of Corinth a nice choice of preachers with the result—division.
DIVISION
“Paul is the man for me,” some said. “No, I am a follower of Peter.” “You are both wrong, Apollos is a better man than either of them.” So the church divided, and no church will stand in circumstances like these. They misunderstood their leaders who had no wish to be figureheads; in fact, each Corinthian is bolstering up his own ego by attaching himself to one of the notables.
How are we to deal with this? This time in an epigram, a rhetorical question—“Was Paul crucified for you?” They are fine people, Paul a great preacher, Peter an organizer, Apollos a theologian. But did any of them die on a cross giving their life for you? No! But there was one who did, and loyalty to him, not to any of his agents, is what matters. Another example, there was in Corinth a shocking case of immorality.
IMMORALITY
There was a man living with his father’s wife. “Well, why not? We are liberated people are we not? We have up to date views on such matters, and we are not shocked, indeed we are rather glad to be so modern.” What will Paul do now? Quite a number of things but they focus on two points. One is Passover, the Jewish feast of the last supper. Before you can celebrate it you must, in accordance with the old law, clean every scrape of fermenting matter out of your home. “Modern?” says Paul to the Corinthians. “You are out of date. Our Passover has already been sacrificed, you must catch up quickly by getting rid of every defiling thing in your house and company.” Why? Turn on another chapter from 5 to 6, for the answers. “You are not your own, you are bought with a price. The price he paid was the most frightful any one can give. He gave it freely for you so that you might be set free from evil and belong in holiness to him.” It may not look so serious, but it was.
INSENSITIVITY
You will always find differences between Christians in this world. Some will feel free to do things that others will think wrong, and sometimes by expressing this freedom in an immodest way they will hurt others, may sometimes even make them lose their faith. Here is another way in which the Corinthian Church was split down the middle. What is the answer to that one? Everything depends on how you think of your fellow Christian. If you think of him as an unprincipled libertine or if you think of him as an antiquated stick-in-the-mud, we know how you will treat him. There is only one way to think of him; he is your brother for whom Christ died. Think of him like that and it will govern how you treat him. So back to where we started at the supper.
AT THE SUPPER
There was poverty, gluttony, indifference, pride; there was also, though I have no time to talk about it, magic. If I say the magic words and do the magic rite, everything will be alright. I can behave as I please guarded by my magic talisman. And all Paul has to set against it is, “You proclaim the Lord’s death, until he comes.” And this is what he sets over against us as we meet here as a church family. Equally it stands over against the family meals to which in a few minutes we go home. What would Paul see in us if he were to meet with us? Far more importantly, what does Christ see in us? Bitterness, impatience, intolerance? Indifferent to need whether it is in Durham, or Sarajevo, or Sudan? The hypocrisy of a Christian exterior and a heathen heart? Does he see weariness, suffering, loneliness, disappointment, fear? One answer will do: a broken loaf, poured out wine, interpreted by Paul. “Do it in remembrance, broken for you, the new covenant.”
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“GROWING UP”—1 Corinthians 13.11
[Preached five times from 9/28/67 at Northern Counties College to 6/16/81 at St. Andrews]
The chapter that you have just heard is at least in part about education. It deals with the process by which we stop thinking like a child and begin to think like an adult. This of course is your business, to lead children on from their narrow experience and their immature thinking into the wider world of grown-up life. The process is one that is never complete, and you, if I may venture to say it, are yourselves today at a milestone within it. For on entering this college, in today’s enrollment, you start out of the narrower environment of home and school and into the world of men and women where you find your own way, and stand on your own feet.
What does this process of developing maturity mean? You ought to know, for this knowledge is part of your professional equipment. Two things are involved: 1) the child’s knowledge has to be broadened, and 2) he has to learn how to use his knowledge. I do not mean by that that whereas he knows how to add and subtract, he must then learn to divide and multiply as well that whereas he knew what happened in 1066, he must now add 1666 too, (the two dates I could always remember). I mean that his experience must extend beyond the narrow limits of the family, that he must taste a wider and wider range of experiences. And he must learn how to reflect upon his experiences, and draw out links of logical inference, that will lead him out of the past, through the present, and into the future. All this is involved in growing up, and when I no longer act and when I no longer speak, and think, and feel as a child, I am reflecting in maturity upon an adult’s experience.
But what has our chapter to say about this? That if you yourself are really going to leave childhood behind, to become adult men and women, if you in turn are going to lead new generations of children into mature and intelligent experience, then you must keep your eye on these following things. The first is faith. Please note what that does not mean. It does not mean a body of doctrine summed up in the creeds, and ready there to be learnt by heart and swallowed whole. I am not myself despising the historic creeds. There is a lot of hard thinking in them, and the more you study them the more you are likely to find that, though they are not perfect, it is not easy to do any better. But they are not at the moment in the picture. Faith is the conviction, the growing experience, that there is much more to life than the eye can see.
The real trouble with materialism is that it is narrowing and immature. It does not take into account the whole breadth and sweep of human experience. It is faith that gives coherence to scientific thought, for faith means that behind the infinite variety of phenomena, there is no mere haphazard association of chances, but purpose and mind and reason. Christians ought to be the first explorers of the universe, for they know that it is the expression of personal consistent will, and that therefore it does make sense. Of course that does not mean that to be a Christian is automatically to know all the physics, and biology, and astronomy there is. To suggest it would be silly. It does mean that the way to personal and intellectual and true maturity is not to turn your back on Christianity but to take it seriously.
The second thing is hope. This too is needed by you and by those you teach, if you and they are to acquire a mature and balanced life. If faith means believing there is a purpose running through life, hope means believing there is a future. I am not for the moment talking about heaven, I mean that I for one have a future. This is not easy to believe. I have bungled most of the important things in life, what I am now is at most a veneer of success, riddled with failure, and if I could not believe there was some sort of future for me, I should throw up the sponge.13 Far more important, hope means that the world has a future. I agree that it doesn’t look like it. That Vietnam and China and Rhodesia and Nigeria and the rest may well make you think we have reached the end of our tether. Well if we have, there is no more development, no more growth. Hope too is a necessary condition of growing up to a sane, mature, balanced understanding of life and the world.
The third thing is love. Perhaps I have over-intellectualized faith and hope. I don’t regret it. They have an intellectual element, and at a time when Christians are apt to run away from their intellectual responsibilities, and non-Christians to deny that Christians have any, it is no bad thing to point out that Christian freedom includes and demands freedom to think, freedom to experience the world’s intellectual pleasures, and to bear the world’s intellectual burdens.
