Photo credit: Sandra Seitamaa, used with permission via Unsplash
This morning’s Scriptures offer us two profiles in courage.
One is humble. One is bold.
Maybe a bit surprisingly, the humble one is the Apostle Paul – Paul, the over-the-top, zealous advocate. Paul, who wades fearlessly into the conflicts of his day and challenges the communities he loves. Paul, who is so right that he doesn’t mind blasting those who are wrong. Paul, who is always clear, convinced, and convicted – and who will tell you so.
And we kind of love him for all that. We’ve been walking with Paul and the Corinthian community for a few weeks now.[1] Along the way, he’s reminded us that we are the body of Christ, each of us a gifted and needed member of that body. He’s grounded us in a love – patient and kind – that puts the well-being of others at the center of our lives. And this morning, he declares what is of first importance: that Christ died for us in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried and raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Paul proclaims resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus. And ours. So much of the Good News that we have, as Christians, we have because the Apostle Paul is brave and brash.
But then he does something here that may feel a bit out of character. The Apostle Paul takes a breath, and says to his beloved Corinthian family, “But who am I to tell you this? I mean really, who am I?”
Because he knows – and they know – that before Paul was apostle and defender of the church, he was its lead prosecutor – its lead persecutor. He was called Saul back then. And in the days after Jesus’ death, he aggressively hunted down and jailed those who followed the way of Jesus. Do you remember? He was there when the crowd stoned Stephen – he was holding their coats and cheering them on. And then he went and got warrants to round up and imprison the followers of Jesus – an ancient version of today’s mass raids. He was... not a nice guy. Until he encountered the Good News that he is now so on fire to share.
But Paul remembers the before times – and he says it out loud – here, as he is making his biggest point – he recalls all the ways he participated in the unjust systems of his day. “Who am I to tell you all this? I am the least of the apostles – and really, I don’t even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”
In the midst of making his most important point, Paul has the courage to be humble. He remembers.
Paul does this because for him remembering all that is the key to unlocking and opening up his experience of God’s abounding grace. “I persecuted the church. I shouldn’t even be called an apostle. But by the Grace of God, I am what I am, and God’s grace to me was not without effect.” Paul participated in the unjust systems of his day – he was a leading henchman – and he says that to remind himself – and to share – the magnitude of the change – and the boundless power of God to make something more of us – even when we are standing in the way.
God’s grace abounds.
Paul tells this story again and again in his letters – his participation in the powers – as a way of tapping into the bigger power of the grace of God, as a way of joining the work of the Risen Christ – building up this body of Christ – with a love that puts the well-being of others at the center of our shared life.
It takes courage to be that humble, that vulnerable, that honest.
For people of relative privilege, it’s on us to do something like that when we come to join the celebration of something like Black History Month. As we celebrate those who have thrived and blessed the world notwithstanding the world’s oppressive systems, we have to be honest about the part we have played – particularly in this moment in history – as those systems double down.
The situation we find ourselves in today did not happen overnight. It has been over two hundred years in the making.[2] In this nation’s founding documents, the Founders wrote of lofty ideals: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” And among those unalienable rights are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
But when the Founders got around to writing the Constitution – notwithstanding their noble and worthy words – they wrote slavery into it. They assumed and protected the enslavement of human beings – they counted enslaved persons of African descent as only 3/5ths a person, withholding the privileges and immunities of citizenship from them, while granting them to everyone else... well, to white male landowners, really.
And we know the history, that a hundred more years of enslavement would follow – so many Black lives brutalized – a wrenching civil war – as folks like Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman labored on – until emancipation. And only then, would this nation write into its Constitution the promise of Equal Protection of law – for all people; everyone who had been enslaved, now free; everyone born in the United States – including those enslaved – everyone born in the United States a US citizen. (Did you know that’s where “birthright citizenship” comes from?)
And, we know the history of the resistance that followed. Jim Crow laws. Systems of segregation in schools, and housing, and public accommodation – in the South, and the North, and in California – the impacts of those systems of segregation persisting to this day. As folks like W.E.B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, John Lewis labored on.
We know the history of the New Jim Crow[3] – the school to prison pipeline – voter suppression -- the history that our neighbors in Marin City have shared with us of how housing restrictions after WWII kept patterns of segregation in place. What that looks like today – as folks like Floyd Thompkins, and Royce McLemore, and Bettie Hodges labor on.
Our nation has promised Equal Protection, but never fully made it so. So it shouldn’t surprise us when, in this moment, an explicitly racist regime comes to power, and on their first day, launches their attack on any progress toward racial equity, on the celebration of our nation’s diversity, on the inclusion of all people in the promise of equal protection of law. We’ve watched in just two weeks as the new regime has eliminated offices working for equity, accessibility, inclusion, and diversity – as if those values no longer matter – as if our nation’s history had never happened. Just this week, the new Attorney General has directed the Justice Department to study how it might go after and prosecute private organizations that support equity, accessibility, inclusion, and diversity.[4] What we see now flows out of this history our nation has failed to address and heal. This moment has been two hundred years in the making. Will we live up to the promise of equal protection, or not?
For people of relative privilege, if we are going to help do anything meaningful in this present moment, we have to learn this history and acknowledge that we have been privileged by these systems at the expense of those who have been harmed. We have to be honest about that so that we can see things clearly
so that we might change –
so that we might listen with humility to those who have been harmed by those systems, hear their lived-out wisdom;
so that together we might resist and change the systems that grind away.
The Apostle Paul acknowledges his participation in the systems that oppress in his day. That humble honesty opens up for him the opportunity to experience the abundance of God’s grace – to be transformed by that grace – and to join God’s liberating work in the world. As he will later write, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” The freedom of all people.
Courage requires us first to be humble.
And then it requires us to be bold.
And that’s the second Scripture.[5] We pick back up just after Jesus has proclaimed the good news – God is on the move – the Spirit of God is upon him to proclaim good news to the poor, healing for every hurt, release for the captive, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of God’s jubilee – economic justice for all people. And, he says, you are seeing that come to life today. And the people lap it up. They are amazed.
But Jesus isn’t done talking. He clarifies, “Now you’re probably going to say. Go on, Jesus. Do it here. Heal your own first. Pour all that blessing out on us.” And then, Jesus says a couple sayings, tells a couple stories, where God starts first with liberating those who have been held low the most – “those whose backs are up against the wall”[6] – those they would least expect to receive God’s favor – foreigners even. The crowd doesn’t like that one bit, and they fly into a rage and chase Jesus up to the cliff’s edge – to kill him.
There’s some foreshadowing going on here.
Notice what Jesus does. He has been bold enough to tell the truth, and when faced with their rage – Jesus turns and walks toward them. He walks toward and into the riotous, murderous mob – right into the midst of them.
A few years ago when I preached this Scripture here, I shared the wisdom of Sister Simone Campbell, one of the nuns who led the “Nuns on the Bus” movement a few years ago. Sister Campbell says that when we face the turmoil and suffering of the world, we need to walk toward the trouble – and not away from it – toward the places of trouble and pain. We come alongside those who are hurting –and, she says, we need to listen and let what we find there break our heart – and then move us to action – to do our part – not everything on our own – but our part– the work that is ours to do – together. “We walk toward the trouble” – like Jesus.[7]
This world-turning good news that Jesus is talking about –
it involves seeing and speaking clearly –
understanding the powers and what the powers do –
and then turning and walking toward the trouble
to do the work that the body of Christ is called to do –
good news for the poor, freedom for he oppressed –
knowing who we are by the grace of God, enlivened and empowered by the very Spirit of God.
Now I want to put all of these pieces together. Since the start of the new year, we’ve been thinking about New Life for a New Day – about how we live into the manifold challenges of our day – and I think there is a pattern – a rhythm that has emerged.
1. Remember, we are grounding ourselves in those seven spiritual practices – breathing, mantras of meaning, gratitude, intention, scripture, no internet before 8am, praying for others with lovingkindness.[8]
2. Then, we are noticing what God is doing in the world, and moving out from there; good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed, a love that centers the well-being of others.
3. Today we add that we are being humble about who we are – learning the part we play in the mess of the world, and even so, beloved and empowered by God’s abounding grace.
4. Then, following to the wisdom of Howard Thurman, we are developing our working papers, figuring out together the work that is ours to do. (Now, remember, all along the way, we keep going back to those spiritual practices to refresh and refuel.)
5. And then, together, by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit, we walk toward the trouble.
This is a serious time. This is serious work. And we are serious people.
We know how to do this. We can do hard things. And, who am I to say all this? Someone just as filled with anxiety, clinging with you to God’s abounding grace? Well, I know you. In fact, this week, I’ve been reading about you – as I’ve edited that Annual Report – the story of life lived here over the past year. I have read:
· of the decades-long commitment to help feed the hungry, lived in more ways than I have time to list;
· of the earnest – sometimes struggling – anti-racist learning – that this year has embraced partnership with our neighbors in Marin City to advocate for Golden Gate Village, to oppose 825 Drake, to Come to the Table;
· of the calling percolating for a couple years, now coming to life to build a refugee guest space – and of the awareness that we have much learning to do there.
I’ve read of the generosity of this community, of the tender care.
We know how to do hard things with hearts that are tender and true. All that coming to church – worshipping, praying, listening for a word, serving together – week after week – year after year – it has a purpose – to draw near to God and to learn to love all that God loves – to seek the way of Jesus, as Jesus walks toward the trouble of the world. We have been building a spiritual muscle for such a time as this.
Courage requires us to be humble – to look seriously and soberly at the world and ourselves – to see what needs to be changed – and also to see God’s abounding grace coming to life all around us – and in us.
And then it requires us to be bold – to claim our identity in Christ – the Body of Christ – and to proclaim with our whole lives – good news for the poor; freedom for the oppressed; love that puts at the center of our lives the well-being those who are hurting the most... and the whole wide world.
© 2025 Scott Clark
[1] For background on this text and First Corinthians, see J. Paul Sampley, “The First Letter to Corinthians,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. x (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002); Mitzi Smith and Yung Suk Kim, “First Corinthians,” Toward Decentering the New Testament: A Reintroduction (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018). For thorough consideration of the life- and world-context of Paul, his letters, and the communities he served, see Udo Schnelle, Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology (trans. M.E. Boring) (New York: Baker Publishing Group, 2005).Humble and Bold -- 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 4:21-30 (6th Sunday of Epiphany)
[2] See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press: New York, 2011); Derrick A. Bell, Jr., And We Are Not Saved (1987); Scott Clark, “When Wait Means Never: American Tolerance of Racial Injustice,” National Black Law Journal (UCLA ed.), vol. 13, no. 1 (1993).
[3] See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press: New York, 2011).
[5] For background on this text and the Gospel of Luke, see R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. ix (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995); Sharon Ringe, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995): Justo L. González, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010); Warren Carter, Commentary in Connections, Year C, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2018).
[6] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited.
[7] This framework comes from notes from a talk by Sister Simone Campbell at a “Big Tent” gathering of the PCUSA; for more on her work, see Sister Simone Campbell, A Nun on a Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).
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