Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Epistle lesson, 1 Cor. 1: 10-18.
Although it was used militarily for thousands of years
before, Julius Ceasar was the first to have the phrase “Divide and Conquer”
documented as a political and military strategy. While humans have used the
technique in battle and in politics, satan has been using it since the Fall. He
loves division and the chaos and fighting that ensues. It’s been said that
every time the Holy Spirit gathers Christians into a new Christian
congregation, the devil builds his chapel next door. He likes being close to
the action so he can drive a wedge between Christians and divide congregations.
His ultimate goal, of course, is to break up the body of Christ but he’s
content to start with one Christian. He’s a wolf looking for the lone sheep,
the isolated Christian who is wandering by himself in the wilderness away from
flock and Shepherd. Ask a rancher: there is nothing more vulnerable than the
solitary animal away from the herd. Ask a pastor: there is nothing more
vulnerable to crafts and assaults of the evil one than the individual believer
all by him- or herself. He or she is easy pickings for the old evil wolf.
The devil’s strategy is deceptively simple – use your sin to isolate you. He
does it one of two ways. He attacks internally. He tempts you to doubt that you
are a child of God or that you are forgiven. He stirs up guilt and fans the
fire of shame so that you begin to think God doesn’t want to have anything to
do with you. What happens? You stop praying; stop hearing the Word, stop
communing. At first, the change is so subtle you think it’s no big deal; you
made it just fine through the week. Eventually it doesn’t matter to you any
more. And the devil’s got you right where he wants you.
If he can’t get you internally, he attacks you externally. Again
the devil uses sin to get the job done. You sin against your brother; your
sister sins against you. It may be something big that causes offense or, in my
experience, something trivial that is taken offensively. Someone said something
you didn’t like or did something you disapprove of. And then he stirs up anger
and resentment and before you know it, you’re at each other’s throats. Or he
puts this bug in your ear that things aren’t going the way you want them to go,
and so you take your toys and go somewhere else. Or just stay at home so you
don’t have to deal with “those people” anymore. And now you are in the perfect
place for the devil. All alone in your own little world. Isolated from the
flock, isolated from the shepherd. Just the sort of sheep a hungry wolf is looking
for.
There were divisions within the Corinthian congregation.
There was quarreling and dissension. There were disagreements. They were
talking in terms of “we” and “they.” Some followed Paul, their first pastor. Others
followed the smooth-talking Apollos. Others followed Cephas, Peter, the great
disciple. Some even dared to boast, “I follow Christ,” as though they were the
only ones who did. Those were likely the most dangerous ones of them all. There
is nothing more dangerous than Christians who think they are more spiritually
mature than everyone else.
Into all this nasty division, dissension, and party
pettiness, Paul fires the arrow of his apostolic appeal. “I appeal to you,
brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that
there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and
the same judgment.” Unity is the way of Christ and His Spirit; division the way
of the devil.
Every single picture of the church in the Scriptures is a
corporate image. There is no notion of the isolated, individual believer.
Nowhere is there a “Me and Jesus” image. The church is a priesthood of priests. The
household of God’s children. Spiritual temple built out of living stones. Even
the word church is plural, “the called-out and brought-together ones.”
Later, Paul will use the image of a body with many different
members. “We, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of
one another.” A body consists of a variety of parts or members, each one
different and serves its own special purpose. Head, shoulders, knees and toes,
and all the rest. One is not more important or indispensable than the others. I
had a man in my first church who lost his little toe to diabetic gangrene. I
visited him before surgery, He thought it was no big deal; it’s just the little
toe. What he didn’t know until after the fact, that little toe is key to
maintaining balance and stride. He had to learn to walk again at 78 years of
age.
God made the body to be an incredible wonder, and a body can
function (more or less) without some of its parts, like an appendix or gall
bladder or a toe, but not without a certain amount of hardship and suffering.
But the parts cannot exist without the body and without each other. A severed
toe or ear will die apart from the body. I had another man tell me that if the
church is the body of Christ, he thought he was the appendix – useless, just
taking up space, and no one would miss him if he left. My answer to him was,
maybe (but I didn't think that true), but he certainly would miss the church. Parts of the body need each
other in order to function. And they all need to be joined together as a body
and not some random collection of individual parts.
If we are going to be guided by the Scriptures and see the
church as God sees it through the lens of the Word, we need to adjust our
thinking when it comes to the congregation. While we are many individuals of different
opinions, ages, skills, perspectives, etc., we are all members of one body and
members of one another. We share the same baptismal bath. We eat the same Bread
that is the Body of Christ; we drink the same Cup that is the Blood of Christ.
We are literally “bodied” and “bloodied” together in a unity that transcends
our individuality. The church is much more than the sum of its parts.
One of the great heresies against the church is the notion
that the church is a gathering of “like-minded individuals,” like a spiritual country
club where people who agree with each other get together to agree with each
other. That’s what political parties and social clubs do. While Paul urges the
Corinthians toward agreeing with each other and be of the same mind and judgment,
this is not what makes them the church. It’s the other way around. In other
words, you don’t become a member of the body of Christ because you agree and
have the same mind; you have the same mind because you are a member of the body
of Christ. Unity is God’s doing, the work of the Spirit working through the
Word, calling, gathering, enlightening, sanctifying, and keeping the whole
church with Christ in the one true faith. God works unity. The devil, together
with our own sinful natures, is what divides the church and isolates its
members.
It’s tempting to think divisions are simply sins of church
member against church member, Christian against Christian, one-on-one. Wrong.
Divisions are sins against the entire body of Christ, the very body that was nailed
to the cross to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under His
lordship. To perpetuate division and discord is to be an instrument in the hand
of the devil, to be the knife in his hand hacking away at and dismembering the
body of Christ. You don’t want to be in that position, I assure you. If you
ever find yourself referring to fellow members as “those people” or “that
group” you need to stop, drop, and repent. You’re playing into the devil’s
hands.
The antidote is not compromise or some phony version of
“playing nice,” but the cross of Jesus. Paul squares the divided Corinthians up
to the cross of Christ. He preaches “nothing but Christ and him crucified.” He
literally holds before their eyes Jesus, dead, hanging on a cross, taking away
their sins, rescuing them from sin, death, and devil. He holds Jesus against
their division and says to them, “How do all your divisions stack up against
this?” How do your cliques and quarrels look when viewed against the cross of
Jesus?
We read about how the disciples bickered over which one of
them was the top dog on the night Jesus was betrayed and we shake our heads
over how silly they are. Didn’t they hear Jesus? Didn’t they realize what He
was about to do? He was talking about His death on the cross, and they are
arguing over which one of them is the greatest! We’re appalled by their lack of
hearing and understanding, yet we ourselves do the same thing. We can go from
the altar directly to each other’s throats in just a few short steps. The same
mouth that eats and drinks the Body and Blood of Christ and sings His praises
can curse and slander a brother or sister in the next breath. One body can
quickly become many scattered members if left to our own devices, amputated by
sin’s razor-sharp edge.
The answer lies in the cross of Jesus. Not the symbol but
the fruits. In Baptism, where we die to self and rise as members of Christ’s
body. In the Word that kills Sin and the sinner and raises up the Church. In
the Supper where we partake of the one Body of Christ and are made the one Body
of Christ. There are many members, but one Body. God does this, we don’t do it.
God is doing this here too, among us. By the Word of the cross, which is utter
foolishness to the world but the power of God for salvation to all who believe,
we are being made one.
You are one Body in the Lord. Baptized with one Baptism.
Forgiven by one Word. Fed by one Body and one Blood. You are one in Christ. And
when you agree with one another, and strive to work together and are united in
mind and judgment, when divisions are healed instead of perpetuated, you are
being the Body of Christ that you are.
In the name of Jesus,
Amen
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