First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Isaiah 49:1-7 and 1 Cor 1:1-9

“Sosthenes Says ‘Hi’”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

January 20, 2008

When you boil it all down, the Apostle Paul preached and traveled around Asia Minor and what is Greece and Macedonia for thirteen years. Surrounding these mission efforts were four years he spent in Tarsus and the desert trying to understand the vision he had seen of Jesus; there were six years he lived with Barnabas in Antioch trying to understand what the church meant; and there were seven years he spent as a prisoner of Rome awaiting his fate. This means he spent more time becoming an apostle or being detained for being an apostle than he actually spent “on the job” so to speak.

When you boil things down like this it helps. It helps me because I can imagine 13 years of ministry, I can imagine four years trying to understand theology, I can understand six years trying to understand the church. When you break it up like this Paul’s ministry is pretty manageable.

During his thirteen years of active ministry he traveled and then rested three different times. One foray took him into what is today central Turkey; a second missionary journey took him along the coast of the Aegean Sea to cities like Athens, Philippi, and, for our purposes today, Corinth. On his third and final journey he simply repeated the second. The first one meant three years of travel; the second, four; and the third five.

During his second missionary journey one of the places he stayed the longest, almost half of his time, was Corinth. Paul lived in the city of Corinth for a year and a half. Luke records in Acts that Paul spent his time in Corinth going to the synagogue everyday and arguing. This is a great detail of history, a great window into the times as it tells us a great deal about religious practice of the day: there were people at the synagogue everyday, and enough of them to engage in debate. If Paul tried to come here everyday, he might spend a fair amount of time arguing with our sexton, Bill, or me and Matt, but not much more. This, by the way, would be an exciting day for Bill.

We know that there were people in the Synagogue as it served as a kind of community center, school, place of worship, and when Paul was around, entertainment. And by entertainment I mean something new. Most likely, the members of the synagogue probably found Paul an oddity when he first arrived. Here was a former Pharisee arguing that a Galilean peasant was the messiah and that even though the leaders in Jerusalem forced the hands of the Romans to put him to death, Hades could not keep him and he was resurrected.

What we call the good news must have come across as a wild tale. News of the miracles of Jesus had spread, but so did his crucifixion and death. Paul was saying this was God’s will, that he should die for us, die as a kind of sacrifice. That Paul knew the scriptures, could argue them with ease, must have kept the people in the Corinthian synagogue busy everyday. Paul would have painted Jesus as the suffering servant of Isaiah; he would have argued that Jesus was fulfillment of the law- the Torah made alive; and the biggie: he was restoration of Elijah and his power. Mostly though he was the logos, the king of kings, and lord of lords in our midst. His life was a moment of suffering to restore our glory, not obtain it for himself.

Paul would have kept the scribes and Pharisees busy chasing down references and allusions. And then this just got old. They said to Paul, you’ve made your case, enough. Paul is asked to leave. Yet, in one of the most curious moments of his ministry, he left the synagogue, but he didn’t leave the city. He stayed in Corinth. And much to the chagrin of the leaders of the synagogue he opened up a church right next door.

It sounds a bit funny until we see how little the church and synagogue made good neighbors. Paul was drawing away good numbers and leaders to his church right next door so people had no ability to ignore it. As his gospel started to spread people began to experience a whole new way of life. And that was then things spun out of control. Paul’s message about Jesus being the messiah was one thing, a controversial thing nonetheless, but then he really took it up a notch. He introduced the idea that the Gentiles could be equal partners in this salvation. In the Jewish world of the time, that was a pretty big party foul. And that is when things just spun out of control.

It is hard for us in America to truly appreciate the kind of exclusion and separation which infuses Judaism. They were supposed to be set apart, sanctified as they did not inter marry or join with other people. Their history is filled with warnings and threats and punishments for living with the “other” peoples. They are supposed to eat foods differently, worship differently, work differently, and so on. They were a special people, God’s chosen. Egalitarian democracy has a hard time appreciating this.

As long as Paul was preaching about Jesus he was irritating but not really threatening; the idea that the messiah of the world would come to them was part of the special quality of the Jewish people even if it was a Galilean peasant.

In so far as Paul was preaching about Jesus we were still within their realm of imagination. It may have been an odd notion, but it did fall with the realm of possibility, especially given how Paul could interpret the law and the prophets and the writings to show how it all worked out. And Paul stayed within this circle of thought until a synagogue kicked him out. Once cut loose, it was his belief that he could then expand his message to the Gentiles, telling them, they too could be part of God’s redemption of the world. These where his marching orders from Jerusalem: first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

Well, the synagogue in Corinth didn’t get this memo. And when Paul opened up shop next door and started bringing in Greeks with all their pollution and Gentile ways this was not cool. It freaked them out. And for all intents and purposes the Corinthian synagogue was just one freak out amongst all the rest. This was not odd for the early church, but pretty much the course of things.

The people of the synagogue decided to act. Yet given that Paul was a Roman citizen and they were close enough to Rome to care, the Corinthian Jews had to bring him up on charges of not worshipping as Rome intended (in other places they just beat Paul at this moment).

Paul was brought before Gaius and the people of the synagogue asked if they could show the man from Tarsus how little they appreciated his ministry. And then, in an odd moment of scripture, Gaius balked. He said, no. He said, I am not going to punish a man for words. (As a side note, this may be because Gaius was the brother of the philosopher, Seneca, whose works would win him prestige and Gaius himself an appointment as proconsul; which was great until Nero put them to death for words.)

Frustrated by Gaius’ unwillingness to punish Paul, the members of the synagogue turned on their own leader, Sosthenes. Sosthenes was a kind of head scribe or Rabbi. Unable to beat up Paul, it would appear Sosthenes became the scapegoat for all the unpleasantness and for this reason he was beaten by the members of his own synagogue. Not much after this, Paul left town. It seems things were no longer workable.

Paul headed for Ephesus, which was an emerging center for the church as John the beloved and Mary, the mother of Jesus, had taken residence there. Before he left, though, it would appear that Sosthenes saw his beating as a good opportunity to transfer his membership from the synagogue to the church. Sothenes became a Christian. We know this from the opening lines of our reading today when Paul, writing from Ephesus, inserts a greeting from Sosthenes into his opening remarks.

Now, I believe in thirteen years of preaching, that is the longest introduction I have ever written for a line in scripture. Everything I just said was to try illumine what it means when it says, “And Sosthenes says, ‘hi.’” Were Sosthenes just one of the cast of characters traveling with Paul, I can’t imagine going to this effort, but Sosthenes is different. He is different not only in that he was once the leader of the synagogue and Paul converted him, the only time this seems to have occurred that we know of; but Sosthenes is also important for the letter Paul wrote to the fledgling church at Corinth, in fact, I would argue, he is the key to interpreting it.

The letters to the Corinthians are really different. They go into much greater detail about the struggles of the church itself. Paul would struggle with the issues of the law and circumcision and authority with all the churches. This seems to have lionized them all. But with Corinth, he takes up the mantle of real life, instances of actual people making mistakes. And this is different from his other letters. To the believers at Rome he wrote to strangers; to Ephesus he wrote pamphlets they could use to build their ministry; to Philippi, Colossae, and the churches of Galatia specific comments about issues and big theological stuff. But in Corinth I actually get a feel for what the church is and Sosthenes is the key to this.

Sosthenes is the key because he knew everybody. Paul was in Corinth for eighteen months, Sosthenes a lifetime. As the leader of the synagogue he knew it all. So when problems arose and a call went out for Paul to respond, Sosthenes was there to filter, interpret, and provide a grounding. The Corinthians had all the problems of the early church, they were not really unique, but with Sosthenes Paul could look behind the curtain as it were.

We need a Sosthenes today in our dealings with Africa, and if the truth be told, in all our mission efforts. But with Africa it is even more important. As much as we have interacted with the people of Malawi and the Presbyterian churches in the North of the country, we are stilling shooting in the dark, taking wild guesses. When I wrote to the Lily Endowment asking if they would fund a sabbatical for me I included this in the request. I said, our partnership has grown to a certain place, our knowledge of each other has reached a plateau. If it is to grow it has to go deeper.

Sosthenes was this for Paul. I think Paul was the chosen, passionate, irascible apostle to bring the message of the gospel to the world, but I don’t believe he was ever in a place- other than Antioch- long enough to really know people, know them so they are more than icons or caricatures. Eighteen months is enough time to know some people, but not a church full. And there is only so much ministry and mission you can do with impressions.

I can remember sitting with a crumpled, old pastor. I was a few years into ministry and made it a habit to quiz the ones who had done this more than forty years. He said something I will never forget, “real ministry doesn’t begin until you’ve been something place at least five years.” He said, “before that you just don’t know enough, can’t see enough to be a pastor.” In his model then Paul was never a pastor. And maybe not, maybe he was ever the prophet, never the priest. Maybe this is what it meant for him to be an apostle and not a pastor. Yet, I believe with Sosthenes this changed; he got a glimpse of the life of the Corinthian synagogue that was different, more profound.

When you boil it all down we are group of people trying to worship God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and trying to live out the call to lift up the fallen, bind the wounds of the broken, and so on. Sometimes we do this great success; sometimes it is as if we are stumbling through grace.

This was the same for the Apostle Paul and then he reached Corinth. In Corinth things changed. He stayed; he lingered. Here he didn’t cut and run like he had before, but tried to see what would happen in the future. And taking Sosthenes with him to Ephesus was part of this, a way of holding on to the church there.

In the months to come this year, I believe we will find our Sosthenes, our deeper view of the church and mission. I am not sure what it will look like, but I committing myself to pray we will find our Sosthenes without too many bruises. Consider this: what if are just skimming the top of what God is going to make of us as a church? What if we are still in the midst of a first blush? What if this is the year we get to look behind the curtain and see the kingdom of God, what God is up to? I look forward to saying, “and Sosthenes says, ‘hi.’” Amen.