Sermon: I Love You But How Can You Believe That?

Throughout Christian history, believers have wrestled with disagreements on biblical interpretation, from women in ministry to church practices and theological positions. These differences can feel deeply personal and divisive, yet they have existed since the earliest days of the church. The challenge lies not in eliminating disagreements but in learning how to maintain unity despite our differences.

Many Christians approach Scripture with biblical literalism, believing interpretation should be straightforward. However, this becomes complicated when encountering seemingly contradictory passages, such as Paul's restrictions on women teaching in 1 Timothy while simultaneously empowering female leaders like Phoebe and Lydia. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral offers a framework for interpretation using Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, recognizing that while Scripture is authoritative and inspired, reading and applying it always involves interpretation.

The Corinthian church faced similar divisions when factions developed around different leaders like Paul and Apollos. Paul's response was direct: both he and Apollos were simply servants with different roles, but God made everything grow. As Christians mature, it's tempting to create categories of right and wrong believers based on theological differences, leading to the countless denominational splits throughout history. However, Jesus consistently connected with people across all theological and social boundaries. True Christian maturity involves holding convictions both tightly and loosely, growing in knowledge while simultaneously growing in the fruits of the Spirit. Our unity comes from one Lord, one faith, one baptism, reminding us that we are one body even when we disagree on specific points of doctrine.

Why do Christians disagree on biblical interpretation and church practices? This comprehensive exploration examines the roots of Christian disagreements from the early church to today, covering topics like women in ministry, biblical literalism, and theological differences that divide believers. Learn about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral approach to Scripture interpretation using tradition, reason, and experience alongside biblical text. Discover how the Corinthian church dealt with factions and divisions, and what the Apostle Paul taught about unity in diversity. This message addresses common questions about biblical interpretation methods, denominational differences, church unity, and Christian maturity. Whether you're struggling with theological disagreements in your church, wondering how to interpret difficult Bible passages, or seeking to understand different Christian perspectives, this teaching provides practical wisdom for navigating faith differences with love and humility. Topics covered include biblical hermeneutics, church history, denominational splits, spiritual maturity, fruits of the Spirit, and maintaining Christian fellowship despite doctrinal differences. Perfect for anyone interested in biblical studies, church leadership, Christian apologetics, or understanding how to build unity in diverse faith communities. Learn how to hold your convictions passionately while growing in love, gentleness, and humility toward fellow believers who interpret Scripture differently.

Transcript

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Our New Testament lesson today comes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians starting in chapter three. I invite you to hear these words. Paul writes, Brothers and sisters, I couldn't talk to you like spiritual people, but like unspiritual people, like babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink instead of solid food, but because you weren't up to it yet. Now you still aren't up to it because you are still unspiritual. When jealousy and fighting exist between you, aren't you unspiritual in living by human standards? When someone says, I belong to Paul, and someone else says, I belong to Apollos, aren't you acting like people without the Spirit? After all, what is Apollos and what is Paul? They are servants who helped you to believe. Each one had a role given to them by the Lord. I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. Because of this, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together, but each one will receive their own reward for their own labor. We are God's co-workers, you are God's field, God's building. Friends, this is the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, let the words in my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, for you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer. Amen. If the worship service each week was an hour and ten minutes, 45 minutes of that was preaching. So buckle up. Y'all freak out if it goes like 22. I memorized the books of the Bible by kindergarten. I learned this song. And in fact, if I still have to remember like a minor prophet, I sing through my song. And I learned hundreds of scripture memory verses as a kid. And as I grew into middle and high school, being able to read and study the Bible on your own was highly prioritized. So I went off to a Christian college that held very similar views of the Bible to what I grew up understanding. The most basic principle for how to live as a Christian was this: the Bible says it, so I do it. It was in a preaching class during the second semester of my freshman year where this view was first challenged. In these preaching classes, we had to get up in front of our peers and preach a sermon. We then offered and received critique and feedback about those sermons. For any of you who are forced into a public speaking class, whether in high school or college, I'm sorry for the PTSD I just caused you. There was a distinct moment in that class when Amber got up to preach and she delivered a humdinger. As we were offering our feedback, I stood up and I said, I know that I came in here believing that women could not be in ministry, but you're the best preacher here. So how I think is going to have to change. This was a powerful moment for Amber. She now teaches ministry as a professor at that same college. And it was a powerful moment for me, for I realized that the Bible says it, so I do it, was not a helpful enough framework for me to live by. I think God was involved in that moment. After all, my sister who grew up in that same church environment as me is an ordained pastor now. I ended up marrying Laura and strongly encouraging her to follow God's calling into ordained ministry. And I have walked with many female students and church members who I have helped mentor into ministry. And now God has blessed us with two daughters who know and believe that they can do anything that God calls them to. And now I ask the opposite question. How could you possibly believe that a woman could not be a pastor? When we think about differences of theology, it's helpful to start at this point. It's always about interpretation. It's always about interpretation. Take the church I grew up in. In many ways, it resembles a lot of churches that fall under the umbrella of evangelical today. It would describe itself as being biblical literalists. In that church, a verse like 1 Timothy 2.12 was held up as the authoritative word about women in leadership. I don't allow a wife or woman to teach or to control her husband, a man. Instead, she should be a quiet listener. The logic was simple. The Bible says it, so we do it. The leadership body of that church was thus comprised of all men, and only men could preach and be pastors in that church. The problem comes, however, when we start to see the wrinkles in biblical literalism. For instance, Paul clearly empowered women who were in leadership in the church, who supported his ministry and who traveled along with him. Phoebe, for instance, delivered the letter to the Romans, Paul's opus. And when she delivered it, she wasn't like a FedEx person. She delivered it, she expounded upon it and preached about what the letter to the Romans meant. Lydia was a powerful merchant in Philippi who helped to fund Paul's ministry. Paul had no shortage of women in leadership in the early church. So the same Paul who wrote 2 Timothy 2.12 then also wrote Galatians 3.28. And he says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul effectively is saying that in God's realm there is not a distinction in hierarchy between male and female. So for the biblical literalist, this presents a quandary. Which verse from the Apostle Paul do you believe? How do we decide what is right? Enter a different view of Scripture than biblical literalism. For us United Methodists, we proclaim scripture as the inspired and authoritative word of God. But we recognize that reading Scripture and using it to guide our lives and to guide our churches always involves interpretation. So we interpret scripture using what is called the Wesleyan quadrilateral. Now I know you didn't think you'd get a geometry lesson today, and you better not hope it's coming from me, because I was really bad at geometry. But I know that a quadrilateral means there's four things. All right, so we can get there together. The four parts of the quadrilateral are scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. If you are a lifelong United Methodist, I hope you know these things. And if you don't, then you need to go back to confirmation class. So we're going there now. The Wesleyan quadrilateral is all about how we interpret scripture. We first use tradition by considering how the church has taught and understood this scripture or this concept since the time of Jesus. Let's look at the issue of women in ministry. Those examples from Paul's ministry of Phoebe and of Lydia are key for showing the position of women leaders in the early church. Now, admittedly, throughout much of the church's history since Emperor Constantine in the 300s, women did not hold the official preaching or priestly offices of the church. But women have been key leaders of many movements in the Catholic Church and in local congregations, even if not granted the authority. Think about key leaders over the last 50 years in traditions that don't officially ordain women. Mother Teresa, probably the most well-known Catholic during that time. Beth Moore, the most sought-after Southern Baptist preacher, even though they wouldn't call her that. In our tradition, the United Methodist Church has officially been ordaining women for over 50 years. Reason is the next part of the quadrilateral. Reason means that God gave me a brain, so I should use it when I think about Scripture. Regarding women in ministry, it does not seem logical to me that God would only utilize one gender to hold authority in the church. After all, Mary Magdalene was the first preacher after the resurrection. And women bring a different perspective than men do. And why not use the fullness of who God made humanity to be in God's image when it says male and female, God created them? And for that final pillar of experience, I heard Amber preach, and the Holy Spirit touched my heart and mind. Y'all, week after week, you get to hear Pastor Laura preach, and many of you would say, She touches my heart and mind a lot better than you do, Pastor Kevin. And all of these things together, tradition, reason, and experience help me interpret what God is saying through the Bible. So no, I'm not a biblical literalist, but I take scripture extremely seriously and hold it as the authority in my life. And many people think differently from me. Many churches think differently from us. And we both believe the Bible to be God's inspired word. So what should we do about that? Well, when it comes to differing beliefs, we have to stop playing who's right and who's wrong. Christina Cleveland wrote a book in 2013 called Disunity in Christ. Her first chapter is called Right Christian, Wrong Christian, and is quite compelling and quite convicting. She describes being in a small group of young adults at her church, and one of their names is Ben. Ben is a white, mansplaining dude. If she wrote that book today, she would have called him Chad. And Christina is a black, educated woman. Christina writes, when I first began walking with Christ, I felt an immediate and authentic connection with any other Christian who crossed my path. Orthodox, Catholic, charismatic, Lutheran, Evangelical, black, white, Asian, Ben. Didn't matter. We were family. Y'all, I remember going in high school to large conferences and meeting with students from all sorts of theological and church backgrounds. And I love traveling and worshiping in other languages and seeing how connected we are as the body of Christ. But Christina Cleveland continues. She says, as I walked with Jesus, somehow my growth had been coupled with increasingly stronger opinions about the right way to be a follower. I started keeping people I didn't enjoy or agree with at arm's length. I managed to avoid most of the bends in my life by locating them, categorizing them, and gracefully shunning them, all while appearing to be both spiritual and community-oriented. I chose to build community with people with whom I could pretty much agree on everything. I resemble this reflection from Christina Cleveland. As I've gotten more mature in my faith, I have grown stronger in some of my doctrinal positions. And all of that has come along with the growth of social media. So I can put something out there, a particular Bible verse or a quote, and know that I'm going to be patted on the back by all the people who think like me. And I've been able to curate this list of people over the last 20 years or so. And there are times where it seems and feels holy to judge and condemn Christians who don't think like me. Cleveland writes, My opinion of wrong Christian was so strong that I not only avoided him, but I also actively condemned him. The mere act of creating right Christian and wrong Christian labels makes wrong Christians a target of your criticism or simply dead to you, or both. There I was, convinced that I was defending Jesus by condemning wrong Christian, when I saw that Jesus was beckoning both right Christian and wrong Christian, and inviting us all to know more of his heart. As I read through the Gospels, I noticed that he had a habit of connecting with everybody conservative theologians, liberal theologians, prostitutes, divorcees, children, politicians, people who party hard, military servicemen, women, lepers, ethnic minorities, celebrities, you name it. He was pretty serious about connecting in spite of natural and ideological differences. And it doesn't end in the Gospels. He repeatedly disregards my right Christian and wrong Christian labels and continues to beckon me, even though I still tend to cling to such earthly distinctions. He's relentless. The church community that Paul established at Corinth definitely understood labeling someone as right Christian and the other as wrong Christian. You can imagine Paul's frustration and disappointment. He spent 18 months in Corinth, sharing the gospel of Jesus with a largely Gentile audience, setting up the church community, and he gets word only a couple of years later that factions have developed. Paul writes in this letter about issues of worship and about community behavior, but his biggest dilemma with them is presented in our reading today. When someone says, I belong to Paul, and someone else says, I belong to Apollos, aren't you acting like people without the Spirit? You see, some of the people love Paul. He was their first pastor, but some of the people loved Apollos. He came after Paul and is leading them now. They don't want anything to do with that Paul guy anymore. And I imagine they've established names for themselves. I'm a Paulist, part of Paul's original church. Well, I'm an Apollon. I'm open to how God is moving now, not just two years ago, back in those ancient times when Paul was here. You see, factions have formed two decades after Jesus, and we already have denominations. You see, Paul writes that being unspiritual or being in the flesh isn't just about any particular ethical behaviors. It's about rivalry and disunity in the church. Paul properly recognizes his place as this community's founding pastor. He writes, after all, what is Apollos? What is Paul? Their servants who helped you to believe. Each one had a role given to them by the Lord. I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. Because of this, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything. But the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow. Paul is saying that the church is a field. And Paul and Apollos have been field hands. They had chores to do in the field. Paul planted a field, lining up the rows. Apollos watered the field, but who are they? Just guys doing their chores, Paul says. And God made it grow. My late New Testament teacher Richard Hayes reflected on how this passage relates to our theological differences today when he said, all our denominational and intradenominational divisions are simply silly. Where squabbles persist, it is a sure sign that we are putting human wisdom and human boasting in the way of God's design to build a unified community. We are acting as though the various churches were franchise operations like McDonald's and Burger King and Wendy's, each hustling for a market share. Well, dang. Our divisions within denominations and between them are simply silly. We can spend so much time and effort bickering with one another over what we disagree about. I often find that C.S. Lewis's book, The Screwtape Letters, offers harrowing wisdom when it comes to my supposed maturity in the faith. In this allegorical book, Screwtape is a senior devil who is teaching his junior devil nephew how to best tempt his human. And in one space he writes this All extremes except extreme devotion to the enemy, that is to God, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, but and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages of which the present is one are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Subordinate factions within the church have often produced admirable results from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the high and low parties in the Church of England. End quote. Inflame the factions. That's what Lewis's devil is trying to accomplish. Mind you, he's writing this in the 1940s, not today. Get them angry enough at one another that they divide again. Friends, this is basically the history of Christian denominations in the United States. We get so focused on a singular disagreement that we split and splinter from one another, majoring on the minors. I think we get it. Our tendency to divide and label who is right and who is wrong stretches all the way back to Corinth 2,000 years ago, but it feels so easy to do now, almost like it's what's expected of us. I'm this kind of Christian, not that kind of Christian. And of course, there are real things to consider here, real issues. There are atrocities that are being done and have been done, all in the name of Jesus, from biblical defenses of slavery to defending domestic abuse to the current problem and scourge of Christian nationalism. So, in light of all the factions and all the problems of the church today, what do we do? Well, we have to focus on God's big story. When we are labeling our differences in theology or practice, we spend a lot of time saying what we are not. And as soon as we are labeling what we are not, we are focused on labeling ourselves as right Christians versus the wrong Christians. So what are we supposed to be for? Well, God's big story is the belief that because Jesus died and rose again, we will rise again too. And we are part of God's new creation. So we live and act as people of that new creation, here and now. And most of the time our divisions and squabbles do not focus on the new creation. They are not about what we are for. As followers of Jesus, we are for justice. We are for compassion. We are for the poor and the marginalized and the immigrant. These are the things we should focus on. These are the tasks that should get our energy. I heard this incredible lecture 16 years ago where former pastor Rob Bell told a room full of pastors that we should hold our ministry both tightly and loosely at the same time. We hold it tightly, he said. We care passionately about it, and our convictions get even stronger, and we hold it loosely. We recognize that God gives the growth and that we are just the workers in God's field, and our positions and convictions might even change over time. Why? Because it is so tempting to ignore the 95% of things that all Christians hold to be true, and instead to focus on the 5% where we differ. We say these things in the Apostles or the Nicene Creed. Paul tells the community of the Ephesians in this way you are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. One. We are one with each other in this room. We are also one with the universal church. Denominations of it in all languages, even if we disagree on some specific points of doctrine, even if we interpret scripture differently. It is so tempting and so easy to make other Christians the enemy. And I have been held in check this week by God's word and by the Spirit's conviction. Who am I to say that God's work is limited to people who share my viewpoint? I am so arrogant. Here is the challenge. As we grow and deepen in our convictions and stances, we also have to grow in love, in gentleness, and in humility. These are the fruits of the Spirit. These fruits are the evidence that when we're growing, we're actually growing in Christ. Maturing as a Christian looks like growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Friends, if we are only growing in knowledge or in confidence of our position, we are becoming what Pastor Laura called last week a jerk for Jesus. It seems like a lot of people who have the most confidence about exactly how God acts and thinks can be the biggest jerks. And if I think that the neighboring church or the one up the road is the enemy, I'm going to be mighty disappointed when they're my next door neighbor in heaven. The North Carolina band, the Avett Brothers, wrote this incredible song 10 years ago called No Hard Feelings. The song is autobiographical, and the writer is thinking about how he wishes to feel upon his death. The theme throughout a lot of the song is No Hard Feelings. Lord knows they haven't done much good for anyone. And that alone is a good enough sentiment in and of itself. But the song builds and crescendos to the end where they sing, it matters for me and you to say and to mean it too, for life and its loveliness and all of its ugliness, as good as it's been to me, I have no enemies. I have no enemies.