Served on a Broken Plate
1 Corinthians 1:17 "For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."
Around the year 197 AD, a Christian lawyer in the North African city of Carthage was angry. His name was Tertullian. He had watched Roman authorities torture his brothers and sisters for their faith, and he had decided to write a defense that would land on the desks of the Roman magistrates who held their lives. The book he wrote, the Apologeticus, covers everything from the injustice of Christian persecution to the moral corruption of Roman society.
Buried in chapter 39, in a passage where Tertullian describes the gatherings of the early church, there’s a single line that has outlived the rest of the book. He’s writing about Christian love. About the way the believers of Carthage gave to one another, ate with one another, cared for the widows and the prisoners and the dying among them. And he reports what the watching pagans of the city were saying about them.
"See," they would say, "how they love one another."
Words spoken by people who didn’t share the Christians' faith, didn’t understand their doctrine, and in many cases would’ve been glad to see them arrested. What they couldn’t ignore about the church wasn’t its arguments, its convictions, or its courage. It was the love.
The early church planted itself in one of the most hostile empires the world has known, and the strangers around them first saw how they treated each other.
This week we’ve walked through 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, Paul writing to a divided church about the danger of fracture. And we’ve come, on this Sunday morning, to the verse that ties it all together.
Paul warns the Corinthians that he was sent to preach "not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power."
The cross is the gospel. The cross is also the meal we serve to the watching world. Imagine, for a moment, the most exquisite dinner you’ve ever been served, on a chipped and broken and dirty plate. The food would be unchanged in its substance. But the plate would change everything in the experience. The watching world is served the gospel on the plate of a church that either does or does not look like its message.
Here’s a thought to let soak in this Sunday. We tend to think of evangelism as something we do: words, invitations, events. Jesus pointed deeper. On the last night of His life He said, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). The unity of the church is itself an evangelistic argument. The love that has no natural explanation is the most persuasive sermon the watching world will ever hear.
And the gospel here is the same gospel that has held us all week. We aren’t manufacturing this. The Christ who took our brokenness into His own body and rose with new life is the same Christ who lives now in His people, breathing His love through us toward each other. The unity is His expression in His people.
So we walk into worship this morning as people meant to live, love, and give like Jesus together. Not because we’ve manufactured the resemblance, but because the One whose name we wear is doing the resembling from the inside out.
Today: Before you sit down in the sanctuary this morning, do one thing. Send the message. Make the call. Cross the room. Don’t point the finger at what you think another should be doing. This time is for you. There’s someone in the body of Christ you have been distant from. A friend you haven’t reached out to. A brother or sister whose eye contact on Sunday you’ve been quietly avoiding. A relationship that has gone cold for reasons you can name and reasons you cannot.
Prayer: "Father, I worship You for a Christ whose life inside me is the only love the watching world has ever found unable to explain. Thank You for the cross! Make us, this morning and this week, a Bayside the neighbors can point to and say what they once said about the early church: see how they love one another. In Jesus' name, Amen."
-PK