I Cor. 5:1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.  6Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.  9I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. 12What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

Focus verse: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.”

1. The Christian life is meant to be a Festival, not a carnival, nor an Inquisition
2. Whether a carnival or an Inquisition, the same sin is behind all other sins at work: “proud” defiance, resistance against repentance and grace & dependence upon God
3. Our Passover festival is celebrated with bread of sincerity & truth, i.e. openness to correction and repentance, honesty, transparency and mutual accountability (not sinlessness and perfection)

When we looked at this passage over breakfast last Tuesday morning, two questions immediately popped up: 1) What does this passage have to do with today’s baptism and new membership, when its about kicking someone out of church membership?; and 2) How good do we have to be lest we too get dis-fellowshipped or expelled? Since none of us is perfect, wouldn’t this passage set us on some sort of feeding frenzy, at the end of which, no one would be left on our rolls, or in our pews, or…. in the pulpit?

Well, to answer the second question first, today I have commissioned several big, strong bouncers standing in the back who are going to go through the sanctuary this morning taking every known and suspected sinner out of the pews and escorting them out of the sanctuary, and….

Now, why do they seem to be heading for the pulpit first?

Just kidding.

But some of us here have had experiences with just that kind of judgmental feeding frenzy, and sometimes over the oddest of things, like the length of your hair or the color and style of your clothing. All the while that they were fixating on those things, they were overlooking the real sins of fear and hostility that fueled such a feeding frenzy. When I pastored in Kansas, I got to know many who were kicked out of the Holderman Mennonite churches for such alleged sins as having pictures of their family members up in their house or at their work sites. It showed pride, they were told. Some of them joined our Western District Conference Mennonite churches, while others were so badly hurt that they left church all together.

That kind of feeding frenzy is not what Paul is encouraging in us today. He’s encouraging us to think of the Christian life, and the Christian community, as a festival. In particular, the Jewish Passover Festival. The Passover is a festival celebrating God and his work of freedom, redemption, liberation, and the restoration of human dignity from Egyptian slavery. Its celebrated in family, with friends, with the sharing of food, love and faith. An even greater freedom, redemption, liberation and restoration of human dignity is now possible for all of us because of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the final, perfect Passover Lamb of God. We, his disciples, get to celebrate such a festival of freedom, dignity and liberation not just once a year but every day of our lives through eternity.

But somebody in Corinth had turned the new Christian passover festival into a carnival, worse than the most lewd and crude Carnival/Mardi Gras images you might ever have seen in the evening news from New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro. It was so bad that people outside of the church would blush and barf at the mention of it.

But it would be no better if we turned the new Christian Passover Festival into a Mennonite version of the Spanish Inquisition. That was five hundred years ago, when Catholic church officials were prying into everyone’s homes and lives and burning people at the stake who wouldn’t repent of being Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Anabaptist, atheist, agnostic, pagan or whatever. They don’t do this today; the Pope even apologized for it, so we shouldn’t hang it about the necks of our Catholic friends anymore, except to recognize that, in this day and age when anything goes, we are likewise tempted to circle the wagons in a fearful, defensive stance against the world, and to seek security by controlling all sorts of external things about each other.

I suppose that’s why I occasionally get phone calls from people who are interested in checking us out, as long as our church imposes some sort of dress code, especially upon women, and that we don’t do any contemporary, upbeat music. I understand their fears and can sympathize with them. But I don’t think that controlling dress or styles of music will get at the things they really fear most. “Come see the beautiful African clothing, especially around Easter,” I say. “And we have a pretty good worship band, plus a full string orchestra.” But they don’t come. I figure its better to tell the truth and disappoint them over the phone than to have them go through all the trouble to come and get disappointed.

As grievous as was the particular sin mentioned in Corinth, the there is a more grievous sin behind that sin. Paul tells us what it is in verse 2 when he says, “And you are [even] proud!” He means “you” plural. So it wasn’t just a person at fault; there was an entire church faction in his corner. With those words we look beyond the unmentionable sin to the sin behind all sins, the proud, willful, stubborn, defiant resistance to God and his gifts of counsel, repentance, forgiveness and restoration, manifested by pride in the sin and its acceptance. It was the sin of believing himself, against all evidence to the contrary, to be not a sinner.

That sin is uniquely dangerous and destructive because, unlike other sins, it amounts to slamming the door on community, counsel, forgiveness and reconciliation. It amounts to painting ourselves into a corner where the gifts of counsel, of repentance, forgiveness and a change of life cannot reach us, where we would remain alone, thumbing our noses at God and others. Because of his pride in the sin, and not just the sin itself, Paul calls for the de-membership of the Corinthian offender until the fruits of his conduct affect him and confront him with the need to repent and reform. After all, the person in question, by his unwillingness to receive counsel, by his certainty that he had nothing to confess or be forgiven, was already distancing himself from God, the community and its mission.

And, like yeast in bread dough, this defiance of God’s grace was contagious and had begun infecting others with this same spirit of defiance and divisiveness. Others in Corinth were boasting about their acceptance of his conduct. That boasting indicates something else more destructive than the sexual misconduct, as bad as it was: it means that they were turning their inner orientation away from God and toward the world, making themselves actors for hire on the world’s stage, seeking to please society, more so than God. Since no one can act toward all sides of a stage, some will then play to different sides of society’s audience, such as for the right or the left, for the revolutionaries or the reactionaries. When that happens, a bridge club can’t stay together, let alone a church. So, defiance of God’s grace leads inexorably to divisiveness in the church.

And this is just as true if we should also turn the Christian life into an Inquisition. Its just as divisive and destructive whether we’re drinking ourselves silly, or snooping in each other’s refrigerators. Whether we’re committing theft, or auditing each other’s check books. Whether we’re dressing immodestly, or whether we’re enforcing a dress code. In either case, its the same temptation and the same sin: to abandon our trust in God in favor of self-reliance and self-justification, whether through a carnival, or an inquisition.

So, to the second question, How good do I have to be to not get kicked out of the community of faith? Well, that would happen only if we weren’t sinners. Actually, when it comes to God’s household of faith, people really, finally don’t get kicked out. Or they shouldn’t. But people may eventually remove themselves, through this willful defiance I have described, to the point where the community must finally acknowledge their leaving, and grieve it. And the surest way for anyone to remove themselves from the community of faith would be if we stopped being sinners in need of God and each other. Or at least, if we were sure we were not sinners, like the Corinthians and their poster child. In the spirit of I Corinthians 5, church membership is only for sinners.

That’s even what our church’s Mission Statement says. It begins by defining us as, “a community of sinners redeemed from the guilt and bondage of sin by the grace of God and the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ.” No sinless people need apply.

But the other side of the coin is expressed in our annual membership covenant, where we promise each other “...the compassionate giving and receiving of counsel among all members and attendees…” So don’t anyone join this church, or attend it, if you don’t want to start growing from sinners toward sainthood. Don’t join if you don’t want to give and receive help along the way. The old saying, “Every saint has a past and every sinner a future” is the plot line of our worship, our songs and our hymns. Its our life stories. And that of the man who wrote today’s Bible passage. He called himself, “the chief of sinners.”

And that leads us back to the first question: What does this passage, about church discipline and expulsion, have to do with today’s celebration of baptism and a new church membership? Well, look again at the focus verses, 7 and 8: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.”

At Emmanuel Mennonite Church, our baptismal vows and our membership covenants commit us to those two things: sincerity and truth. Not to sinlessness and perfection, because we’ve probably all missed our chance at those, but to sincerity and truth. The truth I take to be God’s Word. Sincerity I take to mean honesty, transparency and openness with each other in a spirit of care and compassion for each other. In our life-long Passover celebration together, our “bread of sincerity and truth” is made of our willingness to review our lives, honestly and compassionately, by the standard of God’s truth, to repent and make amends however often they’re necessary, to give ourselves and each other as many chances as we need to get up from our falls and failures and start over, and to accept the gracious, compassionate help of our brothers and sisters to do just that. It may not always be wise to spill everything about our lives before everyone all the time. But hopefully, to some trusted people in God’s household of faith, all of our lives are an open book to someone. Without this regular diet of truth and sincerity, our spirits starve and die.

I hope that every time someone is baptized and embarks on a new Christian life, all of us reflect anew upon our relationship with God and each other. Today, Rediet is joining the new Passover festival in Christ, to purge any of the old leaven of hostility and wickedness, and to share with us the new bread of sincerity and truth. She is committing herself to Christ and to us, to join us on the life-long journey of growth in godliness. Let Rediet’s decision today remind us to keep sharing and feeding on the bread of sincerity and truth, of honest counsel, repentance, forgiveness and newness of life. Its a matter of life and death. Especially for those who need it.

I Cor. 4:6Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not take pride in one man over against another. 7For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?  8Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings—and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you! 9For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 10We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.  14I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. 15Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.  18Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. 19But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. 20For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 21What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?

Any among us who have recently been to Rome just missed an opportunity to experience the following spectacle: to hear the bold, brash blare of trumpets, the stirring roll of drums, the rhythmic tread of marching feet and the deep clop-clop of horses’ hooves, the fluttering of broad scarlet banners with the golden eagle emblem, to the wild cheering of the crowds as through a special gate opened only for such occasions, the Porta Triumphalis, the army of a triumphant general or emperor, returning victoriously from war, marched up the street called La Via Triumphalis with his soldiers, his captives and his loot. Where the likes of Julius Caesar, Pompey and Marcus Aurelius rode their chariots, with laurel wreaths around their heads, at the front of their victorious and surviving soldiers, cars and buses now sit in the sweltering heat of summer traffic jams. Or people sit at sidewalk cafes cooling down with a cup of gelato, on that same street now called La Via del Forii Imperiali. (Sound familiar to anyone?) Anyone who was there recently just missed such a spectacle by only 2,000 years at most.

That is the scene that Paul the Apostle had in mind when he told the Corinthian Christians,.”..God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ…We are weak…..we are dishonored!” Paul puts himself, and the other apostles, on the ancient Via Triumphalis, or today’s Via del Forii Imperiali in Rome. Except for the cars, the buses and the gelato of course. Paul and the other apostles are in the triumphal procession of a general’s victory parade. Only you’ll find them near the end of the parade, among the captured enemy soldiers, hands tied, feet chained, naked or clad in rags, marched off to the Coliseum to face wild beasts and gladiators, unarmed, to die for the entertainment of the masses. But the masses need not wait to take their seats in the Coliseum. Its perfectly permissible for them to jeer, taunt, curse and pelt the prisoners with rocks and waste from their garbage cans. Or their chamber pots. In fact, it would be taken as a show of public spirit, patriotism and good citizenship to do so. In the parade of worldly, imperial life, that, Paul says, is where God’s agents should be prepared to find themselves.

If these are brutal things to say or to contemplate, then we’ve just tasted the sting of the whip that Paul says he might bring when he visits the Corinthian churches, if they don’t take his warning and do an attitude check. When he concludes this section by asking, “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love and with a gentle spirit?” don’t think of a real cowhide whip, like what cowboys might use on horses or cattle. Think of the confrontational images, words and questions that Paul has just used to shake up and wake up the Corinthian Christians from their arrogant dreams of pride, and their desire for strength, status and wealth in the world.

Since arrogance, pride, envy and lusting for power and prestige are common to the human condition, in both the church and the world, we’re never done needing a sting of the occasional reality check to confront us and to interrogate us with some pretty basic questions from time to time. So as we ponder this passage, take note of three things it contains: 1) a confrontation; 2) an interrogation: and 3) an invitation.

As for (one) the confrontation, that’s in the apostle’s image of the Triumphal Entry, the wrong end of it, that is. I felt something of a similar confrontation this week when I heard the tragic news of the ten aid workers, most of them Christians, who were killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the alleged crime of evangelizing. One of them, Glenn Lapp, there with Mennonite Central Committee, was known to several of our own members and attendees. They weren’t evangelizing, and they had always served notice that they wouldn’t. But to the Taliban, just being a Christian, or in league with a Christian, is tantamount to evangelizing, a crime, under Islamic law, worthy of death. And in a way, they’re right. Not the death sentence part. But the actions and the conduct of those aid workers were evangelistic, in that they represented Jesus quite faithfully, even without them uttering a single evangelistic word. And that put them at the end of the Taliban’s victory parade, as targets of dishonor and death.

Their deaths, like Paul’s words, confronted me with some pretty basic questions, like: Why am I a Christian? Is it to garner the respect and admiration of polite society? That may have worked in the 1950′s, when church growth in America was nothing short of amazing, when church membership was part and parcel of postwar middle class, upwardly mobile, loyal American respectability, along with the new suburban home, poodle skirts and bobby socks, and the big car with tail fins. It was not unusual– even legal back then– for employers to ask potential employees during job interviews if they attended church and if so, which one. Such respect gave the pastor and the priest automatic access and success. So we got invited to pray over sessions of city hall and the commissioning of new nuclear submarines.

I think that many American Christians miss those days of triumphal Civil American Religion, and long for them back. But that was an odd, unusual and temporary moment in all of global church history. And they are long gone, especially now, when increasingly, almost any statements of Christian belief and moral boundaries are confused with bigotry, or labeled as much.

It seems from Paul’s words that such respect and respectability vis a vis their society is what some among the Corinthian Christians were striving for. In polite Greek society of the time, what was religion for, anyway, but to cultivate success and social access? That led people, as Paul put it, “to boast in one [apostle] over another.” Or to consider themselves different, wealthy, strong, honored, even kings and royalty…already. Or at least to put on such airs and appearances.

While this kind of social striving is normal, it is devastating to the church. We’re called to be God’s showpiece to the world of the coming class-free jubilee kingdom, in which the first shall be last and the last shall be first, no one will have too much and no one too little. The Corinthian arrogance and lust for honor and respectability led some of them to play fast and loose with Christian doctrine and with Christian ethics. Its why some of them taught that there was no physical resurrection, neither for Jesus nor for us, as we saw in Chapter 15. Because that would be scandalous in polite Greek society. Its why some people were porking out at their communion services/love feasts while the poor members just looked on, to leave hungrier than when they came, as we saw in Chapter 11. Because it was not chic in polite Greek society to share food and tables with slaves and the poor.

Before Paul could set them straight on matters of Christian belief and behavior, he had to confront this arrogance and social striving. “You can boast all you like in your apostle versus someone else’s,” he’s saying, “but notice where we apostles are in life’s parade: the very place you fear most, at the end of society’s Triumphal procession, not the head. So we work with our hands; we go hungry and thirsty, in ragged clothes; considered the scum of the earth and the refuse of the world; we are persecuted but we endure it, cursed, but we bless; a spectacle to heaven and earth.”

Confrontational words these are, with all the subtlety of a cracking whip. But notice the questions they imply (and this is my second point, the interrogation part): Questions like, Just why did we become Christians in the first place? Whose approval and acceptance count most to us? Whose honor and esteem were we seeking when we were baptized? That of the world, so that we might march at the head of society’s parade? What did we expect as a result of our confession of faith in the Crucified Jesus, some sort of victory parade?

Actually, our victory parade is coming. We can count on it. And even on being at the head of it, with the victor’s crown, or laurel wreath. For as Paul told the Roman Christians, “We are more than conquerors, through him who loved us.” That the Corinthians wanted to be at the front of the Victory Parade was not all bad. They just had their timing wrong. And the wrong sponsors. And with this I come to the third part of this message, the invitation.

Paul does invite us all to a victory parade, a triumphal procession, for Jesus, for himself and for us, when he says, in verse 8, “Already you are kings, and that without us. How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you!” Because there will come a day when we and the apostles and all of Christ’s followers will be crowned and revealed for the royalty we really and already are. Christ himself is heaven’s king, come as a servant, to share our humble human condition. The good news today is that Christ conquered not people but sin and death, so as to lift us up, exalt us and make of us a nation of priests and kings like himself. When he returns, that will be his triumphant parade. And ours as well. You are invited to the head of that parade.

But Christ’s example also shows there are no shortcuts to the head of the parade. He was willing to put in his time at the end of the procession, dragging a cross among the jeering, taunting crowds. So were the apostles. So were the ten aid workers killed in Afghanistan.

And so must we. Will we accept the invitation in this passage to join Christ and the apostles there as well, at the end of the procession, as the potential target of the world’s contempt and dishonor?

As hard and difficult as that sounds, the end of the line turns out actually to be a place of great freedom. Remove from our calculation the desire and the cost of public approval and it will be easier to do what Jesus would do. Such as when Shane Claiborne, the speaker at last month’s youth conference, and his friends camped out with homeless families who found shelter in an abandoned cathedral in Philadelphia. They did so in order to stand in solidarity with the homeless, and to help focus resources from the wider community on them. Society expects little else, and hardly even notices when poor people and people of color end up on the streets. But when college-educated young adults from middle class homes get evicted with them, people of their class, family and background are more likely to see human beings among the people and families huddling over ventilation grates on cold winter nights. For this act of solidarity with people at the end of life’s parade, City Hall and the Archdiocese made threatening moves to arrest and evict them all. So did the Fire Marshall, who claimed that the cathedral was a fire trap. His coming inspection would prove that, he said. But Claiborne and his friends stayed, effectively taking their place at the end of society’s parade.

But they weren’t alone. Friends joined them there. The night before the Fire Marshall came, fire fighters showed up to install smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and other equipment, free of charge, so that the abandoned sanctuary would pass inspection for human habitation. And it did, much to everyone’s surprise, joy and relief.

So the end of the parade turned out to be not such a bad place, after all. In fact, it became a place of partying, with lots of friends. The fact that most of them were homeless and poor didn’t detract from anyone’s joy. In fact, the end of the parade was where God showed up with riches and resources, in the form of friends and free smoke detectors and fire extinguishers.

By contrast, the front of the parade, where the conquering general rides alone, is a lonely, solitary place. He had his chariot to himself, although some accounts say that he was accompanied by a slave who held an umbrella over him, to shade him from the hot sun. This slave was also said to whisper repeatedly in the conqueror’s ear, “Remember that you are mortal.” All the more proof that sometimes being at the head of the parade is over-rated.

Unless its Jesus’ victory parade, where we will be immortal. Will we join him there, by declaring and maintaining our loyalty and love for him, even though it might mean marching in the back with him, among the prisoners, the poor and the despised? Will we free ourselves of the need to be respected by the world, and stand with Christ whenever the world heaps contempt on him, and all he stands for? If so, then we can count on his promise, that “Whoever confesses me before men will I confess before my Father.” When that day comes, at that moment, he will be at the head of the parade. So will those who stood with him. And who walked with him, at the end of the procession.

I Cor. 4: 1So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. 2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.  6Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.

Purpose: That we will embrace our Christian freedom from judging others, and being judged by others, because it is God who judges.

If I were promising us today freedom from gravity and a foolproof way of personal flight—not in an airplane, not even a jetpack, but by jumping up and flapping our arms—hopefully you’d be very skeptical. But today’s passage promises something like that very kind of freedom. By the time this message is done, I hope we will all understand and embrace its promise of freedom, a freedom even greater than freedom from gravity.

This promise of such great freedom is described in verse 5, when Paul writes, “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.” At first this kind of freedom sounds exactly like what today’s post-modern thinking considers freedom. “Judge nothing:” Doesn’t that fit right in with the contemporary mindset that says there is nothing to judge but judgment and judgmentalism, nothing to disapprove of but disapproval, nothing to disagree with but disagreement, because we’re past thinking that everything is relative. That’s so 1960′s! We’re on to “everything is good” now, except for saying that anything is bad. So we can tolerate everything except intolerance. See, its even in the Bible. Like Paul says, “judge nothing.”

And if you’re wondering, “Who are you and what have you done with the pastor?” you’re probably not alone. And if you’re thinking, Wait a minute, even saying “judge nothing” is passing judgment on something, at least on judging, then you’re a step ahead of the sermon. And if we should go on to say, “But this whole letter of I Corinthians is about judging or discerning between beliefs, behaviors and values, and that Paul himself passes judgment on all sorts of moral and spiritual options,” then good for you– you’ve been paying attention to this sermon series.

So what gives? How can we judge nothing, including the act of judging, according to a letter full of all sorts of moral and spiritual judgments and discernment? Well, it depends on what—or who—we’re judging. And on who’s doing the judging. We read in verse 6 that the Lord does the one supreme historical definitive and 100% accurate judgment when he returns. “He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. Then each person will receive his praise ….from God.”

For as rarely as we hear sermons on The Last Judgment, it’s a pretty basic feature of Christian faith. Of all prophetic, monotheistic and Abrahamic faiths, like Judaism and Islam too. One of the names given in the Q’uran for God is “Master of the Day of Judgment.” This name is repeated with every one of their five daily prayers. It wouldn’t hurt us Christians either to remind ourselves regularly of that feature of God’s nature, and of our accountability and responsibility.

But what God judges is something that neither you nor I have the capacity to judge: “what is hidden in the darkness [of each human soul] and the motives of people’s hearts.” That’s what is meant by “judge nothing.” Nothing by way of “what is hidden in the darkness [of each human soul] and the motives of people’s hearts.” Paul says that he isn’t even completely capable of doing that for himself. “I do not even judge myself,” he writes in verse 3. “My conscience is clear,” he adds, “but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” The judgment that counts most will be done by the One who knows us better than we know ourselves, let alone anyone else.

So we must judge and discern among all the alternative values, behaviors and beliefs coming at us all the time, as if our lives depended upon them. For they do. As an example, I know people with histories of crystal meth and ecstasy use, whose brains have been so deeply scrambled that sometimes I don’t know if I’m talking to the person in front of me, or to residues of the chemicals. Maybe they got into that stuff thinking, Hey, its all okay, except for saying that anything is not okay. But as far as I know, they may never be entirely free of the temptation to use again, nor of the effects of the drugs that have abused them. So, we are responsible for for discerning between beliefs, behaviors and values, so that we don’t get into bondage like what I just described. Its not always easy, but its a life-and-death matter. And it is doable.

But judging—or discerning– what Paul calls “what is hidden in darkness” and “the motives of men’s hearts,” that is, judging people themselves, that we are neither capable of, nor responsible for. That is God’s business, not ours. On that day when all is laid bare and we shall know as we are known, we will be surprised by the darkness that was in the lightest and brightest of souls, and the light that was somehow yet there in what seemed to be the darkest and deadest of souls. Or as the little childhood ditty puts it, “There’s so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it doesn’t behoove any of us, to talk about the rest of us.” So I hold out hope for all people, whatever they’ve done, whatever their past, not because of who or how they are, or who or how I am, but because of who and how God is.

Paul himself, in all the passages we have read so far this year, does not infringe upon God’s realm of judgment. Nowhere in this letter does he judge persons or evaluate their worth the way he does their teachings or their conduct. Their conduct might be just wrong, arrogant, destructive and divisive, and he’ll say so. But never does he label or reject them personally.

But isn’t that what we often do whenever a disagreement rears its head, or a question or controversy arises over some moral or spiritual matter? Such as the controversy in the church or conference over questions of sexuality, or church membership, or war, patriotism and politics? That, in fear and self-defense, we are tempted to go for the jugular vein and to question people’s motives, their character, their value to us, to the world and to God? That we judge not just what they advocate or do, but who they are and what they’re worth? Experience has taught me that no side in any controversy has the monopoly on such fear-based tactics. I’ve seen people who call themselves “non-judgmental” act very judgmentally against people whom they judged for being judgmental.

But two wrongs don’t make a right, nor can we arrive at clarity without charity. We may have one hundred good reasons to believe that a position we hold, or an action we take, is morally superior to all the alternatives. But that gives us no right nor reason to believe that we personally are morally superior than anyone else. Our position might be technically correct, like the computer that kept billing my father one year for an account balance of zero dollars and zero cents. By the third notice, it was threatening to charge interest if he didn’t send in a check for zero dollars and zero cents. It was technically very, very correct. But also lacking something very important. In Christian moral discernment, that most important part is always love for people, even if we can’t always love their beliefs and behavior, judgmental or otherwise. Our first and most important task in discerning right from wrong and good from evil is to love people with a love that is infinitely warmer, even more sacrificial, than what mere tolerance can muster.

We may know this, but sometimes fear and confusion can tip us back into childish or adolescent behavior, like wondering and worrying about who’s most popular, who’s most valued, who’s in, and who’s out? Whenever we uncover a disagreement, that’s the fear that raises its ugly head: I thought I was in, but am I now about to be out?

And that’s what Paul was up against in Corinth: something like high school cliques that never grew up. As we saw in the previous chapters, the churches of Corinth were preoccupied with a vicious, divisive popularity contest. “I am for Paul, I am for Apollos, I am for Peter,” some were saying. Not only is that trying to pit Peter, Paul and Apollos against each other, it obviously got turned inward, among the members. Many of us came out of our junior or senior high school years the walking wounded, wounded by such rejection, cliques, labels and scapegoating. And the trauma may come back, from time to time. Like for the guy who received information in the mail about his upcoming twenty-fifth high school reunion, read it, and found himself on the list of people whose whereabouts were unknown. Go figure.

But all that “Who’s In and Who’s Out and Who’s Who?” seems to have been like water off a duck’s back for Paul. “God judges, and I don’t even judge myself,” he said. He cares about the Corinthian Christians passionately, like the father that he was to them in the faith. But he doesn’t care about what they think of him or how much they like him. Or not. The only one whose judgment he cares about is God’s. And on that day of judgment, when all humanity is gathered before his Great White Throne, his verdict will prove so indisputably right-on and penetrating that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess” that he is Lord. What a relief that neither you nor I nor anyone else we see sits on that Throne.

And that’s the freedom that this passage offers us today. Not any freedom from responsibility for our actions, not any freedom so-called from the responsibility to discern right from wrong, or good from evil, and to order our steps aright. The failure to do so, or to do so correctly, can lead us into less freedom, not more.

Nor is it freedom from God’s judgment. That’s just a given. And I know, at first, that sounds like a recipe for enslavement to fear. To stand before the One who knows me better than I know myself, and to have him reveal all that he see in me, all that I have done and have therefore become….Scary. Because none of us is exactly on the inside what we are on the outside. And we know that.

But really, finally, the one and most important thing we will be judged upon is whether or not we embraced and accepted God’s love, God’s mercy, forgiveness and affirmation for us. As Karl Barth defined it, “Faith is the courage to accept that we are accepted.” By God. That’s what we’ll have to answer most for: Have we let God justify us through his compassion for us, or did we keep trying to justify ourselves to God and to the world by our works? Or did we try to justify ourselves by judging others? Did we rely upon the world and ourselves to judge us, with the usual harsh and punitive standards, or have we let God judge us, with his reliably merciful and compassionate heart? In effect, by that choice, we actually judge ourselves. The one choice is slavery, the other freedom.

If we’re looking for true freedom, then flee to the Judge who is also our Refuge, our Comforter and our Vindicator, and we need never fear either his judgment, nor that of anyone else again. That’s one kind of freedom that today’s passage offers us.

But there’s another kind of freedom offered to us: freedom from the hard work of climbing onto God’s Great White Throne and taking on the task of judging the world for him, of trying to discern what we cannot know about others, sometimes not even about our own mysterious selves. We can confess this: that there will be a supreme, definitive judgment; that God has the last word over human history and our histories. We can name Him who will do the judging: the One sinless lamb of God who took our most damning judgment upon his own back in the form of the cross. And we have heard how he will judge all who have fled to him for mercy. As he himself said, “No one who comes to me will I cast out (Jn. 6:40).” So, we’re free from the fear of judgment.

But when it comes to other people, even people with whom we disagree on major stuff, even people who may hate us and judge us, we stand at the threshold of a mystery whose depths and darkness only One knows and can judge, and it is not any one of us visible here this morning. We are free from the burden of trying to guess the motives and secrets of their hearts, or to determine their destinies and relationship with God. We can move on then to the first and most important task of discernment for which we are responsible, and of which we are capable: how to order our own lives aright, how to love others and display to them the tender mercies and the extravagant welcome of God.

I had such an experience last January, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t easy, but it stands out as a prime example of the disciple’s freedom that comes from leaving divine judgment in divine hands. It was when our regional district conference held a discussion on biblical interpretation and sexuality.

Since this conference was in Iowa, and since it was winter, it seemed the better part of reason to carpool our way down from the Twin Cities. In that van were people all over the map in regards to their understanding of sexuality and the Bible, even including one person in a major role in a major advocacy organization. So you can understand why I was a little nervous getting into that van. Once they knew what a dyed-in-the-wool classical orthodox biblicist I was, were they going to dump me out and leave me in a snowbank along the windy, wintry Interstate? On a cold January day, being in or out could be a life and death matter. But others in that car, with different positions, probably had the same fear about me. And we had ample opportunity during the conference to compare our positions and air our differences.

On the way back home, we stopped at a restaurant in Mason City, Iowa, and enjoyed good food and each other’s company. No one seemed to be holding a grudge, no fear held back the laughter and the witty repartees, and no one’s appetite seemed to be inhibited by having just done the hard and sometimes painful work of finding our way through the moral and spiritual thickets of this world, holding many of the same basic values, but going down different paths. I remember that friendly and enjoyable trip together, on a dark, cold January night, as a supreme example of what can happen when we separate the need to judge moral and spiritual alternatives from trying to judge what only God can judge: people.

I’m so glad that that is God’s task, not mine. That frees us to get on with doing what we discern, and what he reveals, his will to be, free from fear of either God’s rejection and condemnation, or that of anyone else. Free as well, from the burden of doing God’s job of judging others. That’s the freedom I wish for everyone here.

I Corinthians 14: 26What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.  29Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.  36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.  39Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

Focus verses: “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.”

Yesterday, I was gassing up the car at a filling station, when I read the following words: “Do not leave the pump unattended; all spills are your responsibility.” Next to it I saw the corporate logo of the service station: BP. “Oh Man, I thought; now they’re blaming me!” If that wasn’t scary enough, once the tank was full and the gas stopped flowing, the digital read-out said, “Please see station attendant.” Too late to run or hide; my face is probably on the security camera already. I was feeling picked on, put upon, and put down.

I mention that because many of you may also have the same feeling in response to today’s passage, of being picked on, put upon and put down. I’m referring to the words, “Women should remain silent in the church.” As I hope to show, these words probably don’t really address the issue that we often make it try to address. But I hope that over the course of my message you pick up on my excitement about two things that this passage does address. One of them we discerned as a church, in the year before we moved here, as being very important for our church’s future: small groups. Although the passage doesn’t use the words, “small groups,” hopefully I can make clear what this passage implies about them. The other thing this passage addresses is ministry. Not just my ministry, not just ordained ministry, not just women in ministry, but everybody’s ministry, yours, mine and ours. So, small groups and our ministries: those are what I’m most eager to address today, because those are what I think this passage is really addressing.

But first, we have to deal with the question of women’s leadership in the church. Last week I spoke about a minority report and a majority report about what constitutes the gift of speaking in tongues. I told you that the majority of me goes with the majority report on that. This week I’ll give you the majority and the minority report on women in public, visible, verbal leadership in the church, and tell you why all of me goes with the minority report.

The majority report, when you add up all the voices over twenty centuries of Christian history, has said that this passage, and at least one other, effectively forbids women from clergy leadership roles. But when you ask just what do you mean by ministry and clergy, the answer so often has been so institutional, so hierarchical and so authoritarian, I have to agree: women should not be in ministry. But then, neither should men. Nobody should be in ministry, not if ministers and clergy are supposed to stand between people and God, or between people and the church institution, and mediate the flow of grace and forgiveness and salvation between them and God. That’s a recipe for keeping people childish and dependent upon experts and authorities. That is directly at odds with the definition of pastoral ministry that Paul gives in Ephesians 4:12-14, “to equip God’s people for [their] works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” That is a servanthood kind of power, a power under, rather than power over, a power that serves to encourage and grow everyone else’s power. Beyond that kind of power, no one should go, not in the name of God. But I would wager this morning that many of us can name women in our personal histories who have exercised exactly that kind of supportive, nurturing, empowering servant leadership that Paul describes.

To say that women shouldn’t exercise visible and strategic ministry roles is also at odds with what Paul says to women, and about women, in other New Testament passages, including in this very same letter. In Chapter 11, Paul gives instructions about when men and women do pray or prophesy in the church. He obviously assumes they will, and even affirms it. In the first chapter of the letter we read that Paul has learned about the problems in Corinth through correspondence with a woman, Chloe, who must be some sort of leader among the house churches there. He obviously respects what she has to tell him. Read the list of church leaders whom Paul greets in his letter to Rome and some of them are women. The same with some of the church leaders he mentions in his letter to the Philippians: women.

Telling women that they cannot exercise certain gifts in church also goes against the main thrust of the biblical witness about women: that from the very creation of humanity, that “In the image of God he created them male and female.” So it takes men and women together to reflect the image of God. It also contradicts the respectful and inclusive way that Jesus related to women. He did not make them apostles; sending women by themselves into that world as the first cross-cultural pioneer missionaries would have done them no service. But there were women, like Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet to learn, the posture of a disciple.

So, we’ve established that Paul respects, consults and corresponds with female church leaders, like Chloe in Corinth. And then he says, “Women should remain silent in the church.” What gives? Well, first of all, dispense with notions and questions about where men and women fit into ranks and hierarchies of church power, because church as Paul describes it in this very same passage is definitely not about that kind of hierarchical or institutional power.

Secondly, disengage the question of silence from the whole matter of praying or prophesying or teaching. Paul doesn’t use those words in the passage under question. Maybe the silence he recommends refers to something else. That’s what a growing minority report of scholars are saying, some of them with missionary experience.

I read recently of missionaries, long ago, to the interior of China, who planted new churches among a people for whom very few women had ever had any kind of formal education, or experience in a classroom, educational setting, before becoming Christians. The men had, but not many women. When men and women sat together in these new churches, the men knew how to conduct themselves during formal teaching and worship, how to listen and process what they were hearing, formulate questions and wait their turn during discussion. The women did not, because they had never been given that opportunity before becoming Christian. So the teachings and proceedings were being interrupted by these inexperienced women, often by questions like, “What did he say? What did he mean by that?” or by other business that would intrude, such as, “I’m glad to see your son is doing better,” or “How did it go at the market, yesterday?” This happened in those new Chinese churches, but only because these women, with no previous formal education, were suddenly thrown into a new situation, without preparation, with a new set of protocol for speaking, learning and listening.

Was that the problem in the ancient Corinthian house churches? Like with those women in China? Women in ancient Greece were regularly denied the kinds of educational opportunities that men were given. Now, in the new churches that Paul has planted, men and women are seated and learning together, which is already quite revolutionary. Is Paul just saying, “Women, don’t talk and interrupt the teaching, prophesying and praying during your gatherings, because, among other things, its disgraceful?”That they shouldn’t be interrupting the proceedings with questions or distractions, but wait till they get home if they want to review the teaching with lots of questions and different directions? I have no 100% fool proof evidence to that effect, and it doesn’t answer all the questions. But it best answers for me the most important question: why and how Paul can elsewhere acknowledge and affirm certain female leaders, as does the rest of the Bible, and here tell women to be silent. He doesn’t say or use the verbs for teach or preach or prophesy, just the verbs, “be silent” and “speak.” Otherwise, where women had the gifts and the training and experience to be teachers and servant leaders, like Chloe, Paul treats them as part of his team. Same with Priscilla and Aquilla, a husband and wife team he first met in Corinth. That’s the minority report on Paul and women in leadership, its where I stand on what Paul says about women in church leadership, and its getting less lonely of a minority all the time.

The minority report also best fits with the thrust of this whole passage, the whole context of I Corinthians chapters 12-14, indeed the entire I Corinthian letter: Whatever gifts the Holy Spirit has given you, use them, for the edification of the whole church, whoever you are, whatever your sex. That’s all that the word “submission” means. If you do this out of love, for the love of your brothers and sisters, then God will make these gifts work together beautifully, harmoniously and interdependently, because, “God is not a God of disorder but of harmony,” in verse 33.

So when you get together for worship, Paul says in verse 26, “everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” Just as you shouldn’t interrupt, so you shouldn’t monopolize the time. Paul adds, “If a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged (vv. 30-31).” In that way, everybody is “submissive” to each other, not just the women.

Consider with me just how revolutionary this kind of advice was at the time. Most of the Corinthian Christians were coming out of a pagan religious background where the spirits were allegedly most accessible only to trained, initiated and uniquely gifted prophets, priests and shamans. When they went into a trance and said or prophesied or demanded something, you had to take whatever they said by faith. In effect, your faith was as much in the prophet or priest as in his or her god or their teaching. What’s more, there was no telling what those spirits would do with the priest or the shaman: he had no control. It could be quite dramatic. Or embarrassing. Or entertaining. By contrast, in the Christian gatherings, the Spirit and his gifts are equally available to all members. And our gifts are of equal value, even though they’re different. And if the Spirit inspires or instructs you in some way, you can still take your time, take your turn, listen and treat each other respectfully because, as Paul says, “The spirit of the prophets is subject to the control of the prophets.”

And remember that the Jewish members were coming out of synagogues where the men sat in front and participated in the rites and ceremonies, while the women sat in back with the children, behind a lattice screen, and could only listen. But in the church, the question was not so much if women participated in worship, prayer and teaching, but how they participated. That shows just how much God and His Spirit are creating a new community that is harmonious, yet without domination and hierarchy.

Therefore, when we gather, Paul says, “everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” Gee, why don’t we worship the way Paul describes? Why don’t we dispense with the bulletin, the order of worship, the sermon, and just see what people come with, what the Spirit might have given them to share? Well, if we tried that here on a Sunday morning, with average attendance bumping past 70 people, we could be here all day. I would hope so, because hopefully our spiritual lives are such vibrant, living things, in which God is teaching us all sorts of things and we feel eager and compelled to share them with others, that we would need all day for everyone to contribute their piece.

Actually, we do some of that in this church already. Just not on Sunday mornings. We do some of that in our sharing, yes, and some of that in Christian Education. But we do it most and best in our small groups. We have two of them now. We have the people for more.

And those small groups are more like the kinds of church gatherings that Paul was addressing in today’s passage. History and archaeology both tell us that the church of Corinth, of Ephesus, of Rome, of Jerusalem for that matter, was not one big church meeting in a time and place like this, but a collection of house churches,with a total attendance of maybe 10 to 20 people, men, women and children. The details of this letter, I Corinthians, bear this out.

But those small house gatherings weren’t the only places they met. The First Church of Jerusalem, in Acts chapter 2, was meeting in two places: in the big Jerusalem Temple for a large-scale worship event that was more planned and scripted, and, we read, in their homes, for more intimate fellowship, teaching, prayers and the breaking of bread. In effect, they had big group worship events, and small groups. And so can we. This Sunday morning worship service is like that Jerusalem temple gathering. But among us are enough people for five or six small groups. If we’re not in one, think about joining or starting one if you wish to experience the kind of spiritual connectedness, accountability, interdependence, maturity and mutual up-building that Paul is encouraging on us today.

So, while we fixate on the words, “Women should be silent in the church,” the main point of this passage really is, “let everything be done decently and in order….For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.” Today’s word then challenges us to recognize, respect and give space to the development of everyone’s gifts for ministry. Someone has said that the true measure of a church is not its seating capacity but its serving capacity. When you think of the ministries and gifts of the Spirit already in this congregation, its fair to call us “little big church.” Now that we’re in this new location, think also of the possibilities for us to have a ministry of ministry development for all believers, including and especially young, emerging leaders, from whom new ministries may emerge, maybe even new churches. Every time a leader and servant and gifts and ministries emerge among us, will we recognize them in him? And in her? May it be.

I Corinthians 14: 13For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 17You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified.  18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.  20Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. 21In the Law it is written:

“Through men of strange tongues  and through the lips of foreigners
I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.  22Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. 23So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? 24But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”

1. What is the gift of “tongues,” and how do they serve believers and non-believers?

2. Since this was an issue mentioned only in the Corinthian churches in the First Century AD, how does this gift, and Paul’s advice, apply to us today?

This sermon comes about thirty-five years late. But I hope you’ll listen anyway. Many of us may remember how, during the 1970′s, the Charismatic movement broke onto the scene and affected more than the usual Pentecostal churches, but also mainstream Protestant and even Catholic churches as well. There were and are also some Mennonite churches that were touched by the Charismatic movement, some of which are still going and growing. But there were concerns and controversies about the Charismatic movement similar to what Paul addresses in today’s passage, twenty centuries before.

For those of us who weren’t there, the Charismatic movement was a renewal movement in which the more extraordinary and spectacular gifts of the Holy Spirit were manifested, most notably, the gift of speaking, praying and worshiping in previously unknown languages. I’m not aware that any were documented to have been languages of other human tribes or nations, and therefore, that the person so endowed went on to preach the gospel in such languages to such people, as what happened in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection. But that’s why this movement was also called “Pentecostal,” because, like that first Christian Pentecost, it involved “speaking in [unlearned] tongues.” And that’s why that gift in particular is a key feature of Pentecostal belief, practice and churches today.

People touched by such a gift say that it connects their spirit directly with God’s Holy Spirit, in such a way as to bypass the normal language processes of our minds, thereby touching us at a level beyond human words. It is, they often say, “their spirit language,” or “the language of heaven,” and praying or speaking in that way deeply enriches and renews their spirits.

That is also the answer that the majority of Bible scholars gives to my first question, “What is the spiritual gift of speaking in other tongues?” That also answers the second part of that question, “How does this gift serve believers?” Paul himself says, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays,” But he adds, “but my mind is unfruitful.”

Its not only the classical Pentecostal theologians who say that about praying and worshiping in unknown tongues, by the way. Its the majority report of other Bible scholars who are definitely not Pentecostal nor Charismatic, who are high church people like Bishop N.T. Wright, or ancient Orthodox or Catholic thinkers like St. Augustine, or even great Protestant heavyweights like Martin Luther, and, of course, Menno Simons, even though none of them seem to have practiced that gift.

Now I am not in a position today to argue for or against what they say. Advocating for or against the charismatic movement is not the point of this message. As Paul himself said, “Who am I to judge another man’s servant?” Furthermore, I do not want to put myself in the position of telling the Holy Spirit what gifts he is going to give his church or not. Because this is His church, not any one of ours. If praying in other, unlearned language, of heaven or earth, is part of someone’s spiritual practice, and it has the effect that I have described on them, I’ll take them at their word.

Where I do draw the line, however, is whenever anyone says that speaking in other tongues is the only, or the primary, sign that we have the Holy Spirit. Or that those who speak in tongues are better or more God-pleasing Christians than those who don’t. And most Pentecostal or Charismatic theologians worth their salt don’t say that, either. After all, this Corinthian letter is the only one where tongues are listed among the spiritual gifts, and the Corinthian churches seem to be the only ones among the churches Paul planted where that gift seemed to operate.

But Paul also says, in verse 22 that tongues are for unbelievers. That’s a little harder to understand. Because he then goes on to say that if non-believers come into a church service where everyone is speaking in tongues, they’ll consider everyone to be crazy, and look for the quickest way out of the room. Over the years I’ve heard a number of people talk about their experience in a Charismatic or Pentecostal service in that very same way. They were looking for the first exit out, because it seemed so strange and chaotic to them.

So, how can speaking in other tongues be a sign for unbelievers, when, as often as not, as Paul himself admits, it freaks them out? Well, that’s where the minority report comes in. There’s a minority of Bible scholars who say that all that Paul is referring to, when he writes about speaking in other tongues, is the problem that urban, cosmopolitan churches of the First Century must have had with all the different languages represented by their members. To worship together, they would have had to use some language commonly used for trade, government and entertainment, in effect, pretty much everyone’s second or third language, a language that didn’t reach as deeply down into their hearts and spirits as did the language they learned on their mothers’ laps, what we call “a maternal language.” In the case of Paul’s churches, that common language was the Greek of our New Testament.

Pray or meditate or prophesy or teach in the language you learned in the home, and it will touch the deep, deep recesses of the heart. And so a pastor I knew, at a Mennonite Church in Ontario, said that, as he attended aging and ailing members on their death beds, as they prayed their last prayers of release and commitment to God, they often reverted to the Low German of their childhood. The last words uttered with their last breaths, were often in Low German, even though they had functioned throughout most of their lives quite well in English.

But if everyone in those churches prayed and taught and worshiped in their maternal Low German and English, and, let’s see, let’s add the Mohawk Indian members, plus French Canadians, plus members who might have joined from the Chinese and Indian and African and Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, and have them all praying and worshiping and teaching in their own languages, visitors there might indeed walk out shaking their heads and saying, “They’re stark-raving loony!”

Is that all that Paul was addressing in this passage on speaking in other tongues? That some are more gifted than others by the Spirit with the ability to learn other human languages and to translate them for the sake of the church and its mission? And to preach the gospel and translate it into other languages? Like Paul himself, who says, “I speak in tongues more than all of you.” Or maybe he means, “I speak in more languages than all of you.” Which would have been true for him as a missionary.

If so, that would certainly explain how and why “tongues are for unbelievers.” Because Christian mission often involves overcoming hurdles between people and cultures, like language. There’s a big part of me that would like to say that this is all that’s at stake in Corinth: that the Corinthians must accept the fact that, if all of them with all their different maternal languages are going to get along and edify each other, many of them will have to operate in another “tongue” or language besides the one that speaks most deeply to our spirits: our maternal languages. And if we do speak or pray or worship in our maternal language, then pray, or make sure, that someone interprets for the others. Or translate for yourself. In the world of Biblical scholarship, that would be what I call “the minority report” on the gift of tongues.

But while that explanation answers a few questions (like How can the gift of other tongues be for non-believers?) it raises a few others. Like, how can Paul say, “if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful,” when the mind is made quite fruitful by anything said in our mother tongue? And then, as I read and researched on this passage, I kept wondering, who am I to differ with the likes of N.T. Wright, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Menno Simons and perhaps a quarter of a billion Pentecostals and Charismatics worldwide and counting? That would be beyond saying, “We have a disagreement here,” to saying, “You’ve deluded yourself.” I’m not ready to go there, not on that matter at least.

Especially not since the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have often had a noteworthy and powerful history of mission. They seem to have the most power and impact upon societies in which sorcery, magic, divination and other occult arts are rampant. Also in areas where such things are tied in with political and economic injustice and oppression, like Haiti, much of Africa and Latin America. Their dramatic clashes between devil power and Holy Spirit power seem to do more to rescue prostitutes, dope dealers and career criminals than do polite and intellectual coffee klatches about the latest book on spirituality. Then there’s the indisputable historic fact that, whenever Charismatic renewal has happened, it has often shaken up and broken down barriers of race, class, education and ethnicity among Christians and denominations. When the modern Pentecostal movement began in Los Angeles, in 1906, the Azusa Street tent meetings were one of the few places in the country where you would find Anglos, Mexicans, Native Americans, Asians and African Americans together, in warm, friendly and equal ways. That first generation of Pentecostals was even pacifist, even during the war hysteria of World War I.

In fact, it would be safe to say that Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians and even the Mennonites in much of the Two-Thirds World in the Southern Hemisphere today are Pentecostal. Not that they all speak in tongues and buy the whole doctrinal Pentecostal package. They don’t. But being face-to-face with the undeniable realities of spiritual “principalities and powers and wickedness in high places,” demonic and human, they’re half-way Pentecostal in practice. Having no economic or political resources to defend themselves and overcome these challenges, they rely on the Holy Spirit through dreams, and discernment of evil spiritual presences and powers. They rely on Him just as much for courage and healing and power for witness, where half the time, for them, Christian witness is something done under duress. And so our Mennonite brothers and sisters in Ethiopia are often called, “Pentes,” for “Pentecostal.” As we also enter a society that is increasingly magical, mystical and spiritual in neo-pagan, occultic and shamanistic ways, we too might just need to become more “Pente,” that is, like our African brothers and sisters in our reliance upon the Holy Spirit for special gifts of power, discernment and witness.

So I’m not about to challenge the majority report on what constitutes the gift of speaking in other tongues. For now, suffice it to say that the majority of me, personally, goes along with the majority report: about 55 to 44%. Five to four if I were the Supreme Court. But let’s imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to go along with the minority report and say that this passage is really about the problems of teaching, preaching and worship in a common language when there are so many maternal languages represented among a church’s members. Now, where have we ever encountered a church like that?

Let’s see, in the back of our hymnals is an insert that we use once a year, the closest Sunday to Christmas. Its the song, “Silent Night,” and it has the first verse in seven languages including English: Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Vietnamese and Amharic. These represent the maternal languages of many of our members. Next Christmas we could have the numbers to sing an eighth and ninth verse– in American sign language, and Portuguese. We have members who could also sing it in Chinese and Arabic, and in the African languages of Tigrinya, Fulani, Yamba, Hausa, Kiswahili and Dioula, to name a few. Among our neighbors are those who could sing it in Somali, and in the Native American languages of Dakota, Lakota, Ojibwe, Mohawk, Guarani, Mayan, K’ichua and K’echi.

Going with the minority report this morning, this church is very strongly endowed with the gift of speaking in other tongues. And maybe we’re under-using them. We have at least six fairly fluent Spanish speakers among us, with others pretty far along the way toward fluency. Could some of them be in ministry to our large, Hispanic community? Could one or more of them even help form the nucleus of a new Spanish-speaking church some day? Are there other missionaries to other language groups and cultures yet to emerge from among us?

Barring that, what about learning at least a few words of the every day polite greetings and thanksgiving in, say, Spanish, Hmong or Somali, so that when you know you definitely are dealing with a Somali or Hmong or Hispanic cashier or neighbor or nurse or police officer, we can at least greet them or thank them in their language? Most of the time, whenever we do that, they beam with delight, even if we botch it up terribly, just because we’ve honored them by making some effort, taking some step, to honor them, their language, and their culture. Many of our newest neighbors are hearing things from long-term residents like, “Why don’t you go back to your country?” and “I shouldn’t have to press 1 on my telephone for service in English.” Those attitudes are getting more visible and more strident lately. We can break a lot of ice, show a lot of respect, and gain a hearing for ourself and for Christ by showing we care enough to at least learn how to say, “Hello” and “Thank you,” and “Goodbye.” That reflects well on the Christ who gives us such love and concern.

That moves us in the direction that Paul points us in verse 20, when he says, “Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” By that, he means what he said in the passage before, about all the spiritual gift, when he said, “Try to excel in gifts that build up the church,” and the church’s mission.

Some gifts work best at building us up personally, individually. Paul includes tongues in that category. So its best to practice it that way: personally and individually. Other gifts work to build us up together, corporately and communally, like the gift of prophesy. So share it with the community. But any gift can become a grief when it is misused just to build up our own personal honor and status. The greatest of all spiritual gifts is love. And love is the truest sign of being spiritual adults.