Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year A

It is a truism that all human beings want to be happy. And so it was for the people of Corinth. Like all the rest of us they wanted to live decent lives free from sickness and death. They wanted their life to have some meaning. They did not want to be the refuse of the earth, to be expendable, to be of no account. And finally they wanted to find love … to find someone that they could care about, someone who would care about them.

It was no easier then than it is for us now. In the process of our discussion of happiness, I asked my classes whether they thought perfect happiness was possible for the ordinary human being. Just about half of the group answered “no” (most of them being in the 8:30 class) and the reasons they gave come down to this: we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. One student thought that happiness was possible if and only if we accommodate our desires to the limited possibilities that the ordinary human life provides.

… to make the best of well days in preparation for days of sickness

… to develop a self-respect that will not depend on the respect or honor that comes from others

… to love deeply but to be thankful when our loves love us in return; to love fervently now, today, remembering that the day will likely come when our loves must leave us

… going either into different lives or into the next life through the door of death.

The other half of the group (those in the 9:30 class) took a brighter view … arguing that you can truly be happy even with the limited goods we have now…especially if one has the faith to hope that perfect happiness is possible if only a person is true to themselves and their God.

This last message was the message that Paul was writing to his friends in Corinth. Those first Corinthian Christians were by and large from the poor, the slaves, the unimportant anonymous underclass of the city. Their life was short and hazardous. No one thought they were of any importance. To love and be loved was a difficult task when it was so hard just to make a living.

To such a group Paul wrote the great message of hope that he had learned from his Lord, Jesus Christ. It was the promise of happiness for the “ordinary” folk of this world who want nothing more than life, meaning, and love. He wrote to them sentiments like the following:

It is true that “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”

Not many of you are “movers and shakers” … people of power followed constantly by the press to hear what you think or what you will do.

For sure, not many of you come from the upper classes, those higher reaches of society where supposedly the “best people” dwell.

But that means nothing.

What means something is that you are among those who have been called to be with God for all eternity.

God wants silly old you, to show the worldly wise that their wisdom is worthless if they take it too seriously.

God wants powerless old you, as weak as you are, to show those who pride themselves on their strength that a human is nothing if not supported by God.

God chose old ordinary you, to show those who pride themselves on their genes that there is no such thing as a second class human being.

God chose you to prove that the most ordinary human being can boast that they are loved by God, that they mean something because they means something to God, that they are called to live and to live forever … in God’s heavenly City.

Jesus Christ has brought us the life of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God and because of this even the least of us can cry: “Indeed, I will boast because I have been called to life by the Lord and even now I am held in the palm of his loving hand. No matter what is happening now I will be carried to final happiness in the hand of one who loves me.”