Reading Text: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (An audio version can be found below and the text follows.)
As I have prayed and reflected over today’s readings, I don’t really want to preach about this reading. You see, it’s not for me. It’s not where I’m most comfortable. It’s not what I want to hear. When I first read over these readings a few weeks ago, I wanted to preach about the first reading. The fast acceptable to the Lord, from Isaiah…that’s what I really want to preach and reflect upon. Think of all things that might be able to be incorporated into that …or Jesus’ proclamation about “You are the light of the world”….the themes there are what I really want to preach about…
You see I’m a “do”er. I like to take on projects get them done. Work an extra job, no problem. Take on a project or assignment, not a problem. Try to help someone by doing something for them or listening, I’d be honored. I’ve been called hyperactive, “too much”, over energetic (and other things, that are inappropriate for the Chapel). Yet, it’s the first reading and Gospel that I still feel better speak to me, are what I need to hear….
Or are they? You see if we’re honest, St. Paul’s words are too hard for us to handle. We can so easily build up the resume or list of attachments– in one way or another – to demonstrate how valuable, how important, we are. We need that reassurance, most times. We can list all the jobs we can do. Or for some us here, we can list and state who we know and who we have met…How many friends and acquaintances we have…For others of us, is it how smart we are and how many classes we’ve taken and grades we’ve earned? Maybe for some we are caught in technology – and we use it for good but we’re attached…For others of us, do we seek status and public recognition and see that as the way to being valuable and important?
These attachments, with reflection, balance and in and of themselves, are not negative. But they can quickly become the “driving force” in our lives. These attachments can easily pull us further and further away from the reality, from the wisdom of Paul, that the value and potential I have is not found in any other place but my relationship with God. We may come to the point when we cannot imagine our lives without our work, status, relationships, grades, recognitions, etc. God somehow falls always in the midst of this. Yet the reality is that there are not enough grades, statuses, connections, names to drop, or intellectual abilities that would ever make us worthy of that love and that Spirit St. Paul reassures us of today.
This is not an easy message. Paul gave it with trembling and fear – the opposite of the powerful preachers of this time. The realizations - of things we do, the attachments we grab on to – get in the way of our relationship with God can bring us to our knees. But if we don’t look at it now, particularly while here in the Seminary – it will break through our way of being, our way of living, our vocation. These attachments of works, peoples, things - will creep in and eventually take us down for these things will not have been built out of relationship with God but apart from it.
On the first Sunday Vespers of the Fall semester we heard from the first Letter to Timothy. The message then was very similar – Christ came to save the weak and vulnerable and to use them for his glory. Today, the first Letter to the Corinthians shares a similar message. While it may be a message that is difficult to hear, as we continue in this new semester, it’s a message that bears repeating again and again and again. We are nothing without our relationship with God in our lives –when that relationship is close and intimate and when that relationship feels distant and detached - it is from there and no other place that we can live and have our being.
As we come to close of this day, let’s reflect on the wealth of Scripture to remind us of this. Let’s make the words of the psalm we prayed this morning our prayer each day – “O God, you are my God, for you I long” (Psalm 63). If the desire of the psalmist truly becomes ours, our attachments will not be distractions or controlling but rather aids and means of support and as we call out to the Lord and he responds, “Here I am!” (First Reading from Sunday's Mass) and we go forth, in relationship with him - to be his “light for the world” and his “salt of the earth.” (Gospel at Sunday Mass).
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