REFLECTIONS ON PLURALISM
1 CORINTHIANS 12:14-23
JULY 2, 1972

That passage of scripture is among the more memorable that Paul ever wrote. In it
he created an image of the church - a way of understanding the church, really - that Chris-
tians have never been able to forget: that is, the Church as the Body of Christ, and
individual Christians as integral, functioning parts of the body.

Now, a sermon on the unity of the Church as Christ's Body on earth is not very
unique. Because it is an important theme every minister deals with it on a regular basis.
Yet there is a principle beneath the image that, I feel, we do not always acknowledge:
an important idea whose time has come in our day. The principle is pluralism. And it its
to that principle that I would draw your attention for the purpose of reflecting together

this morning.

"Pluralism". What is it? Writing in the recent issue of Church and Society Clarence

Cave identifies the “central social and hence theological issue of our time as racial and
cultural alienation". And then goes on to identify pluralism as "a condition in which
members of diverse ethnic, racial and religious or social groups maintain an autonomous
participation in and development of their traditional culture or specific interests
within the confines of a common whole..."

If that's a bit heavy think of pluralism in terms of the pop song “I Gotta Be Me" -
and apply it to groups of people in our society saying just that - “We Must be Who We Are -
and not what someone else says we have to be." Racially, think of it in terms of Afro
hair styles and the dashiki, or the burgeoning racial pride of the young, and sometimes
angry American Indian. Sociologically think of pluralism in terms of the Amish, and
. China town and Little Italy and the resurgence of interest in authentic appalachian ‘
culture.

Pluralism is perhaps the most exciting and important issue facing the American
nation as it celebrates its indapendence in this year af our Lord 1972. But that gets
us ahead of ourselves. St. Paul caljed our attention to the idea nearly two thousand
years ago, so let's return to the Greek city of Corinth and see if we cannot understand
a Vittie more fully what he meant.

The fact that Paul had anything to do with the people of Corinth in the first place

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is an indication of his pluralistic leanings. For Paul was a Jew. And in the eyes of
a first century Jew the world could be conveniently divided into two camps - "them and us."
Gentiles - meaning non-dews - were regarded as unclean, and even though Jesus himself
had no qualms about associating with people wha stood outside the legal and ritual
framework of strict Judaism, his first disciples regarded it as a major problem. They
were all dows - heirs of God's covenant with Abraham, heirs of the Exodus and the law,
heirs of the Tong and painful history of God and his people. And they assumed that to be
a participant in the new reality established by Jesus Christ, a man first would need to
beconile a Jew. Paul didn't agree and the dispute was bitter. Finally, at the Council of
Jerusalem it was decided that Gentiles could be Christian Gentiles - which was to say that
God hadn't made a mistake in creating them Gentiles: and that it would be Paul's special
missionary assignment to preach the Gospel to the Gentile world: which is what he did -
among other places in Corinth.

And so we see Paul as a Pluralistic thinker, who was the first to sense the
universal and pluralistic nature of the Gospel. But there was a division and conflict
in the Corinthian Chruch, and ironically it hinged on the same issue that Paul had
prosecuted so vigorously in Jerusalem. The Gentiles now were arguing with each other
about their relative important in the Church: which is anotherway of arguing about
pluralism. The intellectuals among them were insisting that everyone needed to be an
intellectual. Those who could do public speaking were insisting that their way needed
to be adopted by all. Those gifted in healing were suggesting that all true Christians
could heal: those who spoke in tongues said the same. And suddenly Paul sensed the
Church coming apart at the seams on the basis of the same old parochialism - the same old
tendendy to amalgamate and press everyone inte the same mold - that had haunted Judaism.
In response Paul, the pluralistic thinker, compared their fellowship to a body.

And in brilliantly clear anologies potnted out that a human body is either pluralistic
or it is nothing. The eye can't be an ear. A hand can't be a foot. And if it could -
the bedy itself would not function as it wes intended. Each has an appointed agsignenant:

each has a pecular and special function: all are interelated and the whole - the body

itself - depends on each one equally.

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Tn personal terms Paul sensed the uniqueness of each individual: each one had a
special gift - and none was more essential to the other. In fact the Church depended on
each doing what he was able to do to the best of his ability.

That's stili an important and essential idea for the life of the church. Because
we still are very much inclined to press everybody into the same mold theologically,
socially and pietistically. Somehow the Church down through history has come out saying
that all Caristians ought to believe the same things in the same amounts, use the same
vocabulary, pray the same prayers, and if possible look alike, especially on Sunday
morning. And if you don't measure up: if you don't “feel” religious according to these
stereotyped forms, more often than not you aren't going to be found in the Church. One
of the greatest fears of new members always seems to be that we're going to ask them to
stand up and offer prayor in Elizabethian English.

Well all of us have a function - an important, vital function in the life of the
Church. I was intrigued by my friend Eric Dean's suggestion (Wabash College Professor)
that the monks in their monastery perform a vital function for the rest of the Church:
they believe for us: they pray for us: they practice a disciplined piety in a way the
rest of us cannot and will not.

The longer I am a pastor the more I see the truth of that and Paul's pluralism in
the life of the local Church. We depend on teachers and plumber, financial wizards and
soprano's, typists and drivers: we depend on believers and skeptics, pray-ers and peuple
who can't pray: we depend on traditionalists and free spirits, or young people and old
people - aven on Cub fans and Pirate fans by the grace of God. Amd we need each one for
this body to be alive and vigorsus and healthy.

The principle of pluralism is important and it has application beyond the boundries
of the church.

Think for a minute about the relationships in marriage and family. Traditionally
the role of women in marrtage and the family has been as wife to a husband and mother to
children. So much sc that the women ceased being a person and became literally two functions.
And in this day, when divorce is more soctally acceptable we've suddenly discovered that

when the children Teave and husband is totally engrossed in a career, there is a non-person

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climbing the walls of an empty home. We are finaTy earning what the psychologists have
Known all along: that a strong marital relationship is based on two strong people who
Know wha they are and enjoy being who they are and have a life apart from each other.
We are finally learning that any kind of necd that does not grow out of the ability to
Stand alone is a sick need: that dependence cn each other is healthy only when it grows
out of a fierce independence.

Kahlii Gibran the great Eastern Christian said it all a long time ago:

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and Tet the

winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make nat a bond of love: Let it
rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give

one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous but let each one of
you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though
they quiver with the same music. And stand together yet
hot too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand
apart, and the cak tree and the cypress grow not in each
other's shadow.

That's pluralism in marriage.

Think now abuut our nation - our culture - and its function. As we celebrate
Independence Day our attantion is drawn backward into the past = to the vision of
Thomas Jefferson and thz commitment of George Washington. But ,if the occasion is
celebrated appropriately part of our attention needs to be focused on the present and
the future. We are unquestionably undergoing grcat and tremendous change as a nation.
The very structures of our society, the concapts and ideas that have ordered our
life for 200 years are all up for examination and evaluation, We are an ald nation:
we think of ourselves as new, but in relationship to the rest of the world we are old and
established, And if history is any kind of school master our ability to survive wili

depend on our ability to change.

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In the process we must learn to bury with honor and grace the realities of the
past and te deal with the now realities that are now emerging. And the most important
of these new realities for our nation - I believe - is pluralism. Either we will learn
to deal with the pluralism of the American people with honesty and justice - or that very
Pluralism will pulj our nation apart ~ even as it threatened to pull apart the Christian
Church in first century Corinth.

We have assumed, for 200 years in this nation, that our culture was a melting pot:
that somehow we could take all the cultures of the world, and often a respectable period
of time, melt thea down into onc common American culture. We have assumed that the
African, the Asian, the Chicano, the central European, and most pathetically of all, the
American Indian,need most of all to look and act like middle class white pecple. We
have assumed that it was right and good to measure all behavior by our norms, and as a
consequence we managed to communicate to all the world our conviction thatother cultures
were a little inferior and that deviant behavior was a little subversive. Seo paranoid
did we become over the years that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor we herded our
people of Japanese descent into concentration camps for the duration of the war. And
h efore that we emasculated an entire culture of original inhabitants of the land by
keeping them out of sight and poor and powerless in another kind of concentration camp
called a reservation. And today ~ incredibly ther are still some who resent a black
person who wears an Afro and is proud of being black - because that means he's escaping
from the sociological concentration camp American culture has built for him.

Almagamation didn't work: almost but not quite. We almost succeeded in getting
everybody to feel bad about being black or brown or yellow or red. But then, jin our
something happened: somathing deep in the spirit of man surfaced. And they all said
“wait a minute: we're net going te pretend any longer. We want to particbate in this
democratic experiemtn - this greatest hope of mankind - but we must be who we are: and
wo must stop trying to become white and middie class in arder to get in".

Suddenly American Blacks discovered that they had a history and an identity and a
heritage of which they could be proud. Suddenly all the minorities discovered that most

dramatically of all the American Indian. I sat ine meeting in Denver in a rocm full of

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Indian people who were there tc ask the PRESBYTERIAN Church to take them seriously -
not as potential white Presbyterians - but as God's children. They came - not in shirts
and ties but in the attire of their culture, and they weren't apologizing. I found myself
thinking about a television show I had seen once in which a white teacher in a reservation
school and cut the bng beautiful hair of an Indian gir? to “make her look better": and 1
wondered what they wore thinking dout as I sat in their midst - white middle class
heir of the culture that tried to elliminate their ancestors entirely.

They are learning to find dignity and pride in boing who they are: they want to
be part of this culture - but no Tongor if it means being "melted" - and I think that -
that omerging pluralism is the most important thing happening in our nation today.

It's an oid issuc that St. Paul articulated for us centuries ago. In theological
terms pluralism is an affirmation of the goodness of God's creation: an affirmation that
God in his providence built diversity into the scheme cf things: that he know what he
was doing when he made us to be different from each other.

In ecclesiastical torms pluralism is an affirmation that we need the diversity each
of us brings to Christian Faith.

and in national terms pluralism means the future: a future built on vigorous differ-~
ences: a culture that learns from its contributing culture: a society that guards each
man's dignity and offers cach man - each group - tho gift of equality and justice.

If paul was right - that's what God had in mind for his creation - and for our

nation. Let us begin ~ today - to think and work and pray to that end. AMEN

Father, you are the father of all men. We affirm that: holp us new to live and act as

if we mean it. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. nilEN