Divisions may show up in any church community. They are signs of the sin we strive to overcome. Please argue about the Mass, complain about the preaching, challenge the leadership, get angry at the staff, look down on the music, sneer at the school kids, cringe at infants, and laugh at the elderly. Church communities may be so distracted by the people they see that they neglect the people they do not see: the poor, the unchurched, the homebound - those who need to hear the message of Christ, but who don’t because Christians are too busy complaining about one another.

In first-century Corinth, Christians were making divisions along the lines of the ministers who baptized them. “I belong to Paul,” says one. “I belong to Apollos,” says another. “I belong to Cephas,” says still another. Don’t we all belong to Christ? But you’ll still hear voices of division: “I go to the 9:00 Mass,” I sing with the adult choir,” “My kids go to Catholic school,” as if those who worship, sing, or get educated elsewhere belong to an entirely different family.

Paul urged the Corinthians to have no divisions. He wished them to be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.

When churches are divided, it often means that members are also privileged: privileged not to see the burdens of the needy, but privileged to demand that things go their way, privileged to think that local problems merit more attention than global ones. Paul calls us to one mind and one purpose.