What's it All About, Alfie?

January 18, 2004 (Second Sunday after the Epiphany)

By The Very Rev. James Hubbard, Dean Interim

- Isaiah 62:1-5
- Psalm 96 or 96:1-10
- 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
- John 2:1-11

(From The Lectionary Page)

Do you have a sense of purpose and destiny? From what do you take meaning? Remember the song Alfie? Popular about forty years back, What’s it all about, Alfie? Is your life to be about the pursuit of happiness? Is happiness an inalienable right and thereby suitable and sufficient motivation and explanation for ‘what its all about?' Why does everyone want to be happy? Are you?

What is it that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian? Happiness? I hope not. If so we are fewer in number than we suppose. The distinguishing mark is, of course, baptism. That is our mark of citizenship as one of the people of God. But, of course, our baptism does not guarantee us health, wealth or happiness anymore than does our U.S. citizenship. Our baptism is an earnest, an entitlement, an entrée to the unfathomable riches of Christ. But what we do with it is all important.

And what have we done with it? What have you done with it? Does your Christian heritage, made available to you in your baptism, give you a dimension of hope, and solace and joy unavailable to those outside of Christ?

For some of you the answer will be an immediate, ‘yes.’ Yes, because in the depths of your being there is a response which you cannot contain, or ‘yes,’ because you can’t be bothered to say, ‘no,’ or ‘yes,’ because you think that’s what you ought to say. This sermon is to those of you who say ‘yes’ and know what that means and to those of you who are honest enough to say, ‘No’—Christian faith makes no discernible difference in my life, but I wish it did. In this sermon I want to point to what it is and what it takes for Christian faith to make a real difference. There won’t be any answers, because you have to make the answers happen; but I can point for you.

Our epistle this morning is taken from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians.

[“Corinth was situated at the south-western extremity of isthmus that connects the mainland of Greece with the Peloponnese, the peninsula which makes up the southern half of Greece south of the Isthmus of Corinth. The region was not fertile, but its economic advantages were great. It controlled the land route between north and south.

“In 146 B.C. a sharp line was drawn through the history of Corinth, when the Roman consul Lucius Mummius was able to occupy Corinth without a blow. The citizens were killed, or sold into slavery; the city itself was leveled with the ground, and rebuilding was forbidden. The territory became public land belonging to Rome….After 100 years of desolation Corinth was refounded by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony. The new colony bore the topographical and geographical advantages of the old city and it again became an important place of commerce, more cosmopolitan than before—peopled by settlers drawn from various parts of the Empire. In Paul’s day, Corinth was probably little better and little worse than any other great sea port and commercial centre of the age” (taken liberally from Barrett, pp. 1-3).]

In Corinth Paul founded a Christian Church. We know that Paul spent 18 months there and then moved on. Many converts were left behind, the recipients of the teaching of the greatest of the apostles. Two years later, Paul wrote this letter. By that time the new church was in a dither. Members were taking each other to court; one man was having sexual relations with his mother; they were arguing about the legitimacy of eating meat offered to idols; there were disagreements about the propriety of marriage, while others were arguing for the freedom of sexual relations outside of marriage and with prostitutes. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection was being denied by some, and Paul’s apostleship was being questioned. They discriminated against the poor at the Eucharist. Oh, yes, one more thing; there were those who considered themselves more spiritual than the others, because they had or thought they had some spiritual gift. Wonderful place, this; wouldn’t it have been delightful to have been a part of the early church?

Lest you begin to pine for earlier times let me hasten to assure you that being a member at Grace and Holy Trinity is not so very different. You see, we are right smack in the middle of a long, undistinguished tradition. But Paul was not happy with the situation in Corinth nor would he have been in Kansas City.

In his letter Paul made it very clear that the members of the church had been called by God into the fellowship of his Son. That fellowship is the church. That is, we are called into a caring company of Christians. Quarreling, dissent, arrogance and apathy all war against the call of God to each of us. How can there be this fellowship without devotion to Christ and to each other? That must be preeminent. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, and so I speak to you this morning, in his words ‘to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.’ There is no such thing as love for Christ apart from the Church. There is no Church apart from other Christians. There is no body of Christians apart from a way of order and in this body, that order includes a Bishop who is the ecclesiastical head, a Dean who is his representative for spiritual and pastoral matters, and a Vestry that supports the ministry of Christ in this place. St. Paul would not understand a city with 500 churches, most of which do not enjoy fellowship with each other; but that is the way it is today. Each of us must find a place where we can devote ourselves to the work of Christ alone. There is no room for dissension and pettiness in the fellowship of Christ.

“Now concerning spiritual gifts…I do not want you uninformed.” Spiritual gifts are those gifts which were exercised by Jesus in his earthly ministry: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, and discernment. These gifts were used by the Christ to witness to the power of his Father. They were gifts of God to Him given to the one end that men and women, boys and girls would come to know and acknowledge the joy and peace and love and power of God himself. Following the resurrection of Christ, these gifts were given to the Church, which is now the Body of Christ, God incarnate, God in the flesh, God in human flesh, yours and mine. But, you say, if this is so, why do we not see these gifts in operation in our lives in this place? From the day of Pentecost on the undivided testimony of scripture is that these gifts were evident when those gathered were in unity, were of one mind and in one accord—about what? About their whole-hearted commitment to Jesus Christ.

Each of us receives the Holy Spirit at our baptism—an earnest of the Spirit. There is a fullness of God’s Spirit possible, but it is realizable only within the fellowship, only within the Church. If there are those who attempt to exercise these gifts outside the church, they do so contrary to the clear teaching and intent of Scripture and usually to the injury of themselves and the Church. That is such a common observation these days that it has become a truism and the mark of certain movements. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.”

Let me say all of this in a somewhat different way. At baptism we do not experience any significant increase in emotional awareness of the working of God’s Spirit within us. Most of us are infants, anyway, at that time and unaware of what is being done for us, of the gift given to us. The power of God’s Spirit is given to and resides within the Church, the body of Christ. The baptized member becomes a part of that body. You as a Christian do not have the Spirit of God in some special way, although that occasionally occurs. Rather, your heritage of the Holy Spirit of God rests primarily upon the fact that the Spirit is given to the Church, into which you are incorporated at your baptism. The workings of the Spirit are experienced by you above all in the worship of the Church. To be in Christ, is to be within the fellowship of his body, the Church. The gifts of the spirit are given not so much to individuals as to members of the fellowship for the fellowship or church. When these gifts are freed by our unity to work as they ought, then our faith will not rest in words, or hopes or the wisdom and rhetoric of human beings, but in the power of God exercised in our midst.

What is it that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian? Baptism, the Church and the power of God working in us all in an undeniable manner distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian. That is possible for us, for you. We are limited by each other. On the other hand, we have the power to free each other, as well. That is my prayer for you as I leave this fellowship, that you will devote yourselves to the power of God presently hidden within you, and that you will allow His Spirit to work freely among you. Amen.