Hilton Head Island, SC – October 23, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
I Kings 19:15-21; I Corinthians 3:1-9
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. – I Corinthians 3:6 (RSV)
Last week I called on a couple who regularly attend The Chapel. They hadn’t been here for four or five weeks, and I was concerned about their absence. It turned out they had been stricken with a virus. It wasn’t COVID; it was a virus that normally afflicts babies or small children. They think it was their great-grandson who contributed this unusual malady to them.
In the course of our conversation we happened to talk about a farm in northwestern Georgia which has been in this man’s family from the time of his great-grandfather. Two or three generations ago crops were raised there, but now the only crop is loblolly pine trees. Loblollies are the fastest-growing pines in our section of the country. They can be clear-cut within twenty or thirty years. Someone cuts down all the trees. After six months or a year, someone else comes and digs furrows for the seedlings and plants them, and then, twenty or thirty years later, someone else comes and cuts down all the trees. I found it fascinating how all that happens over time.
This farm is in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I learned that loblollies grow best on flat land that is well drained, next best on hillsides, and they like wetlands the least. They need enough water but not too much, they don’t get enough water on sloping land because it runs off too quickly, and their roots definitely don’t like too much water.
One of the most important congregations planted by the apostle Paul was the one in Corinth, Greece. Corinth is located in southern Greece. The Gulf of Corinth is a long, narrow neck of water that separates Sparta and the Peloponnesus from the rest of Greece. It runs eastward toward the Aegean Sea, and ends at the city of Corinth, only two or three miles from the Aegean. Many ships would off-load their cargoes on the Aegean, and they would be transported by carts to Corinth, where they would be loaded onto other ships which would carry the cargoes through the gulf and across the Mediterranean to Italy, Sicily, or Spain.
Because Corinth was such a cosmopolitan place, Paul thought it would be an outstanding site for establishing a new Christian congregation. The Corinthians who comprised that church were a well-educated, successful, eclectic, early group of disciples in the nascent Jesus Movement. They also were a rather difficult bunch to keep united. For that reason Paul wrote not one but four separate letters to the Corinthians, but only two of them made it into the Bible.
Somehow Paul found out that the Corinthians were squabbling over who was more important to their congregation for its existence: Paul or Apollos. Both men had been there at the beginning stages, but Apollos stayed in Corinth after Paul left for other places. Paul loved to use analogies when he wrote his letters to various churches he had founded, and he used one in this instance. He spoke of himself as the planter of the Corinthian church, and he said Apollos was the one who watered it to nurture it in its early stages. But, Paul insisted, neither he nor Apollos caused the Corinthian church to grow; it was God who did that. Therefore they should cease their quarreling and move on to other far more important issues.
From the time of Paul to the present, thousands of Christian congregations have been established in many parts of the world. Many have thrived over time, while others failed to take root, and withered. The Church, the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ, became strong in the eastern part of the Mediterranean area early on. It then moved across North Africa and also into Europe. Because of the rapid expansion of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Islam overpowered Christianity in the Middle East and Africa. By the tenth century, though, Christianity was the dominant religion nearly everywhere in Europe. Then, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when various European nations began to found colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, Christianity once again achieved dominance as the largest religion in the world. It maintains that position today, although Islam is growing more quickly than Christianity at the current time, perhaps mainly because Muslims have more babies than Christians. To use Pauline terminology, historically St. Dominic, Ignatius Loyola, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley and others planted, and their followers watered all these new churches everywhere.
As the United States of America became the world’s number one political and economic power in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in many respects we also became the most influential center of Christianity. American Christian missionary and humanitarian efforts have spread Christianity to the farthest corners of the globe. It is interesting and instructive that now the greatest growth of Christianity is occurring in the southern rather than the northern hemisphere. Christian demographers predict that by mid-century there will be more Christians south of the equator than north of it.
Amazingly, China may currently be the nation with the fastest growth in Christendom. However, it is impossible to authenticate that, because there are few church buildings in China. Most Christians gather in homes, as was the pattern in the first and second centuries. Back then, Rome strongly opposed Christianity; now the Chinese Communist Party strongly opposes Christianity. Nevertheless, some experts on China postulate that there may be as many as a hundred million Chinese Christians. That is a small percentage of the total population, but if the number is accurate, it means that China has the third highest number of Christians of all the nations of the world, after the United States and Brazil. Maybe that will have some influence in diverting the alarming political direction of the Middle Kingdom at present. Thousands of new church developers planted these house churches, later others “watered” them, but it was God who ultimately gave the growth.
In seminary one of our professors (and I don’t remember which one it was) said that St. Augustine wrote, “All good comes from God.” I have never been able to corroborate that from any other source. If Augustine didn’t say it, he certainly could have, and should have, because ultimately it is true; all good does come from God. Whatever good any of us does comes from the spirit of God moving within us. The rain and sun make plants grow, and God makes that happen, the air we breathe is a gift of God, everyone around us who adds meaning and richness to our lives are there because God put them there. All good comes from God.
Aristotle was who he was because Plato was his teacher, and Plato was who he was because Socrates was his teacher. Great coaches of team sports produce great players, some of whom become great coaches themselves, who produce great players. Both of my parents were outstanding human beings, as I have noted in previous sermons. Dad died at 86, and Mom at 93, and they had more people at their memorial services than I will have at mine. It was a testimony to the exemplary Christian people they were. Dr. Morgan Simmons was the organist and choirmaster at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago when I was a young minister on its staff over fifty years ago. Some people trace their genetic ancestry. Morgan preferred to trace his musical ancestry. He studied under somebody who studied under somebody who studied under somebody, and so on, going all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer of church music ever to draw breath. All good comes from God. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
The ninth century BCE was a trying time for the people of Israel. The worship of Adonoy, the God of Israel, had not taken firm hold among many of the Israelites. Many of them were still worshiping Baal, the god of the Canaanites. At that time Elijah was the primary prophet among the Israelites, but he was getting old, and he felt he needed to pass the prophetic baton on to a younger man. So before Elijah got into the chariot which took him to heaven (whatever that might mean), God gave Elijah some last-minute instructions. “You shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place.” God wanted Elijah to fulfill all the important tasks he had left to do before he shuffled off this mortal coil.
So Elijah went to where Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen (it must have been a very large and rocky field, because that’s a lot of bulls). Elijah threw his mantle (his cloak or cape) over Elisha, symbolically illustrating that the prophetic torch had been passed to Elisha. To commemorate that, the hymn God of the prophets, bless the prophets’ sons has a line which says, Elijah’s mantle on Elisha cast.” “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” All good comes from God.
I was a peculiar child. I loved church. I liked Sunday school, and I liked all my teachers through all the years, but I especially loved going to church, and singing the hymns, watching what was going on, absorbing the spirit of the congregation, and listening to the sermons. The sermons were the part that I liked best. We had excellent pastors all the way through my growth years. The minister who baptized me became a professor of preaching at Dubuque Seminary, and the one who taught my confirmation class became the moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA.
In junior high and high school, the director of Christian education at our church in Madison, Wisconsin was Charles Perrin, whom all of us youngsters called Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie had grown up on a farm in northern Wisconsin, milking cows every morning and night by hand. His hands were like ten-pound hams, and his ten fingers were the breadth of the grip on baseball bats. He was a wonderful man, and he had a profound influence on me. So did my Scoutmaster, Dick MacVicar, and “Uncle” George Morris, who was my advisor for many of the merit badges I received on my way to becoming an Eagle Scout. Those early ministers planted, and those many others watered, but God gave the growth.
I attended two confirmation classes, the first in Fort Scott, Kansas, and the second in Madison, Wisconsin. After the one in Madison, each graduate was given a copy of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which had been published only two years before. In that much-underlined Bible I wrote on the last page of the Book of Revelation, “Begun June 30, 1954; Finished December 12, 1955.” I confess I always was more drawn to the Old Testament than to the New Testament, because it is mainly stories, and the New Testament isn’t.
In seminary my Old Testament professor was George Angus Fulton Knight. George Knight was a Scotsman from Glasgow, and his wife Nancy was also a Glaswegian. All teachers have students who almost magically “click” with them, and I clicked with Dr. Knight. He encouraged me to spend my second year of seminary at Glasgow University. Because of that, my blood is not red; instead, it is tartan-tinted. George Knight preached at my ordination nearly sixty years ago.
Also in seminary my first wife, Nancy, and I joined the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Dr. Elam Davies had come there from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, just two months before we arrived in Chicago. He has been the quintessential mentor in my ministry. Without him, I would be a very different parson from who I am. He was a thousand-watt light as a preacher, pastor, administrator, and friend. In retirement Elam and his wife Grace moved back to Bethlehem, living in the Presbyterian Home there until they both died. I was privileged to preach at both memorial services for them at the First Presbyterian Church in Bethlehem. He was the primary planter, all those many others in my life were the waterers, but God gave the growth.
We are standing on the shoulders of giants - - - all of us. Back there we all had our own giants, and we are who we are in large measure because of who they were. God moved us to be moved by them. They were the personal movers and shakers who helped nurture us into the people we became.
Everyone has a role to play in the great scheme of things. God weaves the lives of all of us into a beautiful tapestry of human existence on Planet Earth.
Think back on who your particular giants were. Give thanks to God for their gifts, and for those gifts which became incorporated into your being. Warren and Margaret Miller were the progenitors of Robert Warren Miller and Raymond Hutt Miller and Stuart Alan Miller and John Michael Miller, and we four sons would have been highly impoverished without their parental guidance and assistance. They were extraordinary gifts from God, as are all good gifts ultimately gifts from God.
Each of us has a role to play in the divine horticultural enterprise that is the Christian Church. Some are both planters and waterers, and some are waterers but not planters. Yet all are called to engage in the nurture of what came to be called “the body of Christ.” It is a weighty and wonderful assignment.
I didn’t really know where this sermon was going when I started it. I had only a vague idea. But perhaps, in its own circuitous way, it may assist you better to understand who planted and who watered that into which you have evolved. Always remember this: Fundamentally it is God who has caused all the good growth that has occurred in your life, because all good comes from God.