Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth several years after establishing a church there. The church was probably more like a cluster of house churches--a loosely knit organization, a mission project of sorts. You might call it an institutional ministry in Corinth.

However the church was labeled, Paul intended these particular words in I Corinthians to be addressed to a particular group of people facing a particular problem. And we've gone and read their mail! Have you ever interrupted someone who was reading a letter and had that person turn the page over or fold it up and stuff it back into the envelope in a hurry?

The Corinthians might well have gone into contortions if they had known that, for almost 2000 years, people all over the world would be reading their mail. Paul's letter portrays them in an unflattering light and divulges a number of things that they might have wished to keep private.

History of Corinth

But in A.D. 146, Corinth was demolished by the Roman legions. They killed all the Corinthian men and sold all the women and children into slavery. They destroyed all the buildings and left the city in ruins. It was left that way for 100 years. But the location was so strategic that Julius Caesar established a colony there in 44 B.C. and slowly the city came back to life.

The people who reinhabited Corinth were primarily veterans of the Roman legions and many former slaves. In this new city, they discovered opportunities for economic and social advancement that would not have been available to them elsewhere. The military veterans were steeped in the chains of command. Former slaves were well aware of levels of authority and pecking orders and sought to claim new identities through upward mobility.

The citizens of Corinth understood being looked up to and being looked down upon. So most of the people of Corinth at the time Paul visited also understood relationships as unequal. They assumed a pecking order in all of life and preferred to work for a more elite position than their forebears. They brought this attitude with them into the newly formed church. Another feature of the Corinthian church was that the majority of the new Christians were gentiles. There seems to have been only a small Jewish community in Corinth and so only a small number of converts from the synagogue were members of the Christian community. Thus only a small number of members of the church were familiar with the commandments, the promises, and the expectations of the God of Israel.

Paul spent about 18 months in Corinth preaching and planting seeds for Christian community. He had some time to teach and organize and plan the program, but then he moved on. Within three or four years, some problems and serious misunderstandings arose in the Corinthian Christian community. They arose largely out of the tendency of some to arrange relationships in classes of order and importance in which pride and rivalry were seen as normal.

Two things prompted Paul to write to this group. First, he had received a report from "Chloe's people" that there was serious dissension within the community (I Corinthians 1:11). Paul was in Ephesus at the time and presumably Chloe's people came to visit and complain. The second prompt came when the Corinthians themselves wrote to Paul to ask his advice on several things upon which there was disagreement among them.

Paul wrote a pastoral letter. He addressed controversies about the resurrection, abuses of the Lord's Supper, sexual immorality, legal disputes–Christians who were suing one another in church--the consumption of meat offered to idols, and the question of who had the best gifts to offer to the church. The church was divided into warring factions.

We see an organization that magnified trivialities and trivialized matters of great importance. All the while church members feuded over who had the best and most to offer the community.

The tone of Paul's letter to them suggests that he sees the Corinthian church standing at a moment of crisis and testing. He grasps the dissension and the division in the church. In fact, it might be said that the whole book of First Corinthians is an extended appeal for unity.

Some difficulties can be dealt with more easily than others. A stepson sleeping with his stepmother (5:1) is a problem that's pretty straightforward. But other problems are of individual differences: economic, cultural, social, spiritual differences. The church in Corinth is a community whose individual members are used to living in a strict order of priorities and assigned worth. How will they deal with a Gospel that proclaims: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

Some of these Corinthian Christians are not just upwardly mobile economically and culturally, they are also upwardly mobile spiritually. They want to have--and claim to have--the best spiritual experience. Some have been given gifts of the Spirit that they feel are spiritually superior. This is costing the community dearly, not just because of hurt feelings and disagreements but because this attitude flies in the face of the Gospel. Earlier in First Corinthians, Paul wrote: "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1:27). But "the strong" haven't been paying attention. They have been caught up in exercising showy displays of spirituality.

Some of them are disrupting or dominating the church's meetings by disorderly utterances that are unintelligible to other members of the community, Spirit-inspired or not. Those who are speaking in these unintelligible tongues seem to be proud and joyful about their ability to enter the heavenly sphere and speak with "tongues of angels." Others, who are within earshot during worship, find both the utterance and the pride disruptive.

Paul never disputes the authenticity of these people's experiences or the gifts they have received. But he is cautionary and corrective. He goes on to suggest a deeper way of thinking about various gifts.

Varieties of Gifts

Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

I remember a hideous B-movie I went to see when I was 14. My dad was an Air Force officer stationed in Tokyo and there was not a lot to do on the military base where we lived. So one rainy Saturday afternoon I went to see a monster movie at the base theater with a whole gaggle of teenage girls. It was a black-and- white movie with horrible actors. Through some awful scientific accident, a creature had been formed that was a huge brain with a trailing spinal cord. That was all.

This is the picture that Paul is drawing for the Corinthians. If the whole body were an eye, or the whole body an ear--all a single member--where would the body be? If everyone is speaking in tongues, who is going to take up the collection? If everyone can only add up the collection, who is going to sing in the choir? If everyone can only sing, who will preach?

If all were a single member, if all had the same gift of service, not only would there be no Body of Christ, but life would be boring and a whole lot of needs would go unmet. God loves diversity. That is why we have seasons, day and night, hot and cold, different sizes and colors of people, anteaters and armadillos, cactus and camellias. Bountiful, abundant life is given from the infinite well that is the heart of God. There are varieties of gifts, and everyone has one.

Paul says it plainly: "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good"(12:7). Either that is true or it is not true. And Paul makes the case that it is true. Each and every member of the Body has a gift of value to contribute. The analogy of the human body demonstrates that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Paul is stressing that, with diversity, there is the call to work together for the common good. In the Body of Christ, gifts are given not for the private edification of the recipients but for the common good. To act as a Lone Ranger may be credible political philosophy in some circles, but it is bad theology and has little to do with the Gospel.

No Bad Gifts

As Paul writes about gifts, the word he uses is charismata. Charis in Greek means grace or favor. Gifts are signs of God's grace, freely given. We are given gifts because God wants to give us gifts. And every gift from God is good. God does not recycle hard, dry "spiritual fruitcakes."

I was in a store recently and witnessed a sad conflict brewing between a young teenager and her mother. They were Christmas shopping and the mother was instructing her daughter how to shop and what present to get for her (the mother). As the conversation progressed, it seemed like an old rehearsed script. Almost in tears, the girl grimly said: "Keep your money. It may not cost as much, but this year you're getting something I pick out for you."

We don't pick out the gifts we get from God. When you are given a gift, it is considered good form to accept it graciously, not to stamp your foot and declare: "But I wanted that other one." So each one is given the gift God chooses to give. And then....you open it.

Have you opened your gift yet? Have you used it?

God's gifts to us are given out of love and when we receive them and use them, our efforts are warmly received. When you begin to discover the gifts that God has given you, one by one, and begin to take awkward, tentative steps to use them (all the while praying frantically: "Help me, help me!"), God does not thunder back: "But you led the meeting without authority and forgot half the agenda." Or: "Why did I ever think you could teach Bible school, or be a director of a mission institution, or be president of a board of directors?" No, God tenderly takes our efforts to use our gifts, attaches them to the celestial refrigerator door, like a crayon-drawn gift of a child, and turns and says: "I love you too."

Each of us is given some manifestation, some gift. Open each and accept the greatest gift of all, the love of God. We will be shown a still more excellent way.

From: A pastoral letter to the United Methodist people around the world, November 5, 1999.