Third Sunday in Lent
March 3, 2024
I Corinthians 1:18-25

Super Tuesday. Primary voting. Yard signs and endless text messages and fundraising phone calls. And at no time are our divisions more obvious than at primary voting. You have to pick, one or the other. There’s no compromise, there’s only the choice, it’s this or it’s that.

That’s the way it is, and the way it will be. On Tuesday night, we’ll compare one against the other. In November, we’ll watch those graphics pop up red or blue across the map, displaying our divisions in what is supposed to be, a united states. I don’t mean to come across like I’m wringing my hands; rather, this seems to be the way humans behave.

It was also this way in the church in ancient Corinth. Paul is writing this letter to the church in Corinth about twenty-five years after Jesus. The church in Corinth is new and it is small. It may have only between around forty people. And yet, they were like us. It appears that they had two sides, two parties in their little church. The more things change the more they stay the same.

The issue at stake in the little church in Corinth, is fairly basic. The topic is salvation. Who is saved? One party believed that, because they were Christians, they were already saved; their sins were already forgiven. This meant that they could do whatever they want. And if you read all of First Corinthians, you’ll see, that’s exactly what they do. Fun, frivolity, and a little bit of hedonism. Let’s call them the Mardi Gras Party. They believed that they were already saved by Jesus, so they could have a lot of “fun.” 

The other party, let’s call them the Puritans. They didn’t believe that they were saved yet. So they lived rigorous, austere lives; avoiding anything that looked anything like sin so that they could be saved. They followed all the laws, all the rules, and were bent out of shape by the people who didn’t. You can see, these two groups together in the same church is a recipe for trouble. 

Now, in today’s world, if the disagreements were that bad, half the congregation would just move down the street and start a new church. And that’s what why Paul is sending this letter. He’s worried that this little group of Christians will start worshiping this or that. They’ll start cherishing their divisions. They will become their own pettiness.

And so Paul throws a theological grenade into that little church in Corinth. It may not seem like much, but it is everything. Paul writes, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (I Corinthians 1:18). Being saved. For you nerds, that’s a present participle, used to describe an ongoing, current situation. It’s not that Jesus has saved you, so you can sin all you want. And it’s not that you aren’t saved yet, so you better be on your best behavior. Paul says that the message about the cross is about being saved.

And I think that Paul was smart enough that this was intentional. This isn’t a typo. This sets the stage for the rest of the letter, and in one fell swoop Paul is humbling both parties in the church at Corinth. Salvation is not just something from the past; salvation is not just something we hope for in the future; your salvation is happening now. “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Being saved. Those are words for my hurting soul. Because I look at my life and I see that I could be closer to God, but I also look back and I can see how far I’ve come. And, I can’t look back on my life and pinpoint a day, an hour, or even a year when it was that I decided to follow Jesus. But, I know that it happened. But I also hope that I where I am now, is not where I stay. I can thank God that I have changed, but I also want to change even more. Being saved.

Also, this is good, solid Episcopal Church theology. We don’t get too wrapped up in this or that. It doesn’t make sense, to me at least, to draw lines between those who are saved and those who are not. Because that doesn’t fit the human experience. We live in the present participle. When you come down with a cold, there is no specific point in time in which you had a cold, and then the cold was *snap* gone. No, it’s a process. You are getting better. Or say a child, who is learning to read, it’s not like one day they don’t know the alphabet and the next day they pick up Moby-Dick. No, it’s a process. You are learning to read. When you think about it, there are actually very few hard and fast lines of demarcation in human life. The same in our life with Jesus. We are being saved. We are far more complex than we think we are. We are more than picking a line to vote in on Primary Day. The more and more I live this life, the more I realize that the present participle, being saved, is the way of Jesus. 

Not only is this good for our souls, it is good for our communities; for our society. Insofar as it is possible, we must avoid the Corinthian trap, of dividing ourselves one against the other; this against that. It’s no good for us. I’m not being Polly Anna here, I’m just sticking to the Christian tradition. All too often, we get wrapped up in the zero sum game. If I win, then you have to lose. If I’m right, then I must be one hundred percent right and you must be one hundred percent wrong. We seem to be in a place where it’s just about getting our side to win, about coming out on top. And while it may feel good to win, while it might seem to be the best solution for what we think is right, remember the words of Saint Paul: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (I Corinthians 1:27).

“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The message about the cross. The cross is the ultimate sign of “reaching across the aisle.” With one hand, Jesus reaches out to the Lord God Almighty. With the other hand, Jesus reaches out to us. To bring us together. Not so that one side would be defeated, but rather so that both sides would win. God wins back our hearts and minds; we win grace and mercy. That is the Christian hope. We will raise each other up. That is the gift and the example we can give to this world that is intent on beating each other into the ground, to keep us from perishing.

I know, I have committed the cardinal sin of preaching. I have tried to make two points in one sermon. First, the theological point, that our salvation is a process, not a fixed point. And second, the human point, that unity in Christ is far more important than our pettiness. That’s my sermon.

But if you have made it through this sermon, then you’ve got the gist of Paul’s entire first letter to the Corinthians. I saved you a bunch of time from reading it for yourself. You’re welcome.

So I’ll end today with Paul’s own summary of First Corinthians. In that wonderful little poem of his, he lays it all out. He says that living together is better than living against each other, and he says that knowing the grace of God is a process. Paul says in those eternal words,

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (From I Corinthians 13).