Hilton Head Island, SC – June 12, 2016
The Chapel Without Walls
I Corinthians 12:12-14,27-31a; I Cor. 3:1-9
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. – I Cor. 3:7 (RSV)
When most of us were children, the majority of churches in this country were denominationally connected. There were Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregational, and Methodist churches. Then there were variants of Lutherans in general: the United Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church; the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the United Presbyterian Church, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church; the American Baptist Church, the Southern Baptist Church, the Conservative Baptist Church, the Hard Shell Baptist Church; the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, the United Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Then there were several predominantly black denominations: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME Zion Church, the National Baptists, etc. Eventually there also were various Pentecostal denominations: the Church of God, the Church of God Holiness, and so on.
When most of us were children, there were probably only half the number of discernible denominations as there are now. What often happens is that a denomination splits into two denominations, one relatively conservative and the other relatively liberal, except that some people may try to keep the original denomination together, so that instead of there being one denomination, now there are three. Roman Catholics have managed to hold together astonishingly well over the past 18+ centuries or so of their existence, with the exception of a major disruption in the sixteenth century, otherwise known as the Protestant Reformation. But it was the Reformation that set the pattern for numerous --- and almost innumerable --- Christian denominations.
Next week I want to focus on Mainline Protestantism and the rise of independent nondenominational congregations. But for today I want us to think about how denominations came about, and also what constitutes an interdenominational congregation.
Many if not most Protestant or other kinds of denominations evolved because of a particular charismatic leader. The German monk Martin Luther started the Lutheran Church. Henry VIII, with major help from some understandably compliant English bishops, started the Anglican Church. John Calvin started the Reformed and Presbyterian denominations. John Wesley started the Methodists. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young started the Mormons. William Miller started the Seventh Day Adventists. Charles Taze Russell was the originator of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The apostle Paul alludes to the fact that in the New Testament Church, which means Christians from the 4th to the 10th decades of the first century, there already was a tendency for people to divide up into factions. And, as with Protestants, they were either willingly or unwillingly led by certain charismatic individuals. Of all the local gatherings of Christians Paul visited on his missionary journeys, the church in Corinth was probably the most contentious and obstreperous in that regard. They gave an entirely new meaning to the word “factions.”
In the 3rd chapter of I Corinthians, he wrote very plainly about an issue which had arisen among the Christians of Corinth. Some of them said they were followers of Paul, while others adhered to a man named Apollos. Paul might also have named other of his missionary companions, such as Barnabas, Silas, Luke, or Mark, but he didn’t. After insisting the Corinthians were still babes in the theological woods, Paul said, “For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and another, ‘I belong to Apollos,’ are you not merely men?” (I Cor. 3:3-4)
Then Paul came to the main point he wanted to make. “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (3:5-7). God is Lord of the Church; no human is.
In my candid opinion, Paul was something of a narcissistic prima donna. Nonetheless, he well understood the danger that was facing the Christians of Corinth. If they chose up sides, supposing that their particular choice as leader was The Leader of the Christian Church, there would be no Church. There would only be warring factions vying with one another for supremacy. The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord, and of that Paul had no doubt.
Paul wrote I Corinthians about the years 50 CE (or 50 AD if you prefer). Jesus had been crucified and resurrected not more than twenty years earlier, and perhaps as few as seventeen years or less. And already the Church was beginning to split apart into factions! Factionalism has always been the besetting sin of the Church. It is understandable, but it is also so very regrettable. The Roman Catholics have been the most successful at preventing splits. Virtually all major Protestant denominations have come unglued at one or more points in their history, and over a variety of issues. I won’t go into them, but you are probably personally familiar with some of those issues, because churches with which you have been affiliated may have come apart because of one or another of those points of conflict.
The Chapel Without Walls is an interdenominational congregation. What on earth does that mean? It doesn’t mean we were chartered by two or more denominations at our inception, like some interdenominational churches. We weren’t. We weren’t chartered by any denomination or denominations. Like Topsy, we just started. We were legally established as a 501C3 organization. Thus we are officially recognized by both the State of South Carolinas and the Internal Revenue Service as a not-for-profit institution. We have a set of by-laws, because becoming a 501C3 requires that, but we don’t have any ecclesiastical laws or statutes or regulations. For better, none. For worse, none. As an example, there is no written mechanism for firing the minister or ministers of The Chapel. A concerted insurrection would be necessary to do that, but it would likely be messy and unpleasant. Many denominations, however, can replace the clergy, and they may be able to do it quickly and decisively.
There are advantages and disadvantages to being a denominational congregation. Let us first look at the advantages. Denominations give form and guidelines and well-defined boundaries to congregations. There is order and clarity and stability in denominations. Or at least there is supposed to be. In the past, and even in the present, denominations provided the primary structure and purpose to Christian outreach through congregations, missionaries, outreach programs, medical and humanitarian relief efforts, and many other kinds of ministry.
Historically, especially in the last five centuries, denominations have been the major proponents of Christian growth of all kinds. Without them, Christianity would likely be listless and leaderless. But because denominations have had many rules and regulations, and because people within them have such strong and conflicting beliefs, they tend to splinter from time to time, and they sometimes lose their vibrancy in internal strife and irresolvable differences.
These and other factors are some of the disadvantages of denominations. Sometimes they become too concerned for their own survival, and they forget their congregations, without whom they would have no existence and no reason to exist. Institutionally they may be too removed from the locus of Christian mission to remember what Christian mission is all about. And when conflicts inevitably arise, their rules and laws may prevent them from maintaining peace and may actually create even more discord. Nevertheless, The Church is far better off with denominations than without them.
When The Chapel Without Walls was chartered 12½ years ago, we didn’t request recognition by any denomination. I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister more than 51 years ago. I was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church here on Hilton Head Island from 1979 to 1996. Then I served as an interim pastor of three large Presbyterian congregations in Virginia, Minnesota, and Ohio, and as the interim of a small Disciples of Christ church in Warren, Ohio. When Lois and I returned to this area, I applied to become what is technically called an “honorably retired” member of Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery. (A presbytery is sort of like a collective bishop, with an equal number of teaching elders [ministers] and ruling elders [lay leaders]). The Committee on Ministry refused my request, even though I had served on that committee for most of my 17 years at First Presbyterian. They refused because I told them I would be the organizing pastor of an interdenominational congregation on the island. I did not and still do not think that has damaged First Presbyterian Church at all. I don’t blame them for their decision, or anyone else; rules are rules, and they followed them. So now I am still an honorably retired member of the Presbytery of the Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, which is 700 miles away, rather than Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery, in which I served for many years, and in which we all live.
However, The Chapel Without Walls is interdenominational, because there are several denominations represented by the previous congregational associations of our attendees. We recognize the vital importance of denominations to THE Church of Jesus Christ, and we affirm the crucial role they play in this community, this nation, and God’s world. It is not inconceivable we might affiliate with some denomination some day. For now, however, we believe we have enough on our plate just to keep moving forward, to say nothing of going through the process of requesting to become part of a particular denomination. In truth, it gives me the ecclesiastical heebie-jeebies even to contemplate the process by which we could internally come to a unanimous or nearly unanimous peaceful decision as to which denomination we might join. It is probably wise quietly to allow sleeping ecclesiastical canines to lie dormant rather than to alert them to what might provoke an unseemly and unnecessary religious row.
Such a row occurred in the Corinthian Christian community at the time Paul was writing to them. It revolved around the issue of what have long been called “spiritual” or “charismatic gifts.” Charismatic gifts, as you may be aware, are abilities perceived to be given by God to Christians in specific discernible ways. Paul enumerated them in I Corinthians 12. He wrote, “To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues” (I Cor. 12:8-10). (“Speaking in tongues” is the primary kind of charismatic gift which most people know about, but there were many others, as you see.)
Apparently the Corinthians had gotten into a real brouhaha over whose gift might be the most important. Paul desperately wanted to nip this conflict in the bud, so he wrote, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many” (I Cor. 12:12-14)
The Church of Jesus Christ has, and of somber necessity must have, many denominations. The Chapel Without Walls has, inevitably, several denominations represented among its people. All denominations and all Christians should always strive to nurture and solidify Church unity. No one is more important to God than anyone else; all of us are equal in God’s eyes. Therefore it behooves us to do everything we can to promote Christian unity.
There is only one category of person in Christ’s Church: sinners. We all fail to keep God’s laws all of the time. We hurt one another, usually unintentionally we hope, but it still hurts. We focus too much on ourselves, and too little on others. We do not keep God uppermost in all our thoughts and actions. We are incapable of not sinning.
Desmond Tutu is the retired archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts peacefully to overthrow apartheid in his tragically divided native land. He once made a wonderfully sardonic and sagacious observation about the people whom God allows into His Church. Said Bishop Tutu, “God has very low standards.”
Thank God! Otherwise, we’d all be in serious trouble. God has always had to work with fallible people. Unfortunately for Him, there is no other kind. Within the Church, people form their own associations, and that may mean denominations or branches of denominations or independent congregations or groups within congregations. However it works out, we all need to promote unity, because disunity comes to us ever so much more easily and naturally.
The other night on television we watched a movie called The Mirror Has Two Faces. In it a Columbia University professor of mathematics (played by Jeff Bridges) placed an ad in the university newspaper looking for a woman (played, as we later learned, by Barbra Streisand) who must have a Ph.d. She also had to be interested in a relationship with a man based on intellectual compatibility, mutual sharing, and companionship, but there must be no sex. The sister of a Columbia professor of literature gave her sister’s name to the math professor, but she didn’t tell the sister about the content of the ad. One thing led to another, and after several twists and turns, the two professors took the matrimonial plunge. Months later, however, she decided ultimately she wanted more than merely intellectual stimulation.
It looked as though it wasn’t going to work, and she temporarily moved out. Later she came back to get the rest of her things. She said to him, “I don’t love you anymore, which ironically makes me perfect for this marriage.” That wasn’t true, however; she did still love him. But she felt he didn’t love her. She told him she was leaving permanently. In the meantime, while she had been gone, he had concluded he wanted more than just her mind; he wanted her, all of her, her mind, body, and spirit. In the end they kissed and hugged on a normally busy Manhattan street on an evening when there were no cars at all. That part seemed highly implausible to me, but it was the last scene, and presumably they lived happily ever after.
We are all damaged goods. God accepts us anyway, because fortunately He has very low standards. So we join with one another in whatever version of God’s Church into which we comfortably fit, and we seek to do His will in His world. Of such is the kingdom of God.