I Corinthians 1:3-9
“Ready for the Day”
November 27, 2011 - First Sunday in Advent

         I’ve got brown socks and I’ve got navy blue and black socks. Sometimes, in the light of our bedroom, I can’t tell the difference. I pull a pair of socks from the drawer, hold it next to the remaining pairs, and walk away sure I’ve got brown socks to go with the brown pants and shoes I’m wearing that day. Then in the daylight starting in through a window I look down to see that the socks in my hand aren’t brown at all. They’re black.

         As Paul began writing to the church in Corinth, he wanted them to understand their need to examine the clothing of their souls in the light of a day that is still to come, the day he calls in verse 8, “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Unlike his letters to the Romans or the Thessalonians, Paul has lots of hard things to say to the Corinthians. Here at the outset he wants them to see that they haven’t been looking at themselves in the right light. He wants them to be dressed in a way that will stand up to the light of day. C. S. Lewis put it like this:

Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the day­light of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer.[1]

         In verse 3 of our text, Paul takes a familiar Greek greeting, just the word “grace,” and transforms it into a Christian blessing. “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Grace and peace from God through Jesus Christ are the way to be clothed for the day that is coming.

         Take a look at the first ten verses of this letter. Paul names Christ in all but verse 5. Nine out of ten opening verses stress the point that we are ready for the day to come only in and through Jesus Christ. That point is stressed for us at the beginning of Advent. Our lives only make sense, we are only dressed properly, if we live in the light of Jesus.

         Paul thanks God for the Corinthians in verse 4. Read the rest of the letter and you might wonder why. They are divided. They are teaching heresy. They are living in sin. You would think these are the last people he would be thankful for. But his gratitude is based on grace, which Paul says again, “has been given to you in Christ Jesus.” Paul isn’t thankful for the Corinthians’ failures. He’s thankful for the grace by which Jesus is at work in them to redeem their failures.

         Despite all the problems in Corinth, these were abundantly blessed Christians. Verse 5 says, “for in every way you have been enriched in him.” They spoke, as Paul will say later in the letter, with the tongues of angels. They knew, as he would say in chapter 2, many of the deep things of God. According to verse 6, the testimony, the witness to Christ was being strengthened in their church. Look at them and you saw Jesus alive and active. Verse 7 says they lack none of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They were completely equipped.

         Likewise God equips you and I in Jesus Christ. No spiritual gift is unavailable. Nothing we really need is left out. Our problem, like it was for the Corinthians, is to remember what gifts really matter, what we really need in order to dress for the daylight.

         Folks in Corinth were enamored with flashy spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, offering prophecies, working miracles. Because they had those, they thought they already had everything, that they had arrived at the spiritual peak. They forgot there is a day to come, a light to shine that would make those flashy gifts look cheap. Paul explained to them in chapter 13 that they had forgotten about the gift of love.

         You and I get wrapped up in flashy gifts as well. Some of them aren’t even as spiritually worthwhile as the Corinthians’ tongues and miracles. We get enamored of the bright boxes we drag home on Black Friday, or the funny new television series on Netflix, and forget the deeper and better gifts God is giving us in Christ.

         Advent is here to remind us that we are preparing for something beyond this life, getting dressed for a day that is still to come. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus warned us that no one knows when that day will come. We simply need to be ready, putting our resources and gifts into preparation for that day.

         The end of verse 7 completes Paul’s thought that the Corinthians were “not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s the point of all the gifts we are given, whether material or spiritual. Will we put them to use in ways that make us ready for the day which is coming?

         My family gave me a new fly box for my birthday last month. I was running out of room in the boxes I have. I like to organize my trout flies, line up neat rows of little fur and feather creations according to size. Adams, Royal Wulff, Pheasant Tail, Prince, Hare’s Ear. I anticipate some pleasant hours this winter moving some of my flies into that new box and then admiring them.

         The point, though, is to be ready to catch fish in the spring. A nice fly collection is no good unless you tie them on a line and get them wet. A fly’s purpose, its end, is to connect you with a feisty fish that will give you a fight to remember. Without that aim, you might as well make those feathers into hair extensions like some women have done with fly hackle.

         It’s fine and good to be blessed by God with many gifts. Yet the day is coming when the light will reveal how we used those gifts. The gifts you’ve been given, whether prayer or money, whether a house or help, whether teaching or learning, are meant to connect you with Jesus Christ and with His people. Gifts from God are meant to get us dressed and ready for the day that’s coming.

         Verse 8 tells us we have one more gift. “He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As we wait for that unknown day, God will give us the strength to get there. We need to use our gifts. We need to live in the light of Jesus Christ. But ultimately it depends on God. It’s all His grace. They are all His gifts. It is all done in His strength.

         It was obvious for Paul’s first readers. If God in­tended for them, the messed-up, misguided, arrogant and woefully sinful Christians who lived in Corinth, to be blameless someday, it had to be His doing, not theirs. They were not yet even close to God’s intention for their lives. Yet Paul was confident that when the final day came, the day when they would meet Jesus face to face, they would be ready, not because of what they had done, as we sing sometimes, but because of what He had done for them.

         So verse 9 begins, “God is faithful.” There is awesome comfort in those words, “God is faithful.” Jesus warned us in the Gospel lesson against our unfaithfulness, against our failures to stay alert and ready for His day. We all live botched lives. We choose the wrong socks. We leave the flies in the box. We seek the wrong gifts. We misuse or neglect the gifts we are given. As the confession goes, we have not loved God and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. But God is faithful. What He says, He will do. As Jesus said in Mark 13:31, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

         With all the warnings of Advent comes this assurance. God is faithful. He will make sure we end up where He wants us, where Paul says we were called, “into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” That’s what we are getting dressed for. That’s what all our preparation is for. So that we can be dressed in clothing that will look good in the light which shines from the face of Jesus.

         Let’s not just be ready for Christmas. Let’s be ready for Christ. Let’s take time this Advent to look at how we are dressed. Let’s think about what gifts we are trying to acquire. Let’s consider what day it is for which we are preparing. Jesus tells us the day of His return is coming. Paul tells us that God has given us everything we need to be ready for it.

         Dress yourself with time to pray and read the words of Scripture which Jesus said would never pass away. Put socks on people who have none. Examine your heart in the light of Christ and make peace with a friend or family member. Give forgiveness or ask for it. Check your eyes in the mirror to see if Christ would like what He sees there. With the grace and help of God, be ready for the daylight, ready for His day.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj