January 16, 2005 Des Moines

TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Called to be Saints

We have likely been about letter writing in recent weeks. Whether or not you sat down and composed the annual “Christmas letter” to family and friends, chances are that you took time to write some special someone a holiday letter through which to say hello and catch up. If so, you perhaps noticed some familiar formatting in the first three verses of Paul’s own letter we’ve begun to read. As if utilizing one of those stick-on packaging labels you buy at Target, Paul fills in the typical “From” and “To” lines:

“From: Paul”

“To: The church of God that is Corinth.”

It is standard shipping fare: address; return address. But Paul is not just attending to Postal regulation. As if to decorate the envelope, Paul adds a few theological flourishes that are worth spending some time with here at the outset of a few weeks worth of attention we’ll be paying to this bulky epistle, standing here, as we are, on the welcome mat of a New Year. In addition to naming the sender and the receiver, Paul goes on to annotate, by way of clarification, something of the larger identity of both.

“From Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” In the span of that one long sentence, Paul makes some decisive claims about himself and his audience. He is not simply “John Q. Citizen,” and he is not writing to “Jane Q. Public.” You’ll notice that a whole lot of calling is going on in this short section. He is “called,” they are “called,” and together they, apparently with a whole bunch of others, do a whole bunch of “calling.”

At least the first two of these "callings" are the result of God’s first step.  Paul's work as an apostle and our life as the church both come in response to God's initiative -- as is the gift of grace, itself.  That is the starting point of all we do and are. To go one step further, all three of the “callings” Paul mentions have to do with consciousness – with becoming aware of something God centered. I say to our Elders from time to time that a significant part of their work is “the ministry of paying attention” – paying attention to what is going on in the congregation; what’s going on in the lives of its people. But what this opening sentence suggests is that any ministry of paying attention begins by paying attention to what God is and has already done. And one of the very first things Paul wants us to pay attention to is the sound of God’s voice calling our name.

Last week, in the story we read about the baptism of Jesus, we heard God calling Jesus’ name – and introducing him as “my son, my beloved, in whom I am very pleased.” Here, imagine that Paul is extending that same sort of introduction to include the Corinthians. Here, at the very beginning of his letter – before he gets into anything else he wants to say to them (and as we will discover in the next few weeks, he has much that he wants to say) – he wants to establish the context, the “givens” within which anything else will need to be heard and understood. “Whatever else you need to know,” Paul tells the Corinthians, “know this: God has called you, and at least at some level you have heard. God has called you ‘saints.’”

Which is something you and I share in common with the people of Corinth. We, too, have been called. It isn’t, you see, just preachers and professional church goers who are “called.” The Corinthians, no less than Paul, had been “called.” And you, no less than me. If I have been called to something approximating apostleship, you have been called to sainthood!

Now, don’t get terrified. I know, I know. That word always slows me down, too – a kind of narrative speed bump that I seldom see coming. “Called to be saints.” Or, as it can otherwise be translated, “called to be holy.” But that isn’t much of an improvement; “sainthood” or “holiness,” either one sounds a bit overdrawn when I look in the mirror. Isn’t that kind of stuff reserved for the Mother Teresa’s of the world? Or Martin Luther King, jr. perhaps. Surely, on this commemorative weekend honoring the slain civil rights leader, we wouldn’t have much trouble naming him among the saints. Except for the fact that Dr. King’s detractors have worked to make sure that his image isn’t all halo and polish. “He was no saint,” they keep reminding us.

But however accurate they may be about his legacy of moral perfection, they are perpetuating a strand of theological ignorance that defames not only Dr. King but presumably themselves. Sainthood – holiness – is not a word that has anything to do with moralism. It is not a word of ethics, but of relationship. It’s not something that we earn; not a status that some are able to achieve. None of us -- not Dr. King, certainly not the Corinthians, and though we hate to admit it, not even us – wears a halo. Paul isn’t trying to flatter is readers; merely clarify them. To call them “saints” says nothing about what the Corinthians have done, but rather what God has done. To finally say it, then, sainthood is a state that we enter not by our achievement, but simply by God’s own call.

And God has not called them alone. Holiness, according to Paul, "is...a communal state in which we are placed by baptism. Paul never uses the word in the singular of the individual Christian" (Conzelman). While the Corinthians may look like "a tiny island in a sea of paganism, the Christians at Corinth are part of a larger land. They belong, as Paul puts it, with ‘all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’"

Saints, then, Paul calls them – rich, by God’s generosity, in all eloquence and in all knowledge, lacking no spiritual gift.

I am taken by this introduction. Whatever else there is to say about the church, this, for Paul, is the first thing that needs to be said. The church is that "koinonia" -- that community of reconciling faith – that God has called out and together. "Saints:" God’s people. Existing, as far as Paul is concerned, no longer to serve their own purposes but God’s" (Barrett).

I look out across the weeks and months of this year newly begun – at all the witness and ministry that this congregation will both imagine and attempt – and think of that encircling, defining context. I think of all the time and energy we tend to squander on organizational preoccupations that don’t finally matter all that much; all the emotional distraction that sometimes occurs, huffing and puffing about this trivial travesty or another; all the analytical fervor we sometimes invest in precisely counting the exact number of angels on any number of pins, and then remember our sainthood. God’s own voice has called us, set us apart along with all those who, in every place, call on the name of Christ, to embody God’s own message.

There is a kind of awe-striking nobility in that awareness, and also a centering, enlarging sense of purpose. As God’s own people, called to be saints, we have a holy mission to undertake. And as that holy fellowship, all the necessary spiritual gifts are graciously present somewhere in our congregation. We are, in other words, the church Paul subtly invites us to comprehend: the called.

As we continue into this new year, we will have many things to say – no doubt some things to criticize; hopefully some things in which to take pride. But whatever is done and whatever is said this year, let’s get straight from the beginning who we are. Nothing else can be quite this important: the called. Saints. Rich, by God’s gift. Whether we believe it or not, in all eloquence and in all knowledge, lacking no spiritual gift. God’s people. To be concerned no longer for our own purposes but rather God’s.

We have work to do, and it is time we got at it. But let’s get at it on these terms: keeping close in our minds this understanding of who we are, and whose mission we, with this clarity of “being”, have been called to make visible in our “doing.”