Epiphany 3A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ Some of you know that I’ve gotten a bit involved in raising orchids. I’ve been fascinated by them as I walked by displays in various places, and bought a couple to decorate my home. Keeping them alive seemed to be a continuing issue, so I gave it up. 

When I moved here, I rented a house that has southwestern walls that are all windows. One has a large bay window with a substantial shelf that could be used for seating. I decided to put some plants there that I brought with me, including some herbs that I would use while cooking, another passion I’ve enjoyed through the years. 

I decided to try my hand at orchids again. As most orchid enthusiasts will admit, what begins as an interest can quickly become an addiction. For many, it then became a business. I do have a doctor’s approval for my own addiction. 

The brightest, most showy orchids are often the cattleyas, the flowers sometimes appearing as corsages or in wedding bouquets. Many growers have worked to create hybrids of these, fertilizing one with pollen from a flower of another color or appearance. They collect the seeds and plant them to see what happens. 

Those seeds are as tiny as particles of dust, and can number in the hundreds. But what’s interesting about them is that each seed can produce a plant that after about seven years or so produces a flower that is very different not only from the parent plants, but from others whose seeds came from the same pod. You won’t know exactly what you have until the flower is produced. 

Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth gives us the identity we call “the body of Christ.” And, as you’ll see from today’s Epistle lesson, that body is made up of widely different individuals who sometimes don’t act like they’ve come from the same parentage. I don’t mean they are supposed to all be biological siblings. I mean that, as Paul says, they are born into a new family by virtue of their baptism, adopted as children of God. And, as you might have experienced a time or two, sometimes families don’t get along. 

Paul addresses many issues along the way in this letter, more than I want to cover this morning. When he gets to the most important one, which we again often hear at weddings adorned with displays of orchids and other flowers, we’re reminded of the foundation of our reason for being, the very thing that calls us here and gives us life. 

You’ll remember it with these words. “If I speak with tongues of [humans] and of angels.” Got it? He goes on to say, “but [if I] don’t have love, I am nothing more than a sounding gong or clanging cymbals.”  

You see, it’s not that we agree on everything or even get along 100% of the time. Our reason for being, and something we alone as the body of Christ might be able to teach the world around us, is that our disagreements are met with the same Love that calls us into being and is the foundation of our life as Christ’s church. As we’ll hear especially in the upcoming Lenten season, it very well could be that our cross to bear is Love itself, especially in the face of conflict and division, and, critically, hopelessness. 

We don’t know how the seeds we plant in love might grow and blossom. But it is Love that helps us see the beauty in each one as it grows and blooms. It is love that helps us nurture the growth as we wait for the blossoming that may come only periodically, and that may last only a few days or even just a few hours. But Love calls us to anticipate the next blooming season, until we all burst forth into the blossoming of life with a fragrance that lasts through all eternity. As we wait for that moment, let us anticipate what that might be even as we know we’ll be surprised at its coming in fullness. 
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Love is the foundation of our life together and it is also our invitation to those around us. Our call, if you will, is to invite others into a new life of love that seeks us out, walks with us, even into death itself so that we are led by the outstretched arms of Love into new life, both here and in the age to come. You see, it is in Love, for Love, and by Love, that we ourselves blossom into life that is, each in its own way, lovely