Before we go any further with the First Letter to the Corinthians, I would like us to first have a look at the Gospel today, as it invites us to reflect a little bit more on the themes we have talked about in the two past weeks. Luke presents us a Jesus “filled with the power of the Spirit” – Jesus has just been baptized and spent some time in the wilderness experiencing different kinds of temptations about his calling – and now is the time to start his ministry. And there are two things to notice about the start of this ministry:
– You would think that Jesus being called from heaven as the Beloved Son of God would head straight to Jerusalem to show himself to the high priest, and yet he does something completely different: he heads out to small synagogues in the area and then to his hometown in Nazareth, his local church if you will
– He confirms to the people that he has been anointed, as it was foretold by the Scriptures, but he also stresses that his call as the Messiah, as the Son of God is to show up for those who are in need, those who are suffering.
So a few comments about that:
1- Once again, we see that for Luke (as well as it is for Paul) the Spirit is power, a power that sends us and lead us to action on God’s behalf. Jesus didn’t remain in the wilderness to become a hermit. He went out to meet the people and help them. We have talked about what it is to be a spiritual person, and most of the time we think that a spiritual person is a person who lives a very quiet life and utters a few words of wisdom from time to time – we think we cannot be really spiritual if we are busy or involved in the life of this world – yet it’s not necessarily true. In the New Testament, when people are filled with the spirit, including Jesus, they want to share what they know about God, whether by their words or actions – ideally both. As we saw that with Paul in the Letter to the Corinthians, the Spirit gifts Christians for mission and services.
2- Jesus turns first to simple people, everyday people and to the “local church”. Jesus isn’t interested or impressed by fancy religious leaders or institutions. We spend a lot of time thinking how our churches should be more attractive and have more impact. But for Jesus, it’s only based on the willingness of the people to listen to the word of God and to see how God is manifested in their lives. Jesus visits the local church, is present in the local church, as surely as in the cathedral. We have everything we need if we have Jesus – the only thing we need is to listen and to respond to what we have heard.
If you have read in full the First Letter to the Corinthian (I would recommend it), it’s interesting to see that a lot of people in the church were disappointed with Paul because they thought he wasn’t charismatic enough, and they were looking for a more spiritual, fancy leader! It’s kind of ironic now that two thousands years later we still read from Paul everywhere in the world and all the other church leaders have been forgotten! Paul always put an emphasis on his willingness to only speak the truth of God’s word plainly rather than seducing people with speaking in tongues that weren’t clearly intelligible. Christian spirituality should be simple, not fancy or esoteric because we should be only seeking the truth of God’s words and be able to speak to all.
Which leads me to my last point on this Gospel:
3 – Reading from Isaiah, Jesus confirms his call, his being “anointed” – which means that he is the Messiah, the new Davidic King promised to the people of Israel – and as he announces that, he confirms in the same time that he is there to teach people about God, to help them and bring them salvation. Although a king, Jesus is not there to seek his self interest, or to ask for prestige and honor. He turns to simple, suffering people. Once again, we see how the Spirit leads us to have consideration for all people – and if we cannot bring salvation to people as Jesus did, we are supposed to tell them about salvation by our words and acts. According to Isaiah, that’s exactly what the Spirit leads is to do: Isaiah said: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (= A year of Jubilee, where debts were forgiven and slaves sent free in Jewish tradition). As we have seen when we talked about Simon in the book of Acts, we cannot use the Spirit for our own ends, but the Spirit can use us for God’s purposes and our neighbor’s sake.
– And I think this is also what the passage of the Letter to the Corinthians we have just heard is about: The Spirit sends us on mission and service because the Spirit’s work is to bring people together and unites them as Christ’s body. In our Christian tradition, salvation isn’t, or shouldn’t be, as it is sometimes presented, our own personal salvation and relationship with God. The Spirit seeks out for all people to unite them with one another and with God. The church is Corinth was very diverse. I read a commentary that says that Corinth at the time was a city that was kind of a mix of what New-York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are to us, and the church reflected this diversity and also the tensions so many differences would bring: difference in wealth and social status, difference in culture, language, education, occupations..you name it, and so it was hard to get along.
– What I think is really, really remarkable and worth pausing on in Paul’s letter is that, although his people are so different, he does not ask them to be the same so they can get along. Paul doesn’t ask them to be the same to get along, to smooth over their differences, to eradicate their personalities and their gifts. Actually, this is the other way around: if people really strive to be themselves, to express what the Spirit has put in them that is really unique – then they will know how to be together and to function together.
To help them (and to help us!) understand this, Paul uses the metaphor of the body. And he says two things:
1 – The metaphor of the body was often used in classical literature, most of the time to explain how certain parts of the body were “subordinated” to other parts of the body, more important. It was used to explain to people how they should keep their rank. Paul does not say that though. Nowhere he brings up the fact that some members or organs are more important. On the other way around, Paul emphasizes the fact that all members and organs are important and needed by all. In the same way, the Corinthians need to be aware of their uniqueness in the functioning of the church and how they are individually indispensable, and in the same time, they cannot look down on any other member of the church because they are as themselves unique and indispensable. In our thinking when we often opposes individuality and community, we see how beautifully Paul manages to keep them together. Community enables individuality and individuality enables community.
2 – The body, says Paul, is perfectly united and yet all its members are different and doing a different thing for the body. It isn’t shameful or unfortunate. This is actually the only way a body can work. It would not make sense to have a full body made of eyes or ears, it would not even be possible. Eyes and ears are very useful, yet the body only needs two eyes and two ears and then all the other organs. The eyes and the ears would not be able to work without the other organs, the heart, the brain etc. We get it. Unity is not to look for in uniformity – actually uniformity makes it impossible to have the kind of unity the Spirit provides. The Spirit provides a unity that is complementary, the Spirit brings the people together so they can function together, work together, and beyond that be together, exist together as one, reconciled in their life in God as the body of Christ. You’ll notice that again Paul speaks about the different gifts the people are given by the Spirit to serve each other, but more than that, they are also given the ability to share their joys ad their suffering. They are not just brought together to do a job like workers in an assembly line. Rather, people in Christ are united so they would care for each other – but we’ll talk much more about it next week as we will read from Chapter 13, this famous passage Paul dedicates to love. We generally read this passage for weddings, but it is actually about Christian community and how love is the ultimate goal.