WEEK 1: A TIME FOR THANKSGIVING

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Thankful for God's Grace: 1 Corinthians 1.3–9

3 Grace to you and peace from God our father and King Jesus the Lord.

4 I always thank my God for you, for the grace of God that was given to you in King Jesus. 5 You were enriched in him in everything, in every kind of speech and knowledge, 6 just as the messianic message was established among you, 7 so that you aren't missing out on any spiritual gift as you wait eagerly for our Lord, King Jesus, to be revealed. 8 He will establish you right through to the end, so that you are blameless on the day of our Lord, King Jesus. 9 God is faithful! And it is through God that you have been called into the fellowship of his son, King Jesus, our Lord.

We weren't long into the phone call before I noticed something was different. It was the first time I'd spoken to this friend for some weeks and, whichever way the conversation turned, one name kept coming up. She and James had been talking over dinner last night ... James was hoping to get promotion soon and would be working much closer to where she lived ... perhaps I knew so-and-so who'd been at school with James? ... and so on, and so on. There was a warmth, an excitement, and the conclusion was obvious; any minute now, she hoped, James would ask the key question, to which her answer was ready and waiting.

Well, it happened, of course, and they are now married, but my point is to notice how people give themselves away by what they go on talking about, almost (it sometimes appears) to the point of obsession. It doesn't take long in someone's company, or even during a phone call, before you discover what's really exciting them: what is at the centre of their waking thoughts.

If we had any doubts what Paul was excited about, what was at the centre of his thoughts and intentions, this first paragraph of one of his most varied and lengthy letters would soon put us straight. One name keeps coming up, over and over again: Jesus. The name occurs eight times in these nine verses. Paul couldn't stop talking about Jesus, because without Jesus nothing else he said or did made any sense. And what he wanted the Corinthians to get hold of most of all is what it means to have Jesus at the middle of your story, your life, your thoughts, your imagination. If they could do that, all the other issues that rush to and fro through the letter would sort themselves out.

In particular, he wanted them to have Jesus at the centre of their understanding of the world and of history. Most of the Christians in Corinth had not been Jews but ordinary 'pagans'. They had been Gentiles, believing in various gods and goddesses, but without any idea that history, the story of the world, was going anywhere or that their own lives might be part of that forward movement. Again and again Paul wants them to learn this lesson: that they have been caught up into a great movement of the love and power of the one true God, the God of Israel, whose work for the whole world has now been unveiled through the events concerning his son. That's why Jesus is at the centre of the picture.

Look how, with a few deft strokes of the pen, he sketches a picture of the Christians in Corinth so that, at every point, their story is intertwined with Jesus' story. To begin with, God has set them aside for his own special purposes in King Jesus; that's what 'called to be holy' in verse 2 means. I don't possess very many suits, but there is one I keep for best, which only comes out on the most special of occasions. That's what being 'holy' means, from God's point of view; it means that he has set people aside for special purposes; and the people in question are expected to cooperate with this.

But once they've been set aside as special, they discover that they are part of a large and growing worldwide family, brothers and sisters of everyone who 'calls on the name of our Lord King Jesus'. In fact, 'calling on' his name is the one and only sign of membership in this family, though people in Paul's day and ever since have tried to introduce other signs of membership as well. And the idea of 'calling on his name' links this worldwide family back to the earlier story of Israel, the people who 'called on the name of the Lord' in the sense of the Lord YHWH, Israel's God. Right from the start, Paul shows what's going on: in Jesus, Israel's true king, the world's true Lord, Israel's one God has become personally present in the world, summoning all people into his family.

As in most of his letters, Paul follows the opening greeting by telling the Corinthians what he thanks God for when he thinks of them. Notice how he moves from what has happened to them in the past, through the sort of people they are in the present and on to the hope they have for the future, with Jesus at the centre at every stage. God has given them his 'grace' in King Jesus (verse 4). 'Grace' is one of those little words that contains a whole universe of meaning, summing up the fact that God loved them and acted decisively on their behalf even though they had done nothing whatever to deserve it, but rather the opposite.

The result of this 'grace' is that God's riches have enriched them (verses...