3-26-00. Discipline. This quarter's lesson texts are from Paul's ltr to the church at Corinth, a sometimes rowdy and quarrelsome congregation who were not certain about what the good news of God incarnate meant. It was only a few yrs after the sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrec• tion, of God's Messiah, so in just about everything that pertained to living the life of the re• deemed in Christl{they were ignorant. If modern scholarship is correct, then they had none of the gospel. accounts of J's life & tP.aching, there was no collection of study-course books to instruct and to guide their behavior. Most~of them were Gentiles, non-Jewish pagans whose morality came from the philosophe-r8°;\wh~ advice was so noble that we continue to read and discuss it as the highest attainmt of the'-numan intellect. The proper study of mankind is Man, they taught; we should know ourselves and our limits, and then taste of all that the world has to offer, but noth• ing to excess. Love was not self-giving but self-serving, generosity was a way of glorifying the individual, and the greatest success came with popular acclaim for deeds well done. If any of that sounds like the morality of the mob in our day, then think seriously about the feather• weight of ch~nge from ~ncient athens to the present. But~ those early Xns ~ hafe their questions about the living of the faith that Jesus is God-with-us, to redeem us from our sin and to teach us how the redeemed should live out their days. In this we get to the fundamentals, and they are dilficult for us to swallow, just as they were for those Gentile Xns in Paul's church in Corinth. They were his children in the faith, so he kept in touch with them, and continued his teaching through letters that he wrote to them. Last week the pr_g.blem was the intrusion of secu• lar life-styles into the thinking of the born-again, a temptati~o all of us; today~~e problem was of the moral behavior of church members. text I Cor 5. The name of learning to live joyously and willingly\\by a code of right & wrong\\is the Latin word discipline. That is a concept that many of us reject outright; we are masters of our own minds & souls, we grab pleasure wherever we may find it, and are properly offendee if anyone tries to impose moral limits upon our behav• ior. 0aul did it, in what we may read as sharp language. But note that he spoke as he did not out of anger at a member who knew not, or refused to abide by, the most obvious of morality. So let us hear the words of the text, I Cor 5:1-13. Discipline is something that many of us think is associated with military Gbedience to commands. Whatever the branch of service, the basic training concentrates upon marching in close order, obeying instantly the drill SGt1s command. It is designed to make obed Lence immet.' ate & unquestioning. Some year~: ago the novelist Herman Wouk wrote a story about a mutiny pn a S navy-ship •. In a sentence before •the title page he said, ~This is a work of fiction. Never in A er hist has there been a mutiny on a ship of the fleet.~ Hiscipline from the very beginning of an enlistmt~leads to unity and efficiency, whatever be the order. What Paul in these verses wants ust.to understand is that discipline in our private lives, and in our community of the faithful, is necessary for the health of the Church. In times past, church members often expelled those ·whose life-styles brought ridicule to the group. HenryStroupe who was ~hairl of the WF Hist ~ept and dean of the graduate school, wrote a paper describing what our forefathers called Dismissa)(lrrom N.C. r>apt ,L.hurches. L'arther back in time{!the M0ther Church excommunicates and. sometimes executed those who refused to conform to the hierarchy(\on matters of faith and morals; We are all of us selective literalists--very selective--as we read our Bibles. I think it safe to say that we shall not witness a death by burnihg1 as was meted out to heretics such as Wil1=iam ~·yndale, who translated. the Bible into English, or Giordano Bruni, who agreed w/ Copernicus that the earth is not the center of the umver-se , not even of the solar system. G,'1lileo made a telescope thru which he saw a reality that did not find expression in the Bible. 1!h \\is defense before the Inquisition !i,as, The Holy Scriptures tell us how to get to Heaven, not how Heaven wor~s. He did bow to t~uthorities by saying aloud, the earth does not move; but as he left the room he whispered into his beard, i~ still moves. In every generation there have been defenders of morality who have tried to apply ~aul's discipline to the unmannerly among us, be it an adolesce~~ i;n;'esident, or an humble shop-keeper who runs a numbers game under the counter. But those earnest defenders of the rules are not so numerous as they have been in the past. I leave to you tht1:i decision as to whether society ii st.r-orrge r-;- or weat<:eI, beeause of that chanve , But we must loo~ ~t this passage in some detail. We cannot know who among the membership was this man; it was enough that the congngation knew that Paul's complaint spoke truth. The man was living in a sexual relatship with his father's wife--not his own mother but a step-mother, when the father had died,or had divorced this second wife. It was by the standards of'. the time incestuou,s; it was something that not even the pagans accept.adj- aRf:l ify the Holiness eode of the Hebrew 'Iorah it was condemned, Deut 21:20; Levit 18:8, 20:11. Cursed by anyone who lies w/his father's wife. It was a direct violation of Uod's covenant w/Israel. Paul's respon5e was accall for community dis• cipline not so much as a way of punishing the guilty as of purifying the community of faith. A faith that dl'oes not produce mor-a Lobehavi.or , or change one's attitude toward the world and our living in it, is not much of a fai th';{/''~s it?1 Paul had already cast judgmt on the erring brother . "' '71// .11? 11/0U./ 011 lliliJq .J~Dl/ p (}./iJl{l it t d t . th h. and qe ca 11 e d upon t he c h urc h t o car uostuu pa/ !I r • · • ou , an o agree".w1 am, 1111r11 1 c h '11 h h d'ff' lt 11 · uaaqn.1vwpvff ~~ th 1 · 'l'h e hurc wi ave enoug l. acu y l'/,, pun 111811q swooiq aAo/ 1 cou.E~~ e secu ar neigh- . ' I /iJl/AI <, v' "CC t 1v'V- ./ llOSOiJS JDll0.1/0.1./.1 iJI{/ S.1 S.11/.1 ~ borhood that we are not just a buncl{o.glypocrits, living as we please, while sitting in judgmt of those outside. Paul's answer was to demand the expulsion of the wrong-doer. He acted as he did because he knew the rliblical tradition that one sinful person can bring God's condemnation to the entire group, and that the community has responsibilty for the welfare & the conduct of its members. The ehurch should offer to the,;;world a higher and more conunendable way of life than does the unbelieving ne Igh torhood ; as the English poet John Donne put it, No man is an island; all in Xr1s ~hurch are bound together in a fellowship of caring and supporting, comfortfung and encouraging. One rotten apple, one who holds himself above the standards that govern the group, and the whole is weakened and loses power. So he advised t he Corinthians to expell, to dismiss, to exca.mmunicate, the wrongdoer. This is discipline as a way to bring unity smong the brethren and the sisters. I know it sounds mean to people who make a point of excluding no one, and who refuse to judge other peoples' behavior. But one self-serving Church member may undo all the Bi• ble study and sermonizing of the group. C.S.Lewis, in that channing little booK of letters from a devil in the managemt class to a buck privat:.e in the outfit--the .icr.ewtape .Letters--wrote his underling, douno t loss heart because your subject, has joined a ~n· ih-.;ust remind him that the one who just passed the collection plate is the same man who vor-ce d in the bup-cher shop where you bou~ht your potroast, who surreptitiously put his thumb on the scales to give it a push. An extra dime for the beef isl.not much, but how does it look to a newly converted believer that someone in a position of leadership in the thurch would doruch a thing? Note clearly that 0aul1s motive was to strengthnn the believing community. His advice, and it was very close to a command, 5:4,5, 13, When you are assembled,s~hich squnds like a summons to a wltch-hunt,You are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,and the spiritj\saved for th~y of jtldgmt.