By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” If St. Paul were on social media, he could have posted that on Twitter and then added, “That’s it. That’s the tweet.” It’s what we might call a mic drop—a phrase so succinct and yet so potent that it is best followed by a long moment of silence.
Paul, of course, barely seems to pause for breath after lobbing this rhetorical grenade. There’s a lot to unpack in today’s long passage from the first letter to the Corinthians, and we won’t be able to get into most of it today. But suffice it to say that when Paul gets into the weeds of an argument that seems abstruse or incidental to us in our context, especially arguments around food and table fellowship, his larger point almost certainly centers on relationships and how people within the church should treat one another—a theme that is as relevant today as it has ever been.
We have just lived through a year that will, without doubt, go down in the history books as an exceptionally difficult and significant moment in national and world affairs. In our country, we struggled not just with the COVID-19 pandemic but with issues of racial justice, police brutality, natural disasters, political division and violence, and the increasing pace of climate change and its impacts.
Throughout it all, one of the underlying threads that has been visible in every one of these crises was a deeper crisis about the nature of knowledge itself. How do we know what we know? What sources do we trust when we are trying to gather facts and information? Is all knowledge equal? Our inability to find broad consensus in answering these questions has made it an especially difficult time to bring people together into a common story, united by a common purpose, so that we could find and implement solutions that would help move us all forward.
Paul’s letter, I believe, offers an important perspective on these serious, perhaps existential, crises that we continue to face. Let’s start by breaking down that phrase, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” “Knowledge puffs up,” is not, let me hasten to say, an excuse for anti-intellectualism.
One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that we are encouraged to use reason and knowledge, even scientific data, in our moral and ethical decision-making. This is also, obviously, an important principle in a place like St. Martin’s, which is blessed with so many scientists, researchers, medical professionals, engineers, and the like. I myself pursued a career in academia before I became a priest and consider intellectual curiosity one of my core values. So, no, I don’t think we are being asked to “leave our brains at the door,” to use a phrase sometimes employed against religion.
Rather, it’s clear to me that the problem isn’t knowledge itself, but how we use knowledge. Is it a weapon or a tool? Are we allowing our superior knowledge, our hard-won expertise and insights, to connect us more deeply to one another, or are we using it to stake a spot in our silo and defend our position, from which we will not be moved? What about what kinds of knowledge we value? Are we humble enough to learn from those on the margins—the poor, the disenfranchised, people of color, indigenous communities and so many others who typically are not visible in our church or our neighborhoods?
Knowledge is a powerful force and what Paul reminds us is that we have a responsibility to use it wisely, not for individual aggrandizement but for the common good.
This is why Paul foregrounds love in his letter to the sophisticated, prosperous, and fractious Corinthians. It’s not that we should shun knowledge, not at all, but ultimately the pursuit and the deployment of knowledge must be grounded in love. As I’ve reflected on this passage this week, as well as reflecting on all we have experienced this past year, that’s what has stood out to me. Yes, St. Martin’s is a brainy place, a place where knowledge and expertise are highly prized, but it is also a place where we have grown in our ability and our willingness to ground all that we do in love and in the building up of our community.
What I have seen over and over again at St. Martin’s, especially this past year, is people who want to put their knowledge and expertise to use in the service of others. You can see it in our commitment to creation care, where learning about climate change led to becoming a Zero Carbon Church. You can see it in our commitment to social justice, where learning about immigration policy and systemic injustice led to our starting the Families Together Project and continuing to support the work of such excellent organizations as YIIN (Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network), STEAC (Short Term Emergency Assistance), and DCMH (Davis Community Meals and Housing).
You can see it when a master gardener chooses to use her expertise to help us all learn to care for our yards a little better, or a devoted teacher spends his free time with our parish youth, or skilled professionals devote hours to unglamorous and unpaid processes like getting our finances in order and completing a Mutual Ministry Review.
These are just a few examples, examples that were even more remarkable this year because they continued almost without pause in spite of the challenging circumstances presented by 2020. In some cases we even did more than we have in years past! I’ve never seen our parish as engaged with issues of racism as we were these last few months. In spite of the challenges of communicating and connecting during stay-at-home orders, we were more diligent than about collaborating with other faith communities and local organizations when the time came to speak out about important issues. All of this while figuring out how to move church online and also do our very best not to leave behind those who are not able to keep up with all of these technological changes.
I could go on and on. I hope it’s clear that I’m really, really proud of all that we have done this year, of how much you all have accomplished, especially in a year when it would have been so easy to pull back and do less. I know there are moments when we’ve been overwhelmed and discouraged. I myself have had these moments, hours and days when the way forward was not at all clear and I wondered how I could possibly lead a congregation in the midst of so much uncertainty and stress. What happened again and again, though, was that someone else in this community would be there, working alongside me, offering a gentle nudge through an email or a kind smile on a Zoom call, or a word of wisdom via text. You even arranged for a virtual visit by goats to celebrate my anniversary! If you were doing all those things for me I know you were doing them ten-fold for one another.
That, my friends, is love the kind of love that Paul is talking about. Not love for me or for a certain set of individuals, but love for our church as a whole, for our shared purpose and vision, for that higher ground we all want to reach. Love for God and for God’s beloved community. That is what love does. It builds us up. It allows us to move into new, uncharted territory without losing the anchor of being grounded in faith. It allows us to meet new challenges while remaining firmly committed to our core values, to our relationships, and to God.
Moving ahead into 2021, we will continue to meet new challenges and new opportunities, and so we will need to continue to lean into both our knowledge base and that wellspring of communal love that is our heritage. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry tells a story about how he spoke with his staff once in the midst of a grave crisis. He said he knew that people were hurting and afraid and demoralized. Those feelings were valid. And real. Nonetheless, he told them, “Our job is to do our job.” That speaks to me today and I hope it speaks to you. He continued, “Our job is to do our job, in God’s great movement of love in this world. And whatever the present loss, that great movement continues.”
God’s great movement of love in this world continues, and we here at St. Martin’s are a part of that movement. This is both a grave responsibility and a tremendous blessing. With God’s help, we will continue to build up our reserves of love, so that that love can in turn build us up, together. That’s it–that’s our job. Amen.
