Where does our unity of purpose come from?  Paul’s answer in 1 Corinthians is stark and unequivocal – our unity comes from belonging to, “our Lord Jesus Christ!”  This will be his answer to all the divisions in his Corinthian congregation.

The other day I heard a story about a young pastor.  In his new parish he sought to address what he thought was a serious problem in the congregation he was called to serve.  During the service half the congregation stood for the prayers and half the congregation remained seated for the prayers, and each side insisted theirs was the true, original, tradition.  Nothing the pastor said could resolve the impasse.  Exasperated, he sought out the previous pastor’s advice, an old man, now in the nursing home.  “So, tell me,” the young pastor asked, “was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?”  “No,” answered the old pastor.  “So then, it was the tradition to sit during the prayers!”  No,” he responded.  “Well,” said the young pastor, “what we have now is complete chaos- half the people stand to  pray and half the people stay seated, and they love to argue about it.”  “Yes,” said the wise old pastor, “that was the tradition.” 

While this is a fictional account, the problems Paul addressed in Corinth were real, and they were threatening to divide believers, one from another.

We read again today from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians.  In fact, we continue to read from it, all during this season of Epiphany.  And, we continue to read from Corinthians, not only this year, but all three years of the Epiphany cycle.  In other words, whenever we are in the season of Epiphany, we’re reading from either 1st or 2nd Corinthians.  So, what is it in these letters that Paul wrote to the church he started in Corinth, that has to do with Epiphany?  This is the question that has drawn me to take up this challenge: to preach from Corinthians all through this season, until the festival of Transfiguration, on March 6 this year.  I can’t give you a definitive answer about what the connection is at this point, but I invite you to help me along the way, to discover what it is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, that fits with Epiphany, this season of revealing and light. 

We know that Epiphany begins with the story of the Magi, or 3 wise men coming from the east, who bring gifts to Jesus the new-born king.  As outsiders, and gentiles, they come to reveal the savior of the world.  The first Sunday of Epiphany then, can be celebrated as the Baptism of Our Lord, where Jesus is revealed as the Son of God, the anointed and chosen one.  All this revealing begins to shed light on the mission of Jesus in our world, and so we hear the gospel stories of Jesus’ calling his disciples. 

So, one reason we read from Corinthians in this season, might be because Paul himself is one of those disciples.  Jesus called him, not in person like with the 12, but in a vision, as early as 3 years after his death & resurrection.  Paul then goes through a long period of formation, before he sets out to fulfill his primary call, his mission to the Gentiles.  Paul was in Corinth for a year and a half, in the years 50 and 51, and Paul wrote this letter to his congregation there, a couple years later.  This was all within about 20 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.  So this letter is one of the earliest New Testament books there is. 

Corinth posed unique issues and challenges for Paul as a busy sea-port city in Greece.  Its people had the reputation of “lacking charm and grace,” at least compared to Athens or Rome.  Others knew it as “sin-city,” which sounds quite contemporary to our ears.  The transitory population of merchants and sailors, compounded by the influx of transplants emigrating from various parts of the Roman empire to make their fortunes as newly freed citizens, fulfilled the ungracious, gritty, reputation!  Syncretism proliferated in such diversity, from the polytheistic worship of Greek and Roman gods, to the Jewish temple, to this new Christian church which met in people’s homes.  And Paul’s church reflected this diversity of Corinth, racially, economically, and spiritually, which in turn heightened the schisms, or divisions, Paul addressed in his letters to them. 

Paul identifies one source of division as a “quarreling” over who church members belong to.  Some say they belong to Paul, others to Apollos or Peter.  Paul asks rhetorically, “Has Christ been divided?  Was I crucified for you?”  Obviously not, so “be united in the same mind and the same purpose, by our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Paul, for you belong to Christ. 

For us, the matter of, who we belong to, is rarely recognized as having “holy” or theological implications.  If we admit we belong to anyone besides our self, we would be admitting weakness.  To belong to someone else seems like subservience, like giving up your freedom, it could call into question your self-esteem, and people might suggest that you seek counseling!  If you want to fit in you’d say, “I am my own person.”  That’s our American, post-modern, rallying cry! 

Saying, “I belong to Christ,” threatens to cut us off from all the benefits of the world and our friends out there!  And the challenge for us is to believe it, and live it out.    

Division is therefore not new in the church, it just takes different forms, and manifests in different degrees of tension, both creative and destructive.  Paul faced divisions in Corinth, in the quarreling that divided one from another and threatened to fracture the Body of Christ, to whom they belonged.  But in Christ, they could learn to love. as Jesus taught them.  In the famous words of chapter 13 of this letter, Paul says: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way;” and, “faith, hope and love abide, these 3; and the greatest of these is love.”

To love one another and have the same purpose requires a strong foundation.  Paul rooted his appeal in the death and resurrection of Christ.  [J. Paul Sample, NIB} ”And because each of us belongs to Christ, we are re-created to live in community.  The individual is never simply and singly related to God.  Caring for other believers, building them up, encouraging them, consoling and even warning them,” according to Paul, “are not options for believers; they are a requirement of faith.  Believers must be ready to accommodate to the community,” to the Body of Christ, to which we belong; for in Christ, we are a unity.  

“Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, along with my friend Sosthenes.”  That’s how Paul begins his Letter to the church at Corinth.  That’s how he begins all his Letters to the congregations he formed, indicating who the letter is from, as was the custom of the day.  What was unusual, however, was to list co-workers in this greeting.  Yet Paul does that regularly, contrary to the custom of the day, indicating that this is ‘a shared ministry.’  Paul is training in new leadership.  Sosthenes, this time.

And the really interesting question for me is, was this Sosthenes that Paul calls a friend, a brother in the faith, and a co-worker with him, the same Sosthenes, ruler of the synagogue in Corinth when Paul lived there for a year and a half, building up the congregation, and the one who persecuted Paul and his Christian converts?  From enemy of the Christian movement, to convert himself, that would be a dramatic turn around for Sosthenes!  And it certainly would dovetail nicely with Paul’s message to the Corinthian church, that they are “a holy work in progress!”  They are called to turn their lives around, change their old ways, and make a unity together, a fellowship, a gathering, based on their common faith.  Because as disciples, followers of Christ, we live in a tension that is not quite yet resolved.  That though we are “enriched in Christ, and are not lacking in any spiritual gift,” as Paul said, yet we are still “waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Did Sosthenes receive that message?  Did he come around?  You be the judge!  Scholars can’t agree.  Or, at least, they can’t be sure if it’s two different Sosthenes, or one in the same. 

The Sosthenes we know as the ruler of the Corinthian synagogue comes from Acts Ch.18, a character who is the spitting image of Paul, back when he was called Saul.  Back before Jesus knocked him off his high horse, and called him to leave his life of persecuting the church at Tarsus and arresting its members, to take up a new life, be baptized and worship him, instead of trying to destroy the Body of Christ.  Like Paul, Sosthenes was a leader in Judaism, only at Corinth.  He too was persecuting the church, and arresting followers of The Way, as the early Christian movement was called.  So it happened, when Paul was preaching and calling together a congregation in Sosthenes town, even recruiting in his synagogue, he arrested Paul and brought charges against him to the local magistrate, Gallio.  But Gallio washed his hands of the mess, and let Paul go, and just as suddenly the crowd turned on Sosthenes, attacking him.  And Gallio did nothing about it – an un-holy mess! 

Paul had to be blinded before he saw the light, turned around, and followed Jesus.  Perhaps this confrontational day in Corinth was Sosthenes’ moment of truth?! 

It’s interesting that Sosthenes name comes from the word sozo, which means, “safe,” “rescued,” and is used principally of, God rescuing believers from the power of sin, and bringing them safely to God.  We don’t know if this is the same Sosthenes, Sozo, Paul now calls a brother, a friend, and co-worker in the gospel, but if it were, what a holy rescue story it would be!  He would be fulfilling the meaning of his name, “rescued.”  It would be like a miracle rescue on a Grey’s Anatomy episode, like Christina saving Derrick after being gunned down.  Like seeing your worst enemy show up in church, now a new person, worshiping with you, and singing God’s praises.

Is Paul working with that Sozo now?  A co-worker in a turn-around mission!  A former persecutor of the church, changed into a leading spokesperson?!  Can our faithful mission and witness bear such fruit here? 

For Paul, becoming a member of the Body of Christ, the church, is all about the “call.”  He’s called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.  And it’s not that he doesn’t have fabulous qualifications to fall back on or brag about: (a) he’s highly educated, above most everyone in his tradition; (b) as an apostle, he’s endured suffering like few can claim, from shipwrecks, to beatings, sleeplessness to hunger, (c) and, as a Roman citizen, he’s entitled to all the benefits therein, which may have been why Gallio didn’t want to touch him.  But that’s not what qualifies him to be an apostle.  He is an apostle “by the will of God.”  Instead of boasting in his self-made qualifications, which are considerable, he finds his self, his identity and integrity, all he is, in the grace of God.  His life is under call, he’s been turned around, made holy in baptism, and called on a mission.

It’s the same call, he insists, that his Corinthian congregation enjoys too, who are called to be saints.  They are made holy, “sanctified” in Christ Jesus.  No matter what sins his congregation commits or how messy it gets, if Jesus the Christ makes you holy, you’re holy.  In the Body of Christ that can’t be taken away.  And, it is an un-holy mess in Corinth!  Paul’s letter will detail one problem after another, more than any of his other churches: quarrelling, immorality, slander and suing each other.  Not a pretty picture!  Yet Paul insists, they are holy, in Christ Jesus.  Holy, and at the same time, “they are a work in progress!”  We can’t forget that tension: forgiven and sanctified, but still waiting for the full revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Today we are the holy ones in Christ Jesus, the congregation of Unity Lutheran Church, Chicago.  We are called to be saints, set apart from the world, while at the same time being sent into it.  No matter the tension, no matter the problems we face, holy we are, in Christ Jesus.  Today, we rejoice in the gift of new members, whom we are proud to welcome and call our sisters and brothers, co-workers in the faith.  They are holy, and made so, “together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord JC,” Paul says, a reminder that we are part of a much bigger movement, an expansive Body of Christ.  We are called like all the rest, and made holy, and belong to something much bigger than ourselves too, which helps to remind us that our problems are small, really, in the context of the big picture. 

So today, we celebrate that “this is a shared ministry.”  We are called to continually be reforming, turning around to follow Christ again in new ways, to answer the call of transformation as the Body of Christ.  We are a holy work in progress.  We have all the spiritual gifts necessary to be the church in this place, but we are still awaiting the full revealing of Christ Jesus.  We are confident, but we’re also humble.  We cannot act out of self-righteous rigidity, knowing that we are not yet a finished product.  But we are always seeking anew how and where God is calling us.  For by the call of God, we are ‘a holy work, in progress.’   

I’m not going to even try and compete with the wonderful gospel story of our Hymn of the Day today!  In fact, I can’t wait to sing it!  (sing) “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.” 

This, haunting, and beautiful Irish Air, is also called, “St Patrick’s Breastplate,” or more tenderly, “The Deer’s Cry.”  The beast plate, or lorica, was originally the armor that the Romans wore for protection in battle.  Patrick’s lorica was his song, his creedal confession!  The hymn is so distinct, so powerful, that it tends to stick in your mind long after you sing it.  For Patrick it was a Trinitarian oath of protection against death.  The song is said to have been taught in the monasteries from the 7th C. on, as a sign of faith in the face of some very ‘dark ages.’ 

Patrick was born into a Christian family in Britain, in the year 372, or, some say, 381, or maybe 389, others contend.  In any case, Christianity was still young in the British Isles.  And though Patrick’s family came from nobility, at 16 he was captured by raiders from Ireland, and taken away to be sold into slavery.  He was a common laborer on a farm, though he never gave up his faith or his prayer life.  It was here that he first learned the Irish language which would serve him so well later on.  Eventually, he managed to escape, and immediately he went into the priesthood and was ordained three years later.  In 431 he returned to Ireland as a missionary, and the following year was consecrated bishop of Ireland.  From then on he pursued his passion of organizing churches, and converting the Druids to Christianity, and he died of course, on March 17. 

Now the story behind St Patrick’s Breastplate, or lorica, is a wonderful one!  Patrick met the Druid king Loegaire at Tara Hill, or, the hill of the kings in Ireland, for a kind of challenge.  He picked the night of ‘the festival of the Druid fire-worshipers.’  This spring festival began with the extinguishing of all fires throughout the country.  And that’s the moment when Patrick proudly and defiantly lit a Pascal fire on the next hill, in plain view.  This, of course, enraged king Loegaire, who set off in full attack mode to find, and kill Patrick, he and his men, dressed in full lorica – helmets and armor, weapons in hand.  Patrick and his followers, naturally began to flee – wearing, for their protection, their ‘monastic robes,’ and, ‘singing their lorica’: “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.”  And he added verses as they ran: “I bind unto myself to day, Christ’s incarnation, his baptism in the Jordan River, his cross of death for my salvation, his bursting from the spiced tomb… I bind unto myself today.”  And as they fled, as the legend goes, Patrick and his companions were miraculously transformed, into deer, or, as an 11th C. translation tells it: “on that occasion they were seen before those who were lying in ambush as if they were wild deer having behind them a fawn.”  This is where the title, “The Deer’s Cry,” comes from, of course.  Faithful followers of Christ, invoking the name of the Trinity, and all the ways that Jesus saves us, crying it out, in song, after they boldly lit the paschal fire, the fire of new life, the first light of Christ at the Easter Vigil.  And, “the Three in One” protected them, saved them, by making them appear as fleet footed, innocent deer, running by! 

Now, if you heard the tragic news from yesterday, you know some 18 people who could have used such a lorica, from the ambush of a deranged shooter.  A 22 year old with a automatic weapon decided to walk into an open air meeting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in her Arizona district – ironically, just outside a “Safeway,” – and ended up killing 6 others and wounding 10 more.  The congresswoman’s office was a target last spring, which was vandalized, windows shattered, door broken down, immediately following her vote in support of the Health Care bill in Congress.  Thankfully, no one was there at the time.  All the while, however, the rhetoric against her and her district has been virulent, including a website that featured the cross-hairs of a rifle scope aimed at a map of her district.  Polarizing language, demonizing others, can only inflame, and too often results in unintended consequences. 

Jesus clearly lived and modeled another way, like St. Patrick’s, and apparently, Congresswoman Gifford’s, that was, principled, fearless, articulate, and non-violent.  Jesus took with him the weapons we all do, as his disciples and followers, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, that alights on us in our baptism, and which is our lorica everyday.  We live as innocently as deer, as fiercely as the Pascal fire. 

Patrick was unafraid to light, and receive life from, the new fire – a David, going up against a Goliath.  His lorica was the strong name of our Trinitarian God.  But curiously, not just about Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Patrick also sings of the natural world that the Druids worshiped, with a twist!  He sang that, “the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks,” all “praises the Lord of my salvation.  For salvation is of Christ the Lord.”  It was a bold message to the Druids on the eve of their ceremony to worship the gods of nature, that king Loegaire claimed to control.  This too was a part of Patrick’s lorica. 

So when times are tough we put on our lorica, against all temptations.  We do not worship our jobs, even in this time of fearful unemployment.  We do not worship our family, though they are dear to us.  We do not worship the sun, or our freedom, or our country, or our military might, or our bank accounts, or anything else that commands our attention, or begs for our allegiance. 

Sometimes that puts us in an unpopular place.  It may cost us a battle or two, with our friends or family.  But the ultimate victory is certain when we put on the Breastplate of St. Patrick, our lorica.  Patrick’s aim was to bring the good news to all people.  In that, he was much like the Apostle Peter before him.  Peter was also in a challenging situation when he was called to Jerusalem, to explain himself before his colleagues in the faith, those who were not yet convinced of his outreach plan to the Gentiles, to accept a new group.  So he put on his lorica, if you will, and sang it to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,” that we were called to preach to the Gentiles too, that “beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”  That’s all the lorica, the prayer and protection, Peter had, but the rest is history.  Through Peter and Paul, the outreach has continued to this day.  And with St. Patrick we, “bind unto ourselves today, to the strong name of the Trinity.”  

On this 9th day of Christmas, we hear the story of Jesus birth from John’s gospel.  Not quite the same warm and cuddly version as Luke’s, or the dream-inspired, OT fulfillment story, as in Matthew.  No Joseph and Mary at all!  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” John declares.  Much interpretation has gone on, after the story of the babe wrapped in bands of cloth was laid in a manger!  The baby Jesus has become the Word, the same word of God that we hear in the creation story – “and God said, let there be light!  Let there be earth, the seasons, plants, animals and humans” – that Word!  Jesus has become the universally begotten Son of God, as well as the babe in the manger. 

As cosmic and universal as the implications of this particular birth are, we often flub up what this means for us!  “The Word made flesh that was in the beginning with God,” is very different, for example, than how the Deists of the Enlightenment conceived God, many of whom were our “founding fathers.”  And some in America still want to believe like they did.  The Deists believed in a god who, once upon a time, birthed creation and all things in an orderly way, set the universe in motion, but then, like a great architect who was ready for retirement, went away somewhere and was never heard from again.  They believed they were now the privileged chosen-ones to have dominion over all creation.  Jesus can help us in this, they believed.  He was a wise teacher, but they didn’t believe he had risen from the grave, much less that he was in the beginning with God.  And, there was no ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, because they thought the Trinity was a false doctrine, albeit a clever one. God was much like a clock-maker, who carefully set the pendulum in motion, and then had nothing else to do with our world.  

When we hear some of our brothers and sisters praising the founding fathers as men of great faith, and getting away with it, we know we have, for the time being, lost the battle of public opinion.  Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin declared a revolution on tyranny, and won the war to implement their democratic experiment laid out in the wonder of our incomparable Constitution.  Let us all join in reading it aloud in the halls of Congress.  But we cannot say that they are good examples of a biblically-based faith, for they were never messengers of the gospel of Jesus as “the Word with God, who was God.”  Most of them were good church goers, but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to teach their un-Trinitarian, deistic beliefs to my children in Sunday School or Confirmation.  Even when they came to church, they would not have joined us at the table to receive the bread and cup of communion, but instead, regularly turned it down, not believing in the sacraments either. 

And so John’s Prologue, our Christmas story today, is to be celebrated for the gift we receive: the beauty and depth of Jesus, the Son of God, “who was with God in the beginning,” creating with God – the Word, that God spoke.  We receive the gift of a new-born savior who is more than just a wise teacher, but reveals God to us like never before: “No one has ever seen God,” as John says, but, “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”  In the Word made flesh, we know God best.

Every year on New Year’s Day I am reminded of the inescapable nature of the flesh.  How you and I, made in the image of God, are also made of flesh, a nature that is a wonderful gift, however vulnerable and fallible.  I’m talking about the crazy few, the Polar Bear Club folks who willingly, and against all better judgment, take a plunge into the icy waters of Lake Michigan.  Not unlike a baptismal death and resurrection, a drowning and rising again!  It doesn’t seem advisable, and certainly not comfortable.  Our fleshly bodies don’t seem made for it, even if a hot sauna is waiting right afterwards.  But it certainly is a good reminder that our wonderfully made bodies are totally in God’s hands.  Without God, we cannot live “full of grace and truth.”  We have no future, except in the promise of the resurrection of the body. 

“All things came into being through [the Word], and without him not one thing came into being… He was in the world, and the world came into being through him…”  Even today, it is popular to believe that in becoming a Christian, you escape life in the flesh – usually equating our carnal nature as sinful.  Like the deists before them, when it comes to God in the flesh, or the incarnate God born to us at Christmas, they don’t want to go there.  That’s not popular.  About as popular as jumping in Lake Michigan on New Year’s Day!

              

George Heider from Valpo has said that, “the question arises almost every time I teach a course on the Bible, that if God knew what a mess humanity would make of God’s creation, why did God create the world as we know it?”  And, things can get pretty messy!  The “why” question (the question of Theodicy) has never been conclusively answered, but we know the “what” for sure.  The “what” is the Christmas story, the incarnation, the fact that Jesus is God with us, born in the flesh.  God not only can help us, but God wants to help.  In fact, God, by sending Jesus, invests in us and creation.  “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” as John says, “and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Sophia-wisdom tells us much the same story: “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist,” she says in Sirach. “Over the waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway… I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage,”

Male or female, Jewish or Christian scripture, the bible portrays our God as an incarnate, flesh-loving, very involved, and continuously creative God.  God does not retire or forget us.  We know God in the beauty of creation, and especially in the Son, ‘begotten of the Father’s love.’  Jesus the healer, the lifter of the lowly, the truth-teller, the bread of life, the Good Shepherd, the living water, the servant of all; Jesus in his fleshly nature, as Word and deed living among us; in this Jesus, we know God’s “grace and truth” best.  Whenever we abandon our belief in the living Spirit of God, and in the resurrected Christ, we tend to take our privilege as ‘created-ones’ absolutely, and do not fall on our knees in the straw of the stable, to confess our vulnerable and fallible nature, before the new-born child in the manger.  Jesus, the “Word with God, who is God,” has been born to us, not just because God can, but because God wants to.  “What has come into being in [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”