Weekly Sermon: Corinth - Seeking Community - 08-31-25

I want to thank Brad Atchison, our co-president in all his technology.

You can see I don't have to be fumbling with a laptop because he's doing all

of this from his iPad. Thank you, Brad.

Okay. Today is our last Sunday in our series on the footsteps of Paul.

My husband Dan and I took a trip to Greece as part of my sabbatical.

And if you are interested in the other sermons in this series,

they are on our YouTube channel.

Today we are traveling to Corinth.

I'm wondering if you have ever had one of those moments when you're in a crowd

of people at a party, at a reception, at a big family event or family reunion,

and you still feel alone?

It's happened to me before, surrounded

by people and yet still feeling disconnected or one step removed.

Loneliness affects one in four adults today and is now especially prevalent

in young adults ages 19 to 29.

Alarmingly, for those who are 18 to 25, loneliness surveys reveal that those

in that age group experience it up to 60%.

There are many things that divide us in our culture right now.

Certainly use of technology, generational differences in how we see the world,

what our world frame is, views on politics, social issues, and so on.

We don't need to delineate them because we all know what they are.

But underneath all of this, we each need a sense of belonging and human community

where we feel we are a part of something.

We all need relationships of trust and meaning where we are bonded together

with something deeper than ideas or agendas or sometimes even family ties.

Our need for connection and community

in the face of our vast diversity is stronger now more than ever.

The Apostle Paul recognized this need for belonging and this need for deep community

when he arrived in Corinth.

Corinth was a very diverse place and radically different from Athens and everywhere else he had been.

Paul didn't have far to go to get to Corinth from Athens.

He just had to cross a narrow strip of land and to get to this teeming metropolis over here.

And Corinth was one of the most important cities in Greece at that time.

And there was so much that was unique about Corinth.

First of all, its size. It was the largest city in Greece in Paul's time.

It was 10 to 20 times larger than Athens.

Its population was about 100 to 200,000 people.

And then if you added slaves, that would be another 30,000.

So if you go to this smaller map, you get a clearer view.

I'm probably, am I blocking the screen with my, you know, your eyes get worse

as you get older, even with bifocals, you like it close to your face.

So anyway, the geography of Corinth was unique because it was in the middle

of the province of Achaia,

half of which was up here on the mainland and half of which was in the Peloponnesian

Peninsula, which is connected by this isthmus, this strip of land.

And Corinth is right next to this isthmus, this strip of land that connects them.

And that means that Corinth had two ports, one on the east here at Sancreia and one on the west.

So this went out to the east, so toward modern-day Turkey.

In Paul's time, Asia Minor, Ephesus could go to Syria and Africa.

This way to the west, people could go to Italy and Rome, and so on.

Okay, so here is the port at Sancreia. These are the ruins.

This would have all been built up, of course. And all of the goods and the trade

from the east came into this port at Sancreia.

And this port is the very place where Paul left at the end of his second missionary journey in Acts 18.

And he first sails from here to Ephesus and then goes on to Jerusalem.

And this is also the port in Romans chapter 16, where deaconess Phoebe leaves

Romans 16 · chapter mention

and carries Paul's letter to the Romans.

And she actually lived in Sancria and was a leader in the church there.

And standing here, this is another one of those moments where Dan and I were

just pondering the significance of being in the footsteps of Paul.

Nobody else was there. Other places, there were tour buses and other people.

And here it was just Dan and I just imagining what it was like for Paul leaving

this missionary journey that he had been on,

sending Phoebe as a deacon with this, the greatest of his theological treatises,

the letter to the Romans and entrusting it with a woman to be the reader and

the interpreter of his understanding.

Of our life in Christ.

So we didn't get to the other port, but this is the road through ancient Corinth

that would take you there.

And the next slide will give you a picture of the mountain above ancient Corinth,

and that is called Acro-Corinth.

And there was a fortress up there to protect Corinth since the 7th century BCE.

And Corinth was a bustling city.

It had two ports with offering trade in two directions. And so everybody came to Corinth.

There was so much diversity. Latin speakers from Rome, Egyptian speakers,

Ethiopian. It's like the Pentecost story. Parthians, Medes.

Everybody was there in addition to Greek speakers. So the whole world came to Corinth.

And all of this made Corinth very wealthy, cosmopolitan, ethnically,

religiously, and linguistically diverse.

And the archaeology of Corinth reveals some of the diversity that Paul encountered.

This is the Temple of Apollo. It was built in 550 BC.

A lot of pillars in the ruins around Greece had to be stood up,

but these pillars never fell.

They've been standing since about 2,600 years.

There had originally been about 30 of them, and each one is 24 feet tall.

The next slide is a close-up of the pillars. There was also a temple to Aphrodite,

the goddess of love, and there was a whole prostitution cult that went with that.

This is the god Zeus that was found in the excavation of Corinth,

another sign of the importance of pagan religion in Corinth.

This is a sphinx that they found. It was a very important part of Greek mythology.

This is a Corinthian helmet. It was a definite style of anyone who looked at

this would say, oh yeah, that's the Corinthian style helmet.

Which they found as an important part of ancient Greece.

And because of the two ports, Corinth was very strategic in terms of military positioning.

This is a statue of Julius Caesar found in Corinth.

He ordered the rebuilding of Corinth in 44 BCE, and it had been destroyed by Rome 100 years earlier.

And the next slide, this is Caesar Augustus.

Julius's successor was Caesar Augustus.

And you remember the, if you were here for Philippi,

there was that battle near ancient Philippi where Octavian and Mark Antony beat

Cassius and Brutus, and Octavian became Caesar Augustus, and he was Julius's adopted son.

This is Nero, and he was the emperor in 54.

There were other emperors in between him and the last one, but these are significant

because they are symbols of emperor worship, which was another issue,

of course, that Paul had to contend with.

The next slide shows that Jews settled here.

These are images of Jewish menorahs on a pillar.

So there was a significant Jewish population there, as evidenced by this column.

There was a vibrant Jewish community.

So Paul encounters this rich, incredibly diverse community, And Paul sees that

this is where unity and belonging in Christ as one church, one people,

one body is really put to the test.

No more disconnection, no more loneliness, no more lack of belonging. And.

So Paul was called by God to build a church where there was no Jew or Greek,

slave nor free, male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Anybody know where that is? It's a Bible quiz. Galatians 3.28.

If there was anywhere to try and make this work, it was Corinth.

Because like the song, New York, New York, if you can make it there,

you can make it anywhere.

Corinth was the test capital of the world for the unity that we have in Jesus Christ.

But of course, Paul got into trouble, right? Because he got into trouble everywhere he went.

So in Acts 18, it reports that the leaders in the synagogue got mad and brought charges against him.

Uh, before the governor. So this is where Paul stood. It's called the Bema.

Here's my husband, Dan, and I standing on the Bema where Paul had to defend

himself against the charges that were brought against him.

Now, of course, this was inside a building and so on.

In this case, the charges were dismissed. Um, but not only that,

Paul encountered divisions in the church.

Our text that Caitlin read, the first one talks about Chloe's people,

and then there's Apollo's people, and who baptized who.

And they're also bickering about their spiritual gifts. And some people think

that their gifts are more important, and so they're elbowing their way to the

front of the church, and people who have what they think are the lesser gifts are sitting at the back.

Who knew, right? Because we prefer to sit at the back, even if we think we're more important.

But anyway, that's another conversation. But in Paul's time,

they all wanted to sit up front. So if you guys want to get that bug,

let's do that. But anyway...

They were creating these false levels of status within the community.

And then we hear that the slaves are being left out of the Lord's Supper.

Well, nothing would incense Paul more than people being left out of the Lord's Supper.

So they didn't celebrate communion in the middle of worship like we do.

They started gathering with a meal, and then they ended the meal by sharing the cup of salvation.

And they did so every time they gathered. so it

was like the glue of the community but you

know the wealthy they weren't working and they had lots of money and

they had lots of wine and they had lots of time so they

would get there early and they would eat and drink and then the tryptophan would

kick in and then they'd all fall asleep on the couch and then the slaves and

the people who actually had to work for a living would arrive and they'd get

there and the food would be gone the wine would be gone the rich folks are snoring on the couch.

And you want to talk about feeling lonely, left out, and disconnected from community.

And Paul is like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

This is not the Lord's Supper. This is not the body of Christ.

And so Paul exhorts the Corinthians for their beliefs that there is one body, one Lord.

One Savior, Jesus Christ, and every member is a part of him valued and equaled

and necessary to be manifest in their behavior and how they treat one another

and how they live as the body of Christ.

And so he instructs those who have more means to fill their stomachs before

they come together so that they can wait,

wait until the slaves and the laborers arrive so that they can all be together.

And then the Lord's Supper is a shared meal, not a table where the rich imbibe

early and frequently and the workers are left with nothing.

So, this next slide is the shops area.

And Paul says, you must listen. You must listen enough to become like them.

You must know what it's like to live in a new culture, a new class,

a new person in the community.

And he says, to the Jews, I became a Jew.

To the weak, I became weak so that I might win the weak.

I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some.

And so Paul finds a way to build a relationship with everyone so no one experiences

being alone in a crowd within the community of the church.

And even through their mistakes and struggles and hard lessons,

the Corinthian church did learn and it succeeded.

And in Acts 18, we read of fellow Jews and tent makers, Prisca and Aquila.

And they joined Paul and they hosted him in Corinth.

And these cutouts behind here are the shops.

And Prisca and Aquila with Paul are tent makers. And you remember,

it's not something that you would buy at REI.

Being a tent maker and building tents were awnings that went over the shops

to shade them from the sun.

So after we saw all of those main areas of the Corinthian city,

we walked over to the Roman odium.

And this is a theater.

It's not a huge, you know, giant one for animal fights and that sort of thing,

but it was a small one for musical performances and so on.

So we go over to the grounds of the theater, and you can see how the small town

is kind of on the edge of the ruins.

And then we get to this stone. Now, this is hard to see.

I underlined it in red, but there's an E-R-A-S-T-U-S, Erastus.

This is one of the few instances where archaeological evidence confirms the

biblical witness does anybody recognize the name erastus it's very obscure this

is like a final jeopardy question,

Erastus was a wealthy Gentile who was a part of the Corinthian church,

and he has written about on this stone that they found in front of the odium

during their excavations.

And Paul gathered the slaves and the marginalized, the shopkeepers,

the Jews and the Gentiles, and he also reached the highest echelons of civic

life because Erastus was a Greek who was the treasurer of the whole city of Corinth.

And he has a stone here. This is the, you know, tourist marker.

He has a stone here because he paid for the whole paving of the square at the base of the theater.

And it's written about in Romans chapter 16. And Paul says, Erastus sends you

Romans 16 · chapter mention

his greetings from Corinth.

And they're talking about this guy right here, whose stone they found in front of the odium.

He was a rich, he was the treasurer of all of Corinth, and Paul is talking about him.

He's Paul's convert and a leader in the Corinthian church.

And so they talk about it here on the tourist information plaque.

Back in the second epistle to Timothy, we learn that Erastus met with Paul during

his second visit to Corinth in AD 56 and 57 and remained in the city after the apostles' departure.

So Erastus is a leader in the Corinthian church, and he's the treasurer of—I

know I keep repeating myself, but it was so exciting because we're standing

there looking at the stone and we're looking at the Bible and we're like,

look at that right there, archaeology. Okay.

Anyway, okay, it was so exciting.

So the gift of the Corinthian community is that what divides us as a society,

whether it's wealth or status or politics, it does not separate us in the church.

This is the place that breaks down barriers.

And we have Erastus sitting next to slaves in his city to show us that.

It's a place that breaks down barriers and helps us end experiences of isolation

and loneliness. So bound together as the body of Christ, we experience a deeper community.

We build relationships of meaning where we can learn from each other.

And this is not just to grow the church, but because we too share in the blessings of Jesus.

Right? And so when we learn from each other, then we get to experience the blessing

of Jesus through somebody who is different from us.

Paul says, I do it all for the sake of the gospel so that I may share in its blessings.

So I just had a, this is not in the script, but I had a little example of this

this week where I met with a pastor from a denomination that does not ordain women.

He brought me coffee. He came to the office and we had great fellowship, right?

Now I could refuse to meet with every pastor from every denomination that doesn't

believe in my ordination. but it didn't matter.

You know, he said, we just don't think that we have to change everybody else's

mind, but this is who we are. He treats me with love, respect, and honor.

We shared fellowship. We prayed together.

I learned from him and I was blessed by him and we had a great interaction.

Okay. Right. We came together because we both love Jesus. We had a,

we had a wonderful interaction together and I would have missed the blessing of Jesus through him.

If I had these strict, rigid rules about refusing to talk to people. Do you see what I mean?

That's what I mean. Talk to people with whom you have disagreement.

See the blessing Jesus has for you in those conversations. Okay, that was a freebie.

Paul teaches us in the Corinthian community that Jesus unites us across every human label.

The Lord's table is the great leveler.

In Christ, no one is left out. So after visiting ancient Corinth,

Dan and I went back to our little pension where we were staying,

and we shared Holy Communion with our dinner,

just like they did in Corinth, using Paul's words of blessing.

The church of Jesus Christ is the place where loneliness is answered with belonging,

where division is healed by grace, where the Lord's table is open for all.

Our belonging is given to us in Christ, and we simply live it out as the church.

We don't have to create it.

It's already created for us in Christ, and we simply live it out as the church.

This is the church just outside the ruins of ancient Corinth in the small town that surrounds it.

And 1 Corinthians 13 is on the monument in the courtyard in four languages,

a different language on every side.

In a world that many experience as divisive and lonely, God calls us to live

as one body united in the love of Jesus Christ.

Come to the Lord's Supper today, trusting that you belong to God and you belong

to us in beloved community.

And as you go from here this week, reach out to those who need an invitation

to the next meal and to this community of love and belonging. Amen.

Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil.

Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor do not

lag in zeal be ardent in spirit serve

the lord rejoice in hope be patient

in suffering persevere in prayer contribute

to the needs of the saints live in harmony with one another walk in the footsteps

of paul sharing the good news of christ as you go in peace to love serve and

welcome all thanks be to God and if you were inspired by this week's.