1 Corinthians 12:12-27. "How Should Christians Handle Differences?"

In this episode, Tim starts off discussing the modern phenomena of mass production, where identical products are easily replaced, while with God’s creation, every human is unique and irreplaceable. This uniqueness often causes frustration because people naturally desire others to think and act similarly to themselves, as evident in everyday irritations and misunderstandings.

Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor as oneself, points out the difficulty in this task given within each person’s uniqueness. The early Christians in Corinth, struggled with division and failed to appreciate the beauty of their differences. Apostle Paul's response to this, through his letter in First Corinthians: teaches the importance of love in overcoming division.

Paul emphasized that God intentionally creates differences among people to provide opportunities for love and to bring together diverse gifts within the church community. This is illustrated using the metaphor of the body, where each part contributes uniquely to the whole, reminding the congregation that no member is interchangeable.

Tim concluded with the story of Peter’s sin and redemption, reinforcing that despite our unique sins, all are equally in need of Jesus’ forgiveness. The congregation was reminded that as parts of the body of Christ, they should exhibit mutual care and shared joy, emphasizing unity and the importance of recognizing and valuing each other’s differences through Christ’s love.

This Sunday sermon, based on 1 Corinthians 12 verses 12-27, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on April 28, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Our services are at 9:30am every Sunday morning, at our campus in Dix Hills on Long Island. Visit our website for more information, at www.graceofgod.church 

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)      

Transcript

Grace and peace to you in Jesus’ name, people of God. Amen.

One of the most important innovations of the modern age? Mass production. Identical items, produced in mass quantities. For most of history, anything made by humans was handmade, unique. But now, we can purchase eighty-five identical chairs for our worship space. We have two of these little microphones to record my sermons, two of these lapel mics for the speaker system. It doesn’t matter which one I use. If your windshield wiper breaks, you can head to the store and buy one that, apart from being new, is identical to the one you’re replacing.  

You can’t do that with people. The Almighty God is stubborn, and he still makes things the old way. Every human being is the work of an artisan, a master craftsman. This is true of everything God makes. No two leaves on a tree are perfectly alike. No two snowflakes are identical. 

But those things don’t usually matter to us on a practical level. We can appreciate how uniquely beautiful each and every leaf and snowflake is because it doesn’t affect us. But when it comes to people, we want everyone to be identical.

You might not think you want that. But you. I do. When you say something that unintentionally offends someone else, you think, “I wouldn’t react that way! Why are they so offended?” Well, they’re not you. You’re driving, someone ahead of you is going slower than you would, you get annoyed. You want them to make the choice you’d make. And maybe they should react differently. Maybe you should drive differently. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is the choice you have at that point. Will you love your neighbor, or won’t you?

That’s one of Jesus’ most famous sayings, right? “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Hard to put into practice. If people were all the same - if we all thought the same way, talked the same way, felt the same way - it’d be so much easier. It would be easier to love my neighbor as myself if my neighbor were myself, or as close as possible. I know that’s true!

God frustrates us by making people unique. He refuses to let us see people as interchangeable and faceless. A coworker leaves your workplace. Someone new is hired to replace them. This new person doesn’t laugh at your jokes like your old coworker did. Or your church gets a new pastor. His sermons aren’t as interesting as the last pastor. Or you have your second child, and they don’t sleep like your first did. People aren’t interchangeable. They are frustratingly, maddeningly unique. Because of that, we can love.

Love requires difference. Love requires one person to have something which meets another person’s needs. If someone is hungry, I love them by sharing my food. If I am lonely, someone can love me by sharing their time. 

If you know anything about the Corinthian Christians, you know that this congregation, to which the apostle Paul wrote this letter we call First Corinthians, had some issues. A lot of issues, in fact. Many could be traced back to one fundamental problem. The Corinthians didn’t know how to handle differences.

The congregation became divided at one point over the leaders they preferred. “I like Paul best!” “I’d rather listen to Peter.” As if Paul or Peter wanted them to fight over this! They were divided by material things. When the congregation came together for fellowship, those who weren’t able to bring food - likely the poor of the congregation - were excluded. They went hungry while others ate. And then they became divided over their spiritual giftedness. Those who could teach boasted about that; those who had a spiritual gift of wisdom boasted about that; those who had been given the gift to heal boasted about that. In all of this division, love was entirely lost.

So the apostle Paul, the pastor who had founded that church, wrote them a letter, when he heard about all this. Part of that letter is what we call the “great love chapter of the Bible,” First Corinthians thirteen. It’s a familiar section, often used at weddings. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

So many of the problems facing the Corinthian congregation came about because they were failing to love one another. Where they had opportunities to love because of the differences between them, they had chosen to divide. 

So in the section we’re reading today, Paul teaches them, “God intends for there to be differences between you.” First, it gives you the opportunity to love. Where one has and another lacks, love shares. Where preferences collide, love gives way. 

Second, God also uses our differences for another purpose. He puts Christians together in congregations, churches, with all their differences, to create something bigger than themselves. Paul uses the metaphor of a body to explain this. From the beginning of our second reading: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

That last line is important. When God makes people Christians, believers, through the Gospel message, it isn’t a sausage factory process. Historically, sausage was made from all the random leftover pieces. You grind it all up together and then put it in the casing and you have functionally identical sausages made from what were, initially, all different meats. That’s not God’s process when he makes us Christians. 

God brings people with diverse gifts, temperaments, backgrounds, together to form a body, a congregation. Some to be eyes, some to be ears, some to be fingers and hands. God brings people into his church who have a head for numbers, and those gifts are useful as the congregation wisely plans its future use of their financial gifts. God brings friendly people into his church, and those gifts are useful as they welcome new guests.

Those people are not interchangeable. No local congregation is interchangeable. We depend on one another, as the body depends on all its parts. “I don’t have the gifts, the role, that that person has, so I’m not important to the church.” That’s a lie! A lie from Satan. It is not how God looks at you. When God brings you into a group of Christians, he does so with intention. Your gifts, your presence, make that group better than it was. 

This idea is really lost in American Christianity, where we love to church-shop. I met someone a couple weeks ago who told me he belonged to one nondenominational church with several campuses on Long Island, but then told me he generally attends worship - not weekly - at a different nondenominational church. So what’s his church? Where is he one member of the body? How do you grow as a believer if you hop around churches? Try growing a plant while repotting it weekly. At best, you’ll have a stunted, unhealthy plant. At worst, you’ll kill it. This is also true for our spiritual lives.

C. S. Lewis says in the Screwtape Letters, if Satan can’t convince us to stop going to church, the next best thing is to make us into “tasters” of churches. To break us of the spiritual discipline of commitment. To keep us hopping around, spiritual Goldilocks, looking for the church that “feels just right,” rather than learning to grow in love as we worship, and fellowship, and learn, week after week, with people who aren’t always like us.

This can be pushed too far. We don’t put up with sin in the church. That’s not one we chalk up to differences. Paul strikes the proper balance in this letter. Chapter six, “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” All of those differences - to be greedy, to be slanderous, to be sexually immoral - that doesn’t fly. Because such things harm people. Paul goes on: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

We had the example of Peter today. Peter’s sin was unique! No one else has ever sinned in exactly the same way that Peter did; abandoning and denying his Savior, during his trial, three times in one night. And yet Peter is not that different from you or me, because we also are sinners. When we envy, when we boast, when we are impatient and lose our tempers, when we keep a record of wrongs, we stand alongside Peter. Unique in our particular sins, the same in our sinfulness.

Then - after Easter, in our Gospel reading - Jesus called this completely unique sinner, Peter, back into his church. Jesus forgave Peter. It makes no difference to Jesus what our different sins are. Jesus died for us all. He has forgiven us all.

Keep these things in mind. First, the things that make all people the same. We are all sinners. Jesus died to forgive us all. Then keep in mind the fact that we are all different, by God’s design! God wants eyes and ears and feet in the body of Christ, not all mouths. 

From the end of our second reading. “God has put the body together. So there should be no division in the body, but its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.  Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” 

May God daily remind us of this beautiful truth. May it ever be shown among us through Spirit-worked love. Amen.