“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as
of ourselves,
but our sufficiency is of God.” (2 Corinthians 3.5)
Nobody can stand a braggart — someone who goes on and on about what
they have, and what they have done, and where they have been. Our dislike
of a braggart is, no doubt, in part due to the fact that his bragging underlines
our shortcomings: what we do not have, what we have not done, and where
we have not been. But for whatever reason, nobody likes a braggart.
And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get annoyed when I read
St. Paul’s epistles, because it often seems that he is a braggart, albeit
a “spiritual” braggart. He often speaks of how hard he has worked for God,
what dangers he has been through, how many hardships he has endured for
the sake of the Gospel. I have no reason to doubt St. Paul, and my annoyance
can be traced to the fact I have not laboured as strenuously for the Gospel
as the Apostle. In addition, if you read St. Paul’ epistles closely, you
will see that he speaks of his labours and hardships for good reason. He
is not trying to draw attention to himself, but to the God he serves and
whose grace has been granted him. He is trying to spur his readers on to
greater efforts themselves. So, for example, when he says “I laboured more
abundantly than they all” (1 Corinthians 15.10), and “I suppose I was not
a bit behind the very chiefest apostles” (2 Corinthians 16.5), and “I ought
to have been commended of you” (2 Corinthians 12.11), he makes it clear
from where his strength comes; for he also says: “I can do all things through
Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4.13) and “I am crucified with
Christ: Nevertheless I live: Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.”
(Galatians 2.20). In other words, his great accomplishments are only half
his message. The other half is that what he has done has been through the
grace of God. Without Christ he is nothing; with Christ he can. do all
things.
St. Paul’s message is that each of us has that same grace given to us,
for, as he says in today’s epistle, God has “Made us worthy to be ministers
of the new covenant.” We do not have the power in ourselves to be God’s
ministers, but God has given us that power through the Spirit of his Son.
Whenever, in our words, or in our deeds, we show that love of God which
is the basis of the new covenant, God’s grace is working through us. We
are exercising our power as ministers of God, being made equal to the task
by God himself.
God has richly blessed each one of us with life, and all that sustains
life, with talents and abilities, with the capacity to love and be loved.
Without becoming boors and braggarts, we must somehow communicate to others
the fact that we acknowledge God’s gifts to us. We do this by sharing God’s
love with others, especially with those who have not yet come to know God’s
love. Isn’t that really what being a Christian is: one, acknowledging our
dependence on God (i.e. that we need God); two, believing that all our
needs are supplied by God; and three, communicating those first two beliefs
to others by what we do and say. That is what it means to be a minister
of Christ. That is what my ministry as a priest consists of; that
is what your ministry as laity consists of: convincing people that they
need God, and that God will help them. And from day to day we accomplish
this ministry by loving and caring for one another.
But it is not just by works of charity that our ministry as Christians
is fulfilled. In fact, there are too many people who think that simply
by being nice people they can be saved. They do not think it is necessary
to pray and study, or to attend Church. They neglect the sacraments, coming
to Communion seldom, if ever. We have already established that our sufficiency,
our strength as Christians, comes from God. But how do we receive that
strength? The same Apostle, namely St. Paul, who tells us that our sufficiency
is from God, also tells us that the Church is Christ’s Body, (1 Corinthians
12.27) and that the Eucharist is the “communion of the body and blood of
Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10.16). If you are cut off from the Body, and from
the food which sustains the Body, how can you have any life? Christ himself
said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood,
you have no life in you (John 6.53) Our good works, our
loving one another, need to be anchored in the worship of God in the service
which our Lord gave us: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Over and above this, what more convincing sign is there for our dependence
on God than the message we convey when each of us comes, Sunday by Sunday,
to confess our shortcomings to God and to be fed by him. We don’t have
to stand up in the middle of the service and give a testimony of what we
have been in the past, or what we are now — everybody knows that, and more
importantly, God knows that — but what we do have to do is acknowledge
that whatever we are or hope to be comes from God and his Son who died
for us. And that is the purpose of our worship: to show our need for God,
to have those needs mystically supplied, and to witness to one another
concerning the truth of the Gospel. In other words, our worship is a concentration
or bringing together of the ministry we exercise every day. It is the centre
and source of strength of this ministry.
Let it be our prayer this day that God will indeed fulfill his promise
to strengthen and confirm his Spirit in us through the worship we offer
to him, and that having our needs supplied here at his table, we may, like
St. Paul, be ministers of the new covenant of love every day of the coming
week.
