Reflection National Lockdown Wednesday 16 September 2020

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13         Psalm 33:1-12           Luke 7:31-35

Collect: Ninian Bishop and Missionary in Scotland

God our Father you called us out of darkness into your marvellous light;

And you gave us your servant Ninian to shine as a light in the world:

Shine in our hearts and enable us to proclaim your love;

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Good day dear friends,

St. Paul now demonstrates how the different members of the Church, with their various gifts are all one, as parts of the one transcendent body of which Christ is the head. As the human body is one, in spite of its various members, and as its vibrant spirit is one, although displaying itself differently through different members, so it is with the mystical body of Christ, of which He is the Head and His Holy Spirit the soul.

Paul reprimanded the Corinthians to be satisfied with the gifts they had, but did not forbid them to strive for higher perfection. Access to greater excellence and the more perfect state is possible only through the display of the gift of charity in its different expressions as friendship or shared goodwill, familial love for children, universal love or charity, love for parent and self-love. In the following verses in Chapter 13 Paul addresses the necessity of charity (love) it’s exalted qualities and it’s durability over other virtues. The Corinthian Christians were all seeking after the extraordinary gifts of tongues, prophecy and faith while neglecting the servant aspects of gifts. Paul wants them to realise that the call to love is in line with the expectation to love God and neighbour as self as being identical with purifying grace.  Paul compared tongues, prophecy, wisdom, knowledge and faith with the love for and grace from God and found the Corinthian Christians wanting in their pursuit of heaven.

He is presenting charity (love) as the root and life giving principle of all the other virtues bestowed upon them by God in His grace and does so by describing its characteristics and fruits, negative and positive. As a Greek scholar Paul uses the Greek interpretation of love as believing only good things about, seeking only the best for your neighbour and encouraging them to patiently bear the evil brought about by fellow men. Paul contrasts the durability of prophecies, of tongues, and of knowledge with that of charity and maintains that the former will cease to be whilst the latter will last throughout eternity. The imperfection of faith and of present knowledge, as compared with charity and the vision of God is illustrated by the difference between childhood and perfect maturity and enforced as an indisputable truth.  Faith, hope and love are here presented as future expectation and present reality.

The psalmist penned psalm 33 to convey four important things:

1. God created everything and He, God did so by word. When God spoke things happened and examples of this creation called into being by word are the skies, stars and seas.
2. Men are allowed to make plans but that God does not always allow it to be fulfilled.
3. The omniscience of God with His eyes on everybody and what they do.
4. The omnipotence of God with His powers that surpasses that of the greatest of armies.

The first three verses make reference to the singing of God’s praises for what God has done for the people. It somehow reinforces the understanding that only God can make righteous through forgiveness of their sins. This can only happen when the sinner surrender their sins unto God through Jesus who took it away once and continues to do so. The psalm tells people to praise God with harp, lute and trumpet.

The second part tells us that God made everything by his word. “The breath of his mouth” means “his word”. “Full of his kind love” means “the good things that he made”. “In a bottle” probably means “in one place”.

The last part of the assigned portion for today tells us that God is the authority on earth. In verse 12 “the people that he chose” means the Jews. Since Jesus came to the earth it also means Christians.  The central message to the hearers of the psalm and us today is to impress upon us that holy joy in thankfulness ought to be the heart and soul of our praise offered to God employed with all our skill and earnestness in service to God. We must live and enjoy the bounty given in thankfulness and in glory to God alone.

In today’s Gospel we see the freshness of the Good News which opens its way and thus persons who are attached to olden forms of faith feel lost and do not understand anything more of God’s action. To hide their lack of openness and of understanding they defended and sought immature excuses to justify their resistance to change. Jesus reacts with a parable to denounce the incoherence of his enemies: “You are similar to children who do not know what they want”.

Jesus was shocked by the reaction of the people and being the master of self-explanatory comparisons He used one to reveal their blindness, incoherence and ill will by comparing them to children lacking good judgement. “You are like “those children, shouting to one another while they sit in the market place: we played the pipes for you, and you would not dance; we sang dirges and you would not cry!”  The people complained when others do not do and act as they say and accused John the Baptist of being possessed and Jesus of gluttony and keeping bad company. Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist; he believed in and was baptized by him in full view of the Father who through the Holy Spirit positively affirmed Him and His mission as Messiah and servant.  John was more severe, more ascetical, did not eat nor drink, remained in the desert and threatened the people with the punishment of the Last Judgment, whilst Jesus was more welcoming; ate and drank like everybody else, went through the towns and entered the houses of despised tax collectors and prostitutes. The accusations of being possessed, gluttony and keeping bad company was more than likely instigated by the religious authorities of Jesus’s time who did not believe in either him, John the Baptist and their message.  Jesus was not going to let their opinion on Him and John slip as comment with little consequence and wanted to show the lack of seriousness, coherence and bad will in their actions.

Do we by expressing an opinion on matters express presumptions without addressing the real issue or person? Are we aware of any groups and or individuals in the Church who would justify Jesus’s use of this parable?