All Saints, Dorval
January 14, 2024
John Singleton Copley, “Samuel Relating to Eli the Judgments of God upon Eli’s House,” 1780.
I confess: Whenever this set of lessons comes around in our three-year lectionary cycle, I am less than thrilled to see the lesson from I Corinthians.
The passages from Samuel and John are so rich and wonderful, filled with vivid personalities and glimpses into what it’s like to know God face-to-face. And then we get this chunk of St. Paul sounding joyless, shaming and legalistic (even when he’s explicitly arguing against legalism!). Which is simultaneously not the kind of reading a preacher is super excited about tackling, but also not the kind of reading that a preacher feels comfortable just leaving hanging there, uncommented on.
But as so often happens when we are presented with a passage of scripture that initially seems off-putting, when we wrestle with the message until it blesses us, we find unexpected riches.
This passage from Corinthians is only a small part of a long and complex argument. In it, Paul discusses the various ways in which the Corinthian church is failing to be faithful to the Gospel. And he tackles the place of marriage and family responsibilities, and sexual morality, within the life of a Christian community (which, let’s remind ourselves, is expecting the return of Jesus to judge the world at any moment).
There’s no question that Paul gets slightly hysterical when discussing sexual matters. One could engage in all kinds of armchair psychology in this regard, but that’s not the point.
The very valid point at the center of Paul’s argument is that engaging in a sexual relationship is a kind of intimacy unique in human experience, and not to be taken lightly; that it creates a real and permanent bond between the people in the relationship; and that the practice among Greek men of casually visiting prostitutes and thinking nothing of it, was incompatible with the kind of commitment to Christ that the Corinthians had made.
One thinks, in this context, of the old-fashioned term “carnal knowledge”.
Because what we’re talking about is knowledge – knowing and being known, in the broadest sense of the world. Being intimate, being vulnerable; knowing things about someone that perhaps no one else does, and that could be deeply hurtful if inappropriately shared.
And part of Paul’s point is that the one we know, and are known by, most deeply, should be God; and that all our other relationships should be conducted in the light of the standard set by our relationship with God.
And this is where we circle back to those other readings, the ones I was so much more interested in when I first looked over this week’s scriptures. Because all of them – Samuel, John, and the psalm – deal with knowing, on multiple levels.
In the scene of Samuel’s call from God, the emphasis is on what Samuel, at least initially, does not know – “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Despite serving with Eli the priest in the temple of the Lord, Samuel was not expecting God to speak to him directly. He did not know what it was like to hear the word of the Lord, and he did not know what to say in response.
This kind of knowledge is intellectual knowledge, the kind we use our brains for. When Samuel, with Eli’s help, does finally figure out what is happening – and the response he should make when he hears God’s voice – it is the beginning of another kind of knowledge: the knowledge of relationship; the knowledge we are talking about when we talk about knowing someone well; the knowledge of the heart and the emotions. (English, of course, is both enriched and hampered in this regard by using the same word for the two concepts; si je prêchais maintenant en français, j’utiliserais tous les deux les mots savoir et connaître; auf Deutsch würde ich umschalten zwischen wissen und kennen).
And of course Paul is talking about a third kind of knowledge, the knowledge of the body, which is in some ways the most visceral and intense knowledge of all, and is connected to, but distinct from, the other two.
All the kinds of knowledge we have access to – intellectual, emotional, physical – should be directed first and foremost towards God. There is no point at which we should stop learning about God, listening for God’s voice, striving to turn our hearts to God, and seeking to meet God incarnationally – in bread and wine, water and flame, oil and song, work and rest, and in our siblings in Christ.
Nathanael learns this when he meets Jesus in the gospel of John. Nathanael has intellectual knowledge – he knows (or thinks he knows), that nothing good can come out of Nazareth. His friend Philip convinces him to come and see Jesus, insisting that Nathanael will be convinced, by argument and experience, to expand his knowledge.
Nathanael is not only convinced; he meets and knows Jesus on an entirely different level – the level of relationship, of emotional connection, of “getting to know” someone rather than knowing things about them. And Jesus promises much more for Nathanael than just that initial connection: thanks to knowing Jesus, Nathanael, like Samuel, will know visions, and wonders, and the mystery of seeing and hearing God.
Today’s psalm sums up both the joy and the wonder, and the vulnerability and fear, of being fully known. Lord, you have searched me out and known me … Indeed there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether … Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it … My body was not hidden from you, while I was being made in secret … How deep I find your thoughts, O God! How great is the sum of them!
All three kinds of knowing are present here – intellectual, emotional and physical – and the Psalmist and God are intimately known to each other on all three levels, an inexhaustible knowing that always leaves room for greater closeness and further learning.
And all these scriptures, but the Psalm in particular, remind us that the knowing goes both ways – that we may spend a lifetime growing in knowledge of God, but that God has known us intimately, in body and mind and heart and spirit, since before we were born. That is the context of all of our knowledge of God: that God begins by knowing and caring for us more than we can imagine.
And I think this (as well as – let’s be honest – his own neuroses) lies behind Paul’s outrage at the idea of the Corinthians’ lax morality: when we are so known, so beloved, so intimately and comprehensively cared for by God, how can we bestow our own knowledge and intimacy casually and unthinkingly?
In our contemporary context, it is an invitation not to return to the strict and repressive external forms of morality of past eras, but rather to refuse to take our sexual lives lightly, to insist on treating ourselves and our partners as whole human beings, beloved by God, not as commodities to be swiped through on an app or used solely for gratification.
Samuel and Nathanael learn to know God, and are profoundly changed by the experience. Paul reminds us that knowledge and intimacy are deep and powerful things, not to be treated lightly. And the Psalm gives us language with which to come to grips with, and rejoice in, being fully and lovingly known by God; and to keep trying, day by day, to see God more clearly, love God more dearly, and follow God more nearly, as we move into ever greater knowledge of God.
Amen.
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