Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity
“Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant”
The readings for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity are the least favourite for preachers, it seems, particularly the Gospel, and, perhaps, the least favourite of readings, too, for you. And yet, these readings from 1st Corinthians and Luke 16 belong precisely to the pattern of themes of the Trinity Season with its emphasis upon the relation between the theoretical and the practical, between our thinking and our doing, wonderfully captured in the Collect. They provide us with a necessary challenge and as Paul suggests it has to do with our ignorance.
Ignorant of what? Ignorant of what belongs to the nature of our identity in Christ. But, we are, I am afraid, only too ignorant. And because of our ignorance, we are easily “overthrown in the wilderness” of our lives, both individually and corporately. The good news is that even the things of our ignorance can be used to bring us to understanding, to the understanding of the good and to the doing of all “such things as be rightful”, as the Collect puts it.
In the witness of the Scriptures, we have the stories of the ignorance of our humanity written out for us to read just so that we will not be ignorant. “These things”, Paul tells us in First Corinthians, a people remarkable for their willful ignorance, “were our examples”. What things? The things belonging to our identity in the body of Christ which we ignore and deny. But in making such things known to us, we may learn “not to lust after evil things, as they also lusted” and to avoid idolatry. He has in mind the stories of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness; in particular, the stories of disbelief and complaint on the part of Israel towards Moses and more significantly, towards God.
Paul is doing two things here. First, he is saying that these formative stories of the people of Israel are things from which we can learn. They are “our examples”. Secondly, he is saying something even more significant. He is saying that we are in these stories. The Old Testament stories, he is saying, actually belong to the story of our life in Christ. One of the forms of our ignorance is that we do not or cannot think this but it is a profoundly Christian point-of-view. Paul sees in the wilderness journeys of the ancient people of Israel something which anticipates and participates in the definitive journey of human redemption signaled and accomplished in the passion of Christ.
