Epiphany 4 – 2 Feb 2025
Readings: Jeremiah 1: 4-10, Psalm 71: 1-6, 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, Luke 2: 22-40
The Prayer Book allows a choice of celebrations for today – The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, or the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany. It’s been my practice to keep the Epiphany series going as far as possible for two reasons; firstly, taken together they’re a pattern of revelation or epiphanies of who Jesus really is, and secondly, I think we lose the sense of the Seasons of the Church’s Year if we interrupt the flow too much. Having said all of that, it’s maybe ironic that I’m not really preaching on the Gospel for today. Rather, I want to turn to the second reading.
First Corinthians 13 is perhaps one of the most familiar passages of the New Testament. It’s a great hymn to love, and the passage of years (and translations) since Paul first wrote his letter to the church in Corinth around about the year 55 has not dimmed the majesty and the beauty of the language. And I guess it’s familiar because it’s a popular reading for weddings – and that’s fine. In the past, I’ve had it requested for funeral services too, and it’s appropriate there in many circumstances as well.
But, given all of that, its use just at weddings and funerals lifts it from its context. You may recall that the epistle reading last week – a rather long one – was Paul’s urging of the community of faith at Corinth to work together as all the parts of the body work together. Those who were here will also recall that in his sermon Bishop John posed the question “Why does 1 Corinthians 12 come before 1 Corinthians 13?” My take on it is that Paul wants working together to be seen in the context of love – and for him there is no other way. We heard last week that all people have gifts whose proper exercise brings health to the body of Christ. Yet, the body of Christ has many parts, as does a human body, all of which need one another to fully flourish. Paul writes of all using their gifts for the good of the community and concludes Chapter 12 with …”and I will show you a still more excellent way” and then launches into his great hymn to love and its focus is the broader community of the body of Christ.
The use of all our gifts is to be in the context of love – a patient, self-effacing, forgiving, self giving love. This kind of love is the heart of any enduring and creative community, whether it be two people, a congregation or a Diocese. We are bound together within the body of Christ. Our actions become parts of others’ experiences and contribute to the health or to the dis-ease of the whole. Accordingly, within the body of Christ or the human body, what is most important is healthy interdependence and cooperation rather than individual power, influence, or performance. Even the charismatic spiritual gifts of which Paul writes later can be destructive if they do not take into consideration the overall well-being of the body, that is, the larger community of faith.
God calls us to offer and use our gifts, in love, for the good of all. Too often, however, we think we’re not good enough or have not much to offer. God’s call to us seems greater than we perceive our own gifts to be. There’s nothing new about that – Jeremiah protests his inadequacy as he perceives it. ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’[1] But God is always with us to bring his vision into being through us. “You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”[2], he says to Jeremiah. Jeremiah experiences God’s call to a prophetic and public ministry which God has envisaged for his life. From the very beginning, before he was “formed in the womb,” God has a purpose for Jeremiah, just as God has good purposes for each of us. The passage from Jeremiah read this morning is making a statement of vocation or calling – I don’t think it’s about predestination. God has created a world in which God calls young and old toward purposes they cannot imagine. God slowly and gracefully called forth Jeremiah’s inclinations toward the ministry God had in store for him despite his protestations of inadequacy. I can relate to that. Throughout the process, Jeremiah responded freely to God’s call, but God kept calling within the context of Jeremiah’s unique gifts, talents, and context. God called and Jeremiah responded, thus, beginning a journey that shaped his life and that of his community in his place and beyond.
Jeremiah’s protest seems to me to be part of the Christian vocational journey, irrespective of who we are. However, there’s a note of caution to be sounded. When we feel inadequate or not up to it, we might think we’re just being humble. We’re not really. Humility is essential to a healthy spiritual journey, but it is not the same as unworthiness or inadequacy – many people confuse the two. Humility is a right and appropriate sense of who we are before God. The Rev’d. Dr Martyn Percy in his book “The Humble Church” writes that the word “humble” comes originally from the Latin word “Humus” which means being earthed. He goes on to say that the humble person is a grounded person: surer of their own being, so not above themselves (another good old Australian term springs to mind), and knowing that they are not above others, no matter what giftedness, rank, or status they hold.[3]
The Gospels remind us that the Jesus often gave his disciples lessons in humility when they forgot who they were and wanted for example, like James and John to have the places of honour in the kingdom.[4] Paul writes of not being boastful, or arrogant, or thinking we know it all. All the highly regarded virtues of love depend on a foundation of humility and, as a value, humility as a value is the very opposite of the individualistic, manipulative, seeking behaviour we see in much of society today. St. Benedict was well aware of this. The longest chapter in his Rule is on humility. Sister Joan Chittister in her commentary on the Rule of Benedict writes of the Roman Empire into which Benedict wrote his rule being not unlike our own. The economy was deteriorating; the helpless were being destroyed by the warlike; the rich lived on the backs of the poor; the powerful few made decisions that profited them but plunged the powerless many into continual chaos. Into an environment like this, she writes, Benedict flung his rule calling for humility, a proper sense of self in a universe of wonders. Later generations, she writes distorted the notion and confused the concept of humility with lack of self-esteem. Eventually the thought of humility was rejected out of hand, she says, and we’ve been left as a civilization to stew in the consequences of our own arrogance.[5]
The people of Jesus congregation in Nazareth get a rude shock. Sitting back, complacent, smugly self-satisfied at how well the hometown boy is doing. Then Jesus drops the bombshell – the epiphany revelation for today - God’s grace came to a Gentile woman, or to an unclean Syrian. The locals are furious – not much humility there. Jesus is revealing here the true nature of his ministry as he proclaims God’s love and care for outsiders, persons who were routinely looked down upon as spiritual and moral inferiors hardly worthy to come within God’s ambit. It’s all too much. They believed that God’s ways were crystal clear to persons like themselves and must include them at the centre of God’s love. Jesus escapes their self-righteous fury – and it’s not known that he ever visited Nazareth again. Things don’t change. We saw the same self-righteous fury in Washington National Cathedral on 21st January as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the Bishop of Washington preached at the National Prayer Service following the Presidential Inauguration. She spoke Gospel truth to power about God’s love for the poor, the outcast, the dispossessed and the despised, and the powerful and arrogant didn’t like it.
God call us in love, God gives us gifts in love, and in love and humility we respond, offering the gifts we’re given for the good of all – always confident in God’s good purposes for us, always aware that God is with us, but always wary that we don’t develop some sense of spiritual superiority that we’re OK and others aren’t. Perhaps the last word from Sister Joan – “Humility, the lost virtue of our era, is crying to heaven for rediscovery. The development of nations, the preservation of the globe, and the achievement of human community may well depend on it.[6]
© The Rev’d WD Crossman
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[1] Jeremiah 1:6
[2] Jeremiah 1:7-8
[3] Martyn Percy The Humble Church Canterbury Press, Norwich, UK 2021 p134
[4] Mark 11: 35-45
[5] Joan Chittister The Rule of Benedict – A Spirituality for the 21st Century Crossroad, New York 2010 p 76-77
[6] Joan Chittister ibid p99