God's Fields

Scripture. 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 CEB

3 Brothers and sisters, I couldn’t talk to you like spiritual people but like unspiritual people, like babies in Christ. 2 I gave you milk tom drink instead of solid food, because you weren’t up to it yet. 3 Now you are still not up to it because you are still unspiritual. When jealousy and fighting exist between you, aren’t you unspiritual and living by human standards? 4 When someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and someone else says, “I belong to Apollos,” aren’t you acting like people without the Spirit? 5 After all, what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants who helped you to believe. Each one had a role given to them by the Lord: 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. 7 Because of this, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters work together, but each one will receive their own reward for their own labor. 9 We are God’s coworkers, and you are God’s field, God’s building.

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I may have mentioned before that my church calendar has a list of things I need  to consider when planning worship and sermons on any given Sunday.  First, of course, the whatever Sunday of the liturgical year it is - today is the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany.  Then national and international days to recognize - like Scout Sunday and Earth Stewardship Sunday and MLK Sunday.  Then denominational items of interest or importance, like today’s Special Offering for Week of Compassion.  Then congregational events, like the Installation of Officers, which go straight to the top of my list.  Finally, there are special weeks when a particular topic or cause that is important to me is being lifted up by one of the clergy groups I belong to.  This week is what I have called in the past “Science Sunday” but is actually known as Evolution Sunday, when we are called upon to discuss the relationship between religion and science.  This year the particular focus for Evolution Sunday is “how we can work together to deal with the problems of the climate crisis”.   So I have all of these things to consider alongside of whatever the readings are.  

This week seemed pretty easy to me.  Paul is talking about God’s fields.  We are an agricultural community.  Agriculture is being affected adversely by climate change.  But it’s kind of a stretch, because Paul was talking about church unity.  We'll see how that works out.

For several years I went to Sacramento every June to participate in a lobbying effort with California Interfaith Power & Light,  a network of religious communities committed to being faithful stewards of Creation by responding to global warming through the promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy.  On my first trip I saw the Central Valley of California for the first time ever.  This photo is what it looks like from the air, and I was blown away by the beauty below me.  Flying over Southern California is nothing like this.  That’s all buildings and mountains and desert.  But this . . . Every trip I would glue myself to the window in the plane so I wouldn’t miss one mile of this beauty.   Then I moved here and discovered the fields and orchards and vineyards are even more breathtakingly beautiful at ground level than then they are from the air.   Now I sit in McCoy’s in the mornings and listen to a group of men talk about their crops, problems and worries and solutions.  They all breathed a little easier for a minute when the drought broke, but anyone who has ever lived or worked on a farm knows the worries never really stop - getting enough rain but not too much, the temperatures being just right for particular crops, keeping the birds out and the bees in.  And market conditions.   As conditions change, so do the crops that are planted.  As times and technology change, so do the methods used to plant and grow and harvest the crops.    And people tend not to agree about how to deal with changing situations, as can easily be seen by how violently people disagree over climate change, its causes and potential solutions.  I’m thinking the cause is not as important as the solutions.  We can worry about blame after we do what we can to fix the problem.  Not enough rain and snow to provide the water we need?  Don’t care why.  We just need to work together to figure out how to get by with less water so those fields and orchards and vineyards can continue to bless us with food and beauty.   

The people in Corinth were having disagreements - which seems kind of standard for the church in Corinth.  They were divided over lots of things, but in this particular passage they were arguing over which preacher/pastor their loyalty should go to.  

Have you ever seen what happens when the person who started a successful ministry in the church has to step aside and watch someone else take it over?  In way too many cases, the planter tries to control every thing that the new person does with her program - and even tries to force them to keep it exactly as it was.  Because after all, they developed it.  They believe they know best what is needed, and they don’t see any need for change.  Sometimes the congregation will take sides and argue over who is the best at running the program. This sometimes also happens when a new pastor is called, especially when the previous pastor was the church planter or had been there for decades.   

Some of the church members wrote to Paul to complain about what was going on.  And Paul wrote back, “Seriously people?  This is what’s important to you?  This is not how adults in the faith behave, with fighting and division between them.  You are still unspiritual in your behavior, and you need to grow up.   When you take sides and argue in this way you are acting like people without the Spirit.  Here is what you need to know.  Neither Paul nor Apollos is important here, but only God.  You need to know that “I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow.”   

In today’s church - and I am not talking about this particular congregation, but in general - splits can happen over something that seems as trivial as what color the new carpet should be.  (and in case you are wondering, our new carpet will be almost exactly the same color it is now.)   It’s usually not really about the carpet, though.   It’s about control.  Who has the control over the congregation.  Who gets their way.  Each side in any controversy fully believes that they know what is right for the congregation.   

Our denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has split a number of times. One of the most famous was over how we do music in worship.  “The controversy over musical instruments began in 1860, when some congregations introduced organs, traditionally associated with wealthier, denominational churches.  More basic were the underlying approaches to Biblical interpretation.  The Churches of Christ permitted only those practices found in accounts of New Testament worship. They could find no New Testament documentation of the use of instrumental music in worship. The Disciples, by contrast, considered permissible any practices that the New Testament did not expressly forbid. While music and the approach to missionary work were the most visible issues, there were also some deeper ones. The process that led to the separation begun just prior to the American Civil War."  There are those who believe the issues of slavery and States Rights were almost equally to blame for the split as organ music.   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church_(Disciples_of_Christ)).  More recently we have fallen out and lost congregations over such issues as whether the Bible should be interpreted literally and who is welcome in our churches.   

It is sad that a movement begun over the desire for Christian unity should split over, well, anything.   It is sad that anyone ever says things like, “If you are really a Christian you must believe this particular thing or take that particular action or belong to this or that political party.”  It is sad that we cannot, as a church and as a nation, agree to disagree on trivial things like carpet color and major items like climate change.  It is a shame we can’t just go forward to make the world a better place without arguing over how it got in this shape in the first place.  

I heard an interview on the radio last Sunday morning with a song writer (whose name I didn’t get) who was talking about how important caring for the environment is to him, and he said, “If we want to see change, we have to take action.  No pointing fingers or asking why someone else isn’t doing something,  WE have to take action.  And it doesn’t have to be a big thing,  Recycle more intentionally.  Change your diet.  Buy locally.  Use native plants.”   I like that.  I like the idea of individually taking responsibility for whatever small things we can do rather than waiting for some one to lead us in some giant effort.  It doesn’t matter what kind of change we want to see, or in what field of effort we want that change to happen, If we want to see change, we have to take action.

Paul said about himself and Apollos, "The one who plants and the one who waters work together, but each one will receive their own reward for their own labor.  We are God’s coworkers, and you are God’s field.”  

We are God’s field.  We each have been planted and watered by others, but God is the one who makes us grow.  And we are God’s co-workers in that field.  We each individually get to plant the seeds of God’s love and water those seeds with the example of our lives.  We individually get to take the kind of actions that spiritual adults take, not fighting or looking to be right, but treating one another with respect, working toward justice in whatever way we believe is right - and then stand back and let God grow our crop, so that God’s kingdom may flourish on earth, as it does in heaven.