Sermon: The Corinthians as the Curate's Egg of Congregations

Sermon. St Vedast-alias-Foster, City of London

Epiphany 2 (Year A)

Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

How are you? Here's a piece of advice you can pass on to your new priest for free: it is almost always good to ask people how they are, and if you can ask it, and really care (you know: listen for the answer), you are a large part of the way there to being a pastor.

That also applies to you directly of course, as you continue to minister to one another, and to those who stumble into this church for whatever reason, and indeed as you will minister to your minister. For the idea that the priest dispenses spiritual goods to their flock, who simply receive, is, as well we know, nonsense. You will be pastors to him, and that is as it is meant to be (we are meant to need each other). So never fear to ask him and one another: How are you?

Here is a related question: How would you be, if you were a Corinthian? Let me focus in: How would you be, if you were a member of the emergent church at Corinth in the first century, and the person in front of you was – not me, and not Paul for that matter, but – the person charged with proclaiming to you what Paul had written to all of you, about all of you? How, then, would you feel?

I think you would feel... 'good' (as we now say). Or 'in a good place'. I think you would feel encouraged. You would hear Paul giving thanks to Gd for you, and the grace in you. Here – I'll remind you - Paul is improving - or subverting - the secular Greek letter-writing convention. The convention was to greet the readers with chairein (greetings), and go on to praise them. Paul praises Gd, and offers and speaks of charis (grace), a similar, related word, but with more theological heft. So, as hearers of this letter from Paul – and a letter from Paul is probably a new thing in your church life – a Fresh Expression, we might say – you feel 'in a good place' and encouraged.

Except it is not that simple. We have to dig a little deeper. Yes, Paul is gracious and at heart affirming. There is something of an inclusio in the passage we have; Paul ends as he begins. So Paul begins by saying that you Corinthias are sanctified and called to be saints. You have been made saintly, and will be saintly. Except that the words 'to be' in 'called to be saints' are absent in the Greek... which makes it even better. It means we can say that you Corinthias are called, here and now, already, as saints, as holy ones. And that's all of you, as a collectivity (Paul nowhere calls an individual 'a saint' by the way). And Paul concludes by saying that Christ will strengthen you (this time it is the future tense) to the end, so that you will be blameless, because you have already been called into fellowship with him.

Good news all round! Your salvation is secure. You belong to Christ and Christ's Church. You are valued and of value.

But... but we still need to look at precisely what Paul gives thanks for, in you. It is three things:

• your speech or your words (logos);
• your knowledge (gnosis);
• your spiritual gifts, or your giftedness (charismata).

Now, all of these things seem to be very good things indeed. We want them. A church community is the richer for them.

But... (and I am now coming to the problem)... precisely these things –

• ideas about our own speech,
• our own knowledge
• and our own possession of spiritual gifts –

these are what Paul has hard and harsh words to say about, throughout his letter. He never or rather seldom says they are bad things. He does say that they can be – and for the Corinthians, they are – the right things in the wrong place.

Right-and-wrong attitudes to knowledge Paul discusses in chapter eight, for example. This begins: 'Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.' Paul goes on to tread a very fine line over what was evidently a painful and controversial matter in the Corinthian community (strange though it may seem to us), about whether and when Christians may eat meat which may have been involved in some pagan ceremony.

And he rules out 'knowledge' as an arbiter, or at least knowledge claiming to know more than love knows. He even goes on to say that knowledge can destroy your fellow Christians.

And for Paul's questioning or undermining of all three (speech, knoweldge and gifts) we can turn to an old friend – I mean 1 Corinthians 13. That hymn to love begins in a very particular way. We may miss it, as we lose ourselves in the poetry and think, quite wrongly, of romantic love. But this is how St Paul actually begins chapter thirteen: 'If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers [gifts], and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing [outhen eimi - 1Co 13:1-2 NRSV]'

There it is, Paul at his bluntest: right speech, right giftedness and right knowledge without love are nothing.

These are but the two most obvious examples. Paul has a lot to criticise – to express alarm about – in the Corinthians' behaviour. It actually begins in the very next verses after today's apparently affirming passage. Paul goes straight on to say: 'Now I appeal to you... that there be no divisions among you... For it has been reported to me... that there are quarrels among you.' [1Co 1:10-11 NRS] Thus Paul, for all his wordiness at times, can be summed up as simply this: 'Corinthians, for all your speech, knowledge and giftedness, you are a divided and quarrelsome bunch, and you need to begin to learn to love.'

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to be crystal clear that I am not saying that about you. I am not. (I am taking a risk in preaching as I do, lest I be heard as speaking of you. I simply am not. And I certainly did not know your PCC meeting followed and I make no reference at all to the matters connected thereto. No.) I am also not saying that you will need to decipher your new preacher in the way that I have tried to decipher Paul. Again, no. Let him speak with clarity and candour, always.

But I am saying that the absence from today's epistle is powerful, is moving, and can speak to us all. What is absent is love. Paul sees no love (or no love loving enough to be worthy of comment) in the Corinthians. Can we not see this as bitter medicine? I mean: who would like the eulogy at their funeral to be solely about how articulate, clever and gifted they were? So, do we not imagine that the Corinthians also – not of course the first time they heard this epistle, but the second or subsequent times – would themselves feel the absence of the reference to love, and be pained?

It is said that the last words of St John the Evangelist were 'little children, love one another'. And today I take a leaf out of his book.

And another from the book of Rabbi Lionel Blue of Blessed and Righteous Memory. (You knew there'd be a Jewish reference; I did not want to disappoint you.) He said that his mother at one point, prior to his being ordained a rabbi, said something like: 'Lionel, all this religion – will it make you a kinder person?' He took this as a serious, indeed a religious question.

And our own Rowan Williams has said this, in that august theological periodical, the Evening Standard: 'At the very basic level, religion is uncompromisingly committed to not ignoring people. My faith is one which tells me everybody is worth whatever time, attention and love you can possibly give.' (1)

This can come in many forms. It is not niceness or politeness; it emphatically is not about refusing to rock the boat. It can come from a fierce prophet like Isaiah, or an even fiercer more-than-a-prophet, like John the Baptist - kindness in the form of passionate truth-telling; tough love. Call it love, call it kindness, call it serious and committed and costly attention to the other as the other is – it is what we are about, always and everywhere, regardless of circumstance. It's who we are. It is how we are.

Amen. 

(1) http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2530/evening-standard-interview-with-archbishop-rowan-williams