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A most important discovery has been made about trees. Derl Keefer1 states that scientists have found that when the roots of two trees touch, there is a substance present that reduces competition. An unknown fungus helps link roots of various trees, including dissimilar species. In this way a whole forest can be incorporated together. With certain trees having access to nutrients, other trees access to water, and still other trees access to sunlight, possessing the means to cooperate with one another is essential. The purpose, of course, is not cooperation but to survive and grow!

Today's text is one that is familiar to many. Often there is a great desire to speak on the types of spiritual gifts and answer questions about their authenticity. Paul gave us a priority ranking of the list of spiritual gifts. Certainly Paul's reminder to the Corinthians about their earlier pagan days and the emotional practices of the mystery cults interests preachers. The placement of the gift of tongues in the last position also commands a lot of "air time" in pulpits. We all want to make certain we are dealing with people who are in contact with God and not their latent childhood fears, infantile needs for parental authority, or sweaty, adolescent emotionalism. Fine. Authentic spirituality is a real concern in contemporary American culture. Books about angels and Armageddon sell quickly and often. Most people who don't belong to a church still consider themselves to be "very spiritual." Consequently it is most tempting to view Paul's words as an appeal for cooperation and leave the message there. Actually, the divisions in Corinth are probably centered around competing house churches instead of individuals within a single church.2 Corinth was a large city and easily could have had anywhere from six to twenty private homes among Christians that were sufficiently large enough for casual assembly and meal preparations (kitchen and dining room).

Has Paul required cooperation? Most assuredly. Yet cooperation alone is not his total focus. Unlike trees in a forest, churches are supposed to do more than link together and live. This passage is about more than keeping discord at bay or warning household units about trying to invalidate the spiritual perspectives of their neighboring unit a few blocks down the street.

Mark Twain told of being disturbed at all the discord he saw among God's creatures. He decided to experiment with the problem. He put a cat and a dog in a cage. He wrote that within an hour he had taught the cat and the dog to be friends. In another hour he added a rabbit and taught all three to be friends. Within several days he was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel, and some doves. Finally, he added a monkey to the mix. They all lived together affectionately.

Next he decided to experiment with religion. In another cage he confined an Irish Catholic, a Scotch Presbyterian, a Muslim, a Methodist, a Buddhist, and a Salvation Army Colonel. He stayed away for two days and came home to record the results. Not a single specimen was left alive.3 This tongue-in-cheek story resonates well with conditions in our world.

Certainly the creation of a church that loves and cares about others, regardless of who they are and what spiritual gifts they bring to the fellowship, is an important part of Paul's concern. Corinth, for all its secular and religious problems, was a place that was blessed. Its people brought to any endeavor a fine array of spiritual blessings, from knowledge to preaching to ecstatic tongues. Yet Paul is addressing a weightier issue: how will your gift build up the body of Christ? These things can be a blessing or a curse. Do they build up, edify, and serve the body of Christ? Paul begins his message by acknowledging that people can actually curse Jesus through spiritual speaking. How can one be "speaking by the Spirit of God" and say, "Jesus be cursed"?

Here Paul is setting up the next portion of his argument, one that will lead to his great metaphor of the one body and its many parts. Paul is concerned that the new Christians not return to their pagan ways, when they were led astray to "mute idols." These new Christians knew how to cooperate and have fellowship from having belonged to the various voluntary associations, philosophical schools, and households which were part of the Corinthian world. Paul is not as concerned with the means by which the Christian community is founded as he is with its purposes. This concern parallels, interestingly enough, our contemporary concern with so-called New Age spirituality.

Charles Allen, the great Houston, Texas, pastor, used a technique many ministers have alluded to in their efforts to travel. Sometimes on an airplane you just want to be left alone. Allen, when he didn't want to be pestered by fellow travelers seated next to him, employed a simple procedure. He would take out a Bible, open it, and place it in his lap. Everyone would leave him alone. The travelers didn't want to get in a religious discussion. But that was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Try that ploy today and things would probably transpire in a different manner. Most probably the person next to you would lean over and say, "I am very spiritual myself." Were you to ask that person, "Well, what church do you belong to?" you might be surprised. "Oh, I don't belong to a church. I'm just very spiritual."

Mute idols? Mute idols are idols which have no purpose other than being privately adored by their worshipers. Transcendental meditation is a wonderful exercise. But it makes a mute idol when trying to serve as an individual's deity. Celtic harp music is relaxing. But it is a mute idol against injustice.

The pagan Corinthians had had much experience belonging to households, mystery cults, philosophical schools, and voluntary associations where they ate meals, discussed their trades, and were made to feel good. Paul needed both to bring together a people with many valuable gifts and get them to begin reflecting on their larger purpose, doing something as a Body of Christ.

Bob Ferguson, a South Carolina pastor, has called attention to one of the most interesting developments of our time -- Velcro. In the early 1940s, Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog. Upon his return home, he noticed that his dog's coat and his pants were covered with cockleburs. His inventor's curiosity led him to study the burrs under a microscope, where he discovered its natural hook-like shape. This was to become the basis for a unique, two-sided fastener -- one side with stiff "hooks" like the burrs and the other side with the soft "loops" like the fabric of his pants. The result was VELCRO® brand hook and loop fasteners, named for the French words "velour" and "crochet."

Most of us are grateful for Velcro. It easily brings things together and keeps them secure. Yet it is not the bringing together of disparate parts that is the wonder of Velcro. One might say that since it was invented nearly sixty years ago it was a "mute idol" for much of its life. Its invention certainly solved a problem and gave its inventor great satisfaction. But it was only when it was put to its purpose, hooking together shoes, holding computers, fastening together hospital implements, and you name it, that it made a difference in our world. How wonderful that one side of the gift with its stiff "hooks" could come together with the other side of the gift, its soft "loops." That mutual joining together was an essential first step. But we are grateful for Velcro due to the many ways its fastening capability has been put to use.

Many of you have been blessed with spiritual gifts. Cooperate with other Christians and other churches which have been blessed with spiritual gifts different from your own. But after the cooperation, go another step. Live out the kingdom model of unity and also live out the kingdom model of mission and service to a world that needs it so desperately. We are to use the Holy Spirit's gifts to us not only to build up the church, but to make this world a better place for the people for whom Christ died.

We sometimes forget just how primitive was the organizational structure of the early church. They had no statements of faith.

Paul is writing to a people who have nothing but a story that was transmitted orally and evidence of how his life was changed by God through belief in that story. All the sacred Christian traditions and places are way over in Palestine. Consequently his writings are a theology in process.

We have something in common with the early Corinthians. We have never seen Jesus and have never known anyone who has. But we have seen Jesus in the lives of people.

We cooperate too little over our boundaries and "isms." Getting together people who possess different spiritual gifts is still not easy. The next step, once that is done, is to behave and act in such a way that there is no other explanation for our attitudes and behavior except the Christ.

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1. Derl Keefer The Abingdon Preaching Annual 1998 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), p. 56. Thanks to Gary Carver of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for pointing me to this source.

2. Richard S. Ascough, The Formation of Pauline Churches (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 6.

3. This story from Mark Twain is printed in Jana L. Childers and Lucy A. Rose, eds., The Abingdon Women's Preaching Annual (New York: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 128.