The Sermon . . .

Rev'd Gregory Seach

Context, they say, is everything. Certainly that is the case with this morning's epistle reading. On the face of it as we read it, in the disconnected way our lectionary leads us to this morning, this extract from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians is mysterious to the point of incomprehensibility. But once we understand the context of the rest of the letter, and (from a reading of the letter and also the first letter to the Corinthians), the context in which Paul was writing, it starts to make a bit more sense.

From both of Paul's letters to them, we know that the church in Corinth was riven by dissent. Much of this dissent was focussed on the various "apostles" who had preached to the Corinthian Christians: "I belong to Paul", "I belong to Apollos", "I belong to Cephas", they cried at one point (I Cor. 1:12). And by the time Paul comes to write this second letter, opinions of Paul in Corinth again appear to be bad, and the latter portion of the letter sees Paul at his most passionate and personal, attempting to remind the Corinthians of all that he has done (including all he has done for them) and, more significantly, of the gospel he proclaimed. After Paul had established the church in Corinth, those he refers to as "false apostles" and those he calls "super apostles" came to the city. Now both of these individuals or groups "boasted" of their many virtues and skills as apostles, comparing themselves more than favourably with Paul. Paul's speech was "contemptible" in comparison to their eloquence (II Cor. 10:10). They also "boasted" of their visions and gifts of the Spirit. So, Paul attempts to play them at their own game. He knows boasting is "folly", but if the Corinthians have indulged these others in such folly, they surely ought to indulge Paul! The great Pauline scholar, C.K. Barrett, paraphrases Paul very well:

Let us get back to playing the fool. I too will boast of very human qualifications.
Take these other "apostles". Whatever they are, I am. Whatever they have done,
I have done more. Whatever they have suffered, I have suffered more. And
that indeed is the point. If I am to boast, I shall boast not of my strength but of
my weakness. Take another field of religious life: visions and divine revelations.
I have things that I could tell, if it were legitimate for a man to tell what he had
seen in Paradise, in the third heaven. That I am not allowed to do; more than that,
so great was the exaltation I experienced that God in his goodness gave me,
to compensate for it, to prevent any boasting, a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of
Satan to beat me. I asked God to take it away, asked him three times; and he
answered, My grace is enough for you; for power comes to perfection in weakness.

Finally, of course, Paul turns his boasting on its head, boasting only in his weaknesses because through these, he is made strong in Christ.

You see, when we know the context in which it was written, we can begin to understand what this very difficult and complex text is saying. And a further important element in that context is that these apostles were proclaiming "another Jesus than the one [Paul] proclaimed…or a different gospel from the one [the Corinthians] accepted" (II Cor. 11:4). They were, it appears, proclaiming a "righteousness" based on something other than Christ, and therefore, Paul had to argue against them with all his might. As Barrett puts it, "There were some interpretations of the Gospel, other than his own, that Paul could live with; there were others that he could view only as destructive of the Gospel."

What we see emerging from Paul's correspondence with the church in Corinth (and indeed from all of his epistles) is that in early Christianity, "conflict was inevitable." Let me quote to you another distinguished scholar, J.B. Lightfoot. He said of the apostolic age, ie the time of Paul and the earliest churches:

However great may be the theological differences and religious animosities
of our own time, they are far surpassed in magnitude by the distractions
of an age which, closing our eyes to facts, we are apt to invest with ideal
excellence. In the early Chruch was fulfilled, in its inward dissensions no
less than in its outward sufferings, the Master's sad warning that He came
"not to send peace on earth, but a sword."

Now Lightfoot was writing in 1865. But those words of his, "However great may be the theological differences ...of our own time", are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them. No one here this morning will be unaware of the controversy and lively debate currently embroiling the Anglican Church centred around the appointment of two men who admit to being homosexual, as bishops in our church. Our Primate, Archbishop Peter Carnley, has said we "should expect" a lively debate on this issue, because the Lambeth Conference of 1998 "encouraged the member churches of the Communion to continue to study the complex and difficult matter" of how the church cares pastorally for gay and lesbian people, that is, for people who understand themselves as homosexual.

There are further words from our Primate that show his wisdom, and bare some relevance to the question of "context" that this morning's epistle raises. Archbishop Carnley says,

Given that the concept of a 'homosexually orientated person' is a relatively
modern invention of the mid-19th century, can the handful of biblical texts
that are relevant to the homosexual question be lifted out of their original
cultural context (which assumed an undifferentiated heterosexuality) so
as to be made to apply to the essentially modern question about faithfully
committed homosexual people? The answer to that question is not so
obvious to some people as it apparently is to some "Sydney Anglicans".

Our own Archbishop, in a statement published in yesterday's Age, endorses the Primate's statement. He says, "I am not aware that either the Scriptures or Christian teaching has anything to say about a person's sexual self-understanding." And he goes on to say that "Much of the current debate is offensive, not only to homosexual persons for its tone and failure to distinguish between orientation and lifestyle, but also to those of us who want to treat all persons, without distinction, with dignity and respect." My own opinion (for what its worth) echoes that of Archbishop Carnley. To extract certain "proof texts" (chiefly, ironically enough given what I've been saying about this morning's reading, from Paul), taking these out of context, and seeking to provide a neat pre-packaged answer to contemporary questions that the writers never dreamed of, is intellectually dishonest. I use that term, because those who argue their case based on certain disputed texts are, as we all do, reading them from a certain theological perspective. The 'dishonesty' comes because this perspective goes unacknowledged, and instead, it is argued that the reading this particular viewpoint yields is simply the "plain sense of Scripture." That so many distinguished biblical scholars find the particular texts at issue capable of a number of interpretations - all heavily dependent on a contextual understanding - makes it clear that there is no "plain sense of Scripture" that can be relied on here!

Perhaps the final point I would make is best expressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his letter to the bishops of the Church of England:

It would be a tragedy if these issues ... occupied so much energy that we lost our
focus on the priorities of our mission, the priorities given us by Our Lord. What
we say about sexuality (and not just the same-sex question!) is a necessary part
of our faithfulness, but the concentration on this in recent weeks has had the effect
of generating real incomprehension in much of our society, in a way that does nothing
for our credibility.

Or, as our own Archbishop puts it:

[The debate] has become a distraction from our primary obligation to preach the
Christian Gospel. The general public must be mystified as to why the Anglican
Church seems to be pre-occupied with...the issue of homosexuality. That is even
more puzzling when it is set against the enormous global challenges of violence,
war, disease and poverty which face us....Shouting at one another via the media...
does nothing for our capacity to preach the Gospel and it further alienates people
from us, especially those who struggle with the issues of human sexuality.

And what "Gospel" is it that we are called to preach? I spoke earlier of there being some interpretations of the Gospel, other than his own, that Paul could live with, and others that he could not live with. In Paul's time, the huge issue was whether the all-embracing love of God revealed in Christ Jesus extended to Gentiles who were uncircumcised, and did not follow the strictures of the Law, or whether it was limited to Jews, the circumcised, and those who followed the Law. Paul argued passionately that the righteousness on which we must depend was that won for us by Jesus, not a righteousness dependant on Law and circumcision. The question we face, I suppose, is whether our understanding of the all-embracing love of God extends to homosexual people or is limited to heterosexual people. My own opinion (again, for what its worth), is that to argue for a "righteousness" based on who you sleep with takes away from the 'bottom-line' of the Christian gospel that our righteousness is based on what Christ has done. But finally, what are most need now are honesty and humility, and a willingness to acknowledge the possibility of alternative readings of texts. We need to remember, as Paul's writing to the Corinthian church shows, that debate and dispute have always been part of the Church's life, and that this debate we are having is probably less significant than many others that the Church has lived through. Above all, we need to consider the issue with prayerfulness and maturity, rather than "galloping into the grandstand of self-righteous indignation."