1 Corinthians 12:1-11
January 17, 2016
I.
The apostle Paul is writing at a time before there was a distinct religion called “Christianity.” There was no institutional church, and almost no coherent, integrated doctrines. There was none of the elaborate superstructure of clergy and Scriptures and ecclesiastical law that we have today. There was no New Testament at all, and even the Hebrew Scriptures were not yet completely identified. And they had no prayerbook or hymnal beyond the Psalms.
In those days the church was just these communities of people gathering to hear about and worship some Palestinian Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans but who now strangely still lives: Jesus Christ. This original confession, “Jesus is Lord!” is the bedrock foundation of Christian faith. There simply wasn’t much more to go on in those days but this. But it was apparently enough.
It is important to remember how explicitly political this movement is from the beginning. To worship and follow, and vociferously proclaim to be still alive, someone whom the empire had executed by crucifixion for treason and insurrection, was a very pointed, in-your-face political act. It was an only slightly indirect way of expressing opposition to Rome. The very proclamation, “Jesus is Lord,” as I have reminded you before, was an explicit reaction to the State propaganda slogan of the day which insisted that “Caesar is Lord!” Anyone who affirmed that “Jesus is Lord” would have been automatically understood to also be saying, “and Caesar isn’t.”
Paul says that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. This explicitly brings God, the Creator of the universe, into the equation on the side of Jesus, and therefore against Rome. So just the simple assertion that “Jesus is Lord,” which seems quite insignificant to us, to the people at the time would have carried with it all this extra political and therefore dangerous baggage. To say that Jesus is Lord means “Rome is finished!” And people would have clearly understood this.
So it is not just a religious faith statement. It is not just an expression of individual spiritual opinion. Publicly confessing that Jesus is Lord would get you put on the terrorist watch-list. That’s why Paul is so adamant about this being the key Christian affirmation. It was costly. It was a dangerous thing to say. It was not something a person could say lightly.
He reminds them that back when they were still pagans, that is, back when they still participated in the religions officially sanctioned by the State, what they said didn’t matter. Those idols didn’t have anything worthwhile, let alone dangerous, to say. They were part of the imperial religious establishment, and didn’t say anything. Idols don’t speak; the empire speaks for them.
II.
This confession, that Jesus is Lord, is so important that Paul also states that no one speaking by the Spirit of God could possibly utter the words, “Jesus be cursed!” So one’s attitude towards Jesus, the one crucified by Rome and who now still lives, means everything.
Then Paul goes on to say that if we all agree on this, then the details of how we express this affirmation of faith in Jesus, don’t really matter. As long as it is faithful to this truth, it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Remember that “Lord” is the word used by Jews to refer to God, who actual name was too holy to be spoken. To say that “Jesus is Lord” means nothing less than that Jesus is God. This is an early expression of the Trinity, as the church gradually realizes that God and Jesus and the Spirit are basically all identical.
We continue to affirm this even to this day because it grounds our understanding of God in the experience of Jesus. It places God absolutely and forever against those who wield power in the world by violence, and injustice, and it places God absolutely and forever on the side of those who are victimized by those who wield power in the world.
Once he establishes this foundation of Christian faith, he then uses it as the unifying principle that may give value and energy to many different spiritual gifts.
This is important because the churches that Paul was founding, of which the congregation in Corinth is a fine example, were incredibly diverse. Ethnically, religiously, even in terms of class, these people came from all over the map. All they have in common is this confession of Jesus as Lord. Paul insists that that is enough, and that they should be tolerant and accepting of everything else that these very different kinds of people bring to the church. As long as it is filtered through this one basic essential truth — Jesus is Lord, which is to say that the empire killed God but now God still lives an the empire is doomed — then Paul is willing to let people express that in any way that made sense to them.
That’s when he starts to talk about the “varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.” The same Spirit is that of Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah crucified by Rome for blasphemy and sedition, who now still lives. As long as we agree on this essential thing, opposition to the empire, we can accept these other secondary things. As long as these secondary things communicate the basic and essential truth of God’s light overcoming the darkness of entrenched human violence and injustice, they are fine.
So he talks about “varieties of services,” and “varieties of activities.” And he talks about different manifestations of the same Spirit for the common good: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, and finally various kinds of tongues and their interpretation. All of these, according to Paul, “are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.” And the Spirit is the Spirit of the crucified and risen Messiah.
III.
He deliberately lists “various kinds of tongues” and their interpretation at the end of that list, because we get the impression that this was the most divisive practice of some in the church. The participation in glossolalia, which we call “speaking in tongues,” and which is a central characteristic of Pentecostal and charismatic churches today, is significant because it was not, so far as we know, a Jewish thing. It was something that some of these followers of Jesus brought with them from their previous faith communities, usually Greek mystery cults.
“Speaking in tongues” was a problem because some in the church were suspicious of it because it wasn’t Jewish. Plus, not everyone could do it; which meant that it created a special in-group of practitioners who may have considered themselves to be specially gifted and therefore somewhat superior to others. That’s why Paul adds this to the list which includes some other things that not everyone could do, like healing, miracles, prophecy, and the discernment of spirits.
Paul is saying, basically, “Hey, if you want to import into the church this foreign, non-Jewish ecstatic practice, that’s fine. Just make sure this, like everything else, serves the good news of Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah who makes us all one. There is no excuse for divisions in the church, let alone superiority and subordination. We may have different spiritual gifts; but none of them are necessarily better than any other, and those who practice some of them are not any better than or superior to those who practice others. All of us are under the One Lord.”
In other words, Paul is perfectly willing to accept practices from other sources in the church. He is willing to do this because he understands that Jesus is not a little, parochial, ethnically or geographically limited, deity. He knows that the God he worships did not just create one small piece of real estate in the eastern Mediterranean, but the whole universe. And this God did not just bless one particular family, but through them all families, all nations, and all races. Just because you were not a Jew, did not mean that God was absent from your life. God breathed everything into existence, including other people. Paul did not insist that people coming to the church renounce and reject everything about their former life. If it was something that resonates with the good news, and apparently Paul put speaking in tongues in this category, they could keep it and even teach it in the church.
Because all that matters to Paul is Jesus Christ and the radical, inclusive, subversive unity he reveals and brings into the world. All that matters is that this truth get communicated by any means necessary.
IV.
Paul understands that Jesus is God’s profound “YES!” to true humanity and the good creation, and God’s absolute “NO!” to the forces of evil that corrupt and kill and debase and exploit people and nature. When we proclaim, “Jesus is Lord!” that is tremendous good news for humanity… and terribly bad news for the principalities and powers who have the world in their crippling grip. It is good news for peace, justice, and liberation. It is bad news for those who employ violence and injustice, and who would keep people in bondage. It is good news for the oppressed, and bad news for those who profit from the oppression of others.
The gifts of the Spirit necessarily express and reflect and advance this truth. So on the one hand Paul is quite open and liberal about what he will embrace and accept. But on the other, he insists that whatever we accept and embrace must participate in the love, peace, and justice of Jesus. It must be about the tremendous reversals that Jesus reveals at the heart of God’s intention for the world. It must be about reconnection, reconciliation, and reunion. It must be about our unity.
We see this focus on reversal and transformation in the other two readings for today as well. In Isaiah, it has to do with bringing broken and forsaken people into blessed and redeemed relationship. In John, we see it in Jesus changing the water of an ineffective ceremonial into the powerful wine of blessing and life.
It is this overturning of values and practices from death to life, from participation in oppressive systems to an opening into community, that Paul sees that Jesus creates. It is this that must characterize the “varieties of services” and “activities” in the church. It is this that must be revealed in the different manifestations among us of God’s Spirit for the common good: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, and even those various kinds of tongues and their interpretation.
For Paul, the name of Jesus, refers to his death and resurrection. These have the power to save precisely because they overcome and neutralize the power of the powerful, and bestow power on the powerless. And even today, the true name of Jesus is found and lifted up wherever this is happening. Not in those places where his name is being cynically press-ganged into service of the principalities and powers. But wherever God’s Spirit flows into the world, revealing the truth as manifest in love, and reality fulfilled in goodness.
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