Text: I Corinthians 9:19-23
Date: September 20, 2009
Green Street UMC, Augusta, ME
©Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher

“I have become all things to all…”

Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all … so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (I Corinthians 9:19-23, NIV)

I’ve always been fascinated by the Civil War. I don’t romanticize it, at least I hope I don’t. But it was such a defining moment in our nation’s history, that I find it hard to look away when a documentary or film comes my way, reminding me of that troubled period in our nation’s history. My Great great great grandfather Jim Blackstone fought with the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, or so the family legend goes, and my grandfather said that he could still remember Grandpa Jim’s sword hanging over the family fireplace when he was a child. That tale and others made my first trip to Little Round Top at Gettysburg a moving, emotional experience. How many of Grandpa Jim’s friends and neighbors had died on that very spot? Had he ever gone back there to remember, or was it too painful to recall? I’ll never know.

I was reminded of that experience by watching the 2003 film Gods and Generals last week. It’s not the most amazing film you’ve ever seen, a bit dry in places, but there is Joshua Chamberlain striding across one battlefield after another, and for people who live in this city in this state, well, it’s just something you ought to see. When I’m teaching on the Portland campus of the seminary, I teach in the Joshua Chamberlain Room, and there his picture is, staring down at me for three hours every week. It is an intimidating experience. I always imagine him thinking as I walk out of the classroom, “For this I saved the Union?”

Civil War. It is probably the most horrendous kind of war, because it turns family members, fellow citizens, and those who share a common heritage, into blood enemies. One of the most memorable scenes in Gods and Generals, the film I mentioned, involves the battle at Fredericksburg. At one point in the battle a regiment of Union soldiers made up of recent Irish immigrants finds they are attacking a similar regiment from Georgia in a large open field. Brother against brother, fighting for a country that is not yet even their own. Later that night as the wounded and dead are tended to, one of the town’s Irish American residents recalls how Fredericksburg 20 years before had sent corn grown in that very field to relieve an Irish famine. “I can’t help but wonder,” she remarks, “did we save the lives of boys on both sides, just so that they could come here to kill one another?”

It was against the backdrop of watching Gods and Generals that I later that night turned on the news. And the clashing words of partisan opponents that I heard troubled me, troubled me because these were my fellow citizens, filled with such anger for their fellow citizens, and I began to understand how the Civil War could have come to be.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should start stocking up on canned goods and cannon balls, but I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 will object if I say this is one of the most painful periods of national disagreement in my memory. Perhaps, then, it is a fair question to ask of the Gospel this morning, what is the role of the church when the forces of social and political strife bring such emotions to the very door of our church, our sanctuary, our holy place? Indeed, what does God ask of us when such issues sit the pews between us, hovering spoken or unspoken as we sing our hymns, pass the peace, confess our sins, listen to God’s word, hear the sermon, make our offerings to God, gather at the table, pray for our neighbors, and receive God’s benediction?

Has the Gospel traveled such ground before, we might ask. And the answer of course, is “absolutely.” Perhaps the greatest benefit of Bible Study is to discover that there is very little that we experience in life that earlier generations haven’t already weathered by the grace of God. Notable exceptions include trying to get children’s toys out of their packages, foods that explode in the microwave, and telephone menu options. Those particular plagues are unique to this day and time. Most everything else has already happened to somebody.

The big questions in today’s world are really not all that perplexing compared to struggles that the early church experienced in its earliest days. The role of women and slaves, the divine and human nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the importance of the Old Testament. These don’t sound like agenda breakers at the next church council meeting, but in fact the blood of Christians has been shed by fellow Christians over every single one of them. But perhaps the single most divisive controversy in the NT is the struggle between Christians of Jewish heritage and Christians of Gentile heritage. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but in case you’re not, put yourself back in Jerusalem on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit falls on people of many languages, and persons of diverse cultures begin to speak in languages that are understood by all. And suddenly Jewish disciples of a Jewish Jesus begin to realize that God’s plans for this new religious community are immense. And it is not long before Christians who speak Greek and Latin, who are not circumcised, who eat pork roast on Sunday, and who dress in togas start showing up at the fellowship suppers. And you guessed it, pretty soon there are romances in the youth group, and Miriams start making eyes at boys named Tiberius and Julius and before you know it there is a full blown clash of cultures going on. It’s why Paul is such a controversial figure in the New Testament. He is a good Jewish-Christian preaching, very successfully I might add, to Gentiles. And out there among the great unclean, Paul is taking offerings and sending them to the mother church in Jerusalem, where the traditionalists have to decide whether or not to cash the check.

I know all of this sounds like a silly dispute to us, but for first-century Christians it was a full-blown crisis. Page after page of the New Testament is dedicated to resolving it, resolving it in a way that heals community, and allows brothers and sisters to experience the unity of Christ. In Rome, it was easier since the Jewish and Gentile Christians could form separate congregations, but in small towns and villages it was heartbreaking. Every time a church supper came up, separate tables would be available for kosher and non-kosher families. Every baptism raised the question of whether the convert should first be circumcised as the law requires. (those of you considering membership at Green Street by the way will be relieved to know we have resolved that particular issue!). There were questions of intermarriage between the two groups, and the status of their children, and the nagging problem of “what do we do when the relatives come to visit?” These were not happy days; these were not easy days to be a Christian.

Then along came Paul, this hot-tempered, disagreeable, brilliant man who could argue from sunrise to sunset for a radical rejection of Jewish purity codes among the new Gentile Christian communities. This argument shaped everything that he was. He was passionate that the new converts were free to eat whatever they wanted without criticism from the hardliners, and he made that argument from one end of Asia Minor to the very heart of Rome.

But then, in today’s passage, a strange thing happens. The Spirit of God gets hold of Paul by the heartstrings and reminds him that being right isn’t the only thing, that to be incorporated in the Body of Christ is to be in a relationship of service to others, and some of those others were people whose dress, habits, language, surnames, food, or politics totally disgust, confuse, or enrage him. Paul thinks long and hard about that insight, and the result is this passage in First Corinthians, in which Paul unbelievably says that he is willing to set aside being right, for the sake of being loving; that he will eat a kosher meal, against all of his principles of dietary freedom, if it means he has the chance to tell his dinner partner about the incredible love of God. It doesn’t mean he’s given anything up; he can still go grab a BLT on the way home and not feel ashamed, and if someone asks his opinion, he’ll surely give it to them. He’s really good at that. But when it comes down to it, Paul—as he writes in I Corinthians—will do whatever he can, whatever he has to do, to share the Gospel. He will attach the greatest value to being in fellowship with a brother or sister, even if he or she disagrees with his most passionate views on the controversies of the day.

Now I want you to understand that this is not necessarily an easy sermon for me to preach. Like Paul and maybe like some of you, I often have strong opinions and a desire to share them, and I do. But we are asked by this scripture to remember that the brother or sister who disagrees with us on some issue or another is equally a beloved child of God, as well as a person trying to please God according to what he or she thinks God wants him or her to do. And the takeaway from this scripture passage is that we need to figure out how to live and minister in harmony with those who disagree with us, because the reality is that there are always going to be areas of disagreement in every community, and club, and church that we’re ever going to be a part of, unless of course we go start our own churches, slap our names on the door, and hope nobody comes.

I go through all this, this morning, because the secular world isn’t ever going to teach us this lesson, and because you are a congregation that is articulate, smart, passionate, and diverse. I don’t say those things to butter you up, but as a pastoral diagnosis. That is in fact who you are. And in this season of secular and political debate some of those passions are going to come into church and sit among us, particularly for the next seven weeks or so. That doesn’t trouble me. Christians are supposed to be passionate about justice and righteousness, just as God is. But on November 4, which I’m pretty sure is the day after election day, on that day when inevitably there will be winners and losers, on all kinds of issues, the nation is going to look around and ask itself, ‘How can we live like this? How can we be one nation under God and yet be so divided?”

On a day like that, it would feel so good to have the citizens of Kennebec County, Maine look around and say, “Hey, look at Green Street Church over there. I’ve never seen such a diverse collection of folks in my life, but through all this they kept feeding the poor, and giving thanks to God, and praying for the sick, and gathering around that communion table, where no one has power over anyone else, and every one of them is there as a guest of God. And when they go home at night, some of them watch Fox News, and some MSNBC, and some Public television, and some the Home shopping network. But when they are together as a church, there’s something about them that is more important than any of that. I wonder what it is.” And one will turn to another and say, with a sound of urgency in her voice, “Let’s / go / find / out.”

I would like us to be that church. The church that gets through times such as this, not by shushing the important conversations, as some churches no doubt will, but by ending every heart-to-heart sharing of convictions with the words, “I love you, brother; I love you, sister. You drive me nuts. But I love you.”
That’s important for us as we go about planning, and funding, and implementing the ministry of Jesus Christ in this place. But it is even more important to our neighbors, those who might well assume from the secular media that there is no future for America other than one long, constant, bitter, drawn out argument. As they go looking for better answers than that, I hope and pray and expect that we have a huge helping of God’s generous and inclusive spirit to share with them, not because we are of one mind about anything, but precisely because we are not: we who are so different from one another, and yet united in one ministry by our Savior, Jesus, the Christ. Amen.