A couple of weeks ago, I walked the main streets of Ancient Ephesus, the Agora (the downtown shopping district) on my left and the Theater where the city gathered to riot against Paul’s teachings about Jesus’ superiority over gods made out of stone and wood, on my right. A few days later, I wandered through the Agora in the ruins of Corinth. Did you know that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus?
I was told, among the bones of Corinth, that the wealthy families sold their daughters as temple prostitutes. This was the world the early church had to live in. Cities crying out for the worship of idols, selling their daughters as prostitutes to these gods.
As I sat on a flight from Athens, Greece to Rome, Italy, I cracked open my Bible to read Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church. It has never been so insightful for me as it was after leaving the Corinthian ruins. I have long thought of the book as a rebuke to the church for allowing the wickedness of a son sleeping with his father’s wife, but in truth, it is a rebuke to the church for allowing division. From front to back, I read about how they were using theological teachers (even Jesus), head coverings (which I discovered later were a symbol of modesty for women, or prestige for men), and even the communion table to divide and distinguish between themselves.
I later would stand among the tunnels undergirding the city of Rome, and see how the Christians buried one another in community, in order to sleep off the waiting period between death and resurrection together. I guess they headed Paul’s rebuke.
I returned to the States a few days before a very heated election. I read, online, the slanderous things one side says about the other (pick a side). How people are willing to cut off family and friends because of what bubble they filled in on their ballot. And I wonder what Paul would say about Christ’s Church casting those types of stones?
The ancient Church was a goulash of those who founded their spiritual identity upon their ability to strictly adhere to the Law of Moses, and those who grew up in the streets of Ephesus and Corinth, watching the daily worship of deities who demanded their daughters and sons as tokens of their worship. Greeks and Jews. Yet, much of Paul’s writings are directly encouraging the Church to live in harmony with one another. To show honor to those they least find honor in. Much of what we see in the biblical accounts of the early Church, specifically in Acts, are believers sharing all they have with those less fortunate. They ate, lived, and buried their loved ones together, in community.
We have much to learn from the early Church, and from reading the New Testament, about how the unity in the Body of Christ stands in stark contrast to the division in the world. In the Church, we have the one thing in common that ought to bind us together in perfect peace- Jesus! In the world, people gather based on preferences and pleasantries. If someone offends someone else, they are dismissed from their lives. As a Church, we must look different. But beyond that, we must BE different.
I have been a church member, and am now a church planter’s wife. I have seen enough of the American Church that it’s easy to dismiss others. I could have easily “deconstructed my faith” and blamed it on the sins of others. I have been deeply wounded by pastors, and spent years of my life learning to live in community with them. Yet, I have seen the goodness of God towards me in giving me the endurance to hang on, and by bringing wholeness, comfort, healing and growth through the process. I am not speaking as someone who is ignorant of the pain that has and can be caused by the Church. I’m also not pretending that everyone who calls themselves a Christian actually is, though we can easily start to assume we know who is and isn’t, based on their performance.
Yet, I breathed the musty air of those catacombs and saw, firsthand, the way the early Church had learned to love one another. I imagined how complicated it must’ve been to merge two camps of people so diabolically different from one another, in all manners of life, and to raise up a unified banner of love, humility, and compassion.
So, Church, this is my encouragement to you. In the years to come, as we see our nation, founded upon unity yet so tragically divided, to heed the ancient warnings of our dear brother, Paul, to embrace our salvation with gratitude and humility, to use our gifts to bless one another, and to exalt those we are most tempted to malign. There is no better time for the Church of the Almighty to show the worth of Christ by how we love and serve one another, together in unity!
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