Canter Bridge

It is common to imagine that Paul’s discussion with the Corinthians in this place is about spiritual gifts or even about glossolalia, the phenomenon of speaking in an unknown language.

It is not.

Paul’s intense concern to help the Corinthian church get the thing right is about selfishness over against a concern for the integrity and maturation of the community. ‘Speaking in tongues’ is merely the occasion.

The apostle Paul is often viewed as a renegade, a lone ranger, the kind of apostle who moves from place to place, leaving a profound impact but not truly woven into any single community. The view is not without its support in the biblical texts. Yet for a perpetual outsider—if that is what he is—Paul demonstrates a powerful understanding of what it takes to birth, nurture, and build community to the full stature of its potentiality. In the way that a batting coach might not have hit .300 himself but retains a peculiar eye for a hitter’s dropped elbow at a particular millisecond of his swing, outsiders sometimes see better than the immersed.

Paul will have nothing but clearly aberrant teaching about Jesus impede the desideratum of Christian unity. Certainly he will not allow the practices and accoutrements that gather around public worship to play this destructive role.

The community, for Paul, is not everything. But neither is individual liberty and the balance to be sought will sometimes appear to our individualistic eyes to swing rather to the communal end of the spectrum.

So it may be. All, the apostle reminds his Corinthian readers who paradoxically have recently been told to do all for the glory of God, must be done as well for the building up of the new community:

What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.