“From Conflict to Concord” 1 Cor. 1.18-31, Epiphany 4A, Jan. ‘17

1.               Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The message from God’s Word this morning is taken from 1 Cor 1:18–31.   Last week we learned that the Apostle Paul was writing 1 Corinthians to a congregation in the middle of intense conflict. The passage immediately prior to our reading today from 1 Corinthians, which was last week’s reading, clearly was addressed to the divisions that were taking place within the Corinthian congregation. Today, St. Paul reminds us that dwelling in the middle of every church conflict and the conflicts that boil up in every sphere of life is our sinful pride. Here in 1 Cor. 1:18-31, Paul is attacking pride because he knows that until it is slain by God’s Spirit and Word, there can be no resurrection of the Corinthian fellowship and love.  The message is entitled, “From Conflict to Concord,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.              One day our Lord Jesus brought two angry men into a pastor’s office. They had been factional leaders in terrible years of conflict in that parish. Both of them had left the church and now they wanted to return. But no one wanted the conflict to return. They sat down with the pastor, and they spoke openly about the past—both about what each of them had done and about what Christ had done. They spoke of the present and what Jesus saw in the two of them. And they spoke of what Christ promised to do in the future. That day, Christ made them both to see the foolishness of their pride and the beauty of Christ’s love for the other and for themselves. They shook hands with each other, the next Sunday and they deliberately took the Lord’s Supper together, and the church all wept tears of joy. Now they are both at rest in Christ.  I doubt either of these men—or perhaps anyone else in the congregation—could have foreseen this in themselves or in the other, could have foreseen them becoming men who, after so many years of anger, were instead so truly loving and forgiving. But that’s what God shows us in our text today, that Christ has called us out of conflict into concord or harmony to be what we could never be on our own.

3.              Conflict arises when we think we are something on our own.  Conflict isn’t new—it’s as old as human pride.  It was a wounded pride that stirred Cain to murder his brother Abel.  Paul’s congregation is boasting about whose leader/teacher is the best. “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos” or even someone who says, “I follow Christ!”  Not only was this claiming that Paul or Apollos was something on his own, apart from Christ; it was making each follower of Paul or Apollos more important than a fellow member.  Each member of the Corinthian congregation had the same Christ; that should have made them equally something.  By thinking “I’m more important than you,” people were arguing “I’m something on my own”—something more than I am in Christ.

4.              Our conflicts aren’t anything different; lurking in the basement of every fight is a stubborn human pride that wants to put me first and see attention and love come my way.  Notice here in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 how St Paul describes that sinful human pride causes conflicts in our congregations. Paul uses terms for the proud referring to them as: “the wise,” “the discerning,” “the scribe,” “the debater of this age.”  Paul’s use of boasting language and pride may sound strange to us, but for the Romans it was a little like listing out your accomplishments on a résumé or a job application. Boasting without cause was frowned upon, but honestly boasting was not only socially acceptable, it was encouraged. It allowed others to know what you’d done and could do.

5.              On the other hand, pride is just being dishonest with ourselves. Luther’s last written words were found on a scrap of paper on the table in the room below the bedroom where he died. He wrote, “We are all beggars!”  Pride often takes the form of a false humility: The redeemed man who insists he’s a worm may in fact be falling victim to another form of pride. To insist on one’s own miserable unworthiness after someone has been forgiven of his sin isn’t true piety but a prideful means of denying what the pastor and the Lord Jesus have said. Martin Luther instructed us to rise from confessing our sins confident and joyful in what Christ has done in us, eagerly expecting him to continue that good sanctifying work (1 Cor 1:28–31).

6.              That’s why conflict withers when we admit we’re really nothing on our own.  Our boasting should only be in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, which alone has saved us and given us the forgiveness of our sins.  Let’s face it: Christ/Calvary Lutheran church isn’t the best church on earth and I’m not the world’s greatest pastor, dad, or husband, no matter what my coffee mug says.  God shoots us down!  In Corinthians 1:19-20 St. Paul says, “¹⁹For it is written.“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?   We don’t have to think very hard to remember how many times our wisdom, discernment, clever arguments have proved flat-out wrong: from our predicting presidential elections to advice given to our children.  But, that frees us from the need to judge, to compare, to measure up. I can own my failure and not be surprised at your failures. You’re nothing on your own, and neither am I.  St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:26, “²⁶For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” 

7.              And this shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus was criticized many years ago for collecting sinners and nothings to himself. He has not changed. Jesus calls folks who are nothing.  St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:27-29, “ ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

8.              Instead, Christ calls us who were nothing and transforms us by the power of his cross.  The something that makes us what we could never be on our own is the cross.  1 Cor. 1:18 & 21-25 says, “¹⁸For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  We realize how foolish we are as we see how brilliant God’s plan is. We could never have thought up a rescue that meant the very God we offend willingly taking our punishment.  We realize how weak we are when we see God hanging helpless on a cross, yet remaining powerful enough to save the whole world.

9.              But that cross does makes us something, transforms us with the gifts that flow from it. 1 Corinthians 1:30-31 says, “³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. ³¹Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”  Wisdom that sees the cross as salvation and our sins as those for which he died.  Righteousness that stands in the judgment, freely given as we’re baptized into that cross.  Holiness that flows from Baptism and makes us right with God now taking real shape in our lives.  Redemption that has freed us from slavery to sin and empowered us to be God’s children right now.

10.        At the heart of our conflicts lies a terrible lie, which Satan would have us believe. For he would feed that ravenous thing within all of us that sees us as the center of our universe. Jesus smashed Paul’s little universe and took that place on a road to Damascus. Paul was smashing the little universes of the Corinthians long ago, and he’s still doing it to us today. Jesus has called foolish, sinful, and stubborn people. But having slain us all in Baptism, he’s raised us up new to live in his wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption!  We have been called out of conflict into concord and harmony through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.