FACTIONS

 

A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown

Market Square Presbyterian Church

July 6, 2008

Isaiah 29:15-24 and 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; 3:1-23

 

I recently came across some interesting facts concerning the Bible.  “Americans buy more than 20 million new Bibles every year to add to the four that the average household has at home.”[i]  Are there at least four Bibles in your house?  And which versions?  Just imagine—there are about 900 English translations of the Bible, including a condensed version that can be read in 100 minutes and Bibles geared to every sort of person from seekers to cowboys, from brides to barmen.  There is a waterproof Bible for outdoors types and a camouflage one for use in war zones.  A Bible for boys promises “gross and gory Bible stuff” and “God’s Little Princess Devotional Bible is pink and sparkly.”

 

Coupled with this abundance of Bibles is a startling lack of knowledge about what is in the books of Holy Scripture.  A recent Gallup survey found that less than half the respondents could name the first book of the Bible and only a third knew who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  Billy Graham was a popular answer to this one!  A quarter did not know what is celebrated at Easter, and 60% could not name half the Ten Commandments.

 

I sometimes think that we preachers are part of the problem.  Our sermons may not be helpful enough in setting the context, in explaining where the passages for the day fit in the larger Biblical scheme of things.  After all, the span of time between the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and the Revelation to John with which the New Testament draws to a close, encompasses several thousand years.  It’s easy to lose your place in such a book.

 

With this in mind, Kelly and I have chosen to preach a series of sermons this summer from just two of the 66 books in the Bible, the two letters that Paul wrote to the churches in the Greek city of Corinth about 20 years after the death and resurrection Jesus of Nazareth, 1 and 2 Corinthians.

 

Our eight sermons will deal with major themes in these two letters that were written by the Apostle Paul to the roughly 200 Christians in Corinth who worshiped in the homes of believers.

 

Jesus’ earthly life came to an end about the year 30 AD.  The Latin letters AD stand for Anno Domini, which translates “In the year of our Lord.”  Many today use the designation CE instead of AD to respect those who are not Christian. CE stands for the Common Era.  Whichever designation is used, it’s important for us to place the two letters of Paul in the first century, about 20 years after the life of Jesus. 

 

Paul was a Jewish rabbi who had been a persecutor of the fledgling Christian Church until one day he went through a radical conversion on the road to Damascus.   He saw a flash of light and heard the Risen Christ ask him, “Why do you persecute me?”  Paul would never be the same after this moment.   He was to become the great preacher to the Gentiles or non-Jews in the Mediterranean world.  Paul made three great missionary journeys to places like Athens and Rome and Ephesus and Corinth.

Sometime around 50 AD Paul spent 18 months preaching in Corinth.  This led to the formation of a number of small house churches I mentioned a moment ago.  Corinth was a prosperous commercial crossroads located in the south of Greece on a major trade route between the Aegean and Ionian seas.  The city was well known for hosting an athletic festival second only in importance to the Olympic games.

 

Paul left Corinth in the year 51 AD.  By the year 53 or 54 Paul got wind of serious problems in Corinth via a communication from the household of one of the leaders in the Church—a woman named Chloe.  This was followed by a letter to Paul, who was then in Ephesus in Asia Minor or what is modern-day Turkey,  from others in the Church outlining a host of problems that had arisen since Paul’s stay with them.  There were issues around the sex lives of members, legal disputes, and class differences so extreme that even the Lord’s Supper was being disrupted.  First and foremost there was the matter of divisions or factions that had put the very existence of Christian community at risk.  It is with this crisis that we will begin our summer series of reflections on life in the Corinthian Church and the implications for the church and world in which we find ourselves almost 2000 years later.

 

Something was happening to the young church we can relate to out of our own experience.  Birds of a feather began to flock together at the expense of the larger community, exhibiting jealousy and a quarrelsome spirit.  Paul zeroes in by reminding his friends in Corinth that this is evidence that they are infants in Christ, needing the nourishment of milk rather than solid food.

 

After Paul had left, a new convert to Christianity by the name of Apollos had arrived in Corinth, and some in the community prided themselves on their allegiance to him over against Paul.  It appears that Apollos was a better public speaker that Paul, who by his own admission lacked the oratorical skills of others in the early Church.  All of a sudden there were factions siding with one or the other leaders.

 

Paul says, “Hold on!  I planted, Apollos watered, but it is God who gives the growth to the community.  And never forget that the foundation is Jesus Christ—not I, not Apollos.  So forget all this boasting about human leaders.  Whatever you gain, you gain because you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” 

 

Duke professor Richard Hays, in his commentary on 1^st Corinthians, makes the point that Paul’s major concern in writing his letter “is to call the Corinthians to understand their corporate existence as the church.  One implication of this is that theology and ethics are bound together inseparably in Paul’s thought:  To think theologically is to reflect about the shaping of the community’s life together.”[ii]

 

At one point Paul talks about “jealousy” as one of the sources of factions in the church.  In the Greek in which Paul wrote to the Corinthians the word is zēlos, which can also be translated as zeal of a religious sort.  Zeal is an important word for us to ponder as we think about factions.

Hays suggests that we may do the Corinthians “an injustice if we suppose that they were merely squabbling jealously over petty matters.”  To the contrary, Hays says:

 

The factions in the community were caused—at least to some extent—

by serious questions of theological understanding and religious practice.

How do we obtain divine wisdom?  What activities constitute idolatry?

What sexual norms should be observed in marriage?  How should

manifestations of the Spirit function in worship?  What is the meaning

of resurrection?[iii]

 

I suggest that you hurry home after church and read 1 Corinthians!

 

For today, I want us to ponder prayerfully and carefully the whole matter of factions in today’s church and world.  We come across party spirit at every turn.  I’ll address some of the factionalism in our denomination next Sunday.  Today during the 4^th of July weekend I’d like to look at the place of factions in our nation’s history and see what we can learn that is in keeping with what Paul was telling the Corinthian Church.

 

A presidential election year is always rife with flaming speech of one sort or another.  At times I despair with Paul about the fine line been healthy zeal and destructive quarrelsomeness. The whole subject of factions in Corinth reminded me of something I had read long ago about factions in America at the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in the 1780’s.  I hope you’ll find this as relevant as I do.

 

What I’m going to cite comes from one of the Federalist papers published by James Madison in support of the Constitution.  His theme in Federalist paper #10 dealt with how the proposed federal form of government could “control the violence of faction in the new nation.”  Madison defined a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated  by some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  Note that both majority and minority groups can and do function as factions by this definition.

 

Madison was clear that where there was liberty, there would be factions.  In his words, the “latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.”  We are a factious people!  Just listen to Madison’s careful analysis of how this is so:

 

A zeal [there’s our word!] for different opinions concerning religion,

concerning government, and many other points,…an attachment  to

different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power;

or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting

to the human passions, have, in turn, divided  mankind into parties,

inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more

disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their

common good….[T]he most common and durable source of factions

has been the various and unequal distribution of property. 

 

Our Founding Fathers knew how to tell it like it is.  It’s no wonder that much of the political discourse these days leaves us longing for the past.   We do well to listen imaginatively to the Madisons who forged our national destiny.  We will ignore their insights at our nation’s peril.

For Madison “the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.”  If we are a factious people, then our form of government had better take factions into account!   He believed that the checks and balances in the  Constitution, the multiplicity of factions and political parties that offset one another, and the division of responsibilities between national, local and state legislatures could keep factionalism in check. 

 

What I want to emphasize for our purposes today is how all this may connect with our study of First and Second Corinthians.  At one point Madison holds out a high view of leadership that seems to be at variance with his sober view that factionalism is at the core of human nature.  He dares to envision representatives at the various levels of government, and especially at the federal level, whose “enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and to schemes of injustice.”  This was Madison’s high hope in 1787 and ours today.

 

What so you think Paul would say to all this?  I believe that his own Damascus road conversion to a higher calling than he had known before left him convinced that God’s hand was at work in building up the Christian community.  Therefore, he could move beyond his disappointment with the actions of some in the community and urge them to take the high ground and live as if God had a stunning destiny in store for them.  Madison believed this about America and could thus exude deep hope in the future.  Does it not fall to us to exude that same commonality, that same hope for our life together in the Lord?

 

The opening chapters of 1 Corinthians are both sobering and liberating—liberating if we will but take to heart Paul’s reminder that we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God, whose church this is.   But I can’t resist adding a sobering reminder about human nature and our propensity for forging factions of one sort or another.  Rev. Robin Courtney, Jr. has served a number of small Episcopal congregations in the South.  Here’s how he describes one kind of deadly faction:

 

   They want newcomers.  Why?   To balance the budget.  Do they want

    newcomers to be involved?  Yes and no.  Yes, in that they should take over

    the laborious tasks of the elders, which they are tired of doing.  No, when

                it comes to making decisions about the church’s operation.  They will take

    the visitors’ money, time, and talents, but leave the power to them, or else![iv]

 

I don’t think this is true of Market Square, and I hope you all agree.  But we do well to keep coming back to our foundational calling to be one in Jesus Christ, to remember our true roots in the faith.  This is Paul’s pastoral admonition then and now for avoiding the dark side of factions.

 

Next week we will look at some of the issues that divide Presbyterians as deeply as the Corinthians were divided—under the heading of “Sex, Marriage and Hairstyles.”  I’m not making this up—Paul really does zero in on everyday life.  So will we.    

 

MARKET SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Factions