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“Held Together by Grace”

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

May 31, 2026

Rev. Rebecca DePoe

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Final Greetings and Benediction

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.[a] Be restored; listen to my appeal;[b] agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.

13 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of[c] the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Last week a group of pastors and I traveled to Corinth, Greece so that we could walk in the Apostle Paul’s footsteps. For pastors, walking in Paul’s footsteps is more than an educational experience or a history lesson. It is a chance to stand in the places where the early church struggled and still encountered the grace of God. As I stood in the ruins of ancient Corinth last week looking out over broken columns, graffiti, and scattered stones, I had to remind myself that this place was once a bustling Roman city.

When Paul wrote his letter to the church in Corinth, Corinth was a wealthy, ambitious but deeply divided city. It was a city obsessed with status, influence, and power. People came to Corinth looking to make a name for themselves in this major Roman port city. Cultures collided there. Ideas collided there. And honestly, egos collided there too.

And somehow, in the middle of all that, a Christian church emerged.

What makes Corinth so fascinating to me is that the congregation reflected the city around it. The divisions and tensions of Corinth didn’t magically disappear once people became Christians. They brought all that baggage with them into the church.

If you’ve ever read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, you know that this congregation struggled with almost everything imaginable. At one point, Paul had to address the fact that the wealthy members were humiliating poorer members during Communion. In another section, people were fighting over which preacher they followed: Paul, Apollos, or Peter. Elsewhere, Paul confronts arrogance, lawsuits between believers, and deep disagreements about what faithful Christian living should look like. 

As you read Paul’s letter, you can hear the words of a man who sounded at times frustrated. At times heartbroken. At times like a pastor desperately trying to hold a fragile community together.

And yet, Paul never gives up on them. Paul gets frustrated. He corrects them sharply at times. But underneath all of it is deep love for this struggling community. Because Paul understands something important: the church is not made up of perfect people. The church is made up of human beings learning- slowly and imperfectly- how to belong to Christ and to one another. Which means the struggles of Corinth are not nearly as distant from us as we might like to believe.

We see this in the words that Paul leaves the church with at the end of 2 Corinthians:

Put things in order…agree with one another… live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

The phrase “put things in order” is interesting because it carries more weight than it first appears to in English. The phrase has the sense of being restored, repaired, or made whole again. It was the phrase used to describe mending fishing nets or even setting a broken bone back into place.

That kind of repair takes grace. Because anyone can stay in Christian community when everything is easy. But when there are conflicts? Misunderstandings? Disappointments? That’s when grace becomes essential. And maybe that is one of the hardest spiritual lessons of all: Christian community is not something we simply inherit. It is something we continually tend, repair, and nurture by the grace of God.

And after all of that- after the conflict, the correction, the repair work, the encouragement to live in peace- Paul ends not with a threat, not with exhaustion, but with a blessing.

That matters to me.

Because Paul seems to understand that ultimately this fragile community will not survive on good intentions alone. They will need something deeper. Something stronger than their own ability to hold everything together.

So he reminds them where their life together truly begins:

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Standing in Corinth, as I read those familiar words of blessing, I found myself thinking: maybe the miracle was never that the church in Corinth was perfect.

Maybe the miracle is that God’s grace held them together at all.

One of the things I learned in Greece is that we sometimes romanticize the early church. We imagine the first Christians as people who always agreed with one another, always got along, always understood each other perfectly.

But Corinth reminds us that the early church was made up of human beings. Of complicated people trying to figure out what it meant to follow Jesus in an ever changing world. Honestly, that sounds a lot like the church today.

What strikes me about Paul’s final words is the way he points the early church back to God’s grace. His blessing is not just a nice way to end a letter. It is the foundation underneath Christian community itself.

Because the truth is that the church has never been held together by perfect agreement. Or flawless leadership. Or because everybody likes each other all the time.

The church is held together by grace.

Grace is what allows imperfect people to keep showing up for one another.

Grace is what makes forgiveness possible.

Grace is what reminds us that our identity is rooted not in being right all the time, but in belonging to Christ.

And that matters because every church- from Corinth to Coraopolis- eventually discovers its own limitation.

At some point, every congregation experiences disagreement.

At some point, people disappoint one another.

At some point, the future feels uncertain.

At some point, we realize that Christian community is harder than we imagined it would be.

No church escapes that reality. But Paul says the answer is not despair.

The answer is not giving up on one another at the first sign of difficulty.

The answer is to remain rooted in the grace and love of God.

Because grace is not fragile.

Grace is strong enough to hold imperfect communities together.

But of course, grace is not just an abstract theological idea. Grace takes shape in the way people treat one another. Grace becomes visible in community. Which is why Paul immediately begins talking about encouragement, peace and reconciliation in these final verses.

We are to “encourage one another.” “Live in peace.” “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

In other words: Paul encourages us to keep choosing relationship, keep choosing community, keep choosing one another.

Not because it is always easy, but because the grace of God makes it possible to remain connected even when life is complicated.

The older I get, the more I think Christian maturity has less to do with pretending everything is fine and more to do with learning how to stay present to one another with honesty, compassion, and grace.

When I was younger, I think I imagined mature faith meant always having the right answers. Always being calm. Always appearing confident and composed. I think a lot of churches fall into that temptation too- the temptation to act like faithful people never struggle, never disagree, never grieve, never grow tired.

Christian maturity is learning how to remain rooted in love even when community becomes complicated.

It is learning how to tell the truth with kindness.

How to apologize when we are wrong.

How to listen instead of immediately defending ourselves.

How to make room for one another’s grief, fear, frustration and humanity.

That is holy work.

And maybe that is why Paul ends not with instructions, but with a blessing.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Because in the end, the burden of holding the church together does not rest entirely on us.

Thank God for that.

The church belongs to Christ.

And across centuries- through conflict and change, through joy and uncertainty, through fragile people doing their imperfect best- God has continued to sustain the church with grace.

Standing in the ruins of Corinth, I was reminded that empires rise and fall. Cities change. Buildings crumble. And still, the grace of God endures.

Still, the love of God endures.

Still, the Spirit continues drawing people together into community.

Community held together not by perfection-but by grace.

Thanks be to God.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.