Sunday, May 5th, 2024: Growth as Grace"
First United Presbyterian Church
“Growth as Grace”
Rev. Amy Morgan
May 5, 2024
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?
4 For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely human?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each.
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
8 The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.
9 For we are God's servants, working together; you are God's field, God's building.
A weed is a plant growing where it isn’t wanted. The healthy, green blades of grass I spend hours pulling out of my vegetable beds are the same plants that I plant seeds for in the bare patches of my lawn. The dandelions I attempt to eradicate from my yard are a thrill to pick in the wild so I can make a wish as I blow the seeds into the wind (and probably into other people’s yards). The aspen saplings that I have to snip all summer in my flower beds are the same trees that I drive to the mountains to see in all their golden glory in the fall.
It's hard to say what plants are good or bad, right or wrong. At our outdoor worship service last year, several folks shared their feelings about bindweed, some marveling at its lovely little flowers and others wondering at its ability to grow so quickly and still others troubled by its invasive nature. There are different camps, apparently, on the virtues of bindweed. The same goes for many other plants we view as weeds. I’ve read that we should leave dandelions to grow in our yards because they loosen up the soil and contribute to the health of the environment. The only way my old aspen trees can continue to grow is through sprouting new trees because they are a single organism.
I don’t know a great deal about gardening, but I know just enough to get easily confused. Just when I think I’m doing the right thing, someone tells me I should be doing just the opposite. This makes it all the more challenging for me to get my garden to grow and thrive, when I feel like I’m getting competing advice and keep changing what I’m doing.
This is how the Christians in Corinth felt when they wrote to Paul. Paul had founded their community, shared with them the gospel of Jesus Christ, and showed them how to live as Jesus-followers in a world of competing values. Corinth was one of the most diverse cities in the Roman empire, populated with freed slaves and wealthy merchants, social climbers and back-stabbing politicians. Paul had stayed in Corinth for about a year and a half, and other Christian missionaries had come through after Paul. The early Christian movement varied greatly from place to place. Each community heard different stories about Jesus, different theological teachings, different instructions on how to worship and pray, different advice about how to live with their neighbors.
So in the years after Paul left Corinth, the church grew more and more confused and more and more divided. Just when they thought they were doing the right thing, someone else came along to tell them they were doing it wrong. They couldn’t thrive as a community because they were getting competing advice from different church and community leaders. Eventually, factions began to form around the various ideas, practices, and missionaries.
Some people in the Corinthian church felt superior to others because of their wealth or social status. Some of them felt a sense of spiritual elitism. Some felt a loyalty to Paul and his teachings while others were convinced that other Christian leaders usurped Paul’s authority. There were arguments in the community about how they were to practice their faith and how they were to live their lives. There were divisions over what to believe about the resurrection and other theological questions.
When Paul hears about this, and when he receives a letter from the church asking him to weigh in on these divisive matters, he takes them to task by telling them they are acting like babies, like toddlers fighting over a toy. When Paul says the Corinthian Christians are “of the flesh” (or “fleshly,” as it is sometimes translated), he isn’t making reference to bodies, materiality, or physical lust or gluttony. To be “of the flesh” means living in rivalry and disunity within the church.
The church, he says, doesn’t belong to any of them. It also doesn’t belong to Paul or any other church leader. The church belongs to God and God alone. It is God’s project, and anyone who helps it is just a field hand, doing what God tells them to do. When Paul talks about his work in relationship to Apollos, he says they are “God’s servants, working together.” The word he uses for “working together,” or “co-workers,” is synergoi, the same word from which we derive the English word synergy.
Paul sees that the Corinthian Christians view the church as their project, and they are divided about what is most important, what is a weed and what is a plant. They can’t agree about what is going to help this project succeed, what is going to help them grow. Their squabbles over who to follow, which spiritual gifts are the best ones, who has higher status in the church, how they should live in relation to people of other faiths, what to believe about the resurrection, and what constitutes righteousness and morality, are evidence that they have lost sight of the only thing that really matters – the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. Paul returns to the cross again and again in this letter to emphasize that all power and glory belong to Jesus. God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead, and God is the only one who can help the church and its people grow into the likeness of Christ.
The church today is even more confusing and divisive than the church of 1st century Corinth. Over the last 2,000 years, so many schisms have rent the church into so many factions and denominations that it’s a wonder any of us even bother with it anymore. In truth, more and more people don’t bother with it. And many of the folks who are still invested in church could care less about who is right and wrong about Christian theology and practice. No matter what we do, someone will tell us we’re doing it wrong. From how we baptize to who we serve at the Lord’s table, to what we believe about who is saved and how and why, churches, and the people in them, can’t agree on much. So a lot of folks have just stopped paying attention and are fine with whatever. Despite deep and long-standing divisions in the church, many people tell me they don’t see much difference between one church and another.
What’s ironic is that John Calvin, one of the instigators of that great church schism called the Reformation, called most of our disagreements adiaphora, or “non-essentials.” Unless a belief or practice had a clear and specific scriptural referent, people could do and believe whatever they wanted. Calvin may have supported this idea more in theory than in practice, but his motivation was to remind us that the church does not belong to us. It is not our project. The church, and the whole creation, in fact, belong to God. God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead, and God is the only one who can help the church and its people grow into the likeness of Christ.
As churches struggle with a scarcity of resources, members, and cultural influence, our fear can drive competition and divisiveness to the forefront. We think that if we just do the right things, believe the right things, or communicate the right things, our church will surely grow and thrive. Over the years, I’ve watched churches chase after the contemporary worship movement, the small group model, the missional church movement and the satellite church model. Every year, dozens of books are published on how to make your church grow, and they all have contradicting advice. Get out in your community and serve. No, wait and pray and discern. Be a Micah 6:8 church. No, be a Matthew 25 church. Get involved in advocacy. No, stay out of politics. Be authentic. No, be all things to all people. Use your building as a mission center. No, sell your building and go worship in nature. Add more programs. No, keep it simple.
Even within individual churches, different areas of ministry and church leaders compete for resources and importance. The pastor should spend more time visiting older adults. No, the pastor should spend more time with children and youth. We should spend more on mission outside the church. No, we should spend more on attracting new members. We should hire more program staff. No, we need more administrative staff. Leaders of various ministries compete for volunteers, and members get the message they should be simultaneously singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school, ushering for worship, serving in the soup kitchen, and baking treats for fellowship time. It’s exhausting and confusing, and then we wonder why churches aren’t growing.
And so sometimes we just need to take a step back and realize how childish we are. We need to remember that there is only one thing that truly matters: the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. We need to acknowledge that this is God’s project, not ours. And any growth we experience is ultimately the work of God. The best we can do is to be synergistic co-workers in the garden of God’s people.
Fortunately for me, gardening is an annual reminder of this message. I can plant seeds and pull what I think are weeds, I can water and fertilize, sing to my plants and prune them and try to give them the right amount of sun and shade. But I at least know enough to know that I don’t know what I’m doing. I know that I am, at best, a field hand, trying to do what’s right, even if half the time I don’t really know what that is. And every time I see seeds grow into lettuce and herbs and flowers and fruit, I know it is God’s work, not mine. I’m inept enough to know I deserve zero credit.
Perhaps that’s what we need in the church. To simply know enough to know that we don’t know what we’re doing. To be inept enough to know we deserve zero credit for any growth that occurs. That doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing and wait for God to make things grow. Paul planted and Apollos watered. But if we can hold our skills and passions, our beliefs and practices lightly, perhaps we can work together synergistically in God’s garden. And when we do see growth, we can see it for the sheer grace that it is.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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