WORDS TO WAKE US UP
Isaiah 6:1-8
I Corinthians 14:1-12
Stephen A. Hamilton Wright
First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin February 7 2010
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Look at those super-Christians, showing off their gifts. The self-styled superstars in Corinth want to be sure everyone knows how spiritual they are. Just over twenty years after the earthly life of Jesus, they think they have it all figured out, and they are proud of what they can do. The practice in question in I Corinthians 14 is speaking in tongues—not recognizable language, but an ecstatic outpouring of sound that only has meaning to the one doing it, and to God. Paul writes to slow them down, first of all because any behavior that elevates individuals above the whole group is not good for the church. People who imagine themselves spiritually superior are really not very well developed at all, because they are forgetting about love. When they insist on showing off their gifts, they hold the rest of the body down. This can come in the form of someone who preaches without notes but really needs them. It can be the musician who always snags the flashiest solo, even when others would do better or need the chance. In some congregations, there are givers who want everyone else to know how generous they are, and expect special treatment for it. In the larger scale of a congregation, it can be an obsession with a building or sanctuary, or the most modern worship technology or finest pipe organ. Whatever the gift or resource, if it is used to draw attention to the person or group using it, it is bad for the church.
Speaking in tongues is not a main subject for Presbyterians. It doesn’t get a lot of respect in our circles. Chances are you’ve never heard a sermon about it, and you won’t today, either, because the point is much larger. Let’s take a moment first to be clear about this phenomenon. If we read the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 carefully, we find the disciples speaking in recognized languages. Here in Corinthians, the subject is ecstatic utterances that are not structured language. Sometimes this is called glossolalia, deriving from the Greek word for tongues. I confess that I have been skeptical about this over the years, partly because it seems so susceptible to being faked. Perhaps partly for that reason, the apostle Paul tries to put the brakes on what he saw as an otherwise good and desirable gift. Later in the chapter, he gives thanks that he has this gift himself. Nor is there anything specifically Christian about it; Saul and the prophets around him were once carried away in prophetic ecstasy,[1] and the prophets of Baal “raved on” during their contest with Elijah.[2] In that context, ecstatic utterance and prophecy work together. In Corinth, they are being pried apart, and in Paul’s view that may be for the best; at the same time, wants to be sure that the essential work of prophecy is not lost. This young movement of Jesus-followers needs clear voices to steer its own way and to speak to the wider world, as clearly as Nathan challenged David[3] or Elijah took on Ahab. Don’t worry about the tongues. What we need is plain speech.
The trouble in Corinth is more than fascination with one of the flashiest gifts. It is just as much that the most important gift for developing the body is being blocked out. In the very early church, there were three main offices: apostles, prophets and teachers. Apostles seem to have been those who could authenticate the church’s message, either by having known the earthly Jesus or having some other close connection to the foundation of faith. Teachers were probably concerned with orienting people to their new faith; remember that for a couple of generations, at least, nearly all Christians were converts. Both apostles and teachers probably preached sometimes. Prophets were responsible for bringing it all together, holding the church to account for living out the Gospel in the real world. They called on people to change their own habits—in preacher talk, that’s called meddlin’; they insisted on care for widows, orphans, and prisoners, as the Hebrew prophets always had; and if there were social or political issues to get into, they went there, too. Guess what? People didn’t like all of that then much better than they do now, and as the young church grew and felt the need for order and regularity, the prophetic office was domesticated. Paul protests that the Corinthians are doing just that, favoring flash and excitement over substance that benefits everyone. In the faithful church, the true Church, there will always be prophecy.
We are talking about values today. After worship, up in the chapel, we will talk about core values of the church and this congregation. With so much around us changing, we do not want to lose track of what makes us the church of Jesus Christ, and what our special calling is right here in First Presbyterian in Wausau. We do much good, from our food programs and Heifer and Blanket Sunday to our Deacons ministries and nurturing our children, youth, and adult members, too. Without a defining core purpose, none of those is more than spiritual babbling. It is the spirit of prophecy that can give us a voice that matters to people. It speaks first to us, to remind us that this congregation is more than a wedding and funeral chapel with some social outreach added on. If we mean truly to follow Jesus, his example will be at the heart of our values, and we will care about the things he did: healing people and feeding them, taking time for children, welcoming foreigners and immigrants and those of other faiths, and calling official hypocrisy into the open. Followers of Jesus also invite others to share the journey, finding joy in serving others. The example of Jesus shows the circle of that serving growing ever larger—it can never be as small as our membership directory. That is why our food ministries and mission projects are important, and why we should be part of the new community organizing group NAOMI. We will not hesitate to speak about social and political issues. A decision not to discuss politics is a decision to ignore the needs of neighbors, and we know that Jesus did not ignore his neighbors. Christian prophecy links us to the values of Jesus. Those are the values we have to talk about.