Merely Human

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Last week we looked at kindness as a key character trait of God which was revealed in creation and is reflected in us. We talked about how sin and selfishness tempt us to turn from that image and how our capacity for kindness is countered by a capacity for cruelty. I even went as far as to suggest that the purpose of religion was to teach kindness, to teach us about God’s kindness and to inspire us to imitate it.

I don’t pull that suggestion out of thin air. Two weeks ago you looked at Micah 6, in which we learn what the LORD requires of us: “To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.” God requires us to be kind. This Sunday’s text continues the theme of promoting kindness, and does so in the context of community. The Corinthians aren’t being kind to one another. There is “jealousy and quarreling among them.” They’re bickering over which leaders they support, some claiming loyalty to Paul, while others claiming loyalty to Apollos. It would seem as though partisanship is not a new thing for human communities.

In addition to these disputes among themselves, “the Corinthians have reproached Paul for failing to provide sufficiently advanced instruction in wisdom.”[1] It is to this reproach that Paul directly responds, “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” The metaphors that follow about feeding the people with milk rather than solid food are “stock language in relation to philosophical and religious instruction throughout the ancient world.”[2] Paul didn’t coin these terms himself, and therefore they carry a deeper meaning. Richard Hays explains how the ancients believed that “spiritual progress can be graded and that a different sort of curriculum is appropriate to each level of maturity.”

There is an irony here: that the people assume themselves to be mature and spiritual, to have a capacity for deeper learning and greater wisdom, but Paul uses their own grading scale to call them “infants in Christ.” Paul wants them to redefine their understanding of what it means to be spiritual. And as I’ve already suggested, it has a lot to do with how they express kindness. They want deeper spiritual wisdom, but Paul tells them “you are still not ready, you are still of the flesh.” Paul uses flesh to contrast spirit, just as I used cruelty to contrast kindness, earlier. Being “of the flesh,” for Paul, is the reason why there is “jealousy and quarreling” among the people. Paul uses the term “flesh” a lot in his writing. I remember a paper I wrote back in seminary where I made an argument that you could translate this word as “selfishness” just about every time Paul used it. When Paul tells the Corinthians they are “of the flesh” he means that they are serving their own flesh, their own bodies. This is opposed to being spiritual, serving the Spirit, serving God.

The other term Paul uses to describe this selfish, of-the-flesh living is “merely human.” It is merely human to bicker, to disagree, to fight, to insist our own opinions are right. Alternative facts are merely human. Angry protests are merely human. Being deaf and blind to the woes and worries of anyone but ourselves is merely human. We may insist that our religiosity is the foundation of our quarrels, that we argue and speak out because we believe something important. And indeed there are times when being people of God requires us to speak out and speak up, as Micah reminds us of our calling to do justice. But Paul offers this corrective: if your approach to doing justice is cruel towards others, do not be so proud as to think that you are serving God.

There are many radical so-called-religious groups who are nothing but cruel, nothing but selfish, nothing but merely human. Just as we shudder to have Christianity dragged through the mud by the cruelty of groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, so too do Muslims mourn that so many people associate their peaceful and beautiful religion with the propaganda of groups like Daesh, or Al Qaeda. The purpose of religion, all religion, is to teach and inspire kindness. Whether it is an Abrahamic faith (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or one of the Western religions (Taoism, Hindu, Buddhism) there is, at the core, a call to kindness that counteracts the lures of the flesh. They call it inspiration, Nirvana, spirituality, piety, salvation, becoming a guru…but it’s all getting at a life which serves something other than the self, something which brings us above and beyond mere humanity.

For us, in the Christian religion, we call this path “salvation,” and we have a human being who shows us the way. For Paul, Christ is the culmination of God’s character of kindness, manifest in a life of servitude, sacrifice, listening, loving, courageous compassion. Paul’s ultimate response to those who desire deeper wisdom is this: “If you wish to become spiritual, become like Christ Jesus.” Remember that Paul is trying to redefine the way they understand spirituality. Also remember when Christ stood before his hometown and read Torah, from the scroll of Isaiah. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Spirituality means to serve the Spirit instead of the self, to serve the Spirit through very specific acts of kindness, in ways that send us to preach good news to the poor, release to those imprisoned by sin and selfishness, open the eyes of those blind to the ways of this world, liberate those who are oppressed.

God managed to take on flesh in a way which did not also take on selfishness. This is what we celebrate in Christ: fully-human, fully-God. In the flesh, but not of the flesh. Human in body, but divine in will. Perfectly united with and turned towards God in a way that God was fully reflected in all that Jesus said and did.

Paul, walking humbly with his God, refuses to belittle Apollos, refuses to play their partisan games, refuses to align himself with any agenda other than God’s. “It’s not about adherence to me, or to Apollos,” Paul says, “we are simply servants of God.” “We are all God’s servants, working together.” And we, the church, are a field in which God’s will is planted, watered, and grown. “You should be harvesting kindness,” Paul tells the Corinthians, “but instead you’re quarreling.” Richard Hays paraphrases Paul’s words as: “Stop fighting with each other; you are acting like spoiled babies, not like people who have received the Spirit of God.”[3]

Just as the Corinthians, we bicker and argue over petty things. We insult those with whom we disagree. We call those who speak out in defense of the poor and the weak “whiny snowflakes” while, ironically, ignoring our own tendency to whine and grumble when things don’t go our way. We’re really good at pointing fingers at all the cruelty we see in this world. That is merely human. Let us instead, as followers of Christ, first hold ourselves to a higher standard of kindness, and then, with gentleness and respect, invite others to join us there.

[1] Hays, Richard. Interpretation. Page 48

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. 49.