1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Today we begin our sermon series on our second readings from 1 Corinthians. I would like to start out by giving you some background information on the city of Corinth in the 1st century. Corinth is located on an isthmus in present-day Greece; an isthmus is a geographical term for a narrow strip of land with sea on either side, and that narrow strip of land connects two bigger pieces of land. At some point, the people figured out that hauling boats across this narrow strip of land to get from one sea to the other was safer and took a shorter amount of time than sailing around the larger piece of land to get from the Aegean Sea to the Adriatic Sea. This was before people had the technology for building a canal; in modern times a canal was built and is still in use today. So, in the first century, the city of Corinth was located where the boats were hauled across the land, and it became a port city. And if you’ve heard what sailors do when they’re in port…well, that’s been going on since at least the first century, if not longer than that. There was also a temple to Aphrodite in Corinth. Aphrodite, if you recall from Greek mythology classes in grade school, was the goddess of love. And to worship the goddess of love, people engaged in the physical act of love, which gives us some of the background for the passage we have heard read from 1 Corinthians today. Basically, the city of Corinth was the 1st century’s version of Las Vegas, and people probably could have said that what happens in Corinth, stays in Corinth.
Into this 1st century version of Sin City comes the Apostle Paul. The Book of Acts tells us that Paul visited there on his second missionary journey, after having traveled to the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, and Athens. According to Acts, Paul met up with some fellow tentmakers, Priscilla and Aquila, a Jewish couple who had been forced to leave Rome and had settled in Corinth. While he worked at his trade, Paul also worked at proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Corinth, both Jews and Gentiles. He stayed there for a considerable time and established a congregation there. And then he moved on. But from his first letter to the congregation of Corinth, we can see that even though Paul had done his best to convey to the people the teachings of Jesus, there were still problems going on there.
When we look at letters in the New Testament, we do need to remember one thing. This is someone’s correspondence, and we’re hearing that person’s point of view. We don’t have a copy of the original letter that the Corinthian congregation wrote to Paul that prompted his letter, so we have to deduce what was going on from what Paul says and from what we know about the historical and cultural situation of the city. And in the case of today’s reading, since it comes from chapter 6 of the letter, it feels like we really have been dropped in the middle of a conversation where we don’t quite know what’s going on. So, I’m going to try to give a brief summary of Paul’s letter up to this point.
Paul begins by talking about factions in the congregation. Even though Paul had started the congregation, he had not been the only leader or teacher there by the time he wrote the letter. And people had formed factions based on what teacher they liked best. In response, Paul says that they were baptized into Christ, and it is Christ who unifies them. He talks about Christ as being the wisdom of God that looks like foolishness to the world around them. He then talks about how he and the other apostles have witnessed to Christ, even though they have done so in different ways. And then he gets into specific problems that he has heard about from the Corinthians. In one case, there was one man who was living with his father’s wife, his stepmother. And Paul is horrified by this, saying it is immoral and the offender must be disciplined and cut off from the congregation until he repents. Then he talks about how there are lawsuits going on between members of the congregation, and how that should not be happening: think how it looks to the community on the outside. Were they not capable of deciding matters for themselves without having to resort to pagan judges? And then, Paul comes back with today’s passage.
And he says, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial.” The Corinthian Christians had been taking the idea of the freedom that Christ brings and using it to justify anything they wanted to do, which is probably why they had the guy in the congregation who was living in sin with his stepmother. In response to that, Paul says that even though something may be lawful, it is not always good for us. For example, in some states it might be legal to ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, but to do that is not good because if you’re in an accident, you will have no protection from head injuries that may kill you. In this passage, Paul is emphasizing something that we 21st century Christians don’t always remember: “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” Paul is here talking about the resurrection being a resurrection of the body, which we confess that we believe in when we say the Apostles’ Creed. Our resurrection accounts of Jesus in the Gospels all talk about a physical resurrection, with the disciples being able to physically touch Jesus and with Jesus eating food. Jesus wasn’t some floating spirit when he rose again on the third day. Jesus was, in fact, physically resurrected. And that means that, since we believe in Jesus, that promise of physical, bodily resurrection is also for us.
Therefore, Paul says, since we have the promise of a physical, bodily, resurrection, what we do now with our bodies matters. He uses this premise specifically to talk to those Corinthian Christians who were still having relations with prostitutes, and we can guess that at least some of these prostitutes were working for the nearby temple to Aphrodite. And Paul asks the Corinthians, rhetorically, if it’s really good for them to take the bodily members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute, and very possibly, with a pagan goddess as well. Our bodies, he says, are temples of the Holy Spirit, and so what we do with our bodies here on earth matters. What we do with our bodies here on earth has implications for our relationship with Christ Jesus.
Paul says this, “For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” When we talk about ethics in the context of the church, this should be our starting point. Nothing that we see around us belongs to us, including our bodies, our very selves. Everything belongs to God, even our very own bodies. As Americans, we believe that we have certain rights: a right to life, a right to choose, a right to be free. Those are ingrained within us. But as Christians, I believe we need to try to let go of all this talk of rights and try to get back to this concept of belonging to God through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. If even our very bodies belong to God, how does that change our behavior? Instead of immediately entering a debate with the idea of “It’s my right to *insert behavior here*,” what if we entered a debate with this question, “How can I best glorify God in my body?” And whatever answer one person comes up with, another person may come up with a different answer, and both could possibly be right. It is the process of thoughtfulness and recognizing that, as Christians, we don’t really have a “right” to anything that is important. But what’s even more important is recognizing that it’s okay to disagree with one another, and to be charitable towards one another in our disagreements. For in the end, it is Christ who unites us, and unity in Christ does not mean uniformity of opinions.
Because Jesus Christ was physically resurrected, in his body, that means that we have the promise that one day we will be physically resurrected as well. I don’t know what that looks like, and I don’t think anyone else really does either. Paul will talk later in this letter about this, and his words there take some deciphering as well. We do know from the Gospel of John that when Jesus appeared to Thomas, he still had the scars from his crucifixion, as he invited Thomas to put his fingers in the holes in his hands and the hole in his side. Will we, too, have scars from battles we have fought? Possibly. I trust, though, that whatever scars we may have will have been healed and that our new, resurrection bodies will be healthy, and I believe that because of other promises that we have in Scripture regarding there being a new creation. But what Paul is teaching the Corinthians is that our physical life here on earth is just as important as our spiritual life. What we do with our bodies matters to God because our bodies belong to God. We have been bought and paid for by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We do not belong to ourselves, and therefore, we really don’t have any “rights” to anything. And so, when we are confronted with ethical questions, God wants us to use the intelligence we have been given to think things through and to answer the questions to the best of our abilities. Will we get things wrong sometimes? Absolutely. But that is where Jesus Christ steps in and offers forgiveness and encourages us to try again. So, in our journey together, let us do our best to glorify God in our bodies as well as our spirits. Amen.
Moving North 