St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN,
THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
(March 3rd) 2024
READINGS
1 Corinthians 1: 18-25
Psalm 19:1-6
John 2: 13-22
If I were forced to select one biblical passage by
which to live it would be this short excerpt from Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians. One of the advantages of living by the lectionary is that I don’t
get to choose my favourite passages all the time but here you have it.
I’ll come back to that in a moment but as we leap
for a week or two from Mark to John I must say a word or two about John.
Scholars disagree as to when the Fourth Gospel was written most agree
it was very late in the First Century after Christ’s death and
resurrection. Perhaps about 100 to 105 of the common era. I am conservative in
my understanding of how he came to have this writing, and hold to more or less
the traditional belief that the now ageing man John realises that his life is
coming to an end, not through martyrdom like most of his peers in the church
but through the diminishment of old age. And so with the help of a scribe he
sits down the events of his time with Jesus, Jesus Incarnate, and in doing so
gives us the extraordinary gift of insight into the workings of the mind and heart
of the one that he and we call Lord.
But why is this passage from Paul so important to
me? It might be summarised by saying that we never can, nor ever will, nor ever
should get our minds around the whole Jesus thing. Paul, frustrated by his
beloved Corinthians, is edging towards his characteristic prickliness. Because
they are edging towards a smart alecky approach to living out the gospel. Look
at us, they’re muttering, aren’t we smart, aren’t we good, aren’t we
successful?
Paul’s answer is a resounding “no.” He dares to do
something that few of us should ever do. Elsewhere, dealing with recalcitrant
believers, he utters the famous words, “it is no longer I but Christ who lives
in me.” He meant it with all the weight of first century psychology, which of
course didn’t exist.
Some of you may know the horrible example of nature
red in tooth and claw, the Glyptapanteles wasp.* It devours its host from the
inside out, even going so far as taking over and controlling the host’s brain. Paul
doesn’t mean anything quite so lurid but now I’ve given you the image you may
well never forget it. Paul has a deep sense that as we open ourselves up to the
risen Christ in worship, in scripture, in fellowship and in prayer, we become
taken over by Christ love We are controlled not in a zombie manner, but by the
extraordinary impetus of God’s will to love, God’s will that we “do justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.”
The Corinthians are not doing that. So Paul takes
the dangerous step of setting himself up as an example. He reminds them that he
was not slick in speech, or smart in brain, or rich in pocket. He was dependent
utterly on the Christ who had taken over his life. So taken over his life that
Paul dared to advertise his own integrity as a counter-image to the Corinthians’
sheer arrogance.
Paul dares to remind the Corinthians that he came
to them and persuaded them of the integrity of the gospel by sheer reliance on
the risen Christ; by absolute absence of trickery. Not look at me, but look
through me and see Christ.
The litmus test I like to use in the life of
churches, to evaluate authenticity and Christlikeness is that of “who is this
about?” Have I, for example, turned worship into a performance of which I am
the star, whether I be pastor, preacher, priest, music leader or, improbably, janitor?
As an aside I’m reminded once again of the time
that I carried out an emergency Sunday locum in an Adelaide parish, and found
myself talking after the service to a man who had just finished cleaning the
toilets. He turned out to be a retired bishop, who of course I had never met
before, but who I had long heard of as one of the most authentic and credible
bishops in the Australian church.
I strive for excellence in many aspects of worship
and Christian life – while being fully aware of my own inadequacy. I do so not
in the belief that we should radiate excellence for the sake of excellence, but
the belief that if we get our balances right, if we use the gifts that God has
given us corporately and individually to the best of our ability, then we can
be assured that we are authentically serving the gospel of the risen Lord.
As Jesus entered the temple that he saw as the
House of his Father he is furious. He is furious because all the potential of
the temple to be a place of awe and mystery and sanctuary and justice has been
turned into a maelstrom of commerce and cheap plasticity. Our task is to make
sure that our small buildings of God must never become such a thing (and let me
add I sincerely believe that they have not). But we must always be on our
guard. I want to get our assets right at all times to ensure they serve the
proclamation of the gospel, and to that we will work and are working together.
In this time of Lent the equally big if not bigger
issue is for us to look deeply within ourselves to remember a sort of
benevolent form of the Glyptapanteles wasp; surrender ourselves daily to be
transformed in the likeness of love, the likeness of Christ, the likeness of
lives lived for others.
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