Text: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (Matthew 5:1-12)                                                     W 4th Sunday in Epiphany

Hand-Picked for God’s Team

            In the name of him who bids us, “Come, take up your cross, and follow me”, dear friends in Christ:  I’m willing to bet that most of you have vivid memories from your youth of those times when they lined you up to be chosen for teams.  When I was a kid, it seemed that was the way we divided up groups for everything, from the neighborhood football game we played on somebody’s front lawn, to whatever it was we were doing that week for PE at school, even to academic things like spelling bees and geography contests. The two kids that everyone just sort of recognized to be the best at whatever it was you were about to do would be the team captains, and everyone else would stand there eagerly waiting to be selected by one of them—and hoping not to be, horror of horrors, the one chosen last.  In making their respective selections, what the team captains were doing was sizing everyone else up, measuring their relative skills and talents for the task at hand, and trying to forge the best possible team they could with the available prospects. Sure, sometimes personal feelings entered into the equation and you’d have a situation in which a team captain would make ill-advised choices simply to draft close friends; but as I recall – at least where I grew up – most of us considered wining and having bragging rights far more important than being with your friends and losing, so it didn’t happen often.  Besides, the team captains usually felt a responsibility to the team to make it the best they could by choosing the best they could; so mostly it was a question of:  “Which person standing there has most to offer to our side?”  (Strictly business, you understand; nothing personal.)  And let me say this:  as a system of dividing a group, it works pretty well.  It more or less guarantees that the teams are going to be equal in overall ability, and therefore that the game, whatever it is, will be fair and competitive.

Of course an unintended side effect of the process – call it “collateral damage” – was that everyone knew where he stood in the eyes of the others.  For better or worse, the order in which you were chosen pretty much said it all about what people thought about your ability to help the team. Which is why, as I understand it, that this particular method of choosing sides is now frowned upon in most schools.   It’s discouraged for fear that it damages fragile young egos – that it provides too much of the brutal truth for some to handle … which I suppose may be true in a lot of cases; but having myself been chosen last more than a couple times, I know that it made me play harder and better than I might have otherwise just to ensure that it didn’t happen the next time.  It was powerful incentive to practice.  And I also know that in most neighborhoods, kids still do it when they’re on their own and there’re no adults around to lecture them about how emotionally hurtful it can be.

Why do they do it – even when they’ve been warned of the potential psychological pitfalls?  Well, like I said, it’s because it works.  It’s intuitively obvious that it does.  Besides, the simple fact is that it’s the way the real world works.  Colleges send their talent scouts out to compete for the best high school athletes, and professional teams try to have the best draft picks from the colleges. And again, it happens in more than just sports.  Universities are looking for the best students, and businesses send their head hunters looking for the best employees.  In every walk of life, people want to get on their teams the kind of players that have something positive to contribute to the group and its goals. It’s how you stay competitive. And so in our minds we assign people a certain value based upon what we perceive their potential contribution to the group to be – we even put ourselves on the scale someplace, though maybe not in the same place others do.  And if you’re on the team and you’re not pulling your weight, well, we’ll cut you from the team and contract someone who will.  No sense in feeling bad about it.  It’s business; not personal.  It’s the way the world works; and we all know it.

            The problem I’d like to address, however, comes when we try to bring this particular way of thinking – which is very suitable to the world – into the church of Jesus Christ where it has absolutely no place at all.  And I hasten to add that the reason we must leave it out has nothing to do with the damage it may do to sensitive egos.

            Last week when we met for worship, we considered the problems of divisions within the Christian church.  And we did it on sort of a macro scale:  the question of the proliferation of denominations and so on.  And examining what Paul had written to the divided church at Corinth and other biblical references, we saw that some division in the church is necessary, like when it’s a question of either believing or denying the Word of God and the teachings of Jesus.  The church of Christ stands on its confession of Jesus and his truth.  And it falls when it strays from him.  Therefore we must separate ourselves from error and denials of truth.  But other divisions are not appropriate.  Within a church or church body that shares the true confession of Christ, there should be unity and harmony between the members; they are, after all, one in Christ.  And when such unity isn’t evident, you can be sure that the cause of the division has to do with stuff people bring with them into the church from the world that simply doesn’t belong.

            That’s what happened to the congregation at Corinth.  Their Christian unity was in shambles.  They had broken into arguing factions that bitterly fought with each other over everything.  And these factions identified themselves according to the names of various evangelists or pastors who had served the church in the past or other prominent Apostles who might have dropped by for a visit – whichever one they felt most represented the priorities and goals of their group.  So they had the Paul party, the Apollos party, the Peter party, and others all contending for control – for preeminence in the congregation.

            And in last week’s Epistle lesson, the section of Scripture that immediately precedes this week’s, we heard how St. Paul took them to task for such foolishness.   “What’s this I’m hearing about you?” he asked them.  “Don’t you understand that Christ is not divided, and that all of your teachers were proclaiming the same Christ?”  He was especially emphatic that he did want his own name used to identify a faction.  He told the ones in the “Paul” group, “What?  Do you think that I died for you?  Were you baptized into my name?”  He wanted to make it absolutely clear to everyone that a teacher or pastor in the church is only an instrument through whom the Lord acts; and that it is by the Lord’s action, and his alone that people are brought to saving faith and made the children of God by the preaching of the Gospel and the rebirth of Baptism in water and the Spirit.

            But now, in today’s text, having shown them the error of pitting the names of various teachers against each other, he gets to the deeper, underlying cause of their divisions, which has to do with the relative value that we tend to assign ourselves and others that I was talking about earlier.  Here in the church we are on the Lord’s team, so to speak, and we know that we have been hand-picked by him be a part of it.  As Jesus said, “You did not choose me; but I have chosen you” to be my disciples.  And because this is true, thinking as we naturally do in worldly terms, the assumption is that we were chosen in view of certain qualities that we posses that the Lord was looking for to add to his team.  Each of us looks at his or her self and says, “These are the strengths that I bring to the team.  Here’s my contribution.  This is why I’m needed here.”  And we size up each other in the same way, tending to put greater value on those whom we perceive to be the star players, and barely tolerating those whom we perceive to be just sort of occupying a space on the bench – or rather the pew, I should say.

And what flows from this system of evaluating ourselves and others in terms of assets and liabilities to the team is the tendency to see the strengths as providing leverage and clout: A person’s opinion is worth more or less depending upon how much he or she contributes to the team.  And for those star players, or those who perceive themselves to be one, the usually unspoken assertion is, “You ought to listen to me because I give more, or I’ve been around longer – or maybe my family has, or because I volunteer more, or I’ve read and studied more, or I’m just smarter, more spiritual, or pray more.  Whatever it is, it makes me more valuable to the church than you.  It gives me the right to throw my weight around. And you’d better listen, because if things don’t go my way, well, watch out.  I’ll take my ball and go home.”  You see, it’s about inflated egos and power and control and the tendency to think of oneself more highly than others.  It was this sort of attitude among the members that was really causing the factions at the Corinthian church, and indeed, is what continues to divide Christian congregations today.

And Paul responds to the congregation as if jabbing them with a sharp object to let all of this hot air out of his listeners.  “Let’s set the record straight, here.  Consider your calling”, he says, “There aren’t many of you who are wise, influential, or of noble birth.  You aren’t what we would call the top draft picks.  No, quite the contrary, what we see is that God consistently chooses the foolish, the weak, and the lowly precisely to shame those who think themselves to be wise, strong, and exalted.”  Simply stated, the Lord didn’t pick you to be part of his team because he was attracted to your finer qualities – the strengths you think you had to offer.  Exactly the opposite is true.  You were nothing.  You had nothing to contribute.  He chose to rescue you when you were utterly helpless: spiritually paralyzed, blind, deaf, and dead in sin.  He redeemed you in Christ Jesus because you have no redeeming qualities to do the job yourself.

Paul’s words are strong – insulting even; but he needs to be.  He isn’t the least bit worried about bruising sensitive egos.  In fact, what he wants to do is crush their egos completely. Ego and misplaced self-esteem are the problem.  They have no place in God’s kingdom.  The kingdom belongs to those who are poor in spirit.  I’m reminded of the story of the young vicar who was asked by the pastor assigned to train him why it was he wanted to become a pastor in the church. The young man replied, “I just want to give my heart to Jesus.”  The older man scowled at him and said, “Really?  And just what do you think Jesus wants with that stinking piece of trash?” Hard words to be sure – but right on target.  And this is important:  whatever qualities, virtues, strengths, or attributes we imagine we have that the Lord finds attractive in us, or that makes us worth more to the church than anyone else is an obstacle to faith and trust in Christ.  Thinking that we are worth something in God’s sight – and by that I mean something that he considers worthy of merit and standing before him – empties the cross of Christ of its power.  The cross of Christ alone, his suffering and death to atone for our sin and his resurrection to life, is our only righteousness, holiness, and redemption. It’s the only thing that any of us has going in our favor – but it’s more than enough.

And so, what we see is that the cross is the great leveler.  Coming into the church through it – and there is no other way – imparts to each of us a radical equality.  We’re not members of a team chosen for our talents or what we might be able to contribute. It is sin even to think in such terms. Rather, in Christ Jesus, we are members of a family, and all of us are dearly loved by one Father.  He values each of us the same, and he has called us into the church of his Son to live as his family and to love each other as he loves us.  And so, like members of a family, we’re not in competition with one another. Instead, each of us is to look out for the good of the others – especially the good of those who are in need or who are weak in some way.  That’s how families operate:  they rally around to support and defend the members who need help without thinking about the cost.  Or to say it another way, here in the church it’s not business; it’s personal.  It’s only personal.  And it’s as personal as it gets.

And with this proper understanding of who we are in the church, we will not be divided into factions vying with each other for power and control.  We have one Lord and master, and that’s enough.  But following him together in harmony, we who are foolish, weak, and lowly by worldly standards can be used by him to accomplish great things. Recall that Jesus did not recruit his initial followers from the universities and palaces and major businesses. No, he gathered common laborers and people from the fringes of society:  the tax collectors, the radical zealots, and the poor and the outcast. With them he did amazing things precisely because God’s strength in manifest in human weakness.

In the same way, he equips certain members of the church today with the gifts and talents needed to accomplish his will.  He gives these gifts to those he pleases, not to raise those who receive them higher than the others – not to give them cause for boasting – but so that they can be used for the benefit of the whole group.  So if, having brought you into his family, the Lord has blessed you with wisdom, spiritual insight, worldly wealth, the ability to lead and organize, or any other talents and skills, you are to use them in the church with an attitude of Christ-like service, grateful to him for the opportunity to show your thankfulness in your labors for him.

So, with all that has been said, may God our Father make us one in Christ Jesus.  May he grant to us such gifts so that we who are nothing can by his strength and power accomplish much.  And may he keep us poor in spirit, so that we will inherit his kingdom, and do all of our boasting in the Lord.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!