4th Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
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[i] instigated by the question
of whether or not it is ok for Christians to eat meat that has been offered to
idols. 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?
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