HOW TO SAY HELLO

1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

When he walked in the front door I was sure he was looking for financial assistance. He was a tall, young man dressed in an old Army fatigue jacket and well-worn jeans, with a stocking cap pulled down tightly over his head. He had at least a day’s growth of beard and looked as though he had slept outside. I went up to him, said, “Hello,” and welcomed him to worship. I have to admit that I was surprised that he didn’t ask me for money.

He stayed throughout the morning, walking around watching people. A few spoke to him, but most averted their eyes and walked on by. I expected that by the end of the morning I would find out what he needed.

He “visited” all three worship services and joined in the fellowship hours, partaking of coffee and doughnuts. When it came time for the contemporary service at 12:30 he joined the others in grabbing a bagel before sitting down in the sanctuary. Suddenly he got up and walked up onto the chancel platform and sat on a park bench that had been placed there by one of our members who sat with him and carried on a dialogue about what it was like to be ignored because of his appearance.

It was then that his identity was revealed. It turned out that the young man was one of our own youth, made up to look like a homeless man. This youth, active and well-known by much of the congregation experienced being shunned and unrecognized by most as he walked among us that morning, simply because of his appearance.

How and when we say hello makes a big difference in our relationships. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in response to reports that there were divisions and disagreements among the members. We know that he wrote more than once to address these problems, but he always began with blessing and thanksgiving. Paul knew how to say hello to even the most recalcitrant of his followers.

Although schooled in the ways of rhetoric, I think Paul also had somehow learned along the way the importance of “believing” his people into who they were and how they were to behave before he began his exhortation to them (see Thurman, p.106).

In this letter to the Corinthians Paul first identifies himself as an apostle called by God, assuring them of both his authority and his vocation. He then pronounces the double blessing of grace and peace upon his audience. In so doing, he reminds the Corinthian Christians that they are the recipients of God’s freely given, unmerited favor. Not stopping there, he adds the Jewish blessing of shalom and the attendant assurance of God’s ordering, wholeness, and inclusion of them as children of God.

In “benedicting” them at the outset with grace and peace he is reminding them of who they are and whose they are.

He gives thanks that they too have been called by God to be part of God’s family and that their calling is confirmed by the gifts they have received, especially of speech and knowledge. And he reminds them that they are part of the family of God, of Christians everywhere, who use those gifts within the context of the whole of God’s plan for humankind as they await the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Paul will broach difficult and divisive problems throughout the rest of his letter to the Christians at Corinth, but at the outset he reassures them and confirms their value as sanctified, literally, set apart to be holy, through God’s grace.

In his small book Jesus and the Disinherited, which Martin Luther King, Jr. reportedly frequently carried with him on his travels, African American theologian and prophet Howard Thurman tells the story of a time when he was traveling on a train and sat down across from an elderly white woman. The woman promptly pointed towards him and said to the conductor, “What is that doing here?” Amazingly quick on his feet, the conductor creatively replied, “That has a ticket.”

Thurman relates that,

For the next fifty miles this lady talked for five or ten or fifteen minutes with each person who was seated alone in that coach, setting forth her philosophy of human relationships and the basis of her objection to my presence in the car. I was able to see the atmosphere in the entire car shift from common indifference to active recognition of and, to some extent, positive resentment of my presence; an ill will spreading its virus by contagion (p.78).

In a surprisingly short space of time what could have been a context for connection was turned instead into an atmosphere of hate.

On this Human Relations Sunday, we do not have to go far to see similar kinds of hatred perpetrated towards those who are our real or perceived enemies, as we recall the horrific acts of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison during the trial this week of the soldier reported to be the ringleader. We are reminded of how easy it is to slip into the habit of dehumanizing other human beings based on the wrongs they have committed or simply because they are different from us. In the process we dehumanize ourselves.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians to reprimand them for their behavior and to teach them about appropriate relationships within the Christian community, and he began by reminding them of their status as children of God.

I don’t think any of us can be reminded of that enough. Last week we remembered our baptism, by re-citing the baptismal vows and by experiencing the water symbolic of our identity as children of God. We were reminded that we, like the Corinthian Christians, are called by God for a new vocation as part of the entire body of Christ wherever it is present.

As members of that universal body we are called to be agents of transformation wherever hatred is present or threatens to arise. We are called to be the first ones to step towards reconciliation with our personal enemies, those who are part of our own groups or families with whom we are at odds.

We are called to set aside feelings of bitterness and anger when those we thought we knew betray us, and strive for understanding that literally places us in their shoes.

We are called to drop generalizations about those we call our enemies and come to know them one at a time as persons of worth, while at the same time acknowledging our own worth and humility before God.

We are called to be sincere and genuine, and to act with integrity and honesty in every relationship we enter. As Christians we are especially called to enter into relationships, as Jesus did, with those whom others might call questionable, or not the “right kinds of people.”

We are called to respond as Jesus did when asked where he was staying with the words, “Come and see,” for it is in the reality of our homes, our workplaces, our places of recreation, and of worship where others may see whether and how we live out our vocation.

A lot can be learned about individuals and communities from the correspondence among them. This past week I spent some time reading some of the letters written to and by Martin Luther King, Jr. Like Paul, King was a man who sought to draw out the best of the people with whom he was engaged in the struggle for human rights, even as he exhorted them to behavior fitting their positions and calling.

On January 11, 1957, King, along with his colleagues in the Southern Leadership Conference, wrote to President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon requesting a visit to the southern states to view first hand and speak out against the civil rights abuses being committed there. On February 14 another more urgent appeal was sent in the face of the White House’s response that a visit could not be scheduled. On the same date King sent a telegram to his wife, Coretta Scott King with this text:

My Darling, It is a pleasure for me to pause while attending to important business which affects the welfare of this nation and attend to the most important business in the world, namely choosing as my valentine the sweetest and most lovely wife and mother in all the world. As the days go by my love grows ever greater, for you will always be my valentine. Martin. (The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. IV, pp.132-136)

As Christians we are called into the family of God to maintain warm relationships within our families, as well as to strive for peace and human rights in our communities and throughout the world. We cannot truly have one without the other.

Just as Paul wrote words of blessing and thanksgiving to the Christians of Corinth, so may we be reminded daily of the importance of greeting one another, and especially those who are strangers to us, with the grace and peace that is offered to us in Christ Jesus, thus “believing” them and ourselves into the lives God intends for us.

Prayer:
God of grace and peace, continually call forth the best in us and set our wayward feet upon the paths of righteousness and justice. Make us into people who are able to “believe” one another into the lives we want and that you desire for us. Attune us to the places where human relationships are broken and grant us the grace and peace to be agents of reconciliation and restoration. In the name of the one who has reconciled us to you through his life, death, and resurrection. Amen.