First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

I Corinthians 1

“You Have to Choose Sides if You Want to Play”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

January 27, 2008

Summers in Ohio are tough. By nine in the morning it can be in the mid-nineties and the humidity thick enough to feel like you are wrapped in a steaming blanket. Now my friends from south of the Mason Dixon line tell me such seasonal challenges are child’s play compared to the Carolinas or Mississippi, but it was far and away enough for me. In fact, it was enough for us to join in the mid-west habit of hibernating during the summer, not the winter.

We could hibernate in the summer because of air conditioning. I resisted this at first, but conceded, or was forced to concede when Kathy was pregnant with Ethan. An elder of the church made it quite clear that my disdain of an artificial environment was a flawed notion- she called me an idiot- and paid to have central air put in the manse.

This enhancement came on the heels of the church putting central air in the sanctuary. 160+ years of living without it and then one day everyone said, “Oh, just put it in.” I wish I could tell you it was my leadership, but quite frankly I can’t remember how it happened; I do know it wasn’t my idea.

As good ideas often will, though, the addition of central air in the sanctuary created a controversy. The church had a long-standing tradition of going to summer hours given the heat. Worship was an hour earlier from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now the argument arose that it was no longer necessary to do this. And, as you might expect, there was a good number of church folk who wanted it one way and . . . wait for it . . . a group opposed to this. One side said, this earlier hour is the reason they don’t come in the summer; the other side said, this is the only time they feel like Sunday is theirs; they can start the day normally.

The fracas persisted until the next congregational meeting. There were no overt signs of campaigning like placards or petitions, but there were obvious sides. Once the meeting got underway I can remember being shocked- this is part of a first call- that such an issue could create such division. Before long, I watched my wife exit out the back of the meeting hall, probably to check on one of the children, but also to take a break from the arguing, which was now getting close to an hour. It was in her absence that someone called for the vote.

We went through a voice vote and that was inconclusive, so we went to a hand count. It was forty in favor of keeping the normal worship time and forty in favor of keeping the earlier summer worship time. There was a hush that came over the fellowship hall; it was tie. Almost on cue Kathy returned. Walking through the door someone shouted, “What do you choose, early service for summer or later?” Not knowing she was the deciding vote she said, “Later.” The hall erupted with shouts of joy and groans of defeat.

Sooner or later, at some point, it is inevitable: you have to make a decision. For some of us, making decisions are moments of gladness; others live in peace in between, enjoying the absence of any choice and dreading its arrival. I am firmly in the first camp. I need to check to see if I am being rash; I never need to wonder if I am being too slow to decide.

As a culture we have obscured the power of choosing by equating it with personal choice. We value making up your own mind and have shied away from the idea that choosing is really about taking a side with others, casting your lot with a group, not so much choosing for yourself. Often times I hear people try to differentiate their choice from others who have made the same, saying, this is about me, not them.

We like the idea of principles being the deciding factor, and that our decision or vote or support is not about the influence or connection of others. Kathy wouldn’t have suggested that she voted for the later worship time because of the people who wanted it; she would tell you she voted for the later time because her husband didn’t help her get four children ready for church and an extra hour increased the likelihood that everyone’s clothes would match and the girls would arrive with a hairdo not a hair mess.

We like the idea that the side you take is about the principles you hold dear. If you are a Republican it is because you believe in local government more than federal government; if you are a Democrat you are such because of a moment of confusion that will clear up in time. No. You are a Democrat because you believe that we have the opportunity and responsibility to help the vulnerable, to share the wealth of our nation with all. The chances are good there other reasons for your political choice, but if one of them was because “All your friends are Democrats” or that “Your father was a Republican” and he told you this was what good people do, few would respect your motives.

We believe that ideals, ideology, our philosophy so to speak is about principles not people; our course in life is determined by a truth that transcends us, not relationships that confine us. We like this idea; this sounds good. And in so far as it is voting in federal or state elections, in so far as it is voicing an opinion about an event or challenge raised by strangers, we are fine. We can maintain this. And then life happens.

In our passage today from Corinthians Paul is advocating a very high ideal of unity. Don’t say you are with this person, or you are on so and so’s side; be one: one mind, one will as a church. Let there be no divisions among you. He is arguing the idea that Jesus Christ is a truth that transcends us and our mundane lives and that we can all agree about him, live in harmony with his grace. Yeah, here is the point in writing a sermon where I just laugh and laugh. It may not sound all that funny, but if you have read enough church history, or if you have lived enough years in ministry, this is great stuff. We can all agree about Jesus and live in harmony. Yeah, right.

I am not cynical about unity. Don’t get me wrong. My need to pause and laugh here is not a kind of sarcasm born of a lack of faith or hope. I am laughing because Paul is writing as someone who just hasn’t spent enough time in one place, with one church, to understand the way the unity he seeks is never seen without the tension, the reality of opposition and dissention. This is a bit of a mind bender so I won’t just say it, but present it: unity is not the absence of division, but a sense of common purpose that emerges from time to time. We live in our divisions, maintain them, sometimes entrench them. And then, in moments of significance, we put those aside for a short time and stand together.

This is one of the most profound qualities of our worship. People that live each day representing the radical divisions of our culture, who are categorically opposed to others, pray together. People who couldn’t agree on any point of view gather before God as one. You may not know this but in the pews all around you are people who don’t see things the way you do. In every Presbyterian congregation I have served there are people who are for choice and people who are for life- in the same pew; there are people who pray for the ordination of homosexuals and those who pray the church will withstand the heresy- who pass the offering plate to one another. There are people here who long for the harmony of universal understanding and people here who long for unabated revival. I revel in being a pastor to both.

It is just a question of time that Paul didn’t have, didn’t spend, to see this in a congregation. He stirred up the Jewish community in Corinth for a year and a half, he was directly responsible for a crowd of angry people beating up a rabbi, after opening up a church next door to the synagogue; he created a context where people were moving from one side to another, from one house to another, and then sounds surprised a year and half later that there are divisions among them? Now, I have been here five years and I have been able to achieve a complete harmony of ideals and ideology; everyone believes what I believe about Jesus- no.

A decade or so later Paul would write the church at Philippi and ask them to have the same mind. The difference with our passage today is helpful as it illumines what is yet to emerge at Corinth. Paul says to the Philippians, “Make my joy complete, be of the same mind in Christ Jesus.” Ten years after Corinth, he hasn’t given up on unity; he hasn’t stopped calling for harmony, of a church being one. He still believes: Jesus Christ re-creates us as it were unto a kind of oneness with God and each other. But he has reversed his appeal that he made to the Corinthians. To Corinth he said, don’t make this about me or Cephas or Apollo. In other words, don’t make this about people or individuals or sides. To the church at Philippi he says, “Hey do this for me; make this something you achieve for me.”

We misunderstand the Apostle Paul if we take everything he says as doctrine, rather than as the struggle to understand doctrine. We miss the power of his life if we take away the fight to see just how we are both one and many, how the church is whole and broken, how we are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, yet still sinners in need of grace. We misunderstand his letters if we think he was done as a person, as an apostle, when he wrote them. He was ever coming to be just as we are. Somewhere between 53 AD and 65 AD Paul realized that unity of purpose is ever held in tension with division and factions and parties and individual people. They don’t cancel each other out. In fact, the only thing that might motivate someone to be part of a whole is another person, saying, “make my joy complete”- emphasis on “my.”

In 1957, preaching to a congregation in Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said this, “So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’” For Dr. King this choice would be challenging and some might contend the stuff of a prophetic life and death. I admire his choice for what it didn’t say. It doesn’t say there are things you need to be or know; the message he offered in 1957, a little more than a decade before his death wasn’t about others, but himself. He made it personal. King knew he was looking over the landscape of a deeply divided nation and said in effect, before we go any further I want you to know what motivates me, defines me. This is about me loving you.

In our worship, in effect, we are striving for a moment to live out his choice. There is no bouncer at the door checking to see if you watch Fox News or CNN. When the communion plates are passed there is no one checking to see if your belief in communion matches what someone else believes. In our everyday lives there may not be a great deal of harmony, yet, we are not a people divided in worship. Here, even if it is just for a moment, we pause look around and say, “I’d rather die than hate you.”

I am never surprised that people disagree with me or that their disagreement may reach a level of ire. Kathy often reminds me I have a special gift. The session last week sent me with a message to the presbytery. And, again and again, they kept reiterating: I am supposed to talk nice, be nice. This direction didn’t shock me. Given how free I am with my own opinions the reality that someone believes just the opposite has come quite clear to me- I have the bruises to prove it.

What continues to surprise me is not hatred or anger or heated opposition, what surprises me is love. I will never forget a friend in a congregation who said, “I would serve as an elder even though I don’t want to; I will serve because I love you.” Man that freaked me out. No. You’re supposed to serve out of a sense of calling and duty and devotion to Christ, not me. Had he said he really didn’t care for my way of managing the church and felt called to serve to help right the congregation, I wouldn’t have balked. I am foolish enough to commend people unto this. Anger, got that; love . . . love just confuses the dickens out of me.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about unity he didn’t quite yet understand what he was asking or demanding. A decade or so later, I believe he did when he said, “Make my joy complete, be of one mind.” Somewhere along the path, the power of love went from an ideal he strove toward to something that defined him. I don’t know the life of Dr. King well enough to say when and where he made the decision, but his sermon in 1957 belies a choice that he let love define him. I don’t know when he came to see his path as one motivated not by duty alone, but by love; I don’t know when but I have all confidence it surprised him. You can hear the wonder behind the claim: I love you. I’d rather die than hate you.

Here’s the rub. You know I want you to come to worship and we all want to see the church grow. We are getting close and closer to 600 members and closer and closer to 200 folks in worship each week. There is a gap there. I want to bridge that gap, but not for the numbers. I want to bridge that gap for what it will make us, what we will become.

And what we become in worship is simple: we become the choice of love transcending our differences here. Worship is where we pray together, make vows together. This morning you made a vow to love to love a child. You don’t know if she will grow up to be Republican or Democrat; you don’t know if she will be a Unitarian or a Pentecostal: you are just sure that you would rather die than hate her. You made a vow to love.

I am pretty sure this is not part of your job, part of our community, even part or culture and nation. Only here are you called to say, “I’d rather die than hate you.” This is what we become in worship; this is what it means to be a church. Worship, though, and being a church is something we do together; it is what we become together. It takes that choice, to be a part, to jump in. A part of me still wants to say find this oneness purely for the joy of following Christ, as an act of discipleship and nothing less. But it doesn’t work well that way. It doesn’t work in that even though it is your choice, it is not your ideal; it is our life- you choosing a side more than making a way for yourself.

I want you to know that this is my prayer for you and I hope you will do it not because it is the right thing, or even for the desire to see a goal met, but on account of joy, my joy. I didn’t understand this when I started, but I do know: joy is about a life together. And this life together really happens right here, in this place. Amen.