Sermons
“CREDIBILITY"
TEXT: 1 corinthians 9: 19-27 New Revised standard version
19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. 24 Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. 25 Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. 26 So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; 27 but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.†
“To the Jew I became as a Jew..To those outside the law I became as one outside the law.”
We’ve all known the type of person who can conform to any social environment. The salesman who immediately picks up on an accent and mirrors it back, the new kid in town who quickly changes his clothes and hairstyle to match those at his school, and the party-goer who adapts to the social cues of a gathering with lightning speed—all of us have in us the mechanisms for social adaptation. But why do we conform? To avoid trouble? To be liked and accepted? To belong and fit in? Yes, perhaps all of these—we all need to belong somewhere, and our psychological makeup seems designed to help us become capable social creatures.
But just as much as we need to belong, be liked, and avoid being troublesome, there is another mechanism within us that makes us dislike—even loathe—conformity. There is something unseemly about conformity—about being perfectly satisfied just going along with the herd. Something about it seems to lack integrity or stands as an implicit insult to our individualism. You remember your mother asking, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff…” and we may even feel terrorized by all those negative, psychological experiments about peer pressure: shocking people or refusing to help because no one else did.
So how do we find our balance? When is conformity a good thing and when and where does it go south? Paul tells us in today’s text that he embraces conformity as a means of connecting and spreading the gospel. We’ll see that it’s the strong, not the weak, who can willfully set aside their precious individuality in order to serve others and the Lord.
CREDIBILITY
The key issue for Paul has nothing to do with fitting in, needing to be liked, or belonging. It has everything to do with credibility. To be credible is to be taken seriously. It means that when you have something important to say, you can be heard.
Everyone needs to be taken seriously, at least in certain moments. If there is a fire and you shout, “Fire!” you want and need to be taken seriously. There are old stories to remind us of the problem of failed credibility. You’ll remember Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little, who runs around screaming, “The sky is falling!” after an acorn hits her on the head. Or The Boy Who Cried Wolf, wherein one’s need for attention by playing on public fears kills credibility. When the wolves actually come to kill all the sheep, the boy cries Wolf but everyone expects it to be yet another false alarm. Kinda reminds you of what’s happened to the news media, doesn’t it? 24 hours a day of breaking news and urgent, special reports. Again, all designed to get attention (and sell ads).
The need to be taken seriously can come from either weakness or strength. The weak, fragile ego seeks credibility in order to find respect, or just get attention. The boy who cried wolf was mischievous; Henny Penny was at least a true believer—she was truly paranoid and expected the sky to fall—but her credibility was undermined by her weak, fear-mongering character.
But credibility can issue from strength as well. The strong—and here I mean people of faith—have no need for personal attention or respect but rather seek credibility in order that the gospel of Jesus Christ may be announced to ears that are open. In this case, credibility is not self-serving, but rather serves a higher purpose. Our word for it is simply witness. We do not manufacture truth, pretend to own it, nor pretend to have cornered the market on truth. We merely witness to the truth—truth that is above us and beyond us, but truth which we have seen and experienced. As witnesses we point outward or upward, not in to ourselves.
INTERSECTIONALITY
In today’s pop culture, being a witness isn’t necessarily sufficient. Other qualifications must be met if we are to be considered credible. “Intersectional” is today’s buzzword for credibility. It means that in order to be taken seriously (at least by a certain group of hard-nosed thinkers), you must have certain, specific qualifications in your resumé if you are to have a hearing at all. Are you white? Subtract 10 points. Male? 10 more. Do you follow your biological, birth gender? 5 points off, if yes. Heterosexual? 5 points more. Christian? 7 points off. Republican? Subtract 20.
The cultural assumption has become that you only have credibility to the degree you have some specific identification with a non-dominant group identity. That’s intersectional-ism. To have credibility in this scheme, you must dissociate yourself from privilege and prove you have labored tirelessly for the poor, the oppressed, or the underprivileged if you are to gain credibility at all. And we should be doing those things, but not to gain credibility. We should be doing those things because they are good things to do in service to our Lord—if doing so increases our street credibility, so be it, but anything done without love is essentially worthless.
So I’m not picking on pop culture, let’s be clear: every in-group has its own equivalent to intersectionality. Every sub-grouping of human beings will manifest one code or another by which outsiders are allowed in or remain outsiders. That’s all deeply ingrained within us along with those mechanisms that make for conformity. Think of it—there is no worldly institution that doesn’t have its insiders and outsiders.
In education, there is a vicious king-of-the-hill within academia. What degrees do you hold? From which college? Ah! It really makes a difference, you know. It’s also true of experience. In business, industry, or almost any field you might be asked, “How long have you worked in your field?” [Eye-roll]: “Well, that’s not very long, is it? If you think about it, there are countless codes for for credibility and/or its absence, and these things differ from group to group. Your bridge group is intersectional, and so is the Catholic Church, and so is citizenship, and so is becoming a gang member. Every in-group has its code, and to have
credibility within that group, you must meet the requirements of the code.
UNSERIOUS
Now here’s a hard truth for modern Americans: just because everyone wants to be taken seriously doesn’t mean that everyone should be. We may like to think that all opinions are equal, but this is impossible—there are good opinions and bad opinions depending upon how well they square up with reality.
When Henny Penny rushes up to us, flush-faced and sweaty, demanding that we care as much as she does that the sky is falling, what do we do? Glance up? Do we patronize her until she goes and bothers someone else? That’s more likely than actually believing her. We’re probably not likely to take her seriously, nor those who are quick to take up her cause.
Today, America is full of Henny Pennies. They have their own shows on FOX and MSNBC. Their books top the New York Times bestseller list. They are anxious to get into your and my faces and demand that we care as much as they do that the sky is, in fact, falling indeed! Why, for God’s sake, aren’t we taking them seriously?
If you’ve ever been cornered by a mon0maniac at a party, then you know the feeling. There he stands, preaching you into silence or acquiescence—you can’t get a word in, you can’t get away—and you just have to keep nodding your head until he thinks you’ve got the message. You and I may tolerate his hectoring tirade for the moment, but we will do whatever is necessary to be rid of him, and one thing for sure: we will never take him or his message seriously.
Paul understood this only too well, and Corinth offers an appropriate analogy to California today.
EARNING THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD
Paul earned the right to be heard. He didn’t just corner people and preach at them. He didn’t feel he had the right to preach to them just because they had doorbells or an email address. He earned the right to be heard. Verse 22:
To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
Paul did not demand that others come into orbit around himself or his interests; he met the people where they were, as they were. He announced God’s love for them in Christ, and did not demand that they immediately conform to the code of Old Testament morality.
But neither did he approve of Corinthian sin; he called it out for what it was, but he only did so once he had established trust and built a relationship with the people.
As the Corinthian Christians divided over their own pet peeves and causes—and it seems they did so within minutes of Paul’s first departure—Paul refused to take sides lest the one side of the gospel be dragged into a particular camp or party. We must do the same.
There can be no Republican Christianity, no Democrat Christianity, no “woke” Christianity, no Progressive Christianity, no Conservative Christianity—the problem with and and all of these is that the center becomes something other than Christ himself. It becomes mostly traditional, republican, patriotism, but also Jesus; or mostly progressive ideology, but with Christ thrown in. This is unacceptable.
Paul became all things to all people only in order that Christ should be all in all—central to everyone and everything and otherwise untainted and unpolluted by politics or ideology.
CRUCIAL CREDIBILITY
There are legitimate grounds for our credibility as Christians. In short, the cross.
To be followers of Jesus means we bear crosses—this means we would sooner suffer than to serve self-interests. Our suffering is the basis of our credibility, just as it was for Paul, and just as we see in the cross of Christ.
Our suffering may take many forms: misfortune or mishap through which we are hurt, deprived, or otherwise knocked for a loop. Hardship and failure do not weaken our witness—on the contrary, they can bring credibility to our witness, for we can proclaim how we have survived or overcome the problems with joy and trust in our Lord.
Suffering may be voluntary. Credibility is also established by hard work, which means making sacrifices of time and effort toward a purpose. Hard work establishes credibility and contributes to others taking us seriously.
Selfless service—working hard for the good of others—is the first picture of agapé love and perhaps the most ear-opening activity possible. All of these involve a level of sacrifice, and sacrifice is the language of love that we see in the cross.
In my first week of seminary, we were told: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” That’s what witnessing is about: care, love. Love earns a voice. Love earns the right to be heard.
Caring enough to put others first is the code of Christ and the path of the cross.
Christians should stop strategizing to increase their credibility—to do so turns good work into a mere stratagem for self-gain. Even if that self-gain is a self-gain for the church, it falls short.
Rather we should seek to love—to love with costly, sacrificial, agapé love—and should credibility result, that’s fine, but that is not our goal.
Our goal is to glorify God—to gear our lives around His glory and His gospel.
We are his servants—we are not our own—we have been bought with a price and our lives are our grateful response for having been redeemed from sin, death, and Hell.
So let love be our focus as we seek to serve those to whom God sends us. And let’s let all the other competing enthusiasms and passions just go their own way. We are in this for Christ and for Christ alone. We should have less care for all the other things. †
“DISCIPLINE"
Sermon: “DISCIPLINE”
Text: 1 Corinthians 5: 9-13
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons— 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? 13 God will judge those outside. “Drive out the wicked person from among you.”
CORRECTIONS
In the first eight verses of chapter five, which precede today’s text, Paul the very Jewish, former Pharisee is outraged to hear that a man of the Corinthian church has taken up with his step-mother. Yeah. The funnier thing is that the Christians at Corinth didn’t even raise an eyebrow over it. They shrugged it off and said something like the ancient equivalent of:
—“Well, to each his own!”
—“The heart wants what the heart wants—what’re ya gonna do?”
—“Hey, who are we to judge? It’s all about grace anyway, isn’t it?”
If this voice rings familiar, it’s because today, California is not different from Corinth. We, like Corinth, allow an incredibly broad spectrum of personal tastes, affinities, and practices—all in the name of personal liberty—and we seem less quick to judge than we are to not judge others. “After all,” we may think, “who am I to judge?”
We live in an era of unprecedented authority crises. Who gets to correct whom? Increasingly it seems each one in America has come to believe in his or her heart: “I correct you; you do not correct me.” Corinth, like California, was remarkably diverse. There were people from all over the world living there, people of many races, backgrounds, and religions—mostly pagan. Corinth was sexually permissive, and the majority of their shrines and temples did double duty as bordellos. Therefore, those Corinthians who had become Christians—and had never been Jewish—imported their wayward moral compasses with them and shrugged at practices that Christians like Paul would have found outrageous—even intolerable.
Part of Paul’s purpose in writing this letter was to correct the Corinthians for their overly permissive outlook regarding human sexuality. “Why didn’t you rebuke this guy?” says Paul (I paraphrase), “Why did you simply allow it and look the other way?” How do you think the Corinthian Christians might have responded? When Paul dresses them down for not correcting what definitely ought to have been corrected, what might they have replied?
“Well, gee, Paul—we didn’t know—we really didn’t think it was such a big deal.” Exactly what many Californians would say today, is my guess.
NETFLIX, ETC.
For example, you’ve probably heard the latest scuffle about Netflix and the movie, “Cuties,” in which pre-teen girls are portrayed as sexualized adults. As soon as we read about it, we dropped Netflix. To make it worse, Netflix—in the face of public outrage and criticism—doubled down in defense of the film. Artistic license—and the preposterous justification that the movie was essentially critical of child exploitation. What a crock. That’s like having an exposé of the evils of pornography in a long movie showing lots and lots of porn. The correct word for it is sophistry—which just means that there are some ideas so stupid—so utterly bird-brained—that only cultural sophisticates would believe them.
I remember an old Monty Python sketch. In it, a reporter is interviewing a British intellectual about the psychology of a serial killer. The sophisticate, showing great understanding of the cruel criminal, comments off-handedly, saying, “All things considered, a murder is nothing but an extroverted suicide.” Almost as though that makes it all okay. On Monty Python it’s funny and meant to be funny, but when you hear that same kind of justifying rationale—in all seriousness—coming from Stanford, the Los Angeles Times, and the California State Legislature, it’s definitely not funny. It’s even dangerous, because these sources are well-empowered and they take themselves so seriously. They want you and me to take them seriously as well, rather than simply acknowledge ridiculous as ridiculous.
But Paul’s concern is not correcting the world, but rather the church. The church must be able to correct itself.
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons— 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? 13 God will judge those outside.
It should be no surprise to us that the world is full of sinful behavior, and we can’t escape mixing with sinful people with sinful opinions, lifestyles, and attitudes unless we—as Paul says—go out of the world. “God will judge those outside,” says Paul.
GRIEVING & CELEBRATING
The response of Christians to evil—either in the world or in the church—tends toward one of two poles: grieving or celebrating. Paul criticizes the church at Corinth for having celebrated something that should have been grieved. Rather than serve good conscience, the people served the easier path of just making no judgments whatsoever. Paul sets them—and us— straight by saying that there are things that should be grieved instead of being celebrated.
Can you think of some things that Californians celebrate that should probably be grieved instead? Go ahead, I’ll wait. Doesn’t take long, does it? But before we launch a tirade against the evils of California, let’s remember that Paul says our judgment rightly focuses on the church itself and not on the larger world around us. The Body of Christ is meant to be self-critical, not just critical in general.
The same way a healthy individual deals with the log in her own eye before seeking to pull specks from the eyes of others, so the Church must tend to its own alignment—or lack of alignment—with the will and Word of God. But to avoid all judgment completely amounts to a kind of negligence. We avoid the business of rebuking others in general because. . .it’s not very nice, and we want to be nice people, right?
I think the Corinthians were probably very nice in that sense. They didn’t want to get up into anyone else’s face and tell them that they need to shape up. In their remarkably diverse cultural environment, they had to get along, co-exist, live and let live or else they would all divide and fall apart, right? But that’s exactly what was happening to the Church in Corinth. Being nice did not serve their unity, but rather their division. Avoiding their differences let to justifying or rationalizing very ungodly behaviors and lifestyles.
DIVISION & MARKS
Paul says don’t be partnered up with those who identify as Christians but who rationalize sinful behavior. Keep your distance from them and disassociate yourselves from them. But wait—isn’t division the chief problem in Corinth? Haven’t we said that solving division is Paul’s first concern in writing them? How does dissociating from some serve unity? Isn’t this counter-intuitive? Doesn’t Jesus say, “let the wheat and weeds grow together” and “don’t try to pull out the weeds because you’ll pull up too much of the wheat with them?” Isn’t that what the Corinthian Christians were doing—just letting the wheat and weeds grow up together? Let God sort them out?
Here’s my take on it: when Jesus says “don’t judge” and “don’t try to do the weeding,” he is talking about making worldly assessments about others’ place with God. We are not to say who is authentically called or not called. We are not to condemn anyone with God’s own condemnation. The wheat and weeds judgments are ultimate, final judgments. Paul is telling the Corinthians that the Church must do regularly gardening or else you will have only weeds and no fruit.
God calls the Church to self-discipline, which is not the same thing as judging souls.
In the midst of the Reformation arguments, with condemnations flying back and forth between Rome and the rest of Europe, John Calvin sought to define what characterizes “the true Church.” Not “the right denomination,” but the character and nature of Christ’s true body. He landed on three points:
⁃ 1. Preaching of the Word.
⁃ 2. Administration of the Sacraments.
⁃ 3. Church Discipline.
REPENTANCE
The church that doesn’t practice discipline is not part of the Body of Christ. The unwillingness to correct or be corrected excludes one from the true church. The true Church practices self-discipline. The other word we use for this is repentance. Healthy Christians repent—they acknowledge their own sin and turn away from it. With no moral code whatsoever—or one so totally accommodating that anything and everything becomes allowable—there is no repentance. There is no turning because there is no “correct” to turn to. If all things are equal and everything allowable, then there is no standard toward which people may align themselves.
And this is California. For every plumb line we would hold to measure the straight from the crooked, there come throngs of objections to the plumb line itself. “Who are you to say what’s straight or crooked?” “You think the plumb line is straight, but it’s not actually straight, as science will show.” Or “We prefer the crazy straw plumb line, because we like it better, and who are you to tell us otherwise.”
Paul says let God judge them and all of that, but as for the Church, we have one plumb line, who is Christ the Lord, and we have his Word to guide us, direct us, to align us, and correct us. And our role is to call all to repentance even as we repent ourselves, seeking to align ourselves and out life together after the model and image of our Lord and Savior Jesus. †
_______________________________________________________
Questions:
- 1. What are some parallels you can identify between Corinth and California?
- 2. How can the exclusion of some serve to maintain church unity? Why is this needed?
- 3. What are some things that are celebrated that should rightfully be grieved?
- 4. What is meant by “judging inside” and “judging outside”?
- 5. How severe should our dissociation from immoral Christians be?
- 6. Why are we so hesitant to practice church discipline here in our time?
- 7. What are John Calvin’s “3 Marks of the True Church”?
- 1. ____________________________________ of the Word.
- 2. Administration of the _____________________________________.
- 3. Church __________________________________________.
- 8. Why is “being nice” never the highest moral code?
- 9. What are some dangers of practicing church discipline?
- 10. What are some dangers of not practicing church discipline?
“FOOLISHNESS"
Sermon by Noel K. Anderson, First Presbyterian Church of Upland, September 6, 2020
TEXT: 1 corinthians 1: 12-25
BACKGROUND
Corinth, California—Corinth, the first city of Greece, was diverse, pluralistic, wealthy with a large slave population, and a home for ancient elites. Corinth was the California of its day, a combination of San Francisco, Laguna Beach, LA, and Palm Springs. Like Newport Beach in the 70s, it was the place to be, and like California, it was a cauldron of pop philosophies and many kinds of spirituality. Variations in sexuality was the norm. Corinth was well-to-do, and even the lower classes took pride in the eloquence of being from Corinth.
To boil it down to a few words, Corinth was driven by its love of eloquence, wisdom, and superiority.
Amid the many competing worldviews, the young churches—planted by Paul himself—were tending toward division. House churches formed around cliques: rich with rich, woke with woke, charismatic with charismatic, and so on.
Paul founded the church at Corinth. He brought the gospel to Corinth and started the fire. He had been publicly beaten and humiliated by the Corinthian government in the past, and the growing church—and its many house churches—had begun to challenge Paul’s authority. Eloquent speakers, pseudo-philosophers, had eroded the central message and adapted the gospel to accommodate their various philosophies and fashionable ways of thinking.
Someone—or a group of someones—had written to Paul for help in solving their divisive disputes (unfortunately, the letter itself is lost to history), but 1 Corinthians is Paul’s response. And Paul, though claiming to have little interest in eloquence, writes a truly eloquent letter. The form of the letter was a well-known style of oration (Corinth was packed with great orators) called homonia. A homonia was a speech delivered to a city, addressing the entire city as though it were a single body. It was a kind of health report—think of Dr. Fauci at a press conference, instructing the nation to wear masks and wash our hands, but with the language that the nation is a body that we are all responsible for keeping healthy.
Paul uses this style to address the one church of Corinth that had fallen into many divisions, and he writes to encourage them to act and function like a single body, which in Christ they are.
The key issue for Corinth was division—not unlike the divisions we know as Californians. What divides Californians? You name it—politics, faith, spirituality, and of course, sports.
The antidote? Paul brings them back to the cross.
FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS
The chief problem with Christianity, from the very beginning, was the crucifixion. No one in the world had a hero who ended up crucified, let alone a deity. But the problem goes beyond this, because when Paul talks about the cross, he doesn’t mean just Good Friday; he means the whole series of events: suffering, humiliation, death, the tomb, resurrection, and ascension to Heaven. Every bit of this proved problematic for people, so Paul is aware that in the eyes of the world, this new gospel seems like foolishness.
Paul says, “the Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom.” The Jews demanded signs because they believed that such signs were possible. They believed God could do anything, so they expected signs from God as authorization as to who and what was of God and what was not. The cross is the stumbling block, because to those Jews who did not experience the resurrected Christ, all they saw for a sign was a prophet teacher who got crucified. That was less than a sign; it was an anti-sign—signifying to them beyond all shadow of a doubt that God was not on that person’s side. They looked at Jesus and saw a pretender to the Messianic title whom Rome killed, and therefore not the Messiah. The cross is the problem.
Likewise, the Greeks would have found it bizarre that this group of Christians followed a man whose destiny had been sealed in crucifixion. How strange should it seem? How have we become desensitized and grown used to the scandal of the cross? From the world’s eyes, we Christians are utterly crazy, for we follow and worship one who was captured, humiliated, tortured, and killed two thousand years ago.
It’s right that we should remind ourselves with fresh eyes that the crosses we wear even as jewelry—polished gold or silver—that these are worse than electric chairs. These are the instruments of the most brutal death Rome could devise. They are icons of capital punishment.
Aside from the offense of Jesus’ defeat (in earthly eyes), the Greeks were put off by the idea of resurrection—specifically, bodily resurrection.
We’ll be talking about Gnosticism and the context it created as we go through Corinthians, but for today, just know that the Greeks would have thought Jesus better off without a body. They had no trouble with the idea that He ascended through the heavens, but once He was purely spirit, why on Earth would he bother wearing lowly flesh again? The Greeks found this ludicrous, laughable.
And so the cross is foolishness to the Jews and the Greeks. But to these we need to add the modern world, which also sees it as foolish, perhaps for the same reasons, but also for many others.
We don’t need to dignify the insults and offenses of the past 15o years, but we do need to take every care not to minimize the cross in our proclamation.
BEWARE CORINTH, CA
The cross is central to the gospel. No cross, no gospel.
If you look through church history, you’ll find it unfortunately full of folks who have tried to present something like a cross-less Christianity. They’re usually very upbeat and pride themselves on being very positive. These churches tend to do well, because they are joy factories week to week and make people feel good. Personally, I put Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, and Joel Osteen into this group. I may be mistaken, but I never—never—hear them speaking about the cross. They’re fine about resurrection and having high self-esteem, and living your best life now—and they will talk about Jesus as great example of upbeat, positive thinking—but they stay away from the cross.
Like the people of Corinth, we can tend toward a love of eloquence, a preference for wisdom above love, and find ourselves in service to some vague, personal ideas of superiority.
Take a look at our crosses—our Protestant crosses—what’s wrong with them? They’re clean, anesthetized, bloodless, painless, and pretty. When I was young, I remember a lady at church explaining to me: “This is the cross of the RISEN Christ!” That’s a nice idea—I’m not against it—but it is incomplete. For every cross you have, be it on your wall or around your neck, you need to have a crucifix as well—a cross with Jesus on it, suffering and dying, for that is what the cross is all about. The clean, silver cross doesn’t offend or scandalize anyone, which is an indication that it does not participate in the gospel as Paul and the Apostles understand it.
The cross is central—absolutely central—and whenever we minimize the offense and scandal of the cross, we present a watered-down Christianity, a message tarted up to appeal to the easily offended.
SCANDAL OF THE CROSS
Let us instead commit—or recommit—ourselves to the central proclamation. Let us never neglect the cross at the center of the gospel and let us rather embrace the shame of it.
We, like the early church, are meant to be one body—one body in Christ. We are called to sacrifice our eloquence, our secondary philosophies (yes, that includes politics), and any secondary spirituality that might threaten our unity in Christ.
We stand by the simple, troublesome stumbling block of the cross, and we know of no Christ other than the one who was incarnate, suffered, was crucified, buried, and is raised—bodily—to all power, glory, and authority in Heaven and on Earth.
As we prepare to receive Him at the table, may we long for the unity in Him with the same longing He has expressed to us.