READINGS AND REFLECTIONS FOR THURSDAY, 27 AUGUST 2020 

1 Corinthians 1: 1- 9          Psalm 145: 1 – 7         Matthew 24: 42 – 51 

Collect :

God of our holy and righteous ancestors:

accept us as a living sacrifice and transform us by your Spirit,

that, being members of one body,

we will offer our gifts in Christ’s service;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and forever.

Amen 

In the first ten verses of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the name of Jesus Christ occurs no fewer than ten times. This was going to be a difficult letter for it was going to deal with a difficult situation, and in such a situation Paul’s first and repeated thought was of Jesus Christ. Sometimes in the Church we try to deal with a difficult situation by means of a book of laws; sometimes in our own affairs we try to deal with a difficult situation in our own mental and spiritual power. Paul did none of these things; to his difficult situation he took Jesus Christ, and it was in the light of the Cross of Christ and the love of Christ that he sought to deal with it. 

This introduction or first verses tells us about two things. 

(i) It tells us something about the Church. Paul speaks of The Church of God which is at Corinth. It was not the Church of Corinth; it was the Church of God. To Paul, wherever an individual congregation might be, it was a part of the one Church of God. To him the Church was the Church of God. If we thought of the Church in that way we might well remember more of the reality which unites us and less of the local differences which divide us. 

(ii) This passage tells us something about the individual Christian. Paul says three things about them. 

(a) He is consecrated in Jesus Christ. The verb, to consecrate, means to set a place apart for God, to make it holy, by the offering of a sacrifice upon it. The Christian has been consecrated to God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to be one for whom Christ died and to know it, and to realize that that sacrifice in a very special way makes us belong to God. 

(b) He describes the Christians as those who have been called to be God’s dedicated people. We have translated one single Greek word by this whole phrase. The word is hagios, which the King James Version translates saints. Nowadays that does not paint the right picture to us. Hagios describes a thing or a person that has been devoted to the possession and the service of God. It is the word by which to describe a temple or a sacrifice which has been marked out for God. If a person has been marked out as specially belonging to God, they must show themself to be fit in life and in character for that service. That is how hagios comes to mean holy, saintly. 

But the root idea of the word is separation. A person who is hagios is different from others because they have been separated from the “ordinary” in order to belong to God. When Paul calls the Christian hagios, he means that they are different from other people because they belong to God and to God’s service. This difference is not to be marked by withdrawal from ordinary life, but by showing there Christian qualities which will make them stand out. 

(e) The Christian is called into a community whose boundaries include all earth and all heaven. We are reminded to look beyond our own little circle and thought of ourselves, we are part of the Church of God which is as wide as the world. 

The passage continues with the focus on thanksgiving, and three things stand out. 

(i) There is the promise which came true. When Paul preached Christianity to the Corinthians, he told them that Christ could do certain things for them, and now he proudly claims that all that he pledged that Christ could do, has come true. 

(ii) There is the gift which has been given. Paul here uses a favourite word of his. It is charisma, which means a gift freely given to a person, a gift which they did not deserve and which they could never by themselves have earned. This gift of God, as Paul saw it, comes in two ways. 

(a) Salvation is the charisma of God. To enter into a right relationship with God is something which a person could never achieve themself. It is an unearned gift, coming from the sheer generosity of the love of God.

(b) It gives us whatever special gifts we may possess and whatever special skills we may have or need for life. (1 Corinthians 12:4-10; 1 Timothy 4:14; 1 Peter 4:10). If one has the gift of speech or the gift of healing, if we have the gift of music or of any art, all these are gifts from God. Skills as we possess are not our own achievement, they are gifts from God, and, should be used as God wants us to use them, to the Glory of God and for the good of all people.

How do we live our daily lives as Christians? How do we treat the people around us? How do we live authentic Christian lives, even when no one is watching? 

Today’s gospel is an excerpt from Matthew’s longer version of the end times as described by Jesus. The recurring theme is that we won’t know the day nor the hour when the world (or our lives) will end and so we should be prepared at all times for this foreseeable and certain event. I remember over the years many frightening homilies and sermons on the suddenness of death and the need to be prepared by being in a state of grace, at the risk of being sent to hell or to an extended stay in purgatory. 

As we reflect on this passage — “Be awake! For you do not know on which day you will encounter the Lord.”  We should change our focus to concentrate more on living than on being prepared to die. 

Being alert to when we might encounter the Lord in our daily lives, and being prepared to be the “faithful and prudent servant” turns our attention to how we interact with and treat others. If we are awake to all the possible ways that we can see the Lord, can we recognize Jesus Christ in those who suffer, and then are we able to act differently, more sensitively to them and to their needs. If I do not know when I will encounter the Lord, then I should react to everyone I meet as if I were meeting the Lord. If I am a faithful and prudent steward, then I will be generous with the gifts God has given me and will distribute them “at the proper time” to the other members of my household (realizing that my household is the broader family of other people and not my limited biological family). 

Let us Pray : 

God our Maker,

We praise you for the gift of community.

Thank you for the communities in which we work and live.

Thank you for the community that is your Body, the Church.

Fill us with Your Spirit, today so that, as one, we reflect your

Light and love to each other and to the world.

Amen