Psalm 81: 1 – 11; Genesis 41: 1 – 16, 25 – 37; 1 Corinthians 4: 8 – 13
Since last weekend – quite apart from the terrible event in Nice and the uprising in Turkey – it feels rather as if the whole of our government has been thrown up in the air and come down in a different order – except that some parts are still up in the air. Some of our most senior politicians have experienced extraordinary reversals in fortune – both positive and negative. There’s been much political manoeuvring, and power has shifted. But it isn’t only politics that can cause dramatic changes in peoples’ position or expectation.
There was once someone in public life who sent a letter to his brother. In the letter he talks about his son, who is doing well in his studies. He looked set for a military career which could be followed by a spell in politics and a settled family life to make his father proud. But, as the letter says, this promising boy has gone astray. He seems to have joined some kind of sect, and he’s refusing to join the army because he says he won’t fight, and he doesn’t want to marry because there are things more important than having a family and all his values have been turned upside down. Anyone who has had teenagers can I’m sure identify with this parent’s concern. The letter is an archaeological find from the 3rd century. It’s written by a Roman senator. He’s talking about his son’s conversion to Christianity. Faith can change lives just as much as political events because it changes our focus and our priorities. God intervenes and throws all our plans up in the air.
Our second reading this evening was from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians which was written some two hundred years before the letter I’ve just described – around twenty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. The church in Corinth, which Paul had founded, was only about five years old at this time, and it had lots of problems – not least divisions amongst the community.
Corinth was a bustling Roman colony established on the site of an earlier Greek city on an isthmus with two ports. The city was a vibrant mix of nationalities and classes, not unlike our own great city, and the Corinthian church was made up of people from different classes and walks of life, some of whom had markedly changed in status during their lives. In a highly stratified society where normally everyone knew their place this in itself would have been revolutionary. No wonder they were struggling and there were divisions between them. It was also a highly gifted church; there was a strong sense of the presence of God in their worship – which was decidedly charismatic. And they knew they were special.
On top of this, some of them seemed to have taken on some highly sophisticated ideas taken possibly from cynic and stoic philosophy. They thought that their wisdom released them from any responsibility for what they actually did. They were living on a higher plane. It’s not that these people had consciously rejected their faith, more likely that they had simply absorbed ideas from the surrounding culture without noticing. This is something we all perhaps wrestle with from time to time. How much am I truly living out my faith? Or am I just doing what we all do in Hampstead in 2016? Not easy to see the truth either, when we’re in the middle of things. It can sometimes take someone from outside to tell us.
Well, Paul tells the Corinthians. Against their quarrels, their complacency, their pride, and in order to shame them into repentance, Paul sets a picture of the apostles, God’s appointed leaders of the church. The image is of a procession of military triumph. The victor rides through the streets in procession. Last of all come those who have been captured and are destined for a humiliating death. Strikingly, it is God Himself who Paul says exhibits the apostles in this way – not an enemy of the church. And as they take the lowest place they are following the example of Christ, who washed his disciples’ feet and gave himself up to death. Paul’s model is of weak, vulnerable and suffering leadership. Of people who are not well-regarded by the world at large, thought of as the dregs of society, but who nonetheless bless when they are cursed, endure when persecuted and speak kindly when they are slandered. It’s a model that any of us who are in leadership do well to remember.
Back to our young man in the third century. Educated to be a leader and perhaps destined to be a leader in the church. No wonder his father was so upset! But the image doesn’t only apply to leaders. It’s relevant to all of us. As the writer and vicar of St Martins in the Fields, Sam Wells points out in a recent book , God ruins lives; and God also works with lives that we have already ruined. Think of Jacob, the schemer, who I spoke about last week, of Abraham, called to wander as a nomad, of Moses, caught out for murdering an Egyptian, of Mary and Joseph – plans shattered by an unexpected baby. And out of the ruins of our expectations, out of weakness and vulnerability God brings something new, His life. But first, like Paul with the Corinthian Christians he may have to deal with our complacency.
So, let us pray for our leaders, both in the church and in politics, and let us pray for ourselves too.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”
Amen