Proper 4B, June 3, 2018
1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17;
2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6
St Thomas the Apostle
The Rev’d Leo Loyola
Of all of Saint Paul’s “children”, the church of Corinth was his most difficult child. And we, all of humanity, can be just as difficult with God.
At first, Paul addressed the faith community of Corinth with what we call his First Letter to the Corinthians. You remember: the one that teaches us that “love is patient, love is kind”.
His tone with them was sympathetic and gentle. But he didn’t mince words, either. What needed to be said, was simply said for their benefit.
But the Corinthians didn’t take too kindly to his criticisms of how they practiced their faith.
They picked at perceived inconsistencies. They questioned his motives.
And when they couldn’t argue against him, they cried out, “You’re not the boss of me!”
For the parents here, we can empathize.
We love and adore our children. We look into their faces and see the beautiful goodness of God.
But let’s be honest. We also have days when our kids drive us up the wall. We have days when being the bigger person is tough.
Paul was like any parent in similar situations: deeply concerned about his child’s future, while frustrated and upset with them.
(Perhaps this is why Paul is usually depicted as a bald man in Christian icons and medieval illustrations.)
As soon as Paul straightened out one situation with his children, another one cropped up.
One might argue that Paul had every right to be angry with the Corinthian faith community.
He was, after all, its founding pastor. A doting parent that brought many of them into their faith in Christ. Who could blame Paul if he lashed out at them in anger. He’s only human.
But notice how he responds in our reading from 2 Corinthians:
We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
For Paul, faith in Christ is not about how we practice our religion. It wasn’t about what Paul personally wanted of the Corinthians. Nor was it about how the Corinthians wanted to practice their faith.
Faith is a call to radically shift how respond to our world. Faith is about trusting in God’s ways, and abandoning the worldly ways that we’ve grown too accustomed to.
As the Corinthians were to Paul, our world today is arguably God’s difficult child.
Where there is hatred in this world, it’s easy for us to sow hate.
Where there is injury, we instantly desire payback.
Where there is doubt, we lose faith in our leaders.
Where there is despair, we lose further hope in humanity.
Where there is darkness, we justify and accept evil and wicked decision-making and actions.
And where there is sadness, we grieve over and over again as a nation.
We know better, but we act as if we’re stuck running in a hamster wheel, repeating our mistakes over and over again.
Paul himself acknowledges this reality in his letter:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
As angry as he might’ve been with the Corinthians, he understood their brokenness. He, instead, modeled for them the radical love of Christ.
He says in his letter:
We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us…For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Paul’s words is a reminder to us to not despair about our world.
We can wake up Monday morning, turn to our source for news, and find out about another school shooting, another incident of racial discrimination, another respected individual accused of sexual assault, another foul-up by some major corporation or our own government, another story of a missing child, another wrong done against another human being.
We can respond to such news with groans of despair, further losing our faith in humanity.
Or we can choose to become agents of change to help make this world a better place.
Not because we think we are better than others, thinking our way is the right way. We are simply living out our faith. We are simply looking at the brokenness of this world with a sense of hope. That God is not through with us yet.
By our lives, let us proclaim that Jesus is Lord. By our lives, let us by our faith, bring light to the darkness of our world.
Let us no longer be God’s difficult children, and just grow up.
