In vessels of clay

 2 June 2024

Second Sunday after Pentecost

1 Samuel 3.1-10

Psalm 139.1-7,15-18

2 Corinthians 4.5-12

Mark 2.23-3.6

I remember once as a small boy staying over at my friend’s house, being asked to help set the table. “Just put this in the centre of the table, Evan”, said my friend’s mum. But it was a crystal bowl, it looked and felt precious, and I - felt so clumsy. I must have looked doubtful, because she said to me, “It’s OK. Just walk slowly.” And I carried it very carefully indeed - the bowl that was so delicate and that caught the light so beautifully. But the bowl and I both survived! It felt like a great trust had been placed in me - and a massive relief to get it safely to the table.  After dinner, I stuck to the knives and forks!

So today’s lessons are for ordinary, imperfect human beings who know they drop things, and get things wrong, and that they don’t quite measure up to the task of being servants of the light. Ordinary human beings - who respond to God’s calling in ordinary, human ways. And who find themselves carrying, as St Paul puts it, the light of the Spirit in cracked earthenware vessels. We’ll get back to that, though.

 When I looked at the first lesson, during the week, I recalled that we actually read this in church earlier this year, during Epiphany, the season that celebrates the coming of the light. Why, I thought, is the lectionary suggesting we read it again today? And I found that in my sermon earlier in the year I had reflected on how the young and the old might hear the voice of God differently, and how older leaders need to recognise the new insights that might come through new generations at the same time as younger Church leaders need to honour the traditions of faithful older Christians. But today, I thought, maybe the message is simply that we need to learn to listen, because the whisper of God in the night is too easily overlooked. This reading invites us to think about the times we have heard God speaking to us - and maybe about some of the times God didn’t seem to be speaking to us. It’s a lesson in being perceptive, and a model for our own spiritual growth. Because God’s voice comes within all the other competing voices of life, but it does come. To all of us. It’s not a very loud voice, and we need to be paying attention in order to hear it. We need to learn to be still in order to heighten our awareness of divine wisdom.

The psalm, I think, reminds us that our awareness of God’s presence can be felt deep within our own bodies. We don’t hear too much about a theology of our physical bodies, but today’s psalm reflects on God’s intimate awareness of us and invites us to get in touch with the wisdom of our own bodies. We are wonderfully and fearfully made, and our bodies as well as our minds and souls are made in the image of our loving Creator. The psalmist invites us to be deeply aware of the goodness and beauty of our body and all its functions - even when ageing or illness or the heedless consumer culture of the advertising world remind us that our bodies are imperfect and impermanent and prone to distress. Be aware of the movement of the breath in your body, because it is the Spirit that gives you life. Be aware of your body’s need for nourishment and movement and joy, because the yearning of all living things is the movement of God’s Holy Spirit. 

“Search me and know me,” the psalmist prays. We are known completely by God. Everything we do matters to God. God’s knowledge of us is grounded in love, God’s awareness and creativity form the graceful movement of the Holy Spirit within us. From the moment of our conception onwards, God’s Spirit has moved through our lives at every level - from the microscopic physiology of our lives to the level of our highest thoughts and feelings. Nothing about you is too small or unimportant for divine awareness and activity. To meditate on God’s knowledge of you is to discover yourself as loved by God. Amazement and gratitude are the appropriate responses to the interplay of divine creativity, infinity, and intimacy through which God makes Godself known to you in the depth of your own body.

In Second Corinthians, St Paul is giving his unruly congregation a good telling off. “Don’t consider yourselves any better than others”, he warns them. But in this passage, Paul pauses to remind us that we - each one of us - are entrusted with the clear light of God’s Holy Spirit. Given to us, he says, so that we can see clearly the glory of God in the face of Christ. But - we are spiritual klutzes. We carry this unspeakable treasure around in our fallible and foolish earthenware vessels - our human hearts and minds and bodies. God entrusts this to us, not in the vain hope that this time we won’t drop it - but in the loving knowledge that we are limited, sinful and short-sighted human beings. It’s not, I think, an exercise in trying to make you something that you are not - a super-Christian, perhaps - it’s not by way of blaming you for being the fallible creature God created you to be - but a way of saying, “this is how much I love you”. 

And Paul goes on, reminding us that we have competing tendencies within us. We are prone to death and decay, we may be persecuted but more likely we are susceptible to backsliding, getting distracted by everyday responsibilities, by grief, or by fleeting and trivial entertainments, losing sight of the treasure that is the Spirit within us. And it is this Spirit that patiently re-orients us to light and love, to what really matters, which is mercy, and kindness, and truth. 

Spiritually, this passage invites us to learn to focus on what is of lasting value, to keep sight of the model of God’s love that we see in Jesus, and to know that this love will accompany us no matter what fearful places our lives will take us. We do grow to resemble that to which we pay attention the most. Pay attention to the light and the breath of God’s Holy Spirit that is within you, and have courage. In life, and in death, you are held safe in the loving embrace of God’s Spirit.

And the Gospel? Reminds us that all of this is for us. That everything is sheer gift, and that your needs are known. Remember the sparrows, that Jesus tells us are individually known and loved by God? “And you”, he tells us, “are way more important to God than that”. The Sabbath was central to the ancient religion of Israel. It has a whole commandment to itself, the fourth commandment that warns us to keep holy the Sabbath as the memorial of God’s holy creative purpose. But - it is not as important as hungry disciples plucking a few heads of grain to eat, and it is not as important as the healing of a man who has a withered arm. 

True religion is to see the loving purpose in everything that God has made, and to show compassion. Woven into the fabric of our lives, the Holy Spirit is not hemmed in by any legalistic religious constraints. God’s Spirit is alive, on the move and constantly breaking down the barriers human beings put up to preserve the status quo. Every day is a day for healing, every day is a day for sharing the bread of friendship; every day is a day for listening, for being available to someone who needs to be heard. “Stretch out your hand,” is God’s invitation to all of us. Stretch out your hand to receive the bread that you need for both body and soul, or to offer it to someone in need. Stretch out your hand to heal someone through the simple gift of physical touch. Jesus tells us that the meeting of human need - for sustenance, for inclusion and for healing - is more important than all our religious ritual. It’s the same message as the one we hear in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 25. “When you care for one of these little ones in my name, you are caring for me”. 

True religion is about kindness and mercy, about inclusion and hospitality and speaking up against injustice. True religion is about being on the side of those who suffer, wherever they are and whatever their religion or language or ethnicity. True religion is about seeing others as God sees them. And it is about recognising the words that are God’s leading, trusting that we are made and known by God, and following the illumination of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And true religion is about paying attention, having courage, and being in love with all that God loves.