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