"A FLY IN THE OINTMENT"

(Sermons on 1 Corinthians - 5)

8/05/01 - The Rev. Ted Broadway

SERMON

Pastor Alan warned us that there would be difficult, hard-to-take passages in I Corinthians. So here is a real doozie and Alan is on vacation. It reminds me of the old saying- "when the going gets tough, the tough go on vacation." Just kidding.
 
My sister-in-law once gave us some sourdough starter. In a jar was a little lump of not the best smelling dough. Just a little bit from that jar was enough to make loaves and loaves of sourdough bread, not to mention pancakes and such. We gave some away and probably those we gave the starter to others and who knows how far that sourdough starter has gotten. It has likely leavened loaves all over the West Coast and perhaps beyond. When just a little of that sourdough leavening gets into a big bowl of flour and water- whisssht! It puffs up the whole thing. The Scriptures, from Jesus to Paul, tell us that evil is like that. The leaven of evil has widespread effects. From the saying in Ecclesiastes- "Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment stink and a little evil undoes much good" to the modern saying that "one bad apple spoils the barrel" show us the double badness of bad. Not only is the person who commits the evil harmed but people all around are affected and infected. Evil is insidious and very social.
 
That being said, let's take a look at today's piece of Scripture. In the church in Corinth a man was having sex with his stepmother. It was common knowledge that there was quite a bit of sex outside of marriage (porneia- extramarital sex- from "twisted") going on in the Corinthian church, news had gotten around, but this was over the top. This is an evil so bad that it would shock respectable pagans. This shocked Paul. Yet the people of the church in Corinth ignored the whole thing and kept on with their arguments about who was the best teachers and who had the best wisdom. This shocked Paul. They were filled with a complacent pride. The church had taken a casual view toward sexual morality so when this worse-than-usual case came up they were either blinded to the problem. In our world of shock media it is important that we not become so jaded we cannot be shocked. Shock is part of our spiritual defense system.
 
Eugene Peterson in The Message writes Paul's words like this: " I received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn't be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you're so above it all that it doesn't even faze you! Shouldn't this break your hearts? Shouldn't it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn't this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?"
 
Well, should this be confronted and dealt with? Then? And now? We are talking about inviting people to leave. We speak much of tolerance and inclusivity, what of discipline and holiness? What about this hard edge? Jesus said, "Be ye perfect". The OT tells us several times to "be holy". Paul tells us that no immoral person will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If you are anything like me you would rather skip on down a few chapters to chapter 12 and talk about how great it is that everyone gets special gifts from God or on to chapter 13, the "Love Chapter". It is a great temptation to skip this, but listen to C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory.

"If our [faith] is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it is precisely the puzzling and the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know."

Let's see what we can do with this and not duck it. I'll probably have something to offend just about everyone today. It's my spiritual gift.
 
The context of this passage is the establishment of the Church in Corinth. Placing a mini-kingdom of goodness, holiness, purity, love and selflessness in the middle of one of a perverse, self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual, self-serving, and flesh gratifying city. Alan has already told you of the great temple of Aphrodite and the thousand sacred prostitutes who descended on the city at night. Well, the Greek language had a word, korinthianize, to live like a Corinthian, meaning to live in immorality and drunkenness. Anytime a Corinthian was portrayed on the Greek stage he was drunk. God's holy Church was placed in the middle of this world. So the question for the Corinthian church is the same one we have. How do we resist the pressure of becoming the unholy world around us? Is the world around us so different from then?
 
My wife Sue has been reading an older paraphrase of the Bible by an author named Hurlbut. Unfortunate name. Great book. Written with a great deal of historical detail and tries to capture the times and situations of Scripture. Sue has been reading the OT and recently about the Canaanites. After reading the descriptions of the Canaanites Sue's observation was that we are surrounded by an increasingly Canaanite world- a world that glorifies violence, a world that sacrifices its children on the altar of the god of success and having the good life, a world that treats sex as no more than an appetite to be satisfied. Canaanites are Canaanites and they act like Canaanites. Corinthians are Corinthians and they act like Corinthians. Pagans are pagans and they act like pagans. No surprise there. And Americans are becoming increasingly pagan.
 
What is our responsibility to the Corinthians, the Canaanites, the pagans in our midst?// To love them. To listen to them. To show them Christ. To live and love in such a way that our witness makes sense. Our job is not to hide from them nor to attack them. Love is a much more difficult way of dealing with them but it is our job, our privilege, our responsibility. It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict the world of sin and judgment. John 16:8. If you look down in chapter 5 to verses 12 and 13 Paul says "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? That is God's job."
 
Let me be clear here. This is not to say we do not fight mightily against societal injustice and evil. Evil is evil and must be opposed. Our intolerance is for sin, not for sinners in the world. Jesus Christ died for each pagan person and, if we were honest, most of us were pagans once. Most of us could point to a Christian and say this person loved me into the Kingdom.
 
All this being said, it is a very different story inside the Church. A quick story. A man came upon two boys fighting in a park. He grabbed one of the boys and disciplined him severely. Another woman watching asked indignantly why he didn't discipline the other boy. The man said, he is not my son. The Lord says in Revelation 3:19 "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline." In God's economy discipline is not God's way of saying "I am through with you", a mark of abandonment. Discipline is the loving act of God to bring us back, to save us.
 
We are "new creations" in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." We are to walk on a new way. We choose that way. No one is making us be Christians. No one is forcing us to follow His Way. If you are a member of WPC you once stood up and voluntarily vowed to follow Christ and accept His discipline.
 
When I was a freshman in high school I went to Clear Creek High in League City, Texas, near Houston. I was a bit of an athlete back then and joined the basketball team. Clear Creek was a proud basketball powerhouse. Joining the team we agreed to a discipline, to act and behave in certain ways. No late nights out. No alcohol. No cutting practice. No saying the Lord's name in vain. If you were to be a basketball player representing Clear Creek High you agreed to the discipline. The purpose of the discipline was to have a great team. If you cut practice you missed a game- star or no star. If you used the Lord's name in vain you took a mighty swat from coach. If it was discovered you were out late you missed a game. This was the discipline for ordinary human slips. But there was a guy on the team, I can't remember his name, one day told the coach that the rules (which he had earlier agreed to) were stupid and he didn't have to take it. This was serious. This was willful rejection. This was placing himself outside before what followed. Which was… His person and his gear were out of the locker room in a New York minute. It was not because coach was angry and vindictive. He was not. He was just unwilling to compromise the team. And he was unwilling to let the boy fool himself about what it took to be a basketball player at Clear Creek High.
 
How does it stand at WPC? How do we do discipline here? I see the Corinthian case as an extreme case. The procedure for normal discipline cases, I believe, comes from Matthew 18:15-17 which goes about discipline in the following way: first go one on one. If that doesn't work, take a couple of trusted people with you. If that doesn't work then to the church or representatives of the church. The reason you rarely see public discipline among us is because it rarely gets past the first two steps. Your pastors and elders have asked people to resign from leadership positions. We have refused to allow certain people to teach who were living lifestyles inconsistent with being examples for children. In premarital counseling sessions people who call themselves Christians and are living together are admonished. When we freely preach the Word sometimes people get mad and leave. These are all forms of exclusion and they all hurt. But they are at times necessary. Enough said.
   

amen

 
Your assignment for this week is to read 1 Corinthians, chapter 6.