I.
Divisions in the church are not new, which is why Paul had to write to the church in Corinth appealing:
“to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose.”
What strikes me about this passage is that then, as now, division can creep into a church by way of the sacraments. Paul continues:
“What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”
Then he adds:
“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.”
Reading this today we may think it was strange for an ancient church to quarrel over who baptized whom. Yet the history of the Church is full of divisions stemming from quarrels over the sacraments.
Baptists do not accept infant baptism. If you were baptized as a baby and want to join a Baptist church, you will have to be re-baptized.
Roman Catholics will not allow Episcopalians to take communion. The Episcopal Church today is divided over the popular practice of “open communion” — whether to invite everyone to receive communion — or to follow its own rules and require a person be baptized before he or she can receive.
II.
I have told some of you this story before, but the first time I received communion was in the fourth grade, at a Catholic school. I was not baptized. I had never really even been to church. But there I was, at a school mass, my classmates all dutifully getting in line to go up to the altar, and so I followed.
I didn’t know what to do, so I nudged the elbow of the classmate in front me and asked, “What do I do?”
“Put your hands like this,” he said, crisscrossing his palms, “and say, ‘Amen.’”
I remember that moment because I felt awkward and unprepared. Other than that, I don’t think it mattered very much. I don’t think there was something magical about the sacrament that determined my fate — like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter — which sent me down the path to where I stand today, in this pulpit.
Instead, I agree with Paul:
“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel — and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.”
In other words, it wasn’t the moment of my inadvertent first holy communion that had an effect, but the subsequent eight years of Christian schooling, where I studied God’s word and heard it preached, that worked on my heart and changed it.
III.
In today’s gospel from Matthew, we read about the end of John the Baptist’s ministry and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
“From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Unlike John, however, Jesus does not minister by sacraments, He ministers by preaching, until the very last night of His ministry on earth.
Jesus’ ministry supersedes the ministry of John the Baptist, in the same way that preaching God’s word must always come first, and before the Church’s sacraments are administered.
The sacraments simply do not make sense without faithful preaching beforehand.
IV.
John the Baptist knew this. This is why we heard him say a few weeks ago,
“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I.”[1]
John knew his sacramental ministry would not make perfect sense until Christ came to give it fuller meaning.
That is true for every sacrament and sacramental rite of the church, even today.
Baptism, holy communion, confirmation, marriage, the laying on of hands for ordination and healing: the gospel must be proclaimed first if these symbols of the gospel are to be understood properly and in their fullest sense.
Let me give you an example: Paul’s teaching on marriage. He writes, “Wives, be subject to your husbands.”[2]
For many this is an embarrassing passage of scripture. It’s not even appointed by the lectionary to be read in church. Many preachers won’t touch it. It sounds like a plot device from The Handmaid’s Tale.
If I read you the whole verse, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord,” well, I am not sure that makes it any better. It seems to reinforce a hierarchy with husbands and Jesus at the top.
But Paul isn’t saying that. Still, he doesn’t do himself any favors with this next verse: “for the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.”
There is a line in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding that makes fun of this passage. The daughter, Toula, says to her mother:
“Ma, Dad is so stubborn. What he says goes. ‘Ah, the man is the head of the house!’
Let me tell you something, Toula. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.”
That’s funny but it isn’t what Paul is getting at either. Marriage can be a struggle for position and power, just as the Corinthian Christians were jockeying for position and power by quarreling over who baptized whom. Baptismal pedigrees gave rise to divisions in that church.
What Paul is saying is this: for your marriage to mean anything, it has to find its meaning in Jesus Christ. Specifically, that means husbands have to be willing to die so that their wives can live, just as Jesus died so that His Church might live.
How many of your marriages are based on the principle of total and complete sacrifice?
You may be thinking, “Of course I’d die for my wife!” and I don’t doubt that you would. But do you pick up your dirty socks? Because Christian marriage is meant to imitate (if not always literally) Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.
That’s the gospel and that’s why preaching it has to precede and even supersede the sacraments. Preaching is the first ministry of the Church. Without it, the sacraments tend to become political, as baptism did in Corinth, as marriage has today.
But I think we can depoliticize the sacraments if we heed Paul’s counsel: “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.” He could just as well have said, “Christ did not send me to marry but to preach the gospel.”
Preaching is the cure for divisions in the church.
V.
When Jesus calls His first disciples, He calls blue-collar, working-class men. Fishermen. He spends the next three years teaching them how to preach.
If the gospel were only about meeting our own needs, then I think Jesus might have picked different sorts of men. Indeed, He might even have picked a few women too. He would have run the 1st Century equivalent of a marketing campaign, complete with segmentation and consumer mirroring.
In other words, the divisions in the church of Corinth wouldn’t have bothered Him. He would have seen them as opportunities to tailor His message to suit and flatter the needs of every group. He could have charged a premium for bespoke revelations from God, made to suit every individual need.
Think that’s far-fetched? A lot of “spiritual leaders” did that and still do. Just look at the New York Times bestseller list. How many of those books will challenge the way you already think?
But Jesus didn’t do that. He didn’t preach His own words but the words His Father gave Him.[3] He taught His disciples to do the same.[4]
This is how preaching is supposed to be. It is not supposed to introduce novelties. That is how divisions start. When preaching becomes novel, which is to say, when it becomes political, the sacraments get weaponized.
Preachers need to have the humility to preach only what’s in the Bible, and congregations need to have the desire to “be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose.”
In other words, you, as a congregation, have to want to reconcile and to be reconciled to each other, and you should not tolerate your preacher preaching any gospel but the cross of Christ as the means for that reconciliation to occur.
Otherwise, you will not only empty the cross of its power. You will empty your church.
Christ’s message is simple: “faith will change your life.” Notice I didn’t say, “have faith and your life will be changed.”
A changed life is the effect, not the cause of faith.
We can’t work our way into faith by endless efforts to improve ourselves. Christ’s message has to be preached to us, touch us, and enliven us. Then we are changed.
That is why the sacraments can do nothing by themselves. They are symbols of the grace we already have from God, not the favor we are trying to curry with each other.
If we fight over the sacraments, who baptized whom, who can and can’t get married, we empty them of their power.
Paul asks, “Is Christ divided?”
No. He is not. Neither is His body, the Church. The divisions in the Church are not permanent and they will pass away.
It is best, then, not to be defined by them. Amen.
Preached at St. Peter’s, Lithgow, on January 22, 2023.
Epiphany 3, Year A
Isaiah 9:1-4; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23