united in diversity:
embracing our common unity
Third Sunday After Pentecost ● June 9, 2024
Rev. Josh Lee, Guest Preacher © 2024
You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/S22tn3s_LpU?si=C42NvodyQBdrv473
Scripture Readings:
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (The New Living Translation)
The reading text is provided at the end of this sermon.
iStock Image #1498100679, by Kar-Tr, Used by permission
HOOK: WHY LISTEN?
I’m grateful that throughout my personal spiritual journey, I have gotten to taste a lot of the Baskin Robbins flavors of Christianity.
Highlights of My Story:
● After I came out as affirming and resigned from the conservative evangelical church I was pastoring in Kentucky.
● I lost most of my friends, and every Pastor who had ever served as a reference bailed
● I was without a job and uncertain about my future as a pastor
● I passed a church one day that said messy progressive religion on the street sign
● It was a Methodist Church
● I also started attending a UCC congregation because they had a big rainbow flag
● In the UMC and the UCC, I found a place where my sexuality was finally accepted
● However, I felt like a spiritual refugee.
● I didn’t know the hymns in these mainline traditional congregations
● I didn’t understand why we read liturgy out loud together…
● The sermons were only 12 minutes
● The prayer time was structured completely differently…
● And their progressive interpretations of Scripture would leave me baffled Sunday after Sunday on how they came to those conclusions and applications.
● I didn’t like reading the liturgy at first because I didn’t want to pray something I didn’t mean and I didn’t get to read the liturgy beforehand…
● Every so often someone would notice this and inquire why I didn’t read along….
● When I was asked to preach in both of these churches people made comments with a negative tone like “You didn’t grow up Methodist did you?”
● When I would inquire how they knew that it was because I preached too long, got energetic and I mentioned the Holy Spirit.
● There were many culture shocks for me as a spiritual refugee in this progressive mainline flavor of Christianity.
● I was so grateful for a safe place to land and try to make a home after I had been chased out of a faith tradition that was dangerous to me. There was a sense of safety in knowing I was in a church now that would not inflict spiritual abuse.
● But like all refugees coming from one land or culture to another, I felt the weight of expectations to assimilate.
● I came from evangelicalism and many of these mainliners had some expectations that I would talk like them, dress like them, read the liturgy with them, pray as they did, and preach like them.
● I, as a spiritual refugee, was expected to assimilate.
● However, there were a few people in these faith traditions, that would tell me, don’t listen to those people:
○ you pray in a way that feels comfortable to you,
○ you preach with all the energy and Holy Spirit you want,
○ you keep wearing your shorts to church
○ it’s okay that you don’t know all the theological language
○ all the authors we site,
○ you bring the language and the authors you know to the conversation.
● I was reminded by these few pastors that what I brought from my other faith traditions to the UMC and the UCC, would make them richer.
● And so I did just that… And I am so grateful for the ways it allowed me and others to flourish and nourish our faith.
● I eventually decided to go back to school and I got my master of divinity at Garrett Theological where a wide spectrum of people from a variety of faith traditions brought the best and the worst of their traditions to the classroom and we learned from one another.
● After seminary, I moved to Peoria, Illinois where I have pastored an inter-denominational church before moving here to NYC
There is such a need for churches that can welcome the Spiritual Refugees of other traditions.
Our faith is deeply rooted in Spiritual refugees who:
Who brought traditions from their synagogues,
Romans who brought practices from their temple worship,
Eunuchs who dared to be baptized,
and women who claimed a new voice in shaping our faith.
BOOK: CONTEXT & PASSAGE
AUTHOR & AUDIENCE:
InPauls’s letter to the Corinthians, he spends a majority of the book of 1 Corinthians
addressing some serious differences between how fellow Christians thought other Christians should be conducting themselves.
He is speaking to new followers of Christ who come from a variety of flavors of faith.
Theologian David Garland suggests that most Corinthian believers came from a Pagan Gentile background.
PROBLEM
The Corinthians wrote to Paul because there appear to be differences between the Jewish community and the Gentile community as they sought to live in community
Issues over:
● Marriages
● Sexual ethics
● The privileged and powerful treating the poor poorly
● The rich suing other followers instead of working toward reconciliation
The Jewish Christians are also appalled that Gentile Christians would eat food sacrificed to idols and Paul spends several chapters addressing this.
But the BIG ISSUE we see here… It appears that some in the Corinthian church are also super concerned about speaking in tongues because
To Jews, it seems more like manic speech that would be associated with pagan worship and the occult.
To Gentile Greeks, it seems in the text like it was a competition around who had the best spiritual gift or who was the most spiritual. Giving people special status.
But notice that whenever Paul lists the spiritual gifts, he puts tongues last, perhaps as a subtle way of reminding the believers no one person or gift has supremacy over the other.
The Gentile Pagans, who were most likely Greeks, seem offended by the Jewish believer’s self-righteousness
And how they feel they’re being forced to conform to Jewish customs in order to be accepted in this newly forming Christian community.
We know that in other writings Gentile Christians were feeling belittled in the validity of their faith because the Jewish Christians wanted them to be circumcised and follow food laws from the Jewish tradition.
Paul speaks directly to these differences and pressures for one another to conform by saying as we heard read today:
Resolution
1 Corinthians 12:12
“12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. 13 Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit”
Paul spends considerable time explaining to the believers that they all have different gifts, different backgrounds, different personalities, and passions,
And more specifically, they all come from different faith traditions and they are going to have to learn how to have unity, without uniformity!
Paul is challenging them to not treat one another as spiritual refugees, expecting the other to assimilate.
Paul is calling them to let go of their privilege and supremacy and embrace the diversity of expressions of this newly forming faith community.
LOOK: MEANING TO OUR LIVES
Paul spends a considerable amount of intentional time in this passage highlighting some of the most obvious social distinctions of ancient society.
Jew & Gentle Slave & Free Male & Female
He is drawing them all back to the reality that no matter their:
● backgrounds,
● beliefs,
● social status,
● gender,
● Ability,
● they’re all made of dust
● filled with the same Spirit!
Paul mentions an obscene amount of times that the gift of the Spirit is to all Christians.
I wonder if certain Christians were claiming they were “more holy”
or they “had more of the Spirit” than other Christians.
Perhaps Paul is trying to remind them of what they have in common
While they fixate on all their differences and expectations for others to conform…
Paul is calling them to be in Community ….
Which means to find COMMON -- UNITY.
What is Paul pointing to as their COMMON UNITY… The Spirit.
And no one has more of it or a patent on it!
For some the SPIRIT is going to manifest in believers through:
● exuberant expressions in worship,
● Others may sit and consider the words during worship
● some preachers will read a manuscript of their sermons
● Some will likely go off script or memorize.
● Some will pray written prayers while others will pray extemporaneously
● Some will read the liturgy aloud and others will read along in their head
● Some will pray to believe they can change God’s heart while others may pray to ask God to change theirs.
● Some of us will watch online while others of us will worship in person
● Some of us are in a season to pour out and others of us are in a season to be poured into
● Some of us are quick to trust the church and others of us are still considering where the church fits or doesn’t fit in our lives.
Christianity became a distinct faith separate from Judaism with its own Scriptures because early Christians had to embrace their new Kin and commit to generously caring for one another not despite their differences but because of them.
TOOK: WHAT’S THE TAKEAWAY
CLOSING ILLUSTRATION -
The Statue of Liberty was the idea of Edouard Laboulaye, a French abolitionist who wanted to gift the United States something to symbolize and celebrate the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" - Emma Lazarus
This poem has been heard by refugees around the world…. NYC has been a major hub for where refugees came and continue to come for a season in their life…
NYC was a safe haven for many LGBTQ people who had to leave their more rural communities to find new communities and more safety in this city...
My prayer for you is that wherever you are, watching from home, or gathering in person you would continue to be intentional to be a place where spiritual refugees from other traditions can come and cultivate a just and generous expression of the Christian faith. One that welcomes spiritual refugees who come from all over the world looking for a community of faith that will celebrate what they bring to enhance the body of Christ here, never expecting people to assimilate to be acceptable.
So Church may you be like a beacon of light in this city proclaiming to this melting pot:
"Give us those who are tired of religion regimented by gates,
give us your poor in Spirit who long to find a community of faith where they can bring their full self,
Holy Spirit, bring us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free from the oppressive structures in our society that the church has been explicit in upholding.
Send us those experiencing homelessness, those on the margins, and those who draw them, send us those who are looking for a safe church home.
Church, may you lift your lamp to the doors of this church and say come, find a generous and caring expression of our Faith!
Come and be a part of a faith that celebrates difference and Common-Unity!
__________________________________________________________________________
BENEDICTION Quote-- “Unity is diversity in love. Love creates unity, connecting all things, holding all things. Love is the creative energy of God. God is love. ~Bob Holmes
James Baldwin quote- “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rudfWdKCQzoCKKpWJUHi5dxAch9Xp-IM_xQ6ErsPxo0/edit?usp=sharing
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (The New Living Translation)
The human body has many parts,
but the many parts make up one whole body.
So it is with the body of Christ.
Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles,
some are slaves, and some are free.
But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit,
and we all share the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part.
The Word of Life and Freedom
Thanks be to God