"Building Bridges Instead of Walls"

Building Bridges Instead of Walls
1 Corinthians 1:10-17


During an ecumenical worship service, where a number of churches participated, someone rushed into the sanctuary and shouted, “The building’s on fire!”
The Methodists gathered in the corner and prayed.
The Baptists cried, “Get the water out of the baptistry!”
The Quakers began to shake and praise God for the blessings fire brings.
The Lutherans put a notice on the front door declaring 95 reasons the church was going down in flames.
The Roman Catholics took up a collection for the rebuilding of the church.
The Episcopalians formed a procession, grabbing the Christian flag, marching down the middle isle, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
The Jews threw up their hands and wailed, “Why us, O God?”
The Congregationalists shouted, “Everyone for themselves!”
The Fundamentalists proclaimed the fire was the vengeance of God upon their sin.
The Christian Scientists agreed among themselves that the fire really didn’t exist.
And the Presbyterians appointed a moderator who was to form a committee that would study the fire and bring a report back to the next Session meeting.

It has always bothered me, and maybe it’s also bothered you, that there are so many denominations.  I think it’s all so confusing, for believers, who must go in search of a church.  Things have really changed over the past 10 to 20 years, where people look for other things in a church, rather than a denominational tag.  In fact, being a part of a denomination can be detrimental to a church.  The next time you drive into Wichita, notice how many of the so-called mega churches don’t have anything in their name that identifies if they have an affiliation with a specific denomination.  The Church of the Way.  The Open Door Church.  The Church of the Open Arms.  The Church of the Savior.  When I was in Tucson, visiting my older brother once, I went to The Cool Church.  That was it’s name, The Cool Church.  And it was.

I think about all these divisions and try to make sense of it with Jesus’ prayer recorded in the Gospel of John:
I’m praying not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me; because of them and their witness about me.  The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind--just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so they might be one heart and mind with us.
And then Jesus makes this most glaring statement in this prayer, that should hit Christians and the church like a slap in the face:
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.

Do you see what that means?  It means that the world is really not going to be drawn to Jesus or the Gospel if the church can’t even get it right.  The world can almost be justified, when the church is telling the world to come together in Christ, by retorting back:  “Hey, it it’s not working for you, don’t try to push it on us.”

When I went to Israel with a tour group back in 1992, on the third day, we got to Jerusalem.  One afternoon we made our way along the Via Della Rosa, the way of the Cross, the way that Jesus was forced to take as he carried his cross through the main avenue of shops.  The way ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  It’s a huge multi-sectioned cathedral build over the place where it is believed Christ was crucified.  There’s a huge altar, and under the altar you can put your hand down in a hole in the rock where it is believed the cross of Christ was posted.  The Cathedral also has within it one of the traditional tombs where they think Christ was buried.

By the time we got there it was getting late and the sun was beginning to go down.  We ambled into the darkened church.  Each of us was given a candle so we could see our way better in the darkened church.  I looked around through the collection of artifacts by my candlelight.  But I noticed there were plenty of light fixtures, yet none of them were turned on.

I asked our Palestinian guide, Joseph, why we had to use candles when they could have the lights on.  He explained to me that the three different Christian groups who have rights over the church fight amongst themselves about who should pay the light bills.  The power had to be shut off because they couldn’t agree on who should pay the bill.

At five o’clock we were all asked to leave the church.  We had hardly had a chance to see it all and some in our group protested that we needed more time.  Why was it that they had to close it up?  The tour guide again explained that there was squabbling amongst the three Christian groups as to who should have the responsibility for the key, and for locking the doors at night.  So the local Jerusalem city government had to step in and install their own locks on the door and close it up at sundown every day.

What kind of witness was that?  Especially in the Holy Land.  Of all the places in the world, where is the witness of unity and common purpose most needed, and urgent, than in Israel and the Middle East?  Instead, at that great cathedral, the church continues to crucify Christ and each other, putting forth a witness of disunity and discord.

How did all this get started?  How could believers in the church get so far away from what Christ prayed in his great prayer?  Maybe it all got started at the church in Corinth.  I’ve heard it said many times, “Why can’t we get back to the love and unity the early Christian church had?”  Anyone who says that hasn’t read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  If they had, they they would know the Corinthian Christians were split into so many groups, that it was amazing the church was able to keep going.

A large part of the problem was that the believers in the church in Corinth were rallying around personalities rather than around Christ or their mission in Christ.  They totally forgot what that mission was in all their squabbling.

Something similar happened in the ancient church in Stirling, Scotland.  The church at Stirling had a rich history.  King James VI of Scotland was crowned in it.  Many other famous events had taken place within its beautiful sanctuary.

But in 1656, almost 100 years after King James’ coronation, the two ministers at the church started quarreling.  The conflict pulled in other members and lines were drawn in the sand.  Finally, the bitterness was so deep between the two sides that the church council split.  Their last act of unity was to decide to build a partition down the middle of the sanctuary, so each group could worship by themselves and not have to look at the others.  A brick wall was built, splitting the once beautiful sanctuary in half, creating the East Church and the West Church.  Each side jealously guarded their separate identity and their view of the truth.

At the church in Corinth, the same kinds of splits were taking place and groups were being formed around personalities.  Once group formed around Apollos, who was a great preacher.  He was smart.  His sermons were spellbinding.  And his voice could melt the mortar between the bricks.

Another group rallied around Peter the Apostle.  They felt that since Peter was one of the original 12 disciples, his was the teaching that should be followed.

Others formed a group loyal to Paul, since he was the one who started the church in Corinth in the first place.

And the other group put their noses in their air and said, basically, that they were the purists who were above all the other factions.

Instead of one wall dividing the Corinthian congregation in half, there were walls dividing it into fourths.  They weren’t real walls, of course, but they might as well have been.  How sad.  Peter, and Apollos may not have even known that factions were formed in their names.  It appears from Paul’s statement, the three men certainly didn’t condone the split in their names.  Even sadder still is the fact that from then on, factions in the church have ended up despoiling the power and the beauty of Christian witness and work.

There was a guy who had been marooned on a desert island for 10 years.  At last he was rescued.  A rescue party came ashore and found the man had three huts built on the beach.  The rescuers asked him about them.  The man said, “Well the first hut is my home.  That’s where I’ve been living all these years.  The second hut is the church I built where I could worship.”  Then what was the third hut a little further down the beach, he was asked.  “Oh, that’s the church I used to go to,” he replied.

Sometimes it’s not just churches that don’t get along.  We can’t even get along with ourselves when left alone.

There’s a wonderful book by Dr. Paul Brand titled Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.  Dr. Brand is a surgeon and a Christian.  He looks at things he has seen in his practice and relates them to the work of the church.  At one point in the book he wrote:
A tumor is called benign if its effect is fairly localized and it stays within membrane boundaries.  But the most traumatizing condition in the body occurs when disloyal cells defy their natural boundaries.  They multiply without checks on growth, spreading rapidly throughout the body, choking out healthy cells.  For still mysterious reasons, these cells--and they can be tissues--grow wild and out of control.  Each is a healthy, functioning cell, but disloyal, no longer acting in regard for the health of the rest of the body. (pg. 59-60)

It’s a tragic picture of what happens in the church as well--the breakdown of the spiritual body of Christ.  Instead of being bound together, united in one purpose by the gospel, the church has been infected with single cells that multiply themselves and create factions.  Individuals or groups of believers or denominations break off and go their own way, multiplying their divisiveness, ultimately crippling the church they say they are building.

The one who is most hurt in that infection and division is Christ.  As Paul said at verse 13, “Has the Messiah been chopped up in little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own?”  It isn’t the church that is really divided.  It is our Savior who ultimately gets sectioned and drawn and quartered.  Or the cancer of disunity infects the body of Christ to the point of making it useless.

The Roman soldiers on guard at the Crucifixion of Jesus were allowed to take the clothes of the condemned.  When they got to Jesus’ cloak they discovered it was seamless.  To tear it into four parts so that each soldier could have a piece would ruin it.  That’s why they threw dice to see who would get to keep it as a whole.

Henry Ward Beecher was one of the first to have prayed that the church might be one again, like the seamless robe of her Lord.  Since then, most have agreed that the metaphor of the seamless robe of Christ is one of great beauty and power.  The divisiveness and cancer of all the factions in the Church of Christ have been destructive efforts to tear in pieces the sacred garment of the gospel, and of Christ himself.  I talked a couple of weeks ago about the smiling Christ.  But stuff like what happens to divide us, must make him sad.


So what happened in the church at Stirling, Scotland--the church that built the wall down the center of their sanctuary, splitting it in half, creating two congregations?  300 years later, in 1935, better wisdom and deeper faith finally prevailed.  The two congregations were again united and the offensive wall of schism was torn down.  Once again the beautiful sanctuary, and the joyful people of God were whole again, standing together in worship and ministry.