SERMONS

Rev. Anthony B. Robinson, Guest Preacher

I Corinthians 12: 4 – 20

Well, it’s nice to be back in this role, at least for one Sunday! Thank you, Angela, for the invitation to preach and participate in worship leadership today.

Every now and then I hear someone say something like, “Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if we could be like the early church, recapture that original magic . . . When people were totally united, when faith burned bright, when the church was overflowing with spirit and love!”

Sometimes I respond to such comments by saying, “Well, good news, we aren’t as far from the early church as you might think. Read the New Testament.” When you do read the letters of and to the early church, like Paul’s letter to the congregation in Corinth, you discover that it wasn’t quite as hunky-dory or ideal as we imagine.

In fact, in this letter, I Corinthians, from which our epistle lessons come during this Epiphany season, we find Paul writing to a conflicted congregation, one engaged in some pretty intense power struggles. Some in that congregation felt that they were the spiritually “enlightened,” while others in their view were the spiritually benighted. The benighted were “in the dark,” lacking at least as the enlightened saw it, the true light.

So in his two letters to the congregation at Corinth, a lively seaport town and bustling trade crossroads of the ancient world, Paul sought to address such issues.

One of the ways Paul does so is with his wonderful image of the church as the Body of Christ. He writes, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (I Cor. 12: 27) By speaking of the church in this way Paul affirmed two truths that are sometimes in tension: diversity and unity.

Diversity: we aren’t all the same. Just as the body has many different parts, each with its place and function, so the church is made up of different people with different gifts. There is diversity. It’s important, necessary. As Paul puts it, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?” But also important is unity. “There are many members,” said Paul, “but one body.”

I arrived at the very first congregation I served as a minister, over thirty years ago now, to find it deeply divided. At the first meeting I attended as a pastor I walked in to find that one faction in the congregation, a quite conservative group, were demanding that the congregation immediately withdraw from the denomination.

Not sure what else to do I suggested a kind of moratorium, a cooling off period, during which we study Scripture together. I had some vague recollection from seminary New Testament classes that I Corinthians was all about a squabbling congregation, so I said, “Let’s study I Corinthians.” We did that, in small groups, for ten weeks. Well, God is good, and it turned out to be pretty much what the doctor ordered.

One of the things that Paul does in I Corinthians and in our reading for today is what some contemporary writers and thinkers call “managing polarities.” The idea of polarity management is simple but profound. Polarities are opposites, opposites which don’t function well independently. Like “unity and “diversity.” Turns out we need both. And we need to keep the two in a lively tension. Sometimes we think of such polarities as problems to be solved, rather than polarities to be managed. So the unity people push for a unity that morphs into uniformity. Or the diversity advocates push for a diversity that devolves into fragmentation.

Long before the “discovery” of polarity management in our own time, Paul and indeed much of the Bible were onto it. One of the things I most love about Scripture is that it does live with great polarities and hold competing truths in tension.

For example, faith and works. Paul says, “By grace we are saved through faith.” We can’t earn our salvation; it’s God’s gracious gift. There’s an important truth there. But James answers (remember our tour in James last fall?), “Faith without works is dead.” If our faith isn’t expressed in action and behavior, forget it. Important truth there too. The thing is, Scripture holds the tension between the two, refusing to treat this as a problem to be solved. Rather it is a polarity, a tension, to be managed.

So I want to reflect on three polarities that need to be managed in our personal lives as well as in our life as a congregation. The first is one I’ve already mentioned: the polarity of unity and diversity. It’s the one Paul engages with his description of the church as a body, the Body of Christ. “There are many members,” writes Paul, “but one Body.” And a little earlier in today’s reading, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Everyone is gifted by God, not just some. All the various gifts and parts are important: diversity. Yet these varied gifts are given, “for the common good.” Unity.

Some years ago I served on the Cancer Care team at a large hospital. That team was made up of a mind-boggling array of specialists. There were oncologists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, nutritionists, oncology nurses, administrators, and several of us chaplains. We met once a week to pool our different insights and perspectives with regard to twenty or so patients. We were quite aware of our diversity, of our different perspectives and takes on things. But every now and then, one member of the team, a psychiatric nurse, would ask, “How are we doing as a group?” Then she added a line that has stayed with me. She said, “The group has a life too.”

She meant our group, the Cancer Care Team. She was asking us to take off our specialist hats for a moment and be aware of ourselves as a group, our life together. “The group has a life too.” Her implied question, as we dashed in late, focused on our own agendas or rushed out early was, “Are we contributing to, playing our part, taking care of the life of a group, the whole beyond the parts?”

She really helped me to better understand Paul’s idea of the Body of Christ. “The group has a life too.” Sometimes in the church we are so aware of our particular needs or concerns, or those of a part of the congregation with which we identify, that we forget that “The group has a life too” and each of us have a responsibility for it’s health and strength.

I have experienced the same truth or tension in the family, where we are both, individuals and a group. When kids are adolescents, in the wonderful and awkward in-between years, they become aware of their uniqueness, even their special-ness. They begin to discover the particular self or person they are. And that’s great. But it’s not the whole story. In those years I would occasionally say to my kids, “Yes, you and your plans are very important and you are part of a family.” It’s not an either/ or; it’s a both/ and. Sometimes that’s a real gift, and at other times a huge challenge.

So, in the church today: diversity and unity. “There are many members, yet one body.” We are called to be mindful of and true to both. We are called not to lose the tension between the two.

Okay, here’s the second polarity to manage that I want to mention. I’m thinking of it, at least today, as the tension between compassion and courage.

“Compassion” means that we feel the pain of another. I think it’s quite remarkable and admirable that since January 12 more than half of U.S. citizens have made a donation toward relief for Haiti. We see the pain and are moved by compassion to respond. Here at Bethany, not only do we respond to such situations as that in Haiti or last fall in the Philippines and Samoa, but we have responded compassionately to the plight of immigrants and undocumented workers, providing housing and other forms of support for the stranger and sojourner in our midst.

But compassion too needs to be held in balance and tension with other truths. Most of us, by now, are familiar with the language and concept of co-dependence. It’s not always good or helpful to take care of people in trouble. Sometimes care, however well intended, allows people not to come to grips with their own situation or problems for themselves. It takes great courage to tolerate some pain in the interests of growth.

One of the most powerful stories I ever heard that expressed this truth was told by Harold Wilke, a remarkable United Church of Christ minister who led the church in ministry with  and to those with disabilities. Wilke himself had been borne without arms. On one side, he had a very short appendage with a couple of fingers, on the other shoulder nothing at two fingers.

As a boy, Harold struggled to learn to dress himself. One day a neighbor lady was visiting as young Harold sat on the living room floor and tried to get his shirt on. It was tough. Finally, the neighbor, unable to tolerate the pain, hissed at Harold’s mother, “Helen, why don’t you help him.” Harold’s mother, tears streaming down her face as she looked on said, “Can’t you see that I am?” Had she always dressed her son, he would never have learned how. To not fix it for her son took tremendous courage.

In the church it’s difficult for us when someone is in pain or is unhappy to not wish to or try to fix it. Sometimes we are right to respond to alleviate pain. But not always.

A friend of mine who works as a consultant to organizations and churches on personnel issues has sometimes made this observation: “In the name of compassion to one, we are sometimes cruel to many.”

What she means is that sometimes we can be so concerned to fix one person’s problem or pain or to take care of one person’s needs, that we don’t see that in doing so we are really sacrificing the good or welfare of the larger group, team or congregation. She had observed the way that many times a church carried an employee who wasn’t doing their job, believing that in doing so they were being compassionate. But they were, in effect, asking other members of the staff to do that person’s job for them–in the name of compassion to one, being unkind to many. It takes a lot of courage to face such a situation honestly.

Compassion is a virtue, but it needs to be held in tension with others qualities, like courage and honesty.

A third polarity to be managed is the polarity of leadership and community, or maybe leadership and team or partnership. This too is a polarity to be managed and not a problem to be solved.

A couple weeks ago a group from a local Seattle congregation asked me to meet with them to talk about leadership. That congregation is in the midst of a pastoral search process and they are trying to come to grips with what seems to be an on-going debate in their congregations over what they are about and what they want and need in a new minister.

Some in the congregation argue, “We need a strong leader. We need someone who will take the reins, who will give clear direction.”

Others in that congregation find that worrisome. They respond, “No, we need someone who works as part of a team, who values collegiality, who supports others.”

So this small group asked me, “Which is it . . . Strong leader or Shared ministry and partnership?” You know what I said, don’t you? I said its not an either/ or, it’s a both/ and. To set it up as they had, “strong leader or working collegially as part of a team,” seemed to me a false dichotomy. It’s not one or the other. Strong leaders build teams and empower others in their growth and leadership. It’s a both/ and; a polarity to be managed.

In the book From Good to Great by Jim Collins, Collins speaks of what he calls “the tyranny of the Or,” and “the genius of the And.” He uses the example of the auto industry. For years American car manufacturers clung to the tyranny of the Or. They said, you can have high quality or low cost, but not both. But along came the Japanese car manufacturers who understood the genius of And. They said, we can and must do both, high quality and low cost. Well, we all know the outcome on that one!

So with leadership and partnership or leadership and community. It’s not an either/ or; it really is a both/and. Healthy organizations are congregations value leadership and partnership.

My observation working with many congregations today is that the struggling, unhealthy ones have often lost the tension. If some conservative churches tip the balance in favor of leaders who are too dominant; often more moderate or progressive churches err in the other direction.

For example, last year while teaching in Canada, I noticed how often churches were so apprehensive about leaders or leadership, and so enamored of the language of partnership, consensus and community that they had turned their ministers into mere staff people, employees, hired help. They were not to be leaders. But the churches were suffering for it. Often there was no real or effective leadership or sense of direction.

Working there with churches in Canada I found myself saying, “You guys are playing bunch-ball.” What I meant by that was that their congregations often looked like 6-year-olds playing soccer. You know how that looks right? Everyone runs to the ball, no one plays their position. The result: sore shins and little progress in moving the ball.

They were so enamored of values like partnership and community that they thought everyone in the congregation needed to be in on every decision. The result was “bunch-ball” and stuckness. I suggested that it might be better in the church, as in soccer, to learn to play one’s position and to trust others, including leaders, to play theirs. Hold them accountable, but let them do their job.

There is, again, a polarity to be managed, a polarity of leadership and partnership, or leadership and community. Both are important. When one trumps the other, problems result.

Diversity and unity; compassion and courage; leadership and community–none are problems to be solved. All are polarities to be managed.

In the next chapter of I Corinthians, I Corinthians 13, Paul speaks, famously of “love.” Toward the end of that beautiful chapter, Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

We live here and now and we see, but not clearly; we know, but not fully. Our knowledge is partial, our sight is limited. Only God sees perfectly, only God knows completely.

So we live prayerfully and in community, bringing our partial truth and insight into conversation and healthy tension with the truth and insights of others. This side of the Promised Land, this side of the fullness of God’s Kingdom, we are called to manage and live with polarities, balancing passion and humility.

Passion and humility: say there’s another one!