FINDING ways to stay in healthy relationship with those we don’t agree with is a perpetual problem, a problem that might feel more and more insurmountable today.

The New Testament contains 27 letters to everyday people trying to make sense of the life of Jesus Christ, trying to figure out how to live in the wake of his remarkable actions and words.

One of the letters is from Paul to a church he had founded in Corinth which had fallen into factionalism, its members in danger of permanently falling out with each other.

Interestingly, Paul doesn’t wade in and tell them who is right and who is wrong. He ducks those questions and instead tells them that the cause of their fall out is their immaturity.

To help them find more “grown-up” ways of living in their disagreements, Paul presents them with a new vision of what their life together could become.

He tells them, “You are God’s field, God’s building”. At first it seems an odd thing to say, how is a community like a field or like a building?

I don’t think we’re supposed to land on one answer for what the metaphors mean. Instead, they help us think and imagine new ways of being together.

Paul initially talks about how we sow the seeds in a field and then the growth comes, though not always predictably, or how we want it to come.

Then he talks about starting a building with a good foundation and then lots of contractors coming in to carefully build upon it.

As I try out those metaphors, I find myself thinking about what the field and the building contribute to the life of the world.

A field is supposed to become fruitful in some way; it is to produce life and sustenance.

A building provides shelter from the unpredictable world and the wildness of life; I think about it as a place of rest and security and home for those who have suffered the storms of life.

I hope that the church I am part of in Crediton is, like a field, a net contributor of life to our community. I hope that, like a building, it provides places of safety, rest and help for any who need it.

And perhaps here we get to see a different way we could move beyond our divisions and disagreements?

We will never all see eye to eye on every last issue and question. But if we instead focus onthe good things we can together bring into the world, we begin to feel a renewed sense of shared purpose, we begin to feel excitement over what we could achieve together.

Perhaps focussing on what we can do together will help us to put upwith the things we see differently. Perhaps dreaming about what we could grow, build or change will help us accept each other in spite of our differences. This must be something like the kind of maturity Paul is urging his friends toward.

James Gregory

Pastor

Crediton Congregational Church