Church in Corinth because they were so caught up with their favorite Apostle and Christian leader that they weren’t focused on their common mission which was to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
When a church keeps their focus on that mission, there is not only unity, but there is also vitality.
I remember talking to a church staff member who was telling me about a live nativity that they hosted on their church grounds a week before Christmas. I said, “How did it go?” And he said, “Oh, it was great. We had over 400 people from our community come to see it.” And then he said something that was very telling of so many of our churches.
He said, “I’ve been on staff here for over fifteen years and this is the first time in my fifteen years that this church has really come together to share the love of Jesus Christ with our community. We’ve always had one group do this, and another group do this ministry, but we’ve always looked at each other with suspicion. It was a great feeling to see the people of the church come together for a common purpose.”
It doesn’t sound like the Church in Corinth could have pulled off what my friend was describing to me. In today’s reading from I Corinthians, the Apostle Paul addresses their cliques which were preventing them from having a common purpose.
There are a lot of reasons that there are cliques in the church. Some are because of long-time members not wanting to hear the concerns and ideas of newer members. Others are related to theological differences within the church. Some can be related to strong political views. And then there’s First Corinthian Church that had cliques based on their favorite Apostles and preachers.
In today’s scripture reading, Paul ends up giving us a list of celebrity preachers that had some connection with the Corinthian Church. The problem was that the people started to break off into cliques based on which Apostle baptized them, or which preacher helped them to grow in their faith.
Paul himself was one of those celebrity preachers. Paul was an Apostle which is a title that is only given to someone who had seen Jesus in his resurrected body which he did when he was on his way to persecute Christians. This led him to become a believer in Jesus which then led him to go on missionary journeys to establish churches all across the Roman Empire including the Church in Corinth.
And so, we have the Apostle Paul who had a connection with the Corinthians. And we also have the Apostle Peter. I mean, think of the celebrity status of Peter. It was Peter, who was given the name “rock” by Jesus. And he was also the one who walked on water. How incredible it would be to slip that into a conversation, not that he did, but people would have known this about him.
The third name that Paul mentions is Apollos. We learn more about Apollos in Acts 18. We are told that he was eloquent and well versed in the scriptures. In his modern paraphrase, Eugene Peterson says that Apollos was a terrific speaker.
We are drawn to terrific keynote speakers. I can see why Apollos was put on a pedestal. Speaking of eloquent preachers, one of the early church Fathers during the 4th century was John Chrysostom. The people of his time said that he was such a great preacher, that people gave him the nickname, “Golden Tongue.” He is one of the most celebrated preachers in all of church history. What a great nickname for a preacher! Golden Tongue!
Here’s a story about one of my favorite preachers. When I was in college, I listened to a cassette tape of a sermon that had been given by Dr. Myron Augsburger and that sermon literally led me to rededicate my life to Jesus Christ. If I wouldn’t have listened to that tape, I probably wouldn’t be here today.
I must have listened to that tape about 30 times. At one point in that sermon, he talked about the social issue of nuclear proliferation, a big topic in the 70s and 80s.
In that sermon, he referred to the nuclear arms race by saying, “there’s no morality in a mushroom cloud.” What a powerful line! “There’s no morality in a mushroom cloud.” Just doesn’t have the same impact when I say it.
Whether it’s Apollos or Myron Augusburger, I can see how it can be really easy to form a clique around a particular person who has had a positive impact on our life.
Several year ago, I read about a United Methodist church in Wisconsin which started to experience rapid growth after a long history of decline.
I remember thinking to myself, that there must be a dynamic pastor behind all of this. I asked somebody who had visited this church what he knew of the pastor who was part of all of this growth, and he said, “I heard him preach and for a church that is rapidly growing, he really isn’t that dynamic of a speaker. In fact, when he preaches, he has an annoying twitch. It takes a while to get used to that when you listen to him.”
This preacher might not be known as Golden Tongue, but when you read their church’s mission statement, you can see why they are growing as a church. Their mission is,“Christ Before Us in All We Do. “Christ Before Us in All We Do.” Not Paul, not Cephas, not Apollos. “Christ before us in all we do.”
Back to our Corinthians reading. After naming all of these celebrity preachers, Paul gets tough. He says, “Each of you says, I belong to this famous person, or I belong to this person. And then he asks these rhetorical questions to drive his point home. “Has Christ been divided? Or was I crucified for you? Or were you baptized in my name?”
And then he says, “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom (are you listening to this, Apollos fan club?), and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.”
Paul isn’t against good preaching, and he’s not against baptisms, and he’s not against people who have been gifted with eloquent wisdom. He’s saying that’s not their problem. Their problem is that they are focusing more on that than the unity of the church. And the only way to have unity in the church is to keep our 100% focus on Jesus Christ and the mission he has given us.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, once said, ‘I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field.”
It’s amazing how much we can do together when we are unified under a common purpose and when we keep our total focus on Jesus Christ.
16th century, Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther was known to emphasize the phrase, “The Priesthood of All Believers.” We are all priests to one another and to the people of our community. We are all priests called forth to move beyond our cliques for the sake of a much higher calling.
Oh, by he way. About a year after I had first listened to that tape by Dr. Myron Augsburger. That tape that changed my life. That tape that led me to rededicate my life to Jesus Christ. I heard that he would be speaking at a nearby college about 45 minutes from my home. And I eagerly went to hear him with the hope that I would be able to speak with him in person to let him know what a difference he made in my life.
He ends his lecture. I push my way through the crowd of students and faculty members of this college and I finally make it to him and I say, “Dr. Augsburger, I just want you to know that you were a big part of helping me to rededicate my life to Jesus Christ.”
I’m not sure what I wanted him to say in response, but I didn’t expect this. He looked at me, and with a gentle smile, all he said to me was, “Ok.”
That was kind of a let down! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, that was the best response he could have given me in that moment.
Maybe it was God’s subtle way of telling me to not focus so much on this eloquent preacher, but to keep my focus on the power of the cross, as Paul says in our scripture reading. It is when our focus is on the power of the cross that we can be the unified people God is calling us to be.
Or like that one church puts it, “Christ before us in all we do.”
No comments:
Post a Comment