In Paul’s time, they were just learning how to be Christians. It’s true: nobody had ever been one of those before, nobody had ever lived as a follower of Christ, and they had no idea how to go about doing it. Paul had established communities in his travels, most probably meeting in houses—thus the term “house church”—many in secret, and it was a new thing for them. Compounding it all was the fact that this Jesus fellow wasn’t like anybody else: he wasn’t an aesthete like those guys over in Qumran nor was he a military leader—no matter how wishful their thinking he was called the Prince of Peace. He wasn’t a moral leader, he didn’t seem to be much interested in who was sleeping with whom . . . in fact, he didn’t preach about sex once, although he did talk about divorce, about protecting the woman in an unequal relationship. Most of his preaching was about money, about its use and abuse, and not unrelated, how to treat your neighbor.
This last prompted some, at least, to live in communes, or so Luke says in Acts, and it seemed to have prompted a lotof them to re-think leadership of their communities. That was important, because communities were where it’s at in first-century Christianity, you couldn’t be a Christian on your own, Christianity was practiced in community with others. That’s as true today as it was back then, I think: as Christians we’re called to do the difficult work of living in community. Every time somebody says to me “I can be Christian on a mountaintop, I don’t have to be in a church, I want to tell them—and sometimes I do—that they are full of it, because Christian spirituality isspirituality in community. If you are not in community, you may be spiritual, but it’s not a Christianspirituality.” John Calvin put it even more strongly when he said “unless we are united with all the other members under Christ our head, no hope of the future inheritance awaits us” and “beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation can be hoped for.”
Of course, there’s one caveat here: Calvin’s not speaking of a building or even a denomination, but the greater church, what he called the invisible church, which includes and subsumes the Presbyterian church that he helped found. And he based his ecclesiology, his theology of church, largely on these passages from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians . . . it’s here that Paul talks about the church as a body and Christ as the head . . . Note that we close our passage with his famous “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 from this metaphor flows all of Calvin’s—and Paul’s—ecclesiology, his theology of church, if you will. Note the “for:” it’s forjust as the body is one, as in becausethe body is one we can effectively govern the church, that is, we can govern the church in a Christ-like manner.
I’ve always said, whenever I’m asked—and sometimes when I’m not—that one reason I’m a Presbyterian is that we do representative government right. For those of you who don’t know what I mean, we are governed by elected officials, elected to represent us just as our congress-persons are, and . . . and when I went with my pastor to Presbytery meetings, where representatives elected from each church Session get together with pastors to help govern, I saw a system that, by and large, worked. Not that it didn’t have its little squabbles, its little ups and downs, but hey … look at the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives—you knowhow well they’ve been working, lately. And one reason—perhaps the mainreason—it works is this little thing: all the members of the body, though many, are one, and they are one in Christ.
We are one in Christ, and in Christ, as Paul says over in Colossians, all things hold together. He is the center which keeps us from flying apart; if we separate, if we split up, as this denomination has before, as individual congregations have been known to do, one thing I can say: Christ is not in it. Christ holds all things together . . . and you can spin it around, too, you can come at it from the opposite direction: without Christ, true unity is impossible. And more to today’spoint, true sharing of power and leadership is not possible. For if church splits have nothing of Christ in them, neither do jealousies or anger or the protection of power and turf.
There are varieties of gifts, Paul says, but the same Spirit. It’s the same Spirit, whether you be pastor or janitor or choir director or plumber, and if it’s the same Spirit, how can anyone claim superiority or turf? It’s through the same Spirit that we are all chosen, that we are all called, no matter what our gifts. There are varieties of services, but the same Lord. How against the ways of the powers that be thisis, where we value some jobs—no matter how vital—over others, and justify paying some people much less than a living wage based on our—not God’s but our—notions of how much a job is worth. If our societies were truly Christian societies, it would not matter the nature of the job, all would be paid enough, all would have enough.
This doesn’t mean everybody is identical: there arevarieties of services, says Paul, and to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, not for their own personal good, or even for their family’s good, but for the commongood . . . to one is given the utterance of wisdom, another the utterance of knowledge, to another the gifts of healing . . . to one the gifts of music, to another the gifts of teaching, to still another the gifts of preparing a mean casserole or repairing the locks on the sanctuary doors. All are given specific gifts, all are given tasks to do by the same Spirit, and for the glory of the same God.
This notion is at the heart of the Protestant doctrine of call, of the priesthood of all believers: God calls each of us to specific tasks—note the plural—and we are gifted through the Holy Spirit to perform them. In the Presbyterian Church, we follow Paul in this: our offices, our positions are supposed to be gifts-based, we are to hold church position based on the gifts the Spirit has given us. By this theory, I have some gifts in the realms of preaching and pastoral care—no smart remarks from out there—but thank God there are others with financial heads on their shoulders to appoint as treasurers and heads of finance committees, because if I did it, we’d be in altogether worse shape than we are now. And likewise, thank God there are people who can play the organ or piano or lead a choir, because if it were left up to me to do it, well . . . have you ever heard a bag of cats sing?
Notice where all this puts the emphasis: it puts it on the person, and their abilities, not the office and any intrinsic worth. If a person is appointed or elected or hired for a job, they are done so by dint of their suitability for it. If they are not suitable, then they should perhaps not be in it. As Paul points out here—and our theology of call affirms—there is nothing special about a particular office, about a particular position or job. There are all kinds of jobs . . . the only thing special is the person filling it. That’s why—and this is controversial, I know—I find it hard to respect a position. As Paul says, there are varietiesof position, all are of value to God. It’s not that I have no respect, but I reserve thatfor people, and that after they have shown they should be respected.
Well. Tomorrow’s Martin Luther King’s birthday celebration. In a few minutes we’re going to sing an iconic civil rights hymn. And reading today’s passage, it’s striking how egalitarian Paul was, not just for the times, but human beings, period. In this passage—and the remainder of chapter 12—Paul lays out his criteria for church leadership—and thus, of course, membership—and not oncedoes he say anything about race or gender or sexual orientation, for that matter. He doesn’t say “There are different gifts, but the same Spirit, unless you’re black.” He doesn’t say “All those gifts are activated by the same Spirit, unless you are a woman, and then it must be the devil . . .” No. All gifts of the Spirit are givenby the Spirit. End of story.
And of course, this is hardly the strongest case for inclusion Paul made . . . he is, after all, the one who wrote “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” It makes centuries of exclusion and bigotry in the church all the more unexplainable, because make no mistake—Paul is the founding theologian of the church. That’s why I thank God for prophets like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who through their lives and—yes, death—consistently call the church to live up to its promise of inclusion for all. Amen.
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