Heinrich Schliemann believed so firmly in the Troy of the Iliad that he dug straight through Hisarlik Hill and nearly destroyed the very city he was looking for, because it did not match the picture in his head. This story opens a sermon on the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:2-13). Paul calls it holy and God’s own, even though we know how many problems it had: divisions, quarrels, disorder at the Lord’s Supper. The Church is not the Church because perfect people have gathered in it, but because imperfect people belong to Christ. Listen if you keep looking for yet another community and yet another pastor: could you be walking past the Church that Christ is building right beside you?
Digging Past Troy
Church: Real or Ideal?
Many people make no secret of their disappointment with the Church and wonder why they should bother with it at all. Others keep moving from one community to another in search of the perfect one, yet none matches their picture of the ideal, because everywhere there are very imperfect people. Perhaps, though, by looking only at what we can see, we miss part of the picture. The Church is God’s idea. It is a place where we can learn to live together and to love people who can be difficult. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul helps us see the Church from a wider perspective and find our place in the tension between the real and the ideal.
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