BIBLE STUDIES

The Call to the Community

1 Corinthians 1-4

Paul had planted the Church in Corinth during his Second Missionary Journey (see Acts 16-18). Corinth was a prosperous settlement at the edge of a narrow strip of Greece, with considerable naval resources. The city had such a reputation for immoral living, however, that a Greek verb describing debauched behaviour had been coined from its name. There was a great deal of work for Paul to do.

His initial stay in the city lasted more than eighteen months. He was assisted in his work of preaching and teaching by Silas and Timothy.

The First and Second Letters to the Corinthians belong to the fledgling Christian community’s first period of independence. They are a complex sequence, and the order in which the Second Letter appears has often been disputed by scholars who see it as a compilation of different letters, relating to different stages in Paul’s relationship to the people who had heard the Gospel from him.

What emerges, is a community torn apart by division. It is clear in the First Letter that the Christians had divided their allegiance among different evangelists. Paul has received reports of this unhappy situation from various concerned correspondents in the city, and it is the purpose of the letter to recall the Church at Corinth to unity under one teacher, who is Christ.

In general overview, the first four chapters undertake a number of tasks:

• they remind the community that they have been adequately equipped with Christ’s gifts for everything that is required of them (1.1-9);
• they insist on the need for unity (1.10);
• they assert the supreme claim of the cross, which unites them above all their disgraceful divisions (1.10-24);
• they remind the people that they are still infants in the faith, and use a number of images to describe a newly established and incompletely formed organisation. This is another opportunity to rebuke them for their lack of unity, since Paul and his assistants have all had a hand in their nurture (3.4-17);
• they also remind them that they are stewards of God’s gifts, and subordinates in Christ’s service (4.1-2);
• this leads to a call to reason and humility (4.14-21).

What conclusions can we draw about the nature of the Church? You might like to think about the benefits and dangers of some of the following:

• A distinctive sense of identity (when does a Church become an introverted sect?).
• The leadership of the Church (how do we avoid leadership cults?).
• The Church’s need to grow (how do we identify with the images in 3.6-17?).
• The Church’s call to humility (how can we share the Gospel confidently, yet without assuming an air of superior knowledge or experience?).

Finally, we look closely at the first nine verses of the First Letter. It would be useful to re-read them carefully before continuing.

Paul addresses the Corinthian Christians as ‘God’s church at Corinth’ (1.2). For him, the church is universal; but with local expressions. No place has a particular purchase on the identity of the church. You may like to reflect on this in the light of the words of the Ordinal – when candidates are presented to be ordained deacon or priest, the person presenting them to the bishop specifies that they are ‘to be ordained into the Church of God’.

Later in verse 2, this theme is developed and a new strand is added (1.2). Not only do the Corinthians have their faith in common with all others who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; they have been called (with others) to be his people. So they are called both as a community, and as members of a much larger body than is known to them. What does it mean to share a call, especially when we don’t agree with others who are also called? How can we test our own obedience to God’s call under circumstances of disagreement? You may like to apply these questions to some of the questions currently exercising the Anglican Communion.

The community has been given gifts to live out their calling. Paul says that there is no single gift that they lack. This implies, however, that each member is essential to the whole body (an image properly developed later on in the twelfth chapter of this letter) – the gifts of each person are important, and it is when all exercise their gifts for the good of the community that the truth of Paul’s assertion becomes clear. How do we value our own and other people’s gifts properly? How do we accept the call to exercise our abilities in and for the whole body, when it is sometimes tempting to be individually recognised for one’s personal contribution?

Paul ends this long greeting by reminding the Corinthians that they are called to endurance. God has called them to wait faithfully until Christ reveals himself. They do not know how long that will be, and cannot therefore measure how long they must stand firm. They know that God keeps faith with them. But the question for them, and for a modern Church, is how we keep faith with God. As you reflect on this, think about the morale of the Church, its good housekeeping, its energy and motivation. Part of every community’s call is to attend to these things.

The Call to the Individual : Samuel and Mary

This short study asks you to think about two characters, distant from each other in time, male and female respectively, entrusted with tasks which seem quite different. The individual characteristics of their callings are significant and should always remain in view. Alongside these, however, there are features common to both, which help to set out an appropriate response to God’s call. On the way to identifying these, we will briefly consider other characters in the stories of Samuel and Mary.

1 Samuel 3.1-20
Luke 1.26-38

Samuel, who would come to be a great prophet, was born into an Israel which as yet had no kings. He was to anoint Saul as the first king, and when Saul disappointed God, he was sent to anoint David.

Mary grew up in the southern part of a divided kingdom, now under Roman rule. Matthew and Luke are careful to make clear in their Gospels that her marriage to Joseph ensured that Jesus was recognised as a descendant of David (Matt. 1.1-17; Luke 2.1-5).

Samuel was the long-awaited son of a woman who was prepared to badger God for a child in the Temple itself, in the process attracting a rebuke from the priest, Eli. Hannah, his mother, responded to God’s gift by dedicating her first child to the service of the Temple. This may be hard for a modern audience to appreciate, yet it gives us a first clue to Samuel’s subsequent vivid experience of God’s call – he was physically set apart, in a place where God might just speak, despite the fact that ‘in those days the word of the Lord was rarely heard’ (1 Sam. 3.1). In Eli, he had the pattern of someone who had lived his own life in faithful service to God. So Samuel was being steadily formed for God’s service, even before he was summoned to a particular task.

You may like to pause at this point and think about formation – what shapes us towards a readiness to hear God speak?

When God does speak, it is a puzzling experience. No one expected him to speak, and this is why Samuel assumes that the voice is Eli’s. For many people, it may be the case that a third party must enable them to hear amid a competing background of voices, and explain that God is addressing them.

God’s message is that he is about to do ‘something in Israel which will ring in the ears’ (1 Sam. 3.11). This comes at a cost, for Eli’s own family will be excluded from the priestly line on account of their offences against God, and it is Samuel’s first task as a prophet to pass on the news to Eli. No wonder he is afraid.

What it is that God will do, must be revealed much later. Samuel’s reputation as a prophet seems to depend not on his ability to give accurate predictions, but on his receptiveness as someone who has found out how to listen to the Lord. ‘The Lord continued to appear in Shiloh, because he had revealed himself there to Samuel.’ Samuel keeps faith, and keeps the channel of communication open. Throughout his life, God will call him again and again, through times of great triumph for the chosen people, and through times of disgrace. In all of this, it is Samuel’s constancy that marks him out for God’s service.

Mary rises from obscurity. The Gospel writers give her no credentials (e.g. a miraculous birth, or an early education by holy people). She hears God speak, not directly, but through an angel, and we can imagine what her reaction was from the angel’s reassurance, ‘Do not be afraid, for God has been gracious to you’.

She too is given a task – to give birth to a Son who will inherit David’s throne and whose reign will never end.

Mary does not ask for future assurances. She simply points out in a practical way that it is biologically impossible for God’s call to be fulfilled in her case. The angel has an answer for this: the Holy Spirit will be responsible for the conception, and if this is not sufficient guarantee, the further example of her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth’s pregnancy is given. ‘God’s promises,’ says the angel, ‘can never fail’.

This seems to be enough to make her join her will positively to God’call.

How do we draw Mary and Samuel together? In many ways, Mary has closer affinities with Samuel’s mother Hannah, on whose song of rejoicing (1 Sam. 2.1-10) Luke bases her song, now known to us as the Magnificat (Luke 1.39-56). Both celebrations of the power and favour of God move quickly from the chosen individual to the wider political context. Mary interprets her own exaltation as a model for the exaltation of the whole people of God, which will result from the birth of her son. Hannah speaks of the restoration of a just social order, under the glorious reign of God, as she praises God for Samuel’s birth.

Hannah, in turn, has affinities with the childless Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth herself shares the unexpected birth of a child marked out for great things at a late stage in her life with Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. So there are patterns within patterns.

Were we to try to make exact comparisons between Samuel and Mary, however, we would have to turn to the New Testament Apocrypha (the writings not admitted as part of the Canon of Scripture), where the Gospel of James gives an elaborate account of Mary’s childhood. Born to elderly parents who had prayed in vain for a child, she is dedicated to the service of the Temple in infancy, and brought up by the priests. She learns to walk and to read at a precocious age, and the Temple clergy interview a number of candidates to marry her when she reaches the age of twelve. Joseph is chosen because his staff breaks into flower.

But we do not need to find exotic evidence in order to be able to think about some of the questions both their stories raise. You may like to reflect, therefore, on the following themes:

• Setting apart – what mechanisms does God use in order to put people in a place where they can hear his voice?
• The reaction to God’s voice – fear and confusion, coupled with a need for interpretation, emerge as responses here. Where do we turn for help in understanding what God is saying to us?
• The tasks God gives us – do they look big enough and important enough?
• Prior qualifications – what is involved in saying ‘yes’, before you fully understand what you are being asked to do?

In reflecting on all these matters, bear in mind what Samuel and Mary have in common:

• They listen
• They think seriously and practically about what they are told
• They are ready to keep faith with God’s promise