Introduction

For the next few weeks we are going to be looking at the tensions involved in being a Christian in our world. We will be informed by the tensions and paradoxes in being a Christian in the first Century world that Paul and the Church in Corinth inhabited. The differences between Paul's world and ours are not as vast as we would at first imagine:

" There was one superpower in the world
" People were "spiritual" without being committed to any particular religion
" Social morals were relaxed and there was a great tolerance to different lifestyles
" People were searching for deeper meaning in their lives.
" Christians who took their faith seriously, were seen, at best, as being rather strange and, at worse, rather dangerous.

In our world now there is only one real superpower - America - and the other nations of the world tend to fall in behind the polices it espouses.

Many people are spiritual but reject any affiliation with a particular religion seeing it as restrictive. In our age people want "pick and mix" spirituality which is about making them feel good.

We have all benefited from the great relaxation in social morals and norms and enjoy the consensus of respect that is building for difference and diversity. More than any age so far we find it easier to live as we wish to; we see the stark contrast with so many other nations on earth.

We have lots of material goods but we are searching for deeper meaning in our lives. People continue to need to fill the void in their lives that materialism, alcohol, sex, and drugs doesn't fill.

Christians are seen both as irrelevant and rather backward looking or dangerous when religious leaders remind people of the tenets of their faith. An uproar took place a couple of weeks ago when the Scottish Cardinal of the Catholic Church reminded Catholic politicians that, in Catholic doctrine, abortion is a mortal sin. Somehow he was seen as wrong to remind people of his own church's teaching.

Tensions

Being a Christian both then and now was full of tensions and contradictions. The central events at the heart of our faith are still as problematic for people as they were in Paul's time. Paul says that the crucifixion was a stumbling blocks for the Jewish people who looked for miraculous signs and foolishness to the Gentiles who looked for philosophy.

The Jewish people had seen God give sign after sign throughout the Old Testament. They had a view of God as being all powerful and transcendent. For them, with these beliefs, it was natural to expect that if Jesus really was the Messiah then he would make manifest many great and marvellous signs. Of course they couldn't bring themselves to believe the tales of healing and other miracles. They also could not conceive of a God who would become weak and die on a cross. To be fair people still have problems with the cross. People still struggle to realise that strength is ultimately seen through weakness. The Gentiles wanted deep philosophy not homespun parables, they wanted wonderful systems of thought and reflection, not practical aspects of how to live our lives. They had no time for concepts of sin which needed atonement, but there again many in our society have problems recognising their own sin and evil - the evil of others, however, remains all too easy to notice!

God's Foolishness and Humanity's Wisdom

Paul continues his theme of God's supposed foolishness by reflecting on the people God has called into the church: "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong." It is no accident that in the ancient world Christianity was very popular with the poor, with women and with slaves. Those who were on the outside of society were attracted to the message of Jesus who was also an outsider. In our own time we see an interesting phenomena in London - both the Catholic and Anglican churches have been renewed in faith, strength and numbers by migrants, those who are the bottom of the pile have come and strengthened the church. In Paris the main Cathedrals are full to bursting - mainly with people from Francophone Africa holding all night prayer vigils and bringing an exuberance to worship which had been lost.

If you were planning a religious organisation you wouldn't start with us! You wouldn't try and build a church out of people like us - after all what have we got in common? But God has called us and knit us together to make an image of what the Church will become - outsiders welcoming the insiders, rich and poor, black and white, resident and immigrant, gay and straight, lesbian and trans, to form a church which in its very diversity shows us something of what God is like.

Christ Crucified

It's our faith that holds us together, it's our faith that we have in common. This is our starting place, our faith in the crucified and risen Jesus who makes us new again, who calls us here to meet him, who empowers us and who uses us for mission in our world. Like Paul we preach Christ crucified and trust that Jesus continues to draw people to himself in this congregation. In our weakness God finds strength, in our failing words God finds eloquence, in our poverty God finds great riches.

It maybe that we are foolishness to the evangelicals who look for moral purity and an anachronism to the unchurched who look for highs, but here Jesus is at work within us helping us to preserve and save our people.

(Rev Andy Braunston)