1 Corinthians 1:10-17

There’s an old joke told about a man who had been stranded on a desert island for years.

One day, while strolling along the beach, he spotted a ship in the distance. This had never happened in all the time he was on the island, so he was very excited about the chance of being rescued.

Immediately, he built a fire on the beach and generated as much smoke as possible. It worked! Soon, the ship was heading his way. When the ship was close enough to the island, a dinghy was dispatched to investigate the situation. The man on the island was overjoyed with the chance to be rescued and met his saviors as they landed.

After some preliminary conversation the man in charge asked the man on the island how he had survived for so many years.

The man replied by telling of his exploits for food and how he was able to make a fine house to live in. In fact, the man said, "You can see my home from here. It's up there on the ridge."

He pointed the men in the direction of his home. They looked up and saw three buildings. They inquired about the building next to the man's house and he replied, "That's my church - I go there to worship on Sundays."

When asked about the third building, the man replied, "That's where I used to go to church."

It’s funny, but it’s also sad.

Sad because it taps into such a sticky truth in our world…it doesn’t take much to divide us in the church.

There’s another story that’s told about two churches in Mayfield County, Kentucky.

It’s said the locals refer to the two churches as “Peg Baptist” and “Anti-Peg Baptist.”

And that these nicknames go back to the 1890s, when two deacons at a church were always bickering and arguing. It seemed nothing the other could ever do was right.

One Sunday one of these deacons put a wooden peg in the wall at the back of the church building for the pastor to hang his hat, and the other deacon lost it when he found out that a peg had been put it without consulting him first, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

He went off and started another congregation in town, and for generations they’ve been known as “Peg Baptist” and “Anti-Peg Baptist.”

I wish It wasn’t believable, but it is.

It’s one of the most common questions people outside the church ask of those inside.

“Why can’t you people get along?”

It’s the question that sits at the heart of today’s passage from 1 Corinthians.

When I began this preaching series, I suggested that this book has a great deal of wisdom for us in the 21st century Christian church, and today’s passage certainly bears that out.

Immediately after offering a beautiful greeting in the first 9 verses, Paul doesn’t waste any time.

He dives right into the reason he’s writing this letter.

This isn’t a social correspondence, this isn’t Paul dropping a quick note to say, “hello.”

It’s a letter with purpose, Paul is addressing concerns he has about this congregation in Corinth, a church that, as I mentioned two weeks ago, he himself founded.

Now he’s hearing stories of problems and issues that are popping up and threatening to tear down all that God had built during Paul’s time there.

And nothing is more disruptive than disunity.

PETERSON: “…some from Chloe’s family brought a most disturbing report to my attention—that you’re fighting among yourselves! I’ll tell you exactly what I was told: You’re all picking sides, going around saying, ‘I’m on Paul’s side,’ or ‘I’m for Apollos,’ or ‘Peter is my man,’ or ‘I’m in the Messiah group.’”

What Paul is describing is a church that is forming camps around different personalities and different teachings.

You’ve got those who claim loyalty to Paul, their founder.

You can almost hear their confessions of allegiance:

“Paul’s the guy who got us started in the first place. He was the first one who shared the good news of Jesus with us. His teachings are the ones that sit at the heart of who we are as a church.”

But Paul isn’t the only teacher that the church in Corinth has known.

Not long after Paul left the Corinthians, another teacher, known to be a fantastic speaker with an impressive knowledge of scripture and a persuasive and charismatic style, came along. A man known as Apollos.

And now some in the church are claiming loyalty to him over Paul.

“Paul may have started this church, but Apollos…his teachings are so much more engaging and challenging. The future of this church…hinges on what Apollos teaches. He’s the better preacher.”

[TULSA]

And even more, there’s another group beyond these two, a group naming themselves as followers of the apostle Peter.

We’re not even sure if Peter ever made it to Corinth.

It could be that some of Peter’s associates came there, teaching what they had received from Peter.

However the teachings of Peter got there, there are some Corinthians in the church who say he’s their guy.

“We’re with Peter! What he has to say has for bearing on the future of our congregation than Paul or Apollos. You’d better pay attention to what Peter teaches, or this church has no future.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s even a fourth party Paul calls out.

The Messiah party.

“All you guys are so hung up on Paul and Apollos and Peter…but we follow Jesus the Savior.”

Now that may sound good, but Paul doesn’t seem to single them out as having any better motive than the others.

They’re basically just attaching the name of Jesus to their pre-formed opinions.

“We’ve heard your thoughts…NOW let me tell you what Our Lord thinks about it all.”

I’m with the Messiah.

As NT Wright says, it’s a sobering thought that the church faced such division in its earliest years.

We sometimes have this picture of the early church as the perfect model of pure faith and community, but even back then human pride and sin get in the way of the church’s work.

Two thousand years later we still struggle with the same issues.

We still form our little camps in our congregations, and in our denominations, and between our denominations…

And as I’ve said, I think COVID has made this even worse.

Times of lockdown and isolation have only deepened our tendency towards creating this little camps.

There’s a great term that some have been using in recent years instead of “camps.”

They call them “ministry silos.”

When asked to describe what a “ministry silo” is, one Christian author put it this way:

Silos are the walls that are between departments in an organization.

Imagine silos on a farm. They're those very tall buildings filled with valuable crops. But they're separated from each other by very high walls.

On a farm, silos protect the crops from cross-contamination. But in a church, silos turn colleagues into competitors. … silos will tear apart a church faster than just about anything. From a silo-built church come jealousy, slander, gossip, bitterness, conflict, and competition.

That’s what’s happening in the Corinthian church.

It’s being torn apart by a sense of competition that is descending into bitterness and conflict.

It’s being torn apart by these silos within the church that think and feel as though they are the only ones who get it.

And I think it’s a real tragedy in today’s church when we fail to recognize our own tendency towards the same behavior.

Truth be told, we’re not that far removed from Corinth.

Now in our passage Paul uses some rhetorical questions to point out the absurdity of what these people are doing.

“Are you silly enough,” he seems to say, “to imply that Jesus himself can be cut up into tiny little pieces? Or that I (or Apollos or Peter)…that I am somehow equal to Jesus?”

And right here Paul is getting at the real heart of what’s happening here.

When he asks, “Was I crucified for you? Were any of you baptized in MY name?” Paul is exposing this division in the church for what it really is:

It’s idolatry.

A word we don’t think about much in the modern church…but we should.

Idolatry, simply put, is whenever we elevate something in our lives higher than God.

Kyle Idleman, who wrote a great book on idolatry called “Gods at War,” says this:

“Idolatry is the tree from which our sins and struggles grow. Idolatry,” he says, “is ALWAYS the issue. It's the trunk of the tree, and all other problems are just branches.”

Idolatry is the trunk of the tree…and all other problems are just branches.

I think he is so right.

Sin in our lives, and sin in our churches, ultimately point to the reality that something has displaced God in our hearts.

The call in Scripture is clear: God comes first. Everything else comes after Him.

But we so often allow other things to take that primary place in our lives and hearts.

It can happen with anything: relationships, money, power…it can even happen with things we wouldn’t normally consider.

It can happen with things in the church.

Ministries, money, people, buildings, teachings…good things can become idols if we’re not careful.

Interestingly enough, it’s clear that in Corinth, idolatry has sprung up around the issue of baptism. And baptism is certainly a good thing.

But in Corinth they were attaching some sort of spiritual significance to the person who baptized, as if it was some sort of status symbol.

And Paul is clearly frustrated by it.

“Look,” he says, “I think I only baptized two of you, best as I can remember. Ok, well…ok yeah there was one other family…but that’s it.”

You can almost hear the exasperation in his voice.

He’s saying, “Quit it!”

Stop!

I am not the one in whose name you were baptized. Quit acting like it was.

And then these powerful words in verse 17:

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

Now Paul isn’t criticizing baptism here…Paul took baptism very seriously.

But he is pointing out how it, like so many other things, can become something Jesus never intended it to be.

Baptism is a wonderful thing…but it is not the heart of what we’re about.

The heart of the church is preaching the gospel…the good news of Jesus.

And I think Paul is pleading with the Corinthians, as he would plead with us:

“Don’t let anything get in the way of that calling.”

Don’t let idolatry to anything cloud your understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

“For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”

I read that verse, and I start to wonder.

If Paul were writing this letter to me…to you…to Gilfillan Church…what would he call out?

Are there idols in our lives that need to be identified and dealt with?

What do we cling to too tightly, and how is that causing us to build our own silos?

I believe every church needs to be watching out for this. We need to be vigilant.

When I began having conversations with the vacancy committee here at Gilfillan one thing that struck me was the shared desire for this church to grow and to thrive.

That’s what we want. That’s what we pray for.

But as we wrap things up for this morning let me give you a specific image for the kind of prayer we offer for our church.

An image that I think is very helpful for all churches as we emerge from the frustration and dysfunction of lockdowns and isolation.

The image I would give you is one…of open hands.

In Corinth they were clinging very tightly to false understandings of what was important.

How are we doing the very same thing?

I think as the Christian church enters a new season of post-pandemic ministry…I think one of the things God is asking us to do…is let go.

Let go of the things that bind us and hold us captive.

Because it’s those very things that also divide us.

Friends I speak from experience when I say…we can’t live our lives like this [STANCE].

I think God is inviting us to live our lives like this [OPEN].

I think…no, I know…that God lovingly desires to pry our fingers off those things that we cling to in unhealthy ways.

He wants to show us with new grace and mercy any of the ways our own idolatry prevents us from becoming the people and church God would have us be.

It’s not an easy process…and sometimes it’s not pleasant.

But it’s so crucial.

Because as God frees us from our misplaced loyalties, he then frees us to become more united in our fellowship, more passionate in our pursuit of him, more fruitful in his kingdom work of sharing the good news with the world.

And the question is really quite simple: are we willing to hear what he has to say?

Because as I said last week, this isn’t about scolding or shaming.

It’s about a God who desires to lovingly correct his children.

He comes to us like a Father would come to a child who has fallen…he picks us up, he dusts us off.

He shows us where we were wrong…and then he shows us the way we’re meant to go.

If that’s your desire, let me offer a song to you that will guide us into prayer…