Sometimes we reject what are parents are, and dismiss what they try to do for us, sure that we will soon be, and probably already are, exceeding what they have offered us, from our lives.  I certainly went through that phase, at one time, though I know how foolish that can sound now!  Now, as I look back on my dad’s life, for example, I am pretty amazed at his talents and accomplishments.  I can see now how he challenged himself, to the best of his abilities, to be a good steward of his considerable gifts.  Not only did my dad use his math skills after Grad School to pass the very difficult Actuarial Exams, which helped to leverage his first and only job, and join the team of Actuaries, that helped pioneer the computerization of calculating life insurance coverage, to a whole new level of accuracy in the 1950’s.  But when his company needed him to grow other parts of the organization, he also went on to learn the emerging social science of people management that enable him to rise through the ranks, and become the manager of the companies largest division at the home office, and, by multiple accounts, was a highly regarded boss.  It was a successful career! 

Still, that was not everything that interested my dad.  He had always been a tinkerer and a builder like his father, and there was a part of him that always wanted to be an architect, too.  So, at age 60, after his heart-by-pass surgery, he accepted the early retirement he was offered, and immediately signed up for the ELCA Mission Builders program, basically, a roving band of retired Lutherans who went around volunteering to build new church starts.  Curioiusly, most of the volunteers in my parents crew were from the upper Midwest, and they always worked on projects in the sunny south during the winter months.  My mom and dad did three projects with the same foreman, Ford, and a handful of fellow volunteers that came and went over the changing of the seasons.  The volunteers had to either bring their own RV camper to live in, or stay with a parishioner.  The host congregation also fed them their meals, in exchange for their service.  And everyday, before beginning work, they gathered for devotions, praying that, what they built, the Lord would grow. 

The work was challenging.  Most of the volunteers never had construction experience, including my dad.  They worked with contractors, had deadlines, and, by necessity, learned lots on the job.  My dad proved to be a fast learner, and Ford took him under his wing and taught him everything he knew, finally recommending him to take on a project the next year, as a foreman himself, for the first time.  My dad certainly did some soul-searching and wondered if he had the sufficient skills and gifts?  But, he decided, this was his opportunity.  Over the summer, he spent countless hours diagramming and planning, indulging his architectural aptitude, staying in contact with Ford, and working to be as prepared as possible, come building time.  One of the pitfalls for this project was that the building design was to be of metal siding instead of the wood frame that he had always worked with.  But basically it was the same process. 

Long story short, he succeeded in completing the project, but it entailed some very long days.  Contractors were difficult to work with, promises were routinely broken, and he was forced back to the drawing board, and he spent much more time on the phone, than on the work site with his friends, which he missed.  But, in the end, you could never take away the satisfaction he clearly felt in finishing that job as foreman, the architect, in a manner of speaking, of Shepherd of the Hills, Birmingham. But after that year, he retired from his second career, this time to the golf course! 

My dad’s namesake, Paul, the Paul from our 1st Corinthians reading, continues with his building metaphor in this week’s installment, in the 3rd chapter:  “…like a skilled [a wise] master builder I laid a foundation, …Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.”  You can almost hear the whir of the skill saws cutting, the punch of the nail-guns over the compressor, and the sweet smell of pine wood, as the volunteers got to work, after morning devotions.  The foundation, of course, that Paul was laying with his preaching, was Jesus Christ.  Each builder, whether Paul, or us, must fit our building, our-selves, to that foundation.  The look of our exterior, even the layout of our inner sanctuaries, may be completely different, one from another.  Yet each of us has a gift for building on the foundation of Christ.  Not that we have construction worker talents, or architectural aptitude, but we all have the gift of faith.  The church is not just a building, not just as a balm for when we are hurting, but the church is the foundation upon which we build our life of faith that we live as new creations, born again, to be sent out, as lights and beacons to the world, reflecting the strong foundation, that supports us.  Our faith, the gift God gives each of us, is honed and made steely strong here.  We pray and listen and discuss God’s word and discern the movement of the Spirit, as we edify and exercise our faithfulness.  We build it up on the foundation of our cornerstone, Jesus Christ.  “Each builder must choose with care how to build on it,” as Paul said.  

The church is the people.  Paul knew that, of course.  They had no First Corinthian Church to walk to each Sunday morning.  They gathered for worship in the homes of believers.  Paul’s metaphor of building was about them.  You know that sign, “excuse our mess: work in progress?”  The sign on Paul’s worksite, the nametag of every member in Corinth, would have said, I think: “Excuse our Progress: volunteers creating vision!”  Each builder was putting their gift to work for the progress of the church and the Body of Christ. 

Finally, with his words, Paul hammers together the crowning piece of his foundation.  “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”  To the ears of the Corinthians, a temple building people, this had to come as jarring and radical news!  Paul had opened up a sacred space that none of them had ever thought of being welcomed into!  Everyone knew that the Temple in Jerusalem was the very dwelling place of God.  And in the holy of holies, the innermost chamber of the temple, where the ark of the covenant was kept, was where the chief rabbi alone, and only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, ever entered that holy and sacred room.  But Paul declared that they plural(!), the church together, the collective whole of the Corinthian believers, were the temple of God.  That the most holy of holies, dwelled in them!  Christ, Paul insisted, had taken out his saw and cut loose the Spirit of God, to dwell in believers, in the Body of Christ.  God was taking on flesh in us, another extension of the Christmas story, and growing in the lives of all those reborn in Jesus. 

Paul laid the foundation.  We are the builders.  Not many of us have gifts for construction building, but we all have the gift of faith, and as good stewards we “choose carefully” how to use our gifts as we build on the foundation of Christ Jesus.  We are God’s temple, God dwells in us, and grows our faith. 

“Excuse our Progress: volunteers creating Vision!”  That’s our sign to the world, on our building, and the nametag over our hearts.  

About 10 days before President Hosni Mubarek announced he was stepping down, a structure began to take form in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square.  A circle of tents was erected, creating a center, the calm eye, in the middle of a hurricane of change.  When reporters came looking for who was in charge, they found “discipline” and “organization,” but no leader, no head.  Clearly, responsibilities were accounted for: some were cleaning up, others making banners, and there was a cadre of volunteers who took to controlling the flow of people into Tahrir Square, setting up barriers and frisking everyone who entered by their home-made gates, to insure secure and peaceful demonstrations.  Eventually, some wore name tags, also home-made, out of masking tape, to identify their positions, but which no leader had told them to make. 

So the familiar refrain, “take me to your leader,” whether reporters used those exact words or not, fell on, confused ears.  And the worker-volunteers, the protesters, could only answer, it’s “the people,” or, “the youth,” who are in charge, or, “all of us are participating in this.”  Another part of the starfish-like organization was in a home on the fringe of Tahrir Square, where a group of tech-savvy young Egyptians, including a Google executive Wael Ghonim, contributed their social networking know-how. 

Everyone played their part, but no one person was “the leader” of this protest-movement.  I kept thinking it would turn out to be Mohamed El Baradei, the Nobel laureate, who would be named their leader.  But it wasn’t him, anymore than it was the Google organizer, Ghonim, or Ahmed Maher, a prominent youth activist, or the Muslim Brotherhood.  Yet each played a role, each “planted or watered,” to use St Paul’s analogy, and the spirit and resolve of the movement continued to strengthen and grow.  Outside pressure from around the world also contributed, no doubt, until finally, in a bloodless coup, the starfish-movement received the news that the spiders head had been metaphorically cut off.  President Mubarek had just stepped down, his vice president announced.  And, the celebration began! 

Paul’s church in Corinth, considering they could not use Facebook and Twitter, made use of a starfish, home-made organization too.  Paul preached in the town square, and they met in people’s homes for worship and instruction.  They were drawn by word of mouth, and the compelling message of the new thing God was doing in Christ Jesus, who offered salvation to all, even to Greeks, not just Jews, both male and female, slave, as equally as free, all were welcome.  But who was the head of the movement?  Who was in charge?  Paul’s home-made masking tape ID would have said preacher, or evangelist.  But he never intended to stay and accept a call to be their Pastor.  Paul had empowered them all to share the ministry. 

And the Corinthians had a variety of gifts, which they were proud of.  They had any number of talents in their thriving metropolis.  So why did factions and camps form in the Corinthian church?  Paul says, basically, that they reverted to societies’ unspiritual ways: “brothers and sisters,” he said, “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh.”  They grew to desire recognition for their worldly wisdom, which they were so proud of, rather than use their talents for the good of the whole movement of the church.  When Apollos, a highly gifted speaker, arrived in Corinth after Paul’s 18 month tenure had ended, he gathered a very strong following too.  Whether Apollos encouraged the division that grew or not, is difficult to know.  But Paul’s point is, when it comes to proclaiming the gospel it doesn’t matter who is the more mesmerizing orator – which even Paul acknowledged was Apollos – but the gospel message, preached by either of them, is the same, and points to the same Jesus the Christ.  Just as we know that parents, for personal reasons, may favor or like one child over another, yet they dare not let their love for them, their care, respect, and nurture for their children, be divided other than equally, and to the best of their ability, which is the daily hard work of a parent.  Likewise, we all have our favorite pastors in the history of a congregation, but we have to work, as best we can, with the pastor, or pastoral team, that is presently under call. 

So, Paul’s metaphor of the Corinthians as infants, or babies, is pointed indeed!  He claims he needs to feed them with mother’s milk, and that they are not capable of solid food yet: “[Since] I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food…”  Why?  Because they quarrel over the leadership of Apollos vs. Paul, and so effectively cut themselves off as members of the Body of Christ, acting merely as other rivalrous and inconsiderate humans, not as the community of Christ.  When they are desirous to get their way, to stake out a claim based on their own personal interests, these jealousies look like ‘infantile outbursts’ to Paul. 

We see this in our culture all the time, most recently in our political leaders, when the parties dig in ideologically, exaggerating their differences, and encouraging factions and divisions, in a negative spirit that seeks to dominate the other.  But who has a monopoly on the truth?  Who can afford not to listen and discern the many other possibilities and opinions that make-up the bigger picture, we cannot possibly bring into focus all by ourselves?  

Paul’s recipe for the ‘young co-workers in the gospel he is nursing’ is to remind them how spiritual growth happens.  Growth in numbers is not as important to Paul, as growth in the maturity of faith!  Paul employs the metaphor of growing plants or crops in the field.  “I planted,” he says, “Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” 

               Paul defines both himself and Apollos as deacons in the church, diakonoi, or servants, and fellow workers, for the good of all – another masking-tape badge he wore.  Later, deacons would become an official title and position in the church, but Paul simply intends to model for the Corinthians what each of them is called to do.  Each of them is important and necessary in the life of the congregation, but only God can give the growth that leads to the best gift of all, the gift of life and grace. 

And amazing thing happened in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, in the days of Protest.  It was said that a group of Coptic Christians took to forming a circle around those Muslims who were observing the call to prayer.  In effect, they created a sanctuary, a safe worship space, for them to practice their faith.  So in the movement for the larger Egyptian society to achieve freedom, and a more democratic and just form of government, two distinct religions worked together, respecting their differences.  Together, they offered their individual gifts – planting and watering – so that, God could grow and liberate all of them.    

I felt surprisingly connected to my neighbors in the historic Chicago blizzard this week.  After hunkering down from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday evening, we just had to get out of the apartment.  Maybe it was that snowman someone made just outside our window that was inviting us!  He, or she, though rooted in place, and not quite symmetrical, looked ready to get up and go.  Not like our car, which was snowed in with every other car on our side street.  Drifts up to the door handles immobilized it, as it waited for the city plow to come and rescue it.  We’d have to hoof-it.  And that was part of the charm, though a bit disorienting, that there were more people in the streets than there were cars.  Only Sacramento and Milwaukee Avenues were cleared, and all that snow absorbed the sounds – the cars, ambulances, and the Blue Line train – that usually define life in the city, and the stillness gave way to a muffled calm that I’d never heard before.  But, most eerie of all, the pedestrians looked us in the eye as we passed!  People even exchanged greetings!  What city had I walked into?  Who stole my stoic, anonymously hip, Chicago?  It was more like a small town, where everybody knows everybody.  Kim and I ended up at the Logan Bar, where we ordered pizza and a beer, and sat by the fireplace feeling warmed, not only by the fire, but by the feeling of connectedness to our neighbors, in the middle of the historic blizzard. 

I know that wasn’t everyone’s experience.  Joey Hurd, a CPS teacher and friend of Unity, emailed about his journey.  He dutifully finished class on the south side, hopped on Lake Shore Drive to head back to Edgewater, as he always does, and the rest is history.   He was one of the thousand or so, whose cars got stuck.  He was having it towed to his mechanic on Friday because it was frozen solid with ice, even under the hood of the car, he said. 

Where were you in the blizzard of 2011?  There are any number of ways to view a storm, depending on your perspective: it could be a beautiful gift of God– something to share with your neighbors.  Or a diabolical act of God– that has you running to check your insurance coverage.  It could be an opportunity to get outside and sled, or make a snow-angel.  Or for someone with a medical emergency, it could be a dangerous obstacle, in getting to the hospital.  It could be the workings of Mother Nature, or an angry god’s punishment.    

But despite our varied experiences and interpretations, it also unites us, gives us focus, and it surfaces our creativity and persistence.  City of Chicago road crews, police, and Illinois National Guard, all coordinated to clear roads and rescue stranded passengers.  Neighbors and block clubs worked together to dig out cars and walks, and even cleared allies.  While I sat comfortably inside all Wednesday, a few of my neighbors had banded together to do just that.  I guess they had one snow blower too, but according to my next-store neighbor, a Brian Urlacher sized guy, it was mostly him and a friend who got the bulk of the job done, with only shovels. 

In chapter 2 of 1st Corinthians, Paul is demonstrating his focus, persistence and creativity, as a leader in their church.  Paul says it in a variety of ways, but he always comes back to his main focus, to paraphrase a politician, “It’s the cross, stupid!”  In Paul’s words, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”  Paul is battling the messages of other preachers and their much more lofty, and wise words, who have come through Corinth after him!  Paul, contrary to how we usually think of him, seems to have been a very ordinary preacher.  Not all that eloquent, at least compared to the rhetoricians of the day, those trained in Greek Philosophy.  “Brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom,” he writes, “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,” says Paul.  But, Paul was persistent and focused on his message of the cross: I did it “so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God.” 

I can’t help thinking that behind Paul’s focus on the cross, is his famous image of, “the Body of Christ.”  It is so much easier to picture what Paul is saying to them here, if we remember that portrait, Paul’s snowman if you will, that he paints in chapter 12: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  And Paul goes on to describe the individual parts of the body, and how each one is necessary to make it function properly.  The eye, the hand, the stomach, the nose, each one contributes its unique gift for the good of the whole body.  The church are its people, the Body of Christ.  When we’re healthy, up-and-adam and taking fluids – the Spirit of God is alive and well too. 

There’s nothing like a blizzard to focus the efforts of a city.  And there’s nothing like the blizzard that has blanketed and changed the urban church in recent years, to focus our attention on mission!  As I read yet another article on the changing urban church in America this week, I skimmed over the opening paragraph, the one that invariably has some startling statistic about change and decline.  In this case the pastor described her Methodist church in MA as having had a membership of nearly 1,000 back in 1953, but now only 25.  We’ve heard those stories from all around us here in Chicago, too.  “It is estimated,” she continued, “that a whole bunch of the churches across America today are in some kind of crisis that will involve change. It behooves all of us to understand the process of change.”  I stopped.  What was the amount?  Not just a whole bunch, but 70%!  Can it be, that 70% of American churches are in some kind of crisis that will involve change?  Her congregation had embarked in a Turnaround Ministry, a specific plan, in this case, to share a Pastoral Residency program that was gaining traction: “As one member of her church put it, ‘Change is not killing us. It is bringing us back to life!’” 

Without a focused Vision and mission, Christ has a hard time enlivening our Body, nothing to give it life, nothing to give it legs to get up and walk and be a witness to the neighborhood and world around us – we’d be stuck in the snow.  But using our creativity, as we are doing, to share our spaces with our neighbors, is giving us a focus, and has called us to get ready to be a kind of Community Center, a new being in Christ.  Each of us, individually, by our faith and our calling, participate in the whole Body of Christ.  We share the Life and the Light that is being revealed to us in this Epiphany season.  It gives us ‘vision,’ and we can see how our spiritual bodies have been, holed up and hunkered down, in this urban blizzard, long enough.  The body of Christ is not rooted in the ground like a snowman, but with all its parts working together we get up and find that we are, ready to go.  

How do we “live up” to our call to “be fools for Christ?”  As Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”  “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 

So, here we are, still in the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  I want to thank you for taking up the challenge with me to hear God’s word from Corinthians in this Epiphany season, as we lend our ears, our hearts and minds, to be inspired by St. Paul!  Don’t worry, we’ll move to chapter 2 by next week! 

The Corinthian people, we have found, are a stubborn and wayward bunch.  But then, what congregation isn’t!  Stubbornness is not new to Paul, a Jew, steeped as he was in the identity of an Exodus people, resistant to God’s path of new life, which Moses led them on from Red Sea to Promised Land.  Paul’s church was made up of Greeks, however, not Jews.  And their stubborn and wayward ways were born more out of polytheism.  Paul reports that they are dividing themselves, one from another, into factions, perhaps setting up some kind of Pantheon of competing gods.  Some following Paul, some Apollos, some Peter, and some, trying to best them all, say they follow Christ.  Instead of building up the church they are bringing it down, and their witness to the community, to those they want to share the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection with, is only weakened by these divisions. 

In a word, Paul seeks to unite them in the “cross.”  The cross is Paul’s shorthand for cross and resurrection, and at other times for ‘the dawning of the new age,’ and also for ‘the fulfillment of God’s promise to God’s people.’  And for Paul, it is also a living contradiction: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it it’s the power of God.”  Sometimes Paul talks about the wisdom of God being hidden from the wise, in the cross, but it is never a secret that is aimed at an inward journey, or just for the individual alone, but he always talks about its power in the 3rd person, for the whole community.

The way of the cross and resurrection is an ever growing, morphing pathway.  It cannot be nailed down by agreeing to propositions, the right creed, or agreeing to the right opinion.  So here at Unity, we’re learning discussion and active listening, instead of confrontation and bullying.  That’s why in our New Member classes we don’t insist on one dogmatic theology or a certain denominational belief-set, but we welcome newcomers to join the road all of us are already on, the way of the cross.  The way of the cross is through the foolishness of faith, faith in the grace of God, which comes to us new each morning, and sprouts up in the dardest places. 

 

So, how do we “live up” to our call to “be fools for Christ?”  And what does that look like?  [William Willimon] Paul says, it all sounds fine to our Sunday-morning ears.  When we read the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount: “blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn…” it seems to make sense here in this context.  But to our Monday-morning ears, the flush of foolishness rushes in.  Try living out, “blessed are the meek” tomorrow at work and see how far you get.  As William Willimon says, “Meekness is fine for church, but in the real world the meek get to go home early with a pink slip and a pat on the back.”  Or, “’Blessed are those who are peacemakers’; they shall get done to them what they refrain from doing to others.  ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake;’ they shall be called fanatics.”

So, is the world more like Sunday-morning or Monday-morning?  Well, the first Christians in Jerusalem at Pentecost were thought to be drunk on new-wine at 9am!  Shortly before Paul was martyred, the Roman Procurator Festus, listening to Paul testify in his own defense, in a typical speech about why he was a follower of a ‘dead man come back to life,’ was so alarmed, that he demanded Paul undergo a court ordered psychiatric evaluation!  ‘By the world’s standards of what works, who is greatest, and what’s practical, the Christian faith can look foolish indeed.’ 

The benevolent dictator, Hosni Moubarek of Egypt, has for many years looked rational and in control of his country, but suddenly, he looks like an emperor with no clothes.  The sweep of demonstrations in the Arab world, like a tsunami wave across the region, from Tunisia to Egypt to Lebanon, are insisting on change for more accountable democracies in their countries’, in a great role reversal of the foolish and the wise. 

As Lutherans, the spirit of reformation is not unfamiliar to us.  And it reminds me of the Chicago Pride Parade in June.  Talk about fools for Christ!  There we are, holding our church signs in the middle of a parade, a celebration for LGBTQ rights and, for just being who you are.  Bystanders, here and there, throughout the entire parade route keep snapping their heads back, doing a double-take when they see us.  But then, they thank us, praise us even, for marching.  In being able to join those, who for so long have been considered weak, or nothing, poor in spirit and hungering for righteousness, it can only look like foolishness to those who are outside, but to us who believe in new life, “it is the power of God.” 

And so Kierkegaard could famously say, “Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them.”  Of course, western Christendom has inflicted deep wounds, mostly when it has confused the power of the cross, with wielding power in the world, from the crusades to the Iraq War, from repressing women, racial and sexual minorities, to dominating and abusing the earth, water and sky of God’s creation. 

But Christianity has also shocked the world in bringing healing to it, through the cross.  The cross as a ‘scandal’ to the world, is a challenge to all rival values, not because we lift it higher than the rest, not because its art is more beautiful than the rest, not because we can use its blood to challenge others to blood sports and battles.  But because the value of the cross is a ‘power in weakness,’ it overcomes by emptying itself to live in cooperation with and by including others.  It is non-violent and ever-life-affirming as it points to the real power in the world, the one thing we are not, and cannot be, God.  The power of the cross is all light, and all life, in the midst of fear and darkness and the world’s rivalries. 

This is how we “live up” to our call to “be fools for Christ!”  We proclaim Christ crucified.  Because, though most of us are not “wise by human standards, not many are powerful, not many are of noble birth,” yet we can claim our baptism into Christ’s death, to become joined to his resurrection, and a witness to the world.

The way of the cross, in the words of the Prophet Micah, is “to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”  This is the parade we walk together, “fools for Christ.”