Not Lacking

1 Corinthians 1:1-9 and “So?” by Leonard Nathan

January 18, 2026

The Weekend of CUCC’s 60 th Anniversary

Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche

In the first two centuries, you know the space before the Empire got its hands on the Jesus movement, there were two very different and distinct messages going around about what this word meant: euangelion. (You-on-gay-leone) Later it came to mean Gospels, as in some of what was written down and included in the Bible, but at first it simply meant Good News. But Good News to whom and for whom became the question. The phrase Good News first appeared as really more of a political term with Rome’s first Emperor Gaius Octavian, who ended years of civil war with his defeat of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra and was given the title Exalted One. As scholars point out in the book, After Jesus and Before Christianity, “Rome announces a brash and powerful good news event about the beauty and might of the savior emperor, who destroys his enemies and makes everything right with the world calling it peace. The budding Jesus schools, (labeled) parties of the Anointed One, (included) supper clubs, each with different names, announce good news that celebrates…looking forward to a new creation, calling it peace.”

The propaganda from Rome was spreading the message that they were safer, no longer in danger from pirates or thieves, Pax Romana as it was called, was in fact good news for the Roman males. However most people in the Roman Empire experienced it differently, as oppression. Because on the top of the hierarchy of power was peace and the lower rungs lived with imperial violence, which was, scholars confirm the engine of the Empire. So for most people the Good News was what arrived in small amounts, from secret dinner parties and storytelling, from “a set of practices and lifestyles for surviving and being safer…” therefore “the good news that we read in 1 Corinthians, groups of adult men in the Gospel of Matthew, hundreds of groups called “the Students of Jesus” and many different versions of the party of the Anointed (that’s what they were called in some areas before they were called Christians) were joyful alternatives to the good news proclaimed by the Roman Empire.”

In this snippet that we heard from 1 Corinthians, in a letter attributed to Paul who is writing to a church that is struggling because they are daring to do the radical thing of including the rich and the poor, Greek people and Jewish people, those who were enslaved and those who never had that experience, they were now all trying to gather together, in community and as scholar James Thompson writes there were now quarreling because “at the heart of the problems at Corinth is the fact that members are “puffed up” against each other.”

Scholar Timothy Sedgwick writes, “this letter brings us right to the humanness of what is dividing them, matters of following different leaders, different claims, moral matters of right worship, right belief.” How could this possibly work? That they could all share life together? It seems to me they were still putting down the Empire’s idea of good news. They were still living into the new idea that together they would have what they needed, putting their gifts together would amplify what is possible, how much more they could bring into the circle. Paul shows up and reminds them not to waste their energy replicating the patterns of Rome, instead I appeal to you, let those divisions fall away, there will be nothing lacking… reminding them that Good News means something else for the Jesus groups, together something different could and would happen, for in every way the people would be enriched so that as a whole no gift would be lacking. But this was such a new and radical, spiritually revolutionary for the time and maybe for now too.

I give thanks that we still read these old letters from two thousand years ago. They remind me of what we are called to do in another time when there are competing versions of Good News. As people of faith, we still ask ask Good News for whom? For all of us? Or just for those on the top rung of the ladder, a different form of Pax Romana?

Last week I celebrated my 7th Anniversary as your Pastor and this week we celebrate 60

years of CUCC! I am thinking about milestones, I have been reflecting on what might be needed for this people to be here in 60 years, 160 years, 260 years? What is it that allows a group of humans, a people of faith and justice to be rooted beyond the winds of change, beyond the egos that come and go, beyond the seasons when the pendulum swings back to the Empire deciding who is worthy; what allows us to remain? To not be moved?

What did it take for people in Corinth to get beyond their smallness to something wider and deeper so that we could be here now?

I think part of the answer is a theological one. We are formed by and gathered around teachings and a teacher who was killed by religious leaders drunk on the power of the government. And he went to the cross knowing basically what would happen. In sheer defiance of the version of Good News being spread by the Roman Empire, Jesus fully uncovered the violence of the government of his time, exposing the truth of its cruelty. The fact is that it inspired something beyond him, it bringing forth courage from others, in everything from refusing to turn away when he was dying, offering to help and limit the suffering and then they kept going, to all of the crosses of their time. They started to live as if, together, there would be nothing lacking and they decided they could go to all of the crosses of the world and show up to be loved.

My friend Molly is retiring from parish ministry after more than 30 years and I have cherished her reflections on leading and nurturing strong and healthy churches. In a sermon recently she said of this time for us as American Christians that, “Our work now is the work of Christ heading to the cross. Exposing the violence of the empire, again and again, until more hearts are broken open….The problem is, hearts are harder now, minds are more rigidly made up to follow a death cult to every bitter end. But we don’t need all hearts. Just more hearts. Enough to tip the scales. And enough people, especially white people, willing to put ourselves on the line and stand against violent power.”

When this church was founded and legally incorporated in the state of Colorado it was

1966, and a wild year in American life. It was the year that Batman premiered on ABC. The year Sammy Younge Jr. was shot in Tuskegee, Alabama, being the first African American university student to be murdered due to his actions in support of the civil rights movement. It was the first of the Acid Tests conducted at The Fillmore in San Francisco, the year Chicago was granted an NBA franchise to be called the Bulls the year 8,000 U.S. soldiers land in South Vietnam; bringing the total of U.S. troops to more than 200,000. It was the year John Lennon sparked controversy for saying in an interview, "We're more popular than Jesus now!"

It was the year that the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church met for the first time in 4 centuries. It was the year Medicare went into effect. It was the year that MLK was hit with rocks at a march in Chicago, the year the Rolling Stones performed on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the year that the Camaro was released. Its first name was the Panther, but it had to be renamed because it was also the year the Black Panther Party was founded. Edward Brooke was the first African American elected to the US Senate.

It a very unsettled time to plant a church and it took decades, really not until the Rev. Kayrene Pearson when the community began to stabilize and since then this community has given its all to tip the scales to love and justice, to be a place declaring Good News for all, in defiance of the Pax Romana that we live with this still.

I think we are still here, in a time of dramatic decline in religion and in Christianity, we

remain, existing in part, because we continue to and have said yes to the long tradition

of putting our bodies between the Empire and those in its path. We are a church of courage, of action, of taking risks for what we believe, of living with the truth that we are

all made in the image of God, each here with gifts that are needed.

The are tons of articles about how many churches are about to enter hospice, in the next decade, thousands will close, but that doesn’t mean we are aren’t needed. I am not talking about the parts of our tradition stuck in nostalgic packaging or the stories we tell that are no longer true, what I mean is that the best of who we are, the hope we get from holding the long view, the spine to put ourselves out there that comes from knowing who we are, the willingness to see ourselves as connected to those we do not know, people need that. What we can do collectively! My friend Molly reminds us that our culture has really low expectations for us Christians and for the Christian Church right now. So what an opportunity to surprise them! She writes, “To the degree that we can behave scandalously, paradoxically to the low expectations culture has for the Church and to Christians in general, we can surprise and delight!” Like turning soup into $4,000 or turning a massacre in a movement. It is these holy surprises that keep us here. I feel grateful to continue to be a stewards of all of all of this. Affirming that everyone is made in the image of God.

We are still here and that matters, announcing good news that celebrates…looking forward to a new creation, calling it peace! I believe that whatever give you have it is needed now. You are part of the church in every age, has special gifts that are needed just for the time.

I believe that part of how we thrive in this time and in the next generations is continuing to draw the circle wider, following Christ to the cross, exposing the violence of the empire, again and again, whatever that means for us, living true Good News. We don’t need all hearts, just enough to tip the scales? What if we have something special to offer in this time of competing messages of Good News? What if in some way, every other life depends on you bringing who you are to the whole, to this moment in time? You are the church. And together nothing is lacking. Thanks be To God.

Communal Reflection

Knowing that you have been given just this one life and that in some way, every other

life depends on you being fully you, what unique spiritual gift do you have to offer to this

moment in history?

Beloved of God, what if together nothing will be lacking? What if whatever gift you have

is needed? Let us together follow Christ to the cross, exposing the violence of the empire, again and again, until more hearts are broken open. May it be so. Amen.