Journey's Weekly Homilies

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A, 27 January 2002
Isaiah 8:23b-9:3
1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17
Matthew 4:12-23  

Homily by Joe

 According to a recent article in the New York Times, Enron, the energy trading company, may have gone spectacularly bankrupt, but its web site lives on.  And among the things to be found there is the company’s mission statement.  It reads, in part: “We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.” Now this last bit, it seems, doth protest too much – addressing a charge that hasn’t been made. In the light of reports what the company’s executives were actually up to, maybe it should have been. The author of the Times article suggests that a more honest – and succinct – mission statement might have been “We will strive to make as much money as we can without going to jail.”

Ah, mission statements - everyone’s got to have one of these catchy little settings forth of principles. Companies use them to attract employees or investors; colleges to entice students; churches to draw members. “Come and join us, “ they say. “The goals may be a bit too noble and lofty, but if they appeal to you, you can help make them reality.”

 Tonight’s gospel gives us a good example of an effective mission statement: powerful, to the point and just mysterious enough to be intriguing: “follow me, and I will make you fish for human beings.” In Matthew’s gospel, this is the first time Jesus opens his mouth and doesn’t quote scripture or John the Baptist. And these first words are so compelling that Simon Peter and his brother Andrew drop what they’re doing and follow Jesus on the road. We know where their journey will take them, but they have little idea what they’ve been drawn into. They will learn much as they go, but even from the beginning if they want to know what it is to fish for human beings, they need look no further than each other.

 Paul must have found Corinth a very good place to fish for human beings. As a Roman colony and sometime tourist destination, the city had a diverse population that practiced a variety of religions; most of the people were not long established in the place and were thus open to new ways of thinking and worshipping. We can only infer Paul’s original mission statement, if he had one, but in the Acts of the Apostles we read that he spent a year and a half on his first visit to Corinth, enjoying great success among the gentiles. By the time of this First surviving Letter to the Corinthians, they’ve been on their own for a while and Paul seems to have concluded that his original mission statement was a little too concise. He’s finding it necessary to elaborate on it, to spell out things the good people of Corinth should have grasped from the outset. He has to say “you who were drawn in by the preaching of Apollos are no better than those who listened to Cephas, or those who heard me. I meant what I said when I preached the gospel of equality.” Later on he will have to tell them, “when you host the Lord’s supper in your house, you can’t have a more exclusive group of guests to dinner first. I meant what I said when I preached the gospel of justice.”

 Some of Paul’s preaching to the Corinthians has been characterized as “interim ethics.”

Certain ways of living, such as marriage, are obsolete because Christ is coming soon; engage in them only if you absolutely must. Paul preaches this way with such confidence because for him the return of Christ is not an abstract concept; his experience of it is what made him an apostle. He knows that the Reign of God is already well underway, but he’s finding it difficult to keep the consciousness of this alive in the Corinthians as the years accumulate.

Even when he’s not preaching interim ethics, Paul is frustrated at having to elaborate on his earlier teaching because for him the Cross of Christ is enough – everything you need to know to be a Christian flows from this and having to explicate it only dishonors it -“robs it of its power.” This is the paradigm of leading by example – “do not refuse the death that gives you life” – and no human thought or preaching can begin to approach it.

So it is that Paul doesn’t trust eloquent wisdom. Preach the gospel – use words if necessary.

Our preaching, then, begins with the Cross of Christ, in everything that it signifies for us: justice, equality, liberation, sacrifice. Our true mission statement, like Enron’s, comes to be not in the words we choose and publicize, but in our actions and they images they create: in our case those of Nancy or Laurie or Jackie leading us in prayer, the plate and the cup being passed from one person to another, Douglas delivering Christmas presents. Our faithfulness to the Cross of Christ shows in our mutual respect, in our support and understanding of one another’s faith struggles and our individual and corporate work for justice.  Our trust in the Cross of Christ allows us to risk holding nothing back, leaving all the things we have to follow the one in whose life our lives have been deeply planted.

The question is, will we? Like those first disciples, like those early converts in Corinth, we have little idea what we’ve gotten ourselves into or what the years may hold. Like them we are beginners, works in progress. But the progress is up to us, if we decide to make use of what the Spirit has given us here.