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I remember this specific moment in my youth. I couldn’t tell you the day or year, but I was reflecting on the Creed after the service and I marveled at how wonderful it was that we as Christians, as Episcopalians specifically, could disagree on so much and yet still come together to say the Creed and believe these words we say together every week.
Unfortunately it was not long, maybe months or a year or maybe a bit longer, until things went downhill at my sending parish. I’ve spoken about some of this before, and how our church struggled with our Diocese at the time.
In the midst of all this, we were going through a change of leadership. We began to really lean more into the Protestant branch of Anglicanism. All of a sudden, I started hearing the cry “Sola Scriptura” everywhere. Our Latin scholars out there will know that this means “Scripture alone”. This was used by the Reformers, including Martin Luther. It was meant to combat the idea of “Sola Ecclesia” or “the church alone”, identified with the Roman Catholic Church the Medieval Reformers were fighting with.
I’ve never really understood either of these cries, and I’ve found them particularly divisive from my own experience. Instead I always felt that Scripture itself was giving a different cry, one that could bring us all together: Solus Christus or “Christ alone”.
Our reading from 1 Corinthians is one of the places we see Scripture itself putting forth this idea. Much like what I experienced in my sending parish, the Corinthians are also dealing with division, a similar division in fact. The Corinthians are dividing themselves by rallying cries, specifically of who they belong to. “‘I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas”. The Corinthians are aligning themselves by the various leaders of the church. Only one faction, as Paul presents it, offer the cry “I belong to Christ.”
As Paul points out “Has Christ been divided?” Why is the focus on which leadership camp they belong to if they all, ultimately, belong to the same person? Why make a big deal out of anyone else other than Christ Jesus?
Unfortunately, there are still many divisions in the church. We might trade Paul, Apollos, and Cephas for Roman Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Orthodox, Presbyterians and the like, each with their own revered leaders. Within our own denomination we have Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, as well as the traditionalists and expansionists in each faction.
None of these divisions should matter though. As I have said before, particularly in remembering my time serving at Holy Comforter in Atlanta, GA, all that should matter is our unity and service to God in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the lesson Paul was trying to teach to the Corinthians. It is the lesson we still have to learn today.
This passage in 1 Corinthians is one I love and am particularly passionate about because of the impact it has had on me. Because of the time I spent with divisiveness surrounding me, I found it seeping into myself. When I encountered this passage in 1 Corinthians, I struggled with it. Yet I wrestled with it in a way that I learned from it and was changed by it. Paul’s words helped me to realize the need we have to work together for our Lord and to put Jesus first over everything else. It took a journey to accept the truth of this Scripture and to grow into these words, though it was time well spent. I hope that these words can work the same thing within you.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t ways and methods that are better in our Faith, or even that there aren’t paths and practices that are wrong. Some means of enacting our Faith are better while some practices are clearly wrong. We can’t escape that. Paul, as can be seen throughout 1 Corinthians and his other letters, doesn’t try to argue otherwise either. Yet we cannot come to terms with a better way without a plethora of options, and we cannot enter the same space before we can all accept the same thing: fidelity and faithfulness to our Lord Jesus Christ.
We may be different from other Christians, other churches even, that are out there, and that is all well and good. Yet we have to be willing to come together with our Siblings in Christ to serve our Lord Jesus in this world. We have to be willing to work together with others, whether in our Diocese or in our larger Faith, to bring about God’s Kingdom in this world. At the end of the day, Christ Jesus alone is what binds us all together. We must never forget that, for it is all that matters.