Sermons

Churches can easily become competitive places. People jockeying to be noticed, treated by others as the significant ones.

Or you get a two-tier system. There are the keen members, the spiritual ones. And then there’s everybody else, who feel less part of things.

Competitive. Elitism. We get enough of those two attitudes in the wider world. We don’t need it here as well. And yet it so easily happens.

This morning, we continue our journey through 1 Corinthians. The second half of this letter tackles some issues in a letter they’d sent to the apostle Paul.

Just imagine the shock as 1 Corinthians chapter 11 was read out loud on Sunday morning in ancient Corinth. Verse 17: “In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.” “More harm than good”. In other words, the world would be a better place if you weren’t meeting together. Ouch.

What were they doing? They were holding services of Holy Communion, the biblical name for which is the Lord’s Supper.

How could Communion do more harm than good? Read on. Verse 20: “So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat.”

This text is a strange one to our ears. It’s like entering a period drama. Downton Abbey. Longer ago, maybe: Poldark. Troy, even.

It’s all about the need for women to have their heads covered, and for men not to do so.

What kind of head covering? All we can think of is posh hats at a wedding, or at Ascot. Or we think of some of the veils worn by women in Muslim countries, which have sparked debates in several western countries including our own.

But it’s not about that. So what are these head coverings?

Many people today think that it doesn’t really matter which religion someone chooses. It’s a lifestyle choice, a bit like choosing your diet or your car. It’s part of your culture. Either way, there’s no better or worse to religion. It’s just another way in which we’re different.

Certainly, the Bible tells us to love and respect every person. We don’t just care for those who share our beliefs. We’re one human family, made in the image of God. But that’s not the same as saying that there’s no better or worse, that religion doesn’t matter.

What do you aim at in life? What do you want to achieve? What are the things that you’d make big sacrifices for?

The Christians in ancient Corinth were aiming at the wrong things. Or, rather, they were missing some very important ambitious.

And as a result, they were growing less keen on the apostle Paul, their founder.

We’re in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. If you were here when we looked at chapter 8, you’ll know that Paul was answering a question they’d asked him: “Can we eat meat that has first been offered as a sacrifice to one of the Greek gods?”

The apostle Paul gets plenty of bad press. We’ve been working our way through 1 Corinthians, a letter Paul wrote. It’s in the Bible, So it’s the word of God for us today.

It should be that simple, but there are plenty of people in the wider church who have lots of time for Jesus but not a lot of time for Paul.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little weary of living in a world where it’s a scramble to the top. Where everyone stands on their rights, claiming everything they think they’re entitled to. Where other people are frequently nothing more than an inconvenience for everyone’s personal ambition.

God intends the Christian church to be radically different from that. To be a refreshing picture of how humanity is meant to function. To be a foretaste of how things will be when Jesus returns.

We live in a restless age. Whether it’s houses, jobs or relationships, people are always trying to move onwards and upwards.

Houses: It’s called a housing ladder. It’s increasingly hard to get on that first rung, but once there some people change their home every few years, climbing that ladder.

Jobs: I have several friends who change their employer every few years, either because they’re dissatisfied with their current job, or because moving sideways is the way to move upwards.

The Christian church is often heard, by those on the outside, as having a purely negative message about sex and relationships. It seems there are an awful lot of things the people shouldn’t do. It’s all about “thou shalt not”.

Indeed, we’ve had a bit of that in recent chapters in 1 Corinthians. In chapter 5, a man was sleeping with his stepmother, and Paul rebukes the church for failing to discipline the man.

Today, our Bible reading addresses the subject of sexual sin. And I’m very aware of the need to tread carefully. This is a sensitive subject. For a number of reasons.

It’s sensitive culturally. Increasingly, Western culture says there’s no such thing as sexual sin. That’s not actually true. There are taboos. The big ones are unfaithfulness and underage. But apart from that, as long as there is clear consent, just about anything goes.