Second Sunday after the Epiphany [Proper 2], rcl yr a, 2023
ISAIAH 49:1-7; PSALM 40:1-12; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:1-9; JOHN 1:29-42
God is faithful
There’s an expression that sometimes gets used when it comes to all the letters that are included in the New Testament—there are twenty-one of them, some written to churches, some to individuals. And so sometimes reading the New Testament is like “reading someone else’s mail,” something like stealing someone’s phone and opening up their email app— and just reading a bunch of random things that don’t have much to do with you at all!
They really are letters from people we don’t know to other people we don’t know—(Who are these Corinthians anyway?). They are letters sent to particular people and particular churches experiencing specific things.
But strangely, they were saved and kept, and then copied and shared, and then reread by other people and other churches. They were read by people and churches experiencing different things, because despite the distance from their original circumstances, the early church found that they said important things worth hearing.
And we know that the letters weren’t saved just because famous people wrote them, though Apostolic pedigree—they were written by some early figure, well-remembered—was a factor, there was more to it than the fact that Paul’s name was on it, or Peter’s, or John’s. We know for example that there was a previous letter to the Corinthians that we don’t have. It isn’t in the New Testament, perhaps because it was lost, but just as likely, it wasn’t saved because it didn’t capture the imaginations of people beyond Corinth.
So it might be more accurate to say that reading letters like 1st Corinthians isn’t quite like reading someone else’s mail, it’s more like listening in on a conversation between people talking about things that are very very important to you. Like being at a party when you hear another conversation about a book by your favourite author maybe, or a really juicy political scandal you really want to talk about. And you just want to listen in, because there is something to learn, something you need to know. And in the case of the letters in the New Testament, what we get to listen in on are parts of a conversation about God, and God’s ways in the world.
And then you come to our little bit of Corinthians in the lectionary. And Paul is talking about Sosthenes, somebody that none of us knows! And Paul seems to need to remind the Corinthians that he is indeed an apostle of Christ Jesus—the status of Paul’s apostleship isn’t a huge concern to us, but seems to be for the Corinthians! And then you can tell that Paul feels the need to butter up the Corinthians. “You guys are all pretty awesome, you really know your stuff, you’re all so … spiritual,” says Paul.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve started emails like this. “Let me tell you call the things you do so well …” before I get to the harder stuff to say. And that’s what Paul is doing, he’s starting his letter to get the Corinthians in the right mood so Paul can tell the Corinthians what it is that he thinks they need to hear, but might not want to hear. And in this way, Paul’s not buttering me up, he’s not buttering you up, he’s buttering up the Corinthians.
And today it does kind of feel like we are reading someone else’s mail.
But then you read it again, even this, a salutation given by a long-dead apostle to a gathering of people that no longer exists. And even this begins to speak to us. Vestry is coming up, and it’s quite stressful this year— it looks a lot like we won’t be able to fill all the positions we need to fill. We need a treasurer. But then, even in the salutation of this letter that, at first glance, looks like it’s someone else’s mail, we read that “the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The strength of “the testimony of Christ” is what is key here to “not lacking in any spiritual gift.” Might that be a word for us, and not just the Corinthians? That giving space to Christ, and his word, and his work, and in speaking that word, and recognizing that work, is what leads us to having all the gifts we need to have? And if you think “spiritual” gifts might be nice, but don’t get things done, I hear you. But what Paul would mean by spiritual gifts, is all the gifts that we need to be the church, including administrative gifts.
So it’s quite possible that we already have all we need, and that God has already equipped us to accomplish what needs doing, and God has done so in the Christ who testifies to his own work here among us. And so we preach Christ crucified. And we study the Bible, and we pray. This is where we start; and this is what it means to be equipped with all the gifts we need to be the church in downtown Kitchener, in the region of Waterloo and beyond. It also means that things like the administration of keeping the purse is a spiritual gift, that at its heart is a proclamation of Christ’s own work.
There is more yet in these words sent to Corinth sometime in the first century that would speak to us in Kitchener in the 21st. “He will also strengthen you to the end,” says Paul. If you are feeling overwhelmed with being the church in Kitchener in the 21st century, keep faith in Christ. Keep faith in the Jesus who will “strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul points us here not to life after death, but rather the fulfillment of all things in Christ, when we will be made fully new, and the world too will be made new, the fullness of life and the fullness of the life of the world that we experience here and now, by faith, and in the power of the Spirit.
Jesus will “strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How does this happen? Because “God is faithful,” says Paul. How extraordinary! God is the one who is faithful, and faithful in Christ.
This is good news, and not just for the Christians in Corinth that Paul wants to butter up because he is about to challenge them very very deeply. This is good news for us. Christ is at work in us. And if this is true, we are not lacking in anything. We are not needful, we are rich beyond imagining. Because God’s future, by the gift of faith and the Holy Spirit, is made real now in God’s own faithfulness to us—and in the extraordinary gift that is what we already are: “the fellowship of [God’s] Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The Revd Dr Preston Parsons