Rev. Dr. Winston Persaud
As we continue the Lenten journey in 2024, as much as we try, we cannot but hear two messages: you can be self-made and powerful by whatever means; you are doomed to be nothing! The first message includes the unmistakable word: say and do whatever you want, even if you lie and deceive, once it helps to advance you and give you power over others. The second message says that you are doomed to be nothing; don’t even try to be someone of respect and dignity.
These two messages are not simply out there in the world, but not in the church and religious communities, and among Christians and people of other faiths. On the contrary, there is no place where we can go where those messages are absent.
Writing to the believers in Christ in the city of Corinth, St. Paul was keenly aware of those two messages. In the face of them, he declares to believers that “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (v. 26). In reading these words, the sobering words keep coming to mind, “Remember where you came from!” These are words which I heard from childhood in the colony of British Guiana, which is so shaped by plantation slavery and indentureship—expressions of the power of colonialism. These are words which I would be foolish to forget, as I live my life in today’s world.
However, precisely in the face of those words, we need to hear again and again St. Paul’s words, the good news of God’s gracious choosing in Christ Jesus of the “low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (v. 28). They are the words of hope for all. Paul writes, “[God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (vv. 30-31).
Thanks be to God that no one has to live as if the two messages—you can be self-made and powerful by whatever means; you are doomed to be nothing—are all we have. No! For Jesus’ sake, God offers new life: “righteousness, sanctification, redemption,” which we cannot earn. In Christ, you belong to God. God sees you and claims you through the Holy Spirit as God’s child. That’s who you are!
O, God, I give you thanks that for Jesus’ sake, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you accept me and give me the worth I have. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
