Sheep and Goats

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
01.27.08; Rev. David Williams

All human beings like to make judgments about what is good and what is not. It helps order our world, helps us to frame things in a way that is easy to understand. One of the easiest ways to do this is to view the world like a game, a game in which there is are those who win and those who lose. The winners are good. The losers are...well....losers.

In a couple of weeks, as they do every year, the vast majority of Americans will gather around their televisions to watch the Super Bowl. As they drink watery American beer and each snarf down 4,000 calories worth of simple carbohydrates, they’ll see two teams battle it out for dominance. There will be one winner and one loser, one champion and one not-champion. It’s nice and clear. It’s black and white, night and day.

That binary way of looking at the world has seeped its way into much of American life. Take our system of laws and justice. Everyone divides up into two teams. You have the prosecuting team, whose job appears to be to maximize the penalty that the accused receives. “No, your honor, we don’t believe that seeking the death penalty for unauthorized music downloads is without precedent.” Far fetched, you say? Well...most of you don’t live in Virginia.

Then you have the defending team, whose task is to insure that you get off. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, what you have heard so far does seem to indicate that my client did kill and eat the victim. But, as our panel of highly paid expert witnesses will now demonstrate, he was suffering from a rare case of low-blood sugar-induced Cannibalistic Impulse Disorder at the time.”

Our love of the black and white has pushed it’s way into our politics, where we are allowed only two parties...the Reds and the Blues. You’re only allowed to be one or the other, and the two battle over power like two dogs fighting over a bone. When they’re not fighting amongst themselves, that is.

To admit for a moment that maybe the other party might be right about something is to admit defeat. To try to see things through the eyes of your opponent is to admit defeat. Your job as a politician is to win at all costs. You either have power or you don’t. Telling the truth and being honest with people is acceptable, sure, but only if it helps you win.

That hunger to prove yourself the winner, to make sure that the whole world knows that you’re the victor and everyone else is the loser, that old hunger has been around for a while. It was certainly around in the time of the Apostle Paul. Paul’s struggles with the compulsively divisive church at Corinth were nearly constant. Corinth was a trading hub in the Roman Empire, and was legendary for it’s dog-eat-dog, do anything to get ahead, I’m-gonna-get-me-mine mentality. Proving yourself a winner and back-stabbing your way up the ladder of prosperity was just expected. It’s what Corinthians did, to the point that Roman historians and social commentators at the time invariably mention what a heartless, money-grubbing, uncharitable, and self-absorbed city Corinth was.

How bad was it? Well, Corinth had such a reputation that it became a verb in common Greek that was spoken in the Ancient Roman Empire. The verb was korinthiazomai. The verb “to Corinth” meant...um...well...how to put this nicely...to fornicate. What a wonderful place to plant a church!

As we read this morning from Paul’s First Letter to the Fornicators...oh, sorry, Corinthians...the Apostle Paul is taking them to task for their relentless efforts to prove themselves better than everyone around them. Within the church at Corinth, things had rapidly devolved into the same kind of competitive gamesmanship that defined the world around them. They had divided into teams, and had at it against one another. Seeing their divisions, the heart of Paul’s message in response can be found at the beginning of verse 13:

“Has Christ been divided?”

For Paul, who believed that all Christians were made one as Christ’s body through the Holy Spirit, the relentless divisiveness of the Corinthians was deeply frustrating. Their visible lack of unity, their squabbling, and their attacks on one another as they jockeyed for position within the church indicated to him that they hadn’t really grasped what the faith was all about. Even those who claimed to “belong to Paul” frustrated him. In fact, those people who thought they were part of “his faction” were singled out for his irritation. It is his own supporters that Paul asks “Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” C’mon, people!

What Paul was arguing against was not disagreement. Folks can and will disagree about things, even Christians of good conscience. Instead, what Paul was arguing against was that human tendency to put everyone into two categories, winners and losers, sheep and goats. It isn’t that there’s not judgment. It isn’t that there’s not disagreement. If we’re going to be made one by the Holy Spirit that Christ promised, we’ve got to be willing to focus more deeply on what it is that unites us, who it is that unites us...and less on issues that allow us to conveniently polarize into for and against camps.

I got a chance to see that happening this week at the meeting of our Presbytery, where we once again argued about gays and lesbians in the ministry. What struck me about the discussion at the meeting wasn’t that we as a denomination were going at this controversial issue again. It was, instead, the way that the “debate” was structured. There were two lines, each for one microphone. In one line, the folks in favor of one side of the issue. In another, folks on the other. We were divided up into teams, pro and con, black and white. I didn’t ask which line was for the sheep and which was for the goats, although I was sorely tempted.

Although there are many things that concern the church, and many things that are important, the struggles we have are ultimately struggles that we have together. Our task...our goal...is to stop approach our lives of faith together like a game that must be won or lost. Because when we view those around us as adversaries who must be defeated, we have already lost.