4th Sunday after Epiphany Year B

The Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The 4th Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B January 28, 2024 A few weeks ago, I was at Honey Creek (our diocesan camp and conference center) for a meeting; it was dinnertime, and I was a little late joining the group. I fixed my plate at the buffet and was walking across the dining room to a table when I WENT DOWN! Thankfully, I suffered no real injury beyond the significant bruises to my rear end (which I landed on) and of course, my pride. As two kind friends rushed over to help scoop me and my spilled plate up off the floor and try to restore me to rights, I bewilderedly looked at the foot that had betrayed me to discover off the side the instrument of my literal downfall: a single, rogue, green bean that had been dropped onto the dining room floor by someone who had come before me. (You’ll be relieved to note that I checked my initial impulse to hold a full inquiry and was able to let the matter go.) The apostle Paul writes about this in our passage from 1st Corinthians today. Paul is writing to the young church in Corinth which is a church in conflict. We only get glimpses of what’s going on there in Paul’s admonitions to them on how to get along together as one should in Christian community. In today’s passage, we see Paul reflecting on the relationship between individual freedom and responsibility to others for a community’s overall health instigated by the question of whether or not it is ok for Christians to eat meat that has been offered to idols.i Paul says, sure, it’s ok to do this, but he offers one of the strongest admonitions in the New Testament (in the Greek word blepete)- a word of strong warning, or caution that is translated “take care.” Sure, it’s ok, he says, “but take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block” to someone else. You could also say, “Pay attention that you don’t drop a green bean off your plate and cause someone else to fall.” (Ok, so maybe I’m not as over it as I say.) It’s actually pretty intense, if you think about it. Our lives are made up of webs and webs of connections—with family, friends, acquaintances, fellow church members, strangers. How many times a day do we inadvertently do something (or not do something) that becomes a stumbling block for someone else? Probably so much more than we ever realize. In fact, I bet I’ve left a scattered trail of green beans throughout my life for people to slip on! And while Paul says, yes, technically I do have the individual liberty to leave my green beans wherever I want, as a follower of Jesus, I should take care, take care of other people, take care that my action or inaction doesn’t cause anyone else to stumble or fall. So what do we, as Christians, do about this? How then should we live? First, we have to pay attention to when we drop green beans. We can’t just go through life oblivious to how our action or inaction may cause damage to others. We have to pay attention to what aspects of our personalities, what aspects of our behaviors can become stumbling blocks (and have become stumbling blocks) for the people around us in any given web of relationships. For me, this means bringing more thoughtfulness to ordinary encounters, and it also means paying attention to the ways I have tripped people up in the past; asking for forgiveness; and trying to change my behavior. One of my gifts is that I can see potential—in people, in situations—and one of the challenges of that is that I can be relentless and demanding in pursuit of the achievement of that potential, to the detriment of relationships. A friend of mine shared that her stumbling block is her certitude—that she believes that she is always right and it brings with it a certain degree of inflexibility to other peoples’ ideas. Our Wednesday healing service congregation shared a couple of their stumbling blocks, too. One said that her perfectionism can be an impediment to her most important relationships, and another said that her time frame for things doesn’t always line up with others’ expectations, and this can be responsible for dropped green beans lying around. Once we recognize that we all inadvertently drop green beans from time to time, and are therefore in need of forgiveness, then it reminds us that others who drop green beans that trip us up are worthy of our forgiveness, too. I wonder what in your actions or inactions have you seen to be the cause of other people’s stumbling? What do you need to pay attention to in order to better take care of the people around you? The other challenge in this passage today for us is that it isn’t just about individual behavior; it’s also about communal behavior. How are we, as a church, dropping green beans for other people to slip on and not even noticing? What are the areas that we need to pay attention to that can be or already have become stumbling blocks for people in our midst or others seeking God in this community? One of the gifts of this place is long-established relationships, ties of kinship, and long-held friendships. One of the stumbling blocks in that is we often don’t pay attention to the stranger in our midst, the people outside our circle who are seeking belonging in this community, because we are so busy talking with our friends. How might we open up pathways of belonging in some of those old, cherished, long-standing relationships and create new space for others? I think it’s going to take all of us being intentional about this and maybe even putting some new practices in place. Your invitation this week is to think about all this on both individual and communal levels. How might your behavior (or lack thereof) become a stumbling block to others you encounter? Or what have you experienced around this in the past that you need to pay attention to? How are you being called to “take care” that you don’t cause someone else to fall? And how are we being called to pay attention to this as a church and to continue to be transformed as a community of faith? i. Feasting on the Word. Exegetical Perspective; WJK: p 303

2nd Sunday after Epiphany Year B

The Rev. Melanie Lemburg The 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year B January 14, 2024 Last weekend, I gathered at Honey Creek with the Diocese of Georgia’s Commission on Ministry, which is a committee required by The Episcopal Church canons whose purpose is to advise the Bishop of each diocese in matters pertaining to ministry. Last weekend, we were meeting with people who were discerning a call to ordained ministry—both the priesthood and the diaconate. I told my colleagues when we gathered that I love doing this sort of work for the same reason that I love doing pre-marital counseling: they both help me remember my first love. It is enlivening for me to work with a group of other faithful lay and clergy to try to listen to how the Holy Spirit is acting in lives of individuals and in the greater church. Our work is essentially trying to listen for God’s call among us. So I’ve been especially struck this week in our readings by the story of Eli and Samuel. Eli is an interesting character to me. He’s a priest, but it’s not clear if he is an especially good or effective priest. In fact, throughout Eli’s story in the first part of 1 Samuel, he gets more things wrong than he does right. The book opens with an exchange between Hannah, Samuel’s mother, and Eli when she comes to pray at Shiloh where Eli is in service. She is distraught and in her prayers, she begs God for a son, praying with her lips moving but no words coming out. In watching her, Eli determines that she must be drunk, so he confronts her and chastises her. When she stands up to him, he offers her God’s blessing, and not long afterward, she has Samuel, who she dedicates to the service of God. We also learn that Eli’s sons, who are also priests, are scoundrels. They send their servants to take the best meat from what has been sacrifice to God, and thus they hold God (and the people worshipping God) in contempt. Eli gets a warning that his sons are invoking the wrath of God with their behavior, but he seems unwilling or unable to curtail their behavior. After our reading for today, as events in the life of Israel unfold, Israel goes to war with the Philistines. The Philistines kill a great number of Israelites, including both of Eli’s sons, and they steal the Ark of Covenant which holds the stone tablets containing the 10 Commandments and is Israel’s most prized relic at this time. When Eli receives the news that both his sons have been killed and the ark has been stolen, he falls over and breaks his neck and dies. But our story for today, gives us a glimpse of a single shining moment in Eli’s ministry. Samuel is young--tradition tells us probably around 12--and while he has spent his entire life in the service of the Lord, he doesn’t know the Lord. The Lord calls to Samuel, and he thinks it’s Eli, so he goes to see what the old man wants from him. Eli sends him back to bed with both a patience and a gentleness that he did not exhibit with Samuel’s mother Hannah. After three different times of this, Eli finally realizes what is going on, and he teaches Samuel how to respond to the Lord saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Samuel does as Eli instructs, and the Lord tells Samuel that God is about to punish Eli for the sins of his sons. In the morning, Eli presses Samuel to share what God has revealed to him, and he receives the news courageously with a fair amount of equanimity, not offering any anger toward Samuel as messenger. And here’s a spoiler alert: Samuel goes on to become a great prophet in the history of Israel, an important figure in the establishment of the monarchy, featuring in both King Saul and King David’s stories. But even Samuel has to learn how to hear God’s call in his life, and it was the fallible priest Eli who taught him. Well, that’s all great, Melanie, but what does that have to do with me or with us, today? The reason why we do the work of discernment for ordained life as a committee in the diocese is because much of the time, we need community to understand who we truly are, who God is calling us to be. Eli’s story is heartening to me because it shows that we as individuals don’t have to be good or effective in order to help people learn a little bit more about who God has created them to be, and this is the call of what it means to be together in community. We are called to hold up a mirror for each other at times when we see the giftedness of the other, or when we can discern how God may be acting in that person’s life. It’s a task that requires humility, gentleness, a willingness to listen, and great courage to risk ourselves in this endeavor. But each of us is called to do this work for each other, both inside the church and beyond. You know, I’m not sure if I would be a priest, if my mother hadn’t named something that I was already wrestling with inside, giving me a sort of blessing to begin seriously considering it. And this is not a task that is limited to ordained vocations. So this is especially important work that we can offer to the younger people among us. But we have to take the time to listen, to be curious, and to be compassionate about the things that they are passionate about. To do this truly effectively, we have to be open to perspectives different than our own, and we have to be able to reimagine the contours of our own youth alongside the benefits of wisdom and age. This is also work that we are called to both as individuals and also as a whole church. Your invitation this week is to think of a time when someone noticed something in you and named it for you in a way that helped you understand yourself different? This week, be open to looking and listening to ways God might be inviting you to share something that you see (in kindness, gentleness, humility, and courage) about someone you encounter.