Reading 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

A reading for the third Sunday in Lent: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Wow. I’ve read this before, but today the words leap out at me and into conversations in my life.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Paul’s concern for unity must lie behind this text. The unity of the people is marked by their experiences with God and dependence on God. I’m not sure what the phrase “baptized into Moses” means exactly, but given many recent conversations about baptismal theology  with Metho-friends, I note that all the people were baptized by passing through the sea — not just the adults and people who could choose for themselves to follow Moses, but also the children and the helpless.

Paul also gives us an early warrant for Christian practice of reading the Old Testament as a witness to Christ. This practice is sometimes controversial in the church and seminary these days, but Paul had no problem with making — at least — metaphorical connections between Christ as the source of living water and the rock in the wilderness that Moses struck with his staff.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

With my students I call that first word in this section a “turn signal.” Paul’s “nevertheless” is a warning that we are going to change focus, and, boy, do we. Despite the unity of the people, God was not pleased. They were marked by baptism. They ate the bread of life. They drank the cup of salvation together. But God was “not pleased” with their lives. They did evil. They worshiped idols. They were sexually immoral.

And God struck them down by the thousands. (That “not pleased” in Paul sure is an understatement.)

In my reading and seminary, I encounter lots of talk about the names of God. So far, I’ve not heard anyone suggest “the destroyer” as one of the names of God we should use in worship. Wow, what a thought.

These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.

Where is once-saved-always-saved? I know we can find other words in Paul to prop up the P in the Calvinist TULIP, but here Paul is writing to well-established Christians telling them they must be careful lest they fall away. Dare we say “backslide”?

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

And we close with a passage that drives crazy some people I know, well, not this passage exactly. The saying they despise is “God never gives you more than you can handle,” which has roots here in Paul. Two objections come up. First, God is not the source of the things that cause us to be overwhelmed. Second, sometimes life does give me more than I can handle.

What a rich vein of conversation this one verse holds out for us. I am not prepared to offer easy answers to these objections or Paul’s words, but I will carry around the implications of his words and their reverberations in the lives of people I know.

Reading Philippians 3:17-4:1

A reading for the second Sunday in Lent: Philippians 3:17-4:1

I am reminded of Jesus’ words to lay up treasures in heaven because where our treasure is there our heart will be. Paul is calling on those who bear the name of Christ to live in the light of the cross. Because sin has been defeated, we should no longer live under its power. Once we had no power to resist sin. Now, thanks be to God, we do.

And so Paul sheds tears for those who reject this gift.

As a Wesleyan Methodist, I also hear in these verses a reminder that this letter is not written to pagans, but to Christians. Paul is exhorting Christians to live their lives in ways that reflect the faith they proclaim. He goes so far as to say that Christians who do not are bound for destruction. How we live matters, even to those who are “in Christ.”

In Christ, we get our passport papers declaring our true citizenship, but we are called by that to live as kingdom people in the world, even in a world at war with the kingdom. Our papers can be revoked if we live in ways that reject the citizenship bestowed on us in Christ.

How Fritos helped me understand Paul

Rules do not work well for me.

I started a diet a while back. It was simple. It had only one rule. I could eat potatoes and/or wheat at only one meal a day. These high-carb goodies are my Achilles heel when it comes to diets.

The diet started out well until I discovered Fritos in the school vending machine.

It turns out Fritos have neither potatoes nor wheat in them. Diet approved!

Yes, yes. You see right through this. Even I see through this. It shows what happens when you try to tie down a rebellious will with rules. We are clever little sinners. We always find ways out of the box. We can always find a loophole.

This is why real transformation has to be a heart thing. Laws and rules just make us all that more clever. They do not make us more holy.

This is what  Paul and Jesus are getting at when they tell us to let go of legalism. You can follow every rule and not be saved at all. If deep in your heart you are still longing for deep-fried, salted snacks, you will find a way out of the rules. You will rationalize your way to what your heart truly desires.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Guard the good treasure

Paul’s advice to Timothy:

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from from, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Justification by faith is secondary

Brian LePort on justification by faith:

The doctrine of justification by faith is a secondary argument used by the Apostle Paul most explicitly in his Epistles to Rome and Galatia defending the unity of Jews and Gentiles because both have faith in Christ and therefore both have been filled with the adopting Spirit of God who guarantees resurrection life in the age to come. What Paul fought was exclusion from the body of Christ based on claims that one had to become a Jew by means of circumcision, purity laws, and the like. For any Protestant to say justification by faith is not a possibility for people who have faith in Christ but who have different views of how the sacraments function or the unity of the church seems to me to not understand Paul. Likewise, I say the same of any Roman Catholic (I can swallow Vatican II language that we Protestants are some sort of outside circle, even though I disagree, strongly).

A world without scripture

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them fromthe scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise form the dead, and saying, ‘This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.’ (Acts 17:2-3)

The apostles appear to have spent a fair amount of time trying to convert or convince by showing people who loved and read scripture – that is the books we call the Old Testament – that Jesus was the promised fulfillment of God’s promises. They started on the ground of the people’s hopes and desires, and tried to lead them to the cross from there.

With the Gentiles, it appears to have been similar. Paul’s proclamation in Athens took the gods the Athenians knew and tried to lead to the God Paul proclaimed.

So, in a world in which there are no gods and there is no scripture, how do we help people make that journey to the cross and the empty tomb? 

The theology of revelation is church theology, a theology for pastors and priests. The theology of experience is pre-eminently lay theology. To begin with experience may sound subjective, arbitrary, and fortuitous, but I hope to show that it is none of these things. By experience of the Spirit I mean an awareness of God in, with and beneath the experience of life, which gives us assurance of God’s fellowship, frendship and love. (Jurgen Moltlmann, The Spirit of Life, 17)

If I understand Moltmann, he is suggesting that it is experience that forms the doorway that scripture served for Paul in his arguments in the synagogues. Experience is the way people organized their experience and the frame through which they make meaning of the cosmos. It must be from that starting point, then, that we help them walk toward the cross and tomb.

I know Barthians will wince at this idea. Starting with human experience can never bridge the gap between humanity and God, I’m told by Barth. Only confronting the creature with the wholly otherness of God can shatter the illusion that humanity is the measure of all things.

And yet – despite something stirring in Barth’s language – I am struck by the phrase of Moltmann. The theology of revelation is church theology. It is the theology that always leaves the believer dependent on church and priest as the custodians of revelation. It props up the idea that church is a place where you go on Sunday morning to find God – like the darkness at the heart of Solomon’s temple, which does not leave the holy chambers to follow you out the door.

To speak in the synagogue and the Athenian forum of this day, is it not experience from which I have to start? Paul started from the questions and longings of the people – who is the Messiah, who is this unknown god – and showed them the cross. Our people do not dwell on the scriptures like the Jews in the synagogue and are not aware of the monuments they have set up to the pragmatic gods that rule our lives. Should we not start where they are and within the frame they know?