Tuesday in Holy Week

Not Many are Wise...
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36

Paul’s congregation in Corinth must have been quite different from this one. “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth,” he says to the people in Corinth.  It sounds like they probably weren’t very strong either.

As I say, quite a different group of people than you gathered here this evening. This passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians always makes me smile. I wonder how the folks in Corinth heard Paul’s words.

I don’t know. Either there’s some irony there or they really were a pretty lame group.

How about you? Who are you among these groups? One of the wise? The strong? The nobly born? The powerful?

Or maybe if it feels a bit uncomfortable or conceited to think in that way, how about these questions: Would you like to be known as wise? Would you like other people to think of you as strong? I'd answer "yes." And by default, all Americans are powerful. And we want to be; we want our nation to have power on the world stage.

Wisdom, strength, at least a certain amount of power… these are not bad things. Who wouldn’t want wisdom to navigate life’s challenges? We need strength to accomplish much of what comes to us in life. And surely power is preferable to powerlessness or helplessness. These are admirable traits.

Part of my own focus this Holy Week is on honest self-awareness. Not in the therapeutic sense, although that is helpful. But I’m thinking more of spiritual self-awareness. Of standing naked before God. How does God really see me? Us?

Each of us has been given gifts. Some people have great physical strength. Other people have more mental agility. Some have been given wisdom. Others have artistic or creative potential.

Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospels that we aren’t meant to hide these gifts under a bushel. We are not to put them aside or ignore them. But we are not to boast of these gifts as OURS. They are not ours. They are gifts, given by God, to be nurtured and exercised to the glory of God.

None of them will win us heaven. No human ability will win us heaven.

In the Gospel for today Jesus talks about being the light. Even the best of our human gifts and abilities are of limited use in the dark. Maybe wisdom or patience or strength might help a little. But ultimately we can’t get very far on our own in the dark. Even the strong, the wise, or the powerful. “If you walk in the darkness you do not know where you are going,” says Jesus.

If we look at ourselves honestly, naked on our own before God, we must see ourselves struggling helplessly in the dark.

But Jesus is the light. “The light is with you for a little longer… Walk while you have the light… Believe in the light so that you may become children of light.”

If we look at ourselves honesty, we see ourselves struggling, lost in the dark. But God looks upon us and sees us illumined by the light of Christ. Believe in the light so that you may become children of light.