Proper 22 - Year B
Pentecost 19
Mark 10:2-16


“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

I wish he hadn’t said that. Not that way. If Jesus is this matter-of-fact on the subject where does he leave my parishioners who don’t fit the mould? For that matter where does he leave their parish priest - himself a divorced and remarried man? This came up online with my pals during the week: “What are y’all doing with the unequivocal words of Jesus about divorce and remarriage in your congregations this Sunday?" Suggestion number one from Nigel – “Preach on something else. Psalm 8 perhaps”. It’s what a former Archbishop of Canterbury did a few years back on this particular Sunday, effectively dodging the bullet. Suggestion number two from Kenny – “Nah Rob; be a Scotsman and wade right in”.

“Okay, fab, Kenny! You’re a pukka Scotsman. Is that what you’re doing?”

“No, we’ve got Harvest Thanksgiving this Sunday. Different readings, the church decorated with squash and bulrushes – ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’ and all that jazz.”

Which leaves me alone, therefore, with a Gospel reading in which I am quite explicitly named as a malefactor - as are a selection of you reading this. We resemble that remark. It does no justice to the Scripture to imply that Jesus is doing anything other than underlining the sinful state of humanity: our humanity in general - yours or mine in particular this Sunday. If there’s to be a “Yes, but…” anywhere in the sermon let it come at the end rather at the beginning. Well-aimed arrows of judgement should not simply be batted aside at the outset. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be true. The death of our relationships speaks volumes about our weakness and our sin. Eh, voila! There we are - standing on sinners’ corner.

Sinners’ corner is the place where we belong – all of us. It will do no good to traipse up to Jesus, as some did during his earthly ministry, to say “You didn’t specifically name me, did you Jesus? I’ve kept the rules since my youth, haven’t I?” As will be explained to any who hold such misconceptions about being off the hook; the commandment against murder can be extended to anger and the commandment against adultery even to our fleeting lusts. Those who can remember the day and the year when everything came tumbling down – those who find they’ve been named in the 10th chapter of Mark – may here be the lucky ones. You never know. Don’t count yourselves too quickly amongst the sheep. Don’t assume that you’re the only goat in the room. It took the disciples far too long to arrive at the place where they could finally exclaim “Who, then, Lord can be saved?”

They would come to understand: This was not the end of the line. It was only the starting point

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Proper 20 - Year B
Pentecost 17
Proverbs 31:10-31

A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels......

The jury is still out on whether or not I will risk wading into the 31st chapter of the Book of Proverbs in my sermon this Sunday - the reading which takes as its subject: "A Capable Wife" or in slightly grander language "A Wife of Noble Virtue".  Is my skin thick enough and are my shoulders sufficiently broad to take the repercussions of somebody thinking that I got it wrong?

I want to preface these remarks by stating at the outset that I am married to a Wife of Noble Virtue, was raised by one back in British Columbia and that my daughter in Montreal seems well on the road to taking her place in such a designation within her generation.  Women of Noble Virtue loom large in my extended family and many of them were, in fact, married.  That primary relationship and the household which came with it formed part of the springboard from which their nobility and the virtue could flow effectively in their day and age.

One chief objection to the first reading this Sunday from Proverbs is that the "capable" or "virtuous" wife being described here seems to work her fingers to the bone.  She is in the house, around the house, supervising servants, steering the children forward, haggling with merchants, spinning and weaving, caring for the poor and, above all, being the engine of economic and moral activity in her family.  Her husband seems to spend his time at the city gates with his friends.  No other sphere of activity is specifically credited to him.

There's quite a lot in the Book of Proverbs about wives.  Not all of the reflections there are particularly illuminating or helpful and we tend to move from those negative appraisals of women to then tumble upon this reading about a woman who seemingly has the labours of the world piled upon her back.  This reading suffers badly from the comments and opinions of folks who haven't read it through on its own merits.  Read it, will you?  The woman described herein is a beacon to her village or town.  She is a moral and economic giant within her family and her local community.  She is a force to be reckoned with.

We are blessed at Christ Church with a full complement of high school girls.  While they may not choose to live their lives in the shadow and pattern of the woman described in this Sunday's Old Testament Lesson they will, I hope, think kindly of a woman who seizes the challenges of her day with an iron grip and made things happen.

Girls of Christ Church - take note.

If there's anything to be improved upon or departed from in this passage about the Wife of Noble Virtue it might be in the woman's choice of a husband.   We look in vain for any evidence of his substantial contribution to his age and generation.

Boys of Christ Church - take note.

Pentecost 16 (proper 19)

Year B
Proverbs 1:20-33

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof.

If you've played Tile Rummy or other numbers games with teenagers or young adults - any game, in fact, which requires quick thinking and mental acuity - you'll be struck by how clever these young people are. They do calculations quickly. They see patterns of numbers with little effort. You'd have gotten there yourself - eventually - but you might feel as if you're toting your brain uphill like a heavy load. No question about it: These kids are smart! Time to start taking your vitamin E!

They may not yet be wise, though. In fact you know that they're not. This very same person whose brain is so adept at figuring out a limited set of tasks still lacks judgement, does not yet understand the paradoxes which abound in real life and cannot yet work in an able fashion within communities. Those of you who have supervised younger employees in companies, young doctors and nurses in

hospitals will recognize that situation where you stand there looking at somebody who has so much raw potential and yet is still not ready for certain responsibilities which require a sort of "smarts" which can only be given by deep reflection, by an experience of both success and failure and by a breadth of knowledge which raw organic intelligence itself does not give.

Our passage from the Book of Proverbs this Sunday speaks of a different impediment to wisdom - not merely "youth" which in most cases will give way to richer ways of being intelligent. In our passage on Sunday, Wisdom - a feminine characterization of God in this case - cries out to those who have chosen ignorance rather than wisdom. They love being simple. They delight in scoffing. They hate knowledge. The target of Wisdom's 'reproof' is a community of possibly quite grown-up people who decided not to embark on learning much about the world. They cooped themselves up in a small world. They may be critics - scoffers - who see the faults in others and who are adept at picking apart structures around them which do not meet their immediate needs but have yet to make their own costly contribution. Knowledge - new reflections on life in the world - is a threat to what they were taught. Coming to risk knowing something new gives us cause to reevaluate ourselves, to rethink the values of our home communities, to transform and to become wise.

On occasion we shame ourselves. Why did I say that? Why did I do that? Why was I speaking rather than listening? Was I the friend I could have been? Did I miss an opportunity? This Sunday's lesson gives us space to identify, and even mock, that part of each of us which refuses to grow up and be wise - to venture outside comfortable simplicity and to be bigger than we have allowed ourselves to be.

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Proper 18 - Year B

Pentecost 15
Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is clear that his mission is first of all to the "...lost sheep of the house of Israel". The lapsed

and neglected Jews of Roman Palestine were the first recipients of his message. It is to their towns and hamlets which Jesus and his disciples first traveled with the message of God's closeness and the presence of his Kingdom. The Gospels don't draw the line there. Jesus' parables hint warmly of an expanded and much more inclusive Mission - one which will ultimately include the Gentile tribes and nations from which most of our families spring. The starting point, however, seemed much narrower. The lost sheep got the first crack at Jesus and his disciples.

"Me too - I want in", says a Syrophoenician woman to Jesus in this Sunday's Gospel reading. "Surely there's enough leftover grace - crumbs even -  for my daughter and myself. We want to have some of it too."

And so this unnamed Canaanite woman joins a collection of characters in the New Testament - gutsy and opportunistic - who, by hook or by crook, present themselves at the head of the queue - who yell out or push or squeeze their way into the light and are rewarded rather than rebuffed. Their expression of need is raw and strong and honest.  They will do what it takes to present themselves before the source of their wholeness - their healing - their restoration.   Some of them are real people who Jesus encountered in the course of his ministry. He praises their aggressive approach as an example of great faith. Others are characters in his parables - admirable characters who we are to emulate.. The woman in this week's reading joins with the persistent widow (Lk 18:1-8), Zaccheus in his tree (Lk 19:1-10), the unrighteous steward (Lk 16:1-13), blind Bartimaeus by the side of the road (Mk 10:46-52) as well as the anonymous woman with her jar of ointment who crashed a dinner party Jesus was attending (Lk 7:36-50). 

They demonstrate, for our benefit, the power of sheer bloody-mindedness.

Do you want in? You might want to reset your compass. Accepting one's lot in life, putting on a pleasant face in the midst of terrible troubles, keeping one's problems to one's self, waiting to be invited rather than just showing up - these are polite manners of life for people in gated communities or people in cold northern climes who distrust their neighbors - Viking etiquette maybe but no Kingdom virtue. Jesus, on the other hand, tells us to ask in order that we may receive. He says that for the door to be opened to us we first need to knock. 

 He doesn't even seem particularly dismayed by the thought of our doing so with a very large stone.

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The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 12 -Year B
Ephesians 3:14-21

The writer of Ephesians is above all a pastor. As such he has tangible dreams for his flock. He puts these hopes and imaginings forward in the form of two prayers for quite specific things:

Firstly, that the Christians at Ephesus might be strong within themselves, 

"..and that Christ may dwell in [their] hearts through faith, as [they] are being rooted and grounded in love." 

He prays as well that they 

"...may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [they] may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Pay some attention to these words, please. Do they sound a tad general? Are they, for you, the sort of religious language that sometimes washes over you without sinking in? The indwelling of Christ in a believer and the slow transformation (being rooted and grounded) of his or her life through the power of love was and remains an actual experience in the lives of Christians. Associates, family

members, former friends and enemies recognized in the lives of those whom Christ had seized that these people were being changed and were no longer who they once were. This change then led to understanding (the power to comprehend) how these inner changes were in fact consonant with what God was doing in the world and in the lives of others; there was both evidence within the believer and evidence without.

While the writer prays for specific things - the indwelling Spirit of God and growth in understanding- he finishes this small section by appealing to what he cannot possibly know or, more importantly, control: he consigns his flock to the love and care of God who 

"...by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine".

What all pastors know is that the Word goes out and is received by the senses and the emotions. It mingles with the competing loyalties and the lifestyles of the hearers. It is at once seized on and yet kept at arm's length for a time. People mull it over. It troubles them as much as it thrills them. What do pastors do? Pastors pray. They pray that God will do his work in the hearts of those to whom the Gospel has been presented. God is the gardener, after all - the one who brings in the harvest.

He is the master of the mystery of what happens when folks go home - after the sermon has been preached, the hymns sung and bread and wine have been lifted up to be taken and transformed.

Proper 10 - Year B
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost                                                  
Mark 6:14-29

"When [Herod] heard [John the Baptist], he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him"

"I didn't join this church to be criticized."

"I didn't get married in order to become the object of criticism."

"I never anticipated that having children would result in the withering criticism of me which they sometimes dish out."

"When I agreed to manage this part of the company the last thing I expected was a delegation of employees with a document critical of my management style."

Critics. We've all got 'em. The more we do and the greater the risks we take the higher our degree of vulnerability to such criticism. If we play safe, though, we are criticized for that too. 

Critics - blast them! Why don't they leave me alone?

Herod Antipas (a Roman client-governor based on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee) was a curious fellow with an odd love-hate relationship to his greatest critic - John the Baptist.  The Baptist had zeroed in on improprieties in Herod's family life - most especially his marriage to Herodias, the former wife of his brother Philip Antipater. Whenever John preached, though, Herod would always listen. He was both "perplexed" (set back, troubled or confounded) by the Baptist's critical preaching and yet, at the same time, strangely compelled to pay attention. Aren't we most angered by those words of criticism which resound somewhere within us?  We worry that they might be true. We find that they mirror what others have said about us before. Those ultimately caught in a significant fault by their critics will say it was something they knew themselves all along. It didn't come as a surprise.

You'll hear the whole story this Sunday: Herod is tricked by Herodias and her daughter into beheading the Baptist as part of a rash and injudicious wager which the ruler has made. Herod does what he knows he ought not to have done.

What would happen to you if you got your wish? What if your critic could be silenced?  It could be the voice of some other person - an enemy or a meddling friend. It might be something within your own self - the voice of your own troubled conscience. It might be some word of Scripture which cut straight to the bone of what ails you.  

It's not impossible to turn such a voice off - it can always be done.

You will distance yourself from a meddling friend. You can destroy your enemy. You might school yourselves that the voice within you is just some neurotic nagging force which is best not-listened-to. You could avoid those Scriptures which trouble you. It happens all the time.

Would you be better off, though?  The face of Herod Antipas, when he is presented with the head of John the Baptist on a platter, is often depicted by artists as being the face of a man facing the horrifying truth that he is now suddenly and entirely alone.

There can be no road now out of the hole he's dug for himself - no one left to shake the branch he's sitting on.

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The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost                                                     Proper 11 - Year B
Psalm 23

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

What is it that we keep around for a rainy day? An awful lot of life's activity consists of collecting resources for ourselves and our families. It's always been that way. If your hobby is metal detecting you live in hope of finding one of those coin hordes which some punter, centuries ago, hid from the taxman in the fourth tree to the left of the bend in the old road.

That the teenager with the metal detector even found the coins meant that the original owner was never able to collect them back in the day. That datum, in itself, should tell you something.

As I was sitting in my office this week looking at Sunday's readings I realized two things; that the 23rd Psalm is very popular (I know at least four different ways of singing it) but that most folks would regard the sort of reliance upon God which the psalm prescribes as being a sign of personal failure on their part.  If you are walking "through the valley of the shadow of death" then you must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. You could be reproached for that. If you are relying on God to lead you "in green pastures" or "beside still waters" or to place a cup in your hands which "floweth over", then where exactly was your brain when you were planning your life? The psalm may be popular but we take it as a big part of our life's work never to be in a place where its precepts and promises become necessary. We strive for self-reliance. We've been told that there's a science to it. With a bit of self-discipline it can be done. We don't need to rely on God.

The Church (at least in the First World and since the Second War) has often played along with this. More's the pity really. A quick side glance at world history will tell us that civilizations rise and fall. We can count ourselves merely lucky to be living where and when we do. Every second page of the New Testament seems to subvert - in parable and pronouncement - the idea that self-reliance is the normal human condition. Where such self-reliance is even possible due to accidents of history and geography, rarely is it pious. Our "great cloud of witnesses" contains all those saints (not to mention the philosophers, the aid-workers, the poets and the musicians and other sundry heroes) who forswore their place on the upward path towards "their piece of the pie" in order to embrace the beauty and the sense of a life that could only be found when uncertainty is sought out and embraced.

What makes us safe and well-equipped does not necessarily make us deep or useful. It cannot ensure that we are good.

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The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost                                                                                
Proper 9 - Year B   
Mark 6:1-13                                                              

"He left that place and came to his hometown...."

What is it about your home town that allows you to blend in so easily when you go back? You're bound to bump into somebody who'll think you've never been away and assumed you'd simply been lying low and keeping to yourself. The pendulum in your head swings back and forth several times between "Yes, this is where I belong"and "No, this is certainly no longer who I am". Some of you have recently been repatriated to the U.S. after a number of years in France. Many of us will return to our home countries for holidays at some point in the summer and will find ourselves reconnected to

family members or old friends. It may prove a challenge.

We should not stretch this passage out of shape by relating it too swiftly to ourselves. This is not a passage about us. This story is about Jesus. The words at the beginning of Mark's Gospel had indicated to the reader that Jesus is one who belongs to God: "You are my beloved Son...", declares the voice from heaven at the Jordan. The townsfolk in Nazareth, though, state that Jesus belongs to them and that he is dead ordinary: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary...". What is more significant here is that they "took offense at him".  Belonging to them meant staying where he had been - nailed into place within the bounds set by elders. Jesus had stepped beyond the life set down for him by his community. God has greater plans that that.

The worthies of Nazareth do not understand what the reader of Mark's Gospel will have understood: In God's hands, the humanity, the origins, the language and culture, the village education and even the intimate family connections of Jesus of Nazareth are a means God will use to move out beyond limits, to move the goal markers, to cross boundaries, to speak truth within a particular religious tradition in order that truth might be spoken within other cultures and religious traditions. Empires are overturned and subverted. The poor are given hope and the captives released. The particularity of Jesus' origins are not discarded even if he breaks the bonds of small town prejudice, even if he moves on, even if he leaves his village behind.

Take no offense at humble origins. God speaks to the world with a Galilean accent.

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The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost                                               
Proper 8 - Year B
2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Paul writes the Corinthian congregation about their involvement with the wider church - in particular the current fundraising project which the outlying churches have undertaken to support the mother Church in Jerusalem. 

"For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have."

If-then statements are meant to show how things are tied together.  If you have snow tires then you'll make it to the top of the snowy hill.  If you have a full tank of gas then you will get to Swift Current without gazing nervously at the gas gauge.  If you have the right qualifications then your job application will be received and reviewed.  If-then statements also serve to to provoke self-reflection.  Do you, in fact, have snow tires?  Did you tank up in Saskatoon?  Did you pass your Statistics course at University?  No?  Tough darts then.

Petrol, snow tires and school transcripts are easily quantified.  You have them or you don't.  You can tick the box or not.  Eagerness (and the Greek word here can be translated as zeal, readiness, energy, inclination) is less concrete but completely essential to the task. What Paul seems to be saying here is that it's not just a matter of getting the Quartermaster to do an inventory of what concrete resources

you have at hand but of asking yourself (or your community or your committee)  whether or not you (or they) are interested in doing anything at all.  Do you have that essential ingredient - the presence of which will forgive any number of shortages in concrete resources - which is the good will, the energy, the decision, the inclination and the openness of heart necessary to plug you in to the world around you and to seek after God’s Kingdom?  Yes?  No?

Without mentioning the specific teachings of Jesus anywhere in his Epistles, Paul has all the parables on his side.  The parables are chock full of under-equipped and under-resourced individuals who nonetheless have the following quality:  When they are invited to the banquet they say yes.  When they encounter the treasure in a field they will do what is necessary to make sure it becomes theirs.  They may have nothing but their hunger for righteousness, their inclination towards others, their desire to find meaning in their lives, their willingness to build community and to treasure those bonds with others.  But it's there, that spark.  They can identify it.  They can set their priorities by it.   And if, one day, that energy began to flag then they would themselves know it before anyone took them to task.

“Yes - you're right - I've been a little off recently.”

Do you have what it takes to move forward when energy, conviction and and determination are more important than concrete resources?   If not - then what are you going to do about that?  How can we help?

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 7 - Year B
Mark 4:35-41

                                                                   

The disciples cry out to Jesus, asleep in the boat in the midst of a furious storm

"...do you not care that we are perishing"?

These are words echoed by men and women in various degrees of necessity across the years. Sometimes they are to blame for their sufferings. They've gotten themselves into trouble because of stupidity, dishonesty or self-deception. Or they find themselves, quite innocently, at the mercy of somebody else. An enemy threatens them. Or perhaps, again, there is no ill will at all.  Nothing is askew in anybody's humanity. The wind has simply picked up and the water laps into the boat. Things fall over, the thunder booms and the lightning flashes: The wrong place at the wrong time.

Aren't we owed some safety and security? Don't we have an "in" with God? How can Jesus possibly be sleeping in the boat while the storm rages around his followers? I make no attempt to answer the age-old question in 500 words except to point you to an interesting verb in this passage from Mark: Jesus tells the storm to be silent. He does not say "Be still" or "Be calm" or "Flatten yourself". He tells the storm, literally, to shut up (perfect passive imperative tense - "be muzzled and remain so") and employs the same verb he will later use when he tells the demons to be silent - that they have no right to tell anybody's story - least of all his.

What does a disaster or the threat of a disaster tell us in words? Can the activity of impersonal forces - water, fire, rain or earthquake, dividing cells or economic downturn - be said to have a voice of some sort that might prompt the rebuke to be silent and remain so? 

It might well. We feel guilty when bad things happen to us - even when they are outwith our control. We walk away from the downsized office with our desk's contents in a cardboard box feeling like failures because our job has been moved overseas. We take our inability to protect a loved one from what could not possibly be foreseen as a personal failure. We do it all the time. We are at fault. God is at fault. It cannot simply be something which happens - it has to be a story about my failure and unworthiness or God's failure and unworthiness.

More, the disaster says to us, you are alone - all alone here in your boat.

Jesus says "shut up" as much to the disciples as to the storm. We are not alone. In his Incarnation, Jesus comes to join us and not to leave us. The words which course through the disciples' heads - words about abandonment, loneliness and the inadequacy of both man and God are a lie - worthy of being muzzled and remaining so. In this world, where we will continue to be subject to our own weakness, to the wiles of others and to the power of lake water at 2204 pounds per cubic meter of wave, faith can and must and will be found. Jesus is there with us on that shifting ground and there his Kingdom can be discovered.

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The Third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6 - Year B
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Israel had to argue for its right to be ruled by a king like all the other nations. "Don't confuse yourself with other nations" says God, through the prophet Samuel.  "You are different. A king will not make you great or a major player or a big fish. You are unique - ruled as you are by judges and informed by prophets"

Nonetheless Israel's desire to be like all the other nations prevails. God relents and lets them have their king. The Reign of Saul is Israel's first stab at being completely ordinary and it is a resounding failure. Saul is rejected by God and his fate is sealed. Samuel is instructed to anoint a new king from

among the sons of Jesse. He arrives at Jesse's house. The boys are led in one at a time from the greatest to the least. Good strong boys they are, too. Each time Samuel the prophet sees one of them he is reassured that they have King written all over them. And each time God tells the prophet "No, not this one."

He finally has to ask if there are other boys that he hasn't met and Jesse admits that the youngest has been left off the list. He's been sent out to take care of the flocks while his brothers are being admired for their natural aptitudes - their ease of speech - their leadership potential. These were the boys fit to be presented to a prophet. Not the youngest. He was left off the list. David is sent for and Samuel anoints him as King.

The adjectives "big" and "little" are some of the first things we learn. We're told to think big, we can hardly wait to be big. We are attracted to big ideas, big houses, big cars and big ambitions and we will need to deal with the fact that we miss out rather a lot because of that obsession. That's the way of the world - that's the way the world thinks. We too are a unique people and we give up that uniqueness all too quickly. Our history of faith, contained in the salvation history covering the two Testaments of the Bible, is filled with stories of world changing events taking place in out-of-the-way locations and with quite ordinary people initiating those events at the behest of God's voice. The stone which the builders rejected becomes the capstone of the arch. Tiny mustard seeds grow into great and commodious plants within the garden - in whose branches the birds of the air can make their nests. Suffering becomes victory. Weakness proves to be strength.

The ordinary logic of the world does not explain what happens in the life of faith.

Think again. "Big" and "little" just don't cover it

The Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 5 - Year B
2 Corinthians 4:13-15:1

When you're threatened enough you'll look around for something heavy or pointy enough to throw overhand at whatever opponent stands in your path. If you receive a large and unexpected bill in the post you'll dig out the bank statements to see what sort of liquid resources you have to pay your way out of trouble. You put your trust in the Bank of England, or in the reliability of a good diesel engine or maybe in Smith & Wesson. Please insert here whichever tool or resource you choose which you believe will ensure that you make it to the next point in your journey. You are strong and able. You can list the resources you have at hand to keep yourself on the top step. It may be a long list.

Anytime we generalize about the state of human beings around the world or across time and use a term like, say, "the human condition" we are usually referring to where humans find themselves when their strength runs out and when their natural goodness reaches its limit. Even calling it "the human condition" pretty well lets the secret out, doesn't it? We are not really that strong. If we are strong we tend to be strong for a season only. There is something illusory or at least temporary about the visible tools and structures with which we ensure our future.

You can't take it with you, we say.

Saint Paul wants the members of the Church in Corinth (or in Clermont-Ferrand) to look beyond what they can see and touch and to find the ground of their confidence in what God is building, invisibly, in and among and around them.

"...we look not at what can be seen

but at what cannot be seen;

for what can be seen is temporary,

but what cannot be seen is eternal.."

Paul is not writing to impractical people. He is writing to a mixed community of urban Christians - many of whom are well-equipped with earthly resources - and he is telling them that the building blocks of faith, hope, love and perseverance will build them a home. Their worship will create a
world. What the skeptic might deny has, for them, the greatest and the most enduring reality. God is making them a home which surpasses any ability they may have to fend for themselves. The strong and the well equipped are not as safe as they think they are. The weak may well not be so weak.

Learn this. Teach it to your children. Let it be a part of your discourse as Christians. It is nothing other than what Jesus taught us in the Parables of the Kingdom - that God provisions his people in ways that the world neither sees nor understands.  The smallest seeds can become the greatest shrubs in the garden.

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