preached at Osoyoos United Church and St. Edward the Confessor Anglican Church in Oliver
If I didn’t know better, I would think it was all a bad dream. It would be hard for a science fiction author to come up with a dystopian fantasy more far-fetched than what has been happening to the people of Minneapolis, and Gaza, and Venezuela and Greenland and Cuba, and people of ethnic and religious minorities around the world whose inhumane treatment flies under the radar. Oh, and then there’s all the things that casually happen to harm the earth, as nations scramble to deal with the chaotic economic climate by ramping up resource extraction practices that harm this dear planet.
Since at least 2020, the
world and all who dwell therein have experienced one crisis after another, so
much so that it blurs into one ongoing state of alarm… and we are not built to
withstand that. Repeatedly, I have
needed to pause, and let go of the frenzy, and be reminded of the holy
intentions of God, the author of love and life and justice. And fortunately, it’s not just a matter of
taking a deep breath and hoping for the best, for we have for we the gift of a sacred
text that has been steadfast throughout the rise and fall of thousands of tyrants,
and it will support us through the current round of evil buffoonery as
well.
That sacred text, the Bible,
has brought us such gifts through this season;
- · On Epiphany Sunday, January 4th, I spoke of
the physical gifts that equipped the Magi on their journey: gold, frankincense
and myrrh, but also the God-given qualities that accompanied their journey: wisdom,
curiosity, humility and adaptability. Humility and curiosity led them to honour the
newborn Messiah, while wisdom and adaptability rescued them from the toxic
insecurity of King Herod and sent them home in safety.
- · The following Sunday, Rev. Steve Hershey spoke of the
baptism of Jesus, and the declaration of belovedness by God: the unique
belovedness of Jesus, and the inclusion of all God’s children to receive a
blessing and to be a blessing. Jesus has
authority bestowed upon him by God, the authority of one whose essence is life
and light and transformative love.
- · On January 18th, our video preacher, Rev.
Dr. David Holmes, preached on the wondrously mystical 1st chapter of
John, of Christ, the Word made Flesh. In
his sermon he quoted Douglas John Hall’s words about the humiliation of the
Church in the second half of the 20th century. Dave reminded us that
the words humiliate, humbling and humble come from the word humus, or earth, so
while Church life in much of the northern hemisphere isn’t what it was in our
nostalgic memories from 50 or 60 or 70 years ago, we are more “grounded” than
we have been for a long time, and that can be a profound and timely gift to us
and to those we serve.
- · Last Sunday, our Regional Minister, Kathy Davies led us
in a worship service with a workshop imbedded in the middle, and she reflected
on Matthew’s account of the call issued by Jesus to the first disciples. The call, she noted, was simply “follow me”,
right then. They were provided with no
great explanation; just follow, said Jesus, and I will teach you how to bring
the love and grace and reconciling power of God into the lives of those you
touch.
- o
(OLIVER: And our
friends of the St. Edward’s congregation will have other points to add from the
homilies you’ve heard. We do work from
the same Sunday lectionary, and the readings have been full and rich.)
- · This all brings us to this morning, and a reading in
which the apostle Paul contrasts the attention-seeking ways of the wise and
powerful of the world, with the image of Christ crucified, a God who personally
identifies with the vulnerable of the world by entering into their reality, and
sums it up like so: “22 Jews demand signs and
Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ
crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has
called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom
of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser
than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human
strength”.
Friends, as we follow this
progression of messages through the season of Epiphany, it may well be that God
is trying to tell us something here!
Week after week, with a variety of scriptures and a variety of
preachers, our sacred story, culminating with the cross, is leading us away
from the arrogance and boastfulness and self-importance that absolutely fills
our newsfeed, to choose instead a life nourished by life and love and humble
service.
Writing nearly two thousand
years ago, the apostle Paul knew the human propensity for arrogance, because he
saw it in the Church in Corinth and perhaps recognized it in himself. Corinth, a freewheeling port city with a
reputation for raunchiness, was a place whose Church had an amazing breadth of
social classes and an embarrassing ability to do really ugly things to one
another. At the beginning of his first
letter to this motley crew, Paul lays it out for them: Christ Jesus intends to
take the way the assign power and prestige and turn it on its head.
In his 1993 Bible
translation, The Message, Eugene Peterson expresses Paul’s words from 1st
Corinthians this way: “22-25 While Jews clamor for
miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go
right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and
Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God
himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all
wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming
absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s ‘weakness’ …God
deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and
abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’”
My goodness, do I ever need
to hear that. Here we have a Bible translator from thirty years ago, and the Apostle
to the gentiles, two thousand years ago, calling out the kinds of hollow
pretensions that are so prevalent today.
As 2026 is warped by a thirst for wealth and power, a narcissistic need
to be the centre of attention, and a complete disregard for the rules of fair
engagement as the rules change moment by moment, we are reminded that we and
our Judaeo-Christian forebears have been this way before. As Paul put it, through Eugene Peterson,
“Human wisdom is so cheap, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of
God. Human strength can’t begin to
compete with God’s [so-called] weakness”.
Now, I do need to speak a
word of caution. We live in a time when far
too many Christians view learning and science as somehow “the enemy” of
religion and faith, and these words from Paul telling those who are vain about
their wisdom may seem to play into that.
But that’s not what this is about.
The gifts of kind, calm, rational thought are gifts of God, calling us
to shape every one of our decisions so that we express love. And as followers of Jesus Christ, we must lean
into his so-called foolishness, the foolishness that got him crucified, and
speak truth to power, as the Moderator of the United Church of Canada, the
Right Rev Kim Heath, noted in her official letters of support to leaders of our
Church partners in the US and Greenland.
Paul is not telling us to
step down from the things we know. But what Paul’s words do move us away from,
is being motivated by a hunger for power, or an arrogance that judges anyone
unlike you to be inferior, or insisting on praise that’s not been earned. We
are called by God, our source and destination, to be motivated not by might and
self-aggrandizement, but by love and service.
The world might see that as a terrible strategy, because the
vulnerability that God shows us in the infinite love of the risen Christ is so
contrary to the human thirst for power. We are called to be those who invite
God’s gracious wisdom and light to shine truth on situations ruled by hatred
and greed. As a child of God I know
that I will not always understand and I will not always get it right, I but I
will not go astray if I give myself over to love, again and again and again.
And so, all these years after
the resurrection of Jesus and the founding of the Church, we come together in
humility, remembering a simple gathering of trusted friends, huddled together
in an upper room as the powers that be closed in on Jesus and his words and
deeds of boundless love. We gather, with
the simplicity of bread and cup, in the name and at the table of Jesus, the
Christ. We gather with a infinitely wise
and self-emptying Lord motivated not by power, but by love, a Lord who longs
for the days when weapons are put down, and name-calling ends, and diversity,
and equity, and inclusion are agendas to be always celebrated, never denigrated. We gather with a Lord who knows that when we
view the world as if it was all about simple binaries – good and bad, friend
and foe, even wise and foolish – we will miss the complex beauty of life, the
nuances where God is found. At table
with Jesus, we face those places where we have gotten sucked into the ways of
the world, and repent; and we stand with Jesus in solidarity with those who are
getting pummeled by the cruelty of this world in 2026.
In the light of Epiphany, we are invited by Jesus to a way that is both new and ancient, the way we discover in the “aha” moments of life and in the wisdom of the old, old story of scripture. We are drawn by God’s loving intent to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God and neighbour. It is good to be here, with you, in humility, light, and life. Thanks be to God, Amen.
References:
Hall, Douglas John. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-08/cross-and-context
Peterson, Eugene. The
Message. https://messagebible.com/
Thompson, Karen Georgia. https://www.ucc.org/it-is-time-to-return-peace-to-our-nations-cities-rev-karen-georgia-thompson-issues-statement-and-prayer-following-2nd-fatal-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis/
Whitfield, Bryan J. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-1-corinthians-118-31-6
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley,
Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.
