1 Corinthians 3:1-9 - "The Perfect Food"

Sermon starts at 29:01

“The Perfect Food”

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

I remember reading this passage in my high school youth group and being taught that Paul was saying that milk for infants was a sign of spiritual weakness. “Infants in Christ” was practically an insult! I mean, just think of how we use the words “childish”, “infantile”, “crybaby” and “juvenile”. These are all insults! In fact, most adjectives about infants have negative connotations and so when we read this metaphor about milk for infants in Christ who “aren’t ready for solid food” we tend to quickly interpret it as a negative sign of shameful spiritual immaturity. Every single male commentator that I read interpreted this passage to mean that spiritual milk was inferior to “solid food” and Paul was admonishing them for not being able to comprehend his real teachings. I remember as an overachieving high schooler thinking, Oh those poor infants in Christ who can’t take the real meat of spiritual teaching! Ha! I’m not like them!

But now, I am a nursing mother who spends an enormous amount of time and energy thinking about milk for infants. Well, technically just one infant who is just about ready to start taking his first bites of solid food. What I know now is that milk for infants is neither a sign of weakness nor something to scoff at. I think it’s important to understand what breastmilk really is because when we do, Paul’s metaphor takes on an entirely new meaning. I have spent more time thinking about milk in the last five months than I could have ever imagined before. My journey in feeding my son has been a complicated one with many tears shed from pain and discouragement and despair. And those were just my tears! Jack has had a combination of breastmilk, donated milk, and formula every day of his life. Although I am extremely excited about the science of breastmilk, it’s worth saying that any kind of milk an infant drinks is amazing– straight from their parent or from formula in a bottle. Any way a baby is fed that is best for the family is worth celebrating.

Now you may not have given as much thought to breastmilk as I have lately, which is understandable. On the surface level, breastmilk is an amazing substance. Since it is all that infants drink for the first few months of their lives, it contains all the nutrients babies need to grow; the list of minerals and vitamins in milk is quite impressive! But it’s not that which makes it such a fascinating substance. Breastmilk is not like the foods we eat that have a static nutritional content– one carrot is not much different than another. Unlike the solid food we eat, breastmilk is dynamic and it changes every day. It changes flavor depending on what the mother eats, it has different melatonin levels depending on the time of day to help babies develop a circadian rhythm, and the immunological components of breastmilk change according to the specific, individual needs of a baby. So how does the mother’s body know that the baby is changing? When a baby nurses, a vacuum is created the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother where receptors in her mammary gland read its signals about the baby's immune status. If the mammary gland receptors detect the presence of pathogens, they compel the mother's body to produce antibodies to fight it, and those antibodies travel through breastmilk back into the baby's body, where they target the infection. It’s nothing short of an everyday miracle. 

It is this unbelievably dynamic, powerful, perfect food that Paul says new Christians are given. That is no insult. Paul is not belittling the Church in Corinth for being new Christians in need of spiritual milk. He is saying, “you have been trying to eat the wrong spiritual food and it is making you sick. You need the right foundation for a life of faith and discipleship.” Just as breastmilk is exactly what infants need, new followers of Christ have unique needs of their own. 

I do think there is a rebuke here from Paul because he says, “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” Now, we should not interpret Paul’s words to mean that the flesh is bad, but that a life devoted to Christ means practicing putting an end to our all-too-human tendencies toward jealousy and infighting. These new Christians aren’t content with receiving what they need most and they think that being a “better Christian” means growing as fast as possible and jumping straight into the deep end of theological debates. They seem to think that building strong relationships and a healthy community is unimportant or maybe they thought it’s just a backdrop to the real work of Christianity. But by trying to go too quickly into the “meaty” theological issues that they aren’t ready for, they have built their house on a sandy land and the foundation is crumbling beneath them. The rest of Paul’s letter details all the issues that the Corinthians are fighting over– sex, food, church politics, and resurrection. These theological issues are important, which is why he takes the time to write in detail about them, but they are not what these new believers should be focusing on as they begin to develop their faith. The spiritual milk that new believers need is found only in healthy, Christian community where everyone is welcome and loved and able to grow. 

When Paul says, “you are not ready for solid food”, he is not making a judgment claim against them for their spiritual immaturity. What he is saying is, “you need the spiritual food that is best for you right now.” Solid food is not what is best for infants. In fact, it is quite the opposite! Solid food would be deadly to a newborn. We do not shame babies for drinking milk instead of food for they are eating exactly what God created them to eat and there is nothing wrong with being new. By trying to skip ahead to what they think they need, the Corinthians are missing out on the perfect food God has for them.

I cannot help but return to the image of a dynamic relationship between mom and baby. Like an infant who radically changes their parents, we are God’s beloved children and God is changed by us. We have more than just a one-way relationship with a far-off God who created us but remains unchanged. God our Mother is changed by us. Like the breastmilk that changes in response to a baby’s needs, God is constantly giving us new spiritual food in response to our needs. All we need to do is ask and God will give us the food we need. What an incredible God we have who not only creates us in God’s own image but then also desires to be in an intimate, dynamic relationship with us.

And so when we remove the negative connotations surrounding infants and their food, we instead see the words of a gentle pastor to his beloved congregation. We see that our spiritual needs– whatever they may be– will be met by God. Whether we need spiritual milk, which is found in a healthy Christian community, or solid food that takes work to chew and digest, there is no right or wrong, there is only what we need at this particular moment in our faith journeys. 

My question to you then, is this– what spiritual food are you eating? What is nourishing your soul and fueling your relationship with God? There are so many kinds of spiritual food that can feed us in our faith journeys. You can be fed by your community here, in corporate worship and in fellowship. It could be through reading and studying scripture, either on your own or with a bible study group. You can talk to God out in creation and experience a deepening in your relationship with our Creator when you do so. But perhaps this might be something you haven’t given much thought to at all lately. Maybe, if you’re honest with yourself, you haven’t been growing your faith. Maybe you’re going through the motions and showing up at the table but not really taking a bite. And while not every season of life needs to be one of wildly flourishing growth, I hope you’ll ask yourself if this is the nudge you need to start growing again and seeking out the spiritual food you need most in this season. With Lent coming up soon, perhaps this could be a time to take on a new spiritual discipline for a season. 

Now I suspect that there are some of you out there who are thinking, “I really didn’t think I’d be coming to church to hear an entire sermon on breastmilk” and I get it. The metaphor is not for everyone! I think that’s why, without transition or apology, Paul dives straight into another metaphor– that of gardening. So this is where I’ll leave you– with the image of God as a gardener. This is a pastor’s letter to his church that is deeply struggling with conflicts as they claim their identity not as followers of Christ, but as followers of the ones who introduced them to Christ– “I belong to Paul,” and “I belong to Apollos.” No, he says. Paul is merely part of a team of gardeners in God’s great garden. His metaphor gets a bit jumbled because he says that we are both the gardeners and the garden itself, but I particularly like the latter metaphor. We are called to grow like plants in the garden. Anyone who has planted a garden knows that not every plant grows the same. Our growth may look wildly different than others but a succulent is no less beautiful and important than a peony. We all need different care in God’s garden. Some of us are shade plants and others need full sun; some need constant watering and others plant their roots deep into the soil to resist droughts. We will all have our seasons of dormancy and our seasons of bright flourishing, but at the end of the day, it is God who makes us grow. Our job is not to compare ourselves to others but to grow just as God made us. So may you bloom where you are planted and trust in the God who gives you the exact food you need, just as you are today.