The Difference Being Different Makes

"The Difference Being Different Makes"
1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Paul sat at a tiny desk in the home of Priscilla.  She and her husband, Aquila, were there in the room with him, trying to offer their support.  Paul was clearly frustrated.  While in Ephesus, preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, establishing a church with the help of women like Priscilla and men like Aquila, he had heard news.  It wasn't good news.  It was news about the church he had started in Corinth a couple of years earlier.

Paul was trying to compose himself and write a letter to the people in the church at Corinth.  But every time he started to write, his blood would make his face flush with heat and his nostrils flare.  He would slam the quill down and launch out of his chair.  "You write; I'll dictate," he'd demand of Priscilla, pointing to the scroll.  "I've ruined too much papyrus already."  Priscilla would sit in the chair, and then Paul would demand, "No, get up; I'll write!"  Up and down, they traded positions, not getting a word written, until finally, Paul with his back against the stonewall of the room, slowly slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

The church at Corinth had become Paul's problem child among all his church children.  They were irreverent.  They were selfish and self-centered.  They were personality worshippers.  They ruled by their emotionalism, rather than patient reflection.  They were gluttons.  They were sexually promiscuous.  They were insensitive to each other's needs.  They had one foot in the old ways of Corinthian society, the other foot lightly touched down upon their new faith in Christ.  They weren't sure on which of those feet they really wanted to put their full weight.  In a word, they were a mess.

The one question Paul felt he had to answer for them was, "Does the Gospel of Jesus Christ have the power to change lives or not?"  Can the power of Christ overpower and subdue the power Corinthian society was exerting on the new church?  Once the people in the church had made a decision for Christ, the sabotage and allurement of the Corinthian way of life was ever in their face.

Paul began to remember the first day he had come to Corinth.  He was on the third leg of his second journey to take the gospel to the Gentile world.  He had just sailed down the Greek coastland from Athens.  Paul had heard stories about Corinth, but none of them prepared him for what he saw.  Landing at the narrow neck of land upon which Corinth was built, Paul remembered standing at one of the grand gates of the city.  His mouth was gaping as ships went by in both directions, being rolled on logs so they wouldn't have to sail around the treacherous southern cape of Greece.

Corinth's position made it the main city on the north-south, and east-west trade routes.  It had become one of the most important cities in the Roman empire, second only to Rome itself.  Paul walked up and down the well-kept avenues that led to the main buildings of the city, mostly built by various Roman emperors.  There was the Agora, a huge central marketplace with shops selling anything (and I mean anything) you would want from all over the world.

Paul gawked at the Baths of Eurykles; the Peirene Fountain; the Basilica honoring Emperor Julian; the theatre, unlike any theatre in the empire; the starting blocks for the races of Olympic games; the impressive temple of the Greek god Apollo, with 38 Doric columns, each 24 feet high.

And there was the temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love, which employed nearly a thousand temple prostitutes who would work their profession in the streets of Corinth, all in the name of their religion.  Along with prostitution, Paul had no problem recognizing the signs of moral depravity.  Gross immorality seemed to be the acceptable way of life in Corinth.  There was a reason there was a saying, "Live like a Corinthian," and the reason wasn't a good one.

Paul remembered standing on the roof of the Julian Basilica, looking down upon the press of people in the marketplace below, and suddenly having a great deal of sympathy for the prophet Jonah.  Jumping on one of those ships rolling by, and sailing in the opposite direction from that city was becoming and entertaining option.

But as he looked down upon the din of activity, he also remembered who he was:  an apostle.  He was a messenger.  He was called by the will of God to bring the message to whomever, wherever, whenever.  And he also knew, as he looked over all the faces in the crowd, that those were people whom God loved, people whom God wanted to be believers, people Christ wanted in his family.  Done watching, Paul climbed down from the roof and got to work.

Now, it was a couple of years later.  The Christian church at Corinth was being eroded away around the edges as Corinthian ways exerted their influence.  Instead of trying to stay distinct from Corinthian society, the believers in the church were finding creative ways to be both Corinthian and Christian.  Instead of giving up either, they were, in dangerous ways, blending the two.  The blend was creating a watered down gospel, robbing it of its power to effect the people's lives on a deep and sustaining level.

If you think the ways of Corinth are dead, just look around at American culture.  All the powers of nationalistic bravado, consumerism, capitalism, counterfeit sexuality, the media, and unbelievably out-of-whack priorities—all that is mixed up in the pot with the thick broth of denial, blame, and depression.  It's served up over ice, and people drink from it on a daily basis.  Christians in America are constantly trying to do the same thing the Corinthian Christians did:  mix their faith with a strong dose of the cultural elixir, thinking it won't do any harm.

So Paul sat down to write a fiery letter to the church at Corinth, and by so doing banked it off Corinth for a knock on the American church a couple of thousand years later.  If you are going to be a Christian, it means you have to be different from those around you, Paul wrote.  Those differences have to be shown in two distinct areas of your lives.  First, in the way you speak; and, secondly, in the way you understand things.

In terms of speaking, Paul uses a word that means, basically, "When you talk, use pregnant words, as opposed to empty words."  Use words that give birth, that produce life, not just a bunch of emptiness or gossip strung together as mindless chatter.

Consider this.  The Lord's Prayer contains 56 words.  The Ten Commandments have 296 words.  The Gettysburg Address has 266 words.  And a recent U.S. Government order setting the price of cabbage has 26,911 words.

Our American culture, indeed our world, is full of words.  We have probably not seen a time in the history of humanity where we have been awash in so many words.  But so much of society's words have so little to say.  For the Christian, Paul is demanding that we not add to the emptiness of our culture with so much verbiage with so little power of God in it.

We don't want to be like the preacher who was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in the middle of his sermon.  The nurse, fresh out of nursing school, accidentally put a barometer in his mouth instead of a thermometer.  When she went to check for a reading it said, "Dry and windy."

For Christians, our words must be pregnant words, gospel words, which carry in them the power of the Cross, the wonder of the Resurrection, the attractiveness of Grace, the influence of Life, and the punch of truth.  Paul is telling us, via the Corinthians, the importance and difference Godly speaking can and should make.

Secondly, along with gospel-filled words, Paul told the Corinthian Christians that the way they understand things must be distinct from the culture around them.

John Naisbitt, author of the popular book, Megatrends, wrote that, "We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge."  I think that is part of what Paul may have been trying to say.  Just like words, we are awash in information, but who is doing the serious reflection about all that information?  Who is doing the thinking and pondering and praying over all that information, helping us find our way through it, deciding what is important for our knowledge, and what is just plain trash?  Paul is saying to the Corinthians (and we need to pay attention) that Christians are supposed to be the kinds of people who are doing that serious reflection and guiding people toward useful, life-filled knowledge.

In the Peanuts cartoon, Lucy is pointing to a bug on the sidewalk and telling her brother Linus, "Look at this tiny, little bug.  It's appalling how little he knows.  He's not like us.  He doesn't know anything about voting or disease or earthquakes or love or Monday mornings!!"
Linus looked at her and insightfully asked, "Who's better off?"

Those are the kinds of questions Christians need to be offering up to the world as we are getting buried under an internet full of so-called information.  If you know this or that tidbit of information, are you really better off?  If you've watched this or that YouTube video, are you any cooler?  And if not, then what is it you really need to know?

For Paul, as he writes to the Corinthian church, what you really need to know is the message about Christ.  All that will matter in the end is that one thing.  If you know the message of Christ, you will not fail to receive a single blessing from God, says Paul.  If you want to know how to live in this life, and if you want assurance for the afterlife, then the gospel of Christ is all you need to know, take into yourself, and live out all your days.

Mark Twain once described a man he had met by saying, "He knows so little and he knows it so fluently."  That statement, though funny in its bite, can be taken a couple of ways.  Certainly it can be taken as Twain meant it, that the man he was talking about was ignorant about just about everything, but spoke as if he knew it all.

But in another way, it could be a statement that aptly describes a Christian.  We may not know a lot of things, but as believers we know the most important thing—the gospel of Jesus Christ—and we better know it fluently.  That's what sets us apart from the crowd and from our culture.

In the next few weeks I will continue looking at Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, getting a sense of what kind of difference being a Christian makes.