II Corinthians 10
II Corinthians 10:1-17: With 10:1 the reader encounters such an abrupt change of both subject and mood that it is difficult to understand chapters 10-13 as originally part of the same letter as chapters 1-9. (Peoples New Testament Commentary) The tone changes so abruptly here that it is difficult to imagine that the same letter goes on. After priming his audience to be financially generous in the previous two chapters, Paul now assumes a truculent and defensive stance. Many commentators think that these four chapters contain the difficult, or painful, letter to which Paul alludes earlier, written after the painful confrontation had occurred. That makes the best sense out of these chapters. Here Paul’s back is against the wall, and he is fighting for his credibility and honor. (New Interpreters Study Bible)
The subject is the legitimacy of Paul’s apostleship, which is rejected by traveling missionaries who have come to Corinth claiming that they are the authentic apostles who the church should heed. Paul’s response is bitter and sarcastic. (People’s New Testament Commentary) Paul’s integrity, credibility and ministry have come into question. We can only surmise what some of the issues are through hearing Paul’s response to them. If Paul is fighting for his credibility and integrity, does his tone suggest that we, too, should or could be sarcastic and bitter if we are in similar situations? I don’t think that would be the lesson to draw, here. What we may be able to learn is something of the nature of ministry and leadership in the church. Even good leadership can be opposed, and spiritual leaders should be prepared for this. Edwin Friedman, a rabbi who wrote insightfully about leadership, used to say “No good deed goes unpunished.” Anytime change occurs, it will have its difficult side, and some will be opposed.
Paul may have been accused of being two different people, one more gentle and humble in person, but capable of writing strong letters when away. Paul claims that he tries to model his life on the meekness and gentleness of Christ, but that will not stop him from using some very strong language in the upcoming verses. He appeals to a common standard for the mutual interaction between he and the Corinthians, the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
Paul was also being accused of not being “spiritual enough,” of acting according to human standards. The Message makes the accusation one of being “an unprincipled opportunist.” The Corinthian Christians were enthralled by spectacular spiritual gifts, and thought Paul too mild, too ordinary, too unspectacular. He never accepted money for his teaching, but did ask them to give generously for an offering to be taken elsewhere. Paul responds that all need to live in the world. His notion of Christian spirituality apparently is that it needs to be lived out in the daily realities of life, by showing love in community, and not simply by the display of extraordinary spiritual gifts. Nevertheless, to try and live in such a way is to battle against spiritual forces, to fight against a “massively corrupt culture” (The Message). When we think about the kinds of things that get in the way of living the Christian life in our day and time, we can think of “spiritual” principles and ideas that seem to get in the way – the idea that the purpose of life is to look out for number one, the idea that the one who dies with the most toys wins, the principle that life is to be measured by dollars and possessions, our obsession with sports metaphors as a way to understand all of life. In his time, Paul was willing to stand against spiritualities that did not foster love in community. He sought to fit “every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ” (The Message).
Verse 6 is a challenging one, with its language of punishment – what does Paul mean? Paul may be saying that when the Corinthian community finally comes around, he will be ready to work with them to exclude those who continue to oppose the direction of his ministry. The Cotton Patch Version says, “We stand ready to give disobedience a fit.” Perhaps Paul is simply trying to say that when things are set right, those who want to remain focused on spectacular spiritual gifts, even when they tear apart the community, will find themselves excluded by their own actions and behaviors. The Message renders verse 6: “Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.” Maybe that’s Paul’s focus, building maturity. This does raise the issue of the limits of tolerance in the Christian community. Our goal should always be inclusivity, compassion, warm acceptance, gentle embrace, but sometimes the church needs to set limits and boundaries. When a congregation has addressed an issue thoughtfully and fully, how much space do we give to those who continue to use the issues to raise a fuss? For instance, a church might decide to change their worship schedule, and one person constantly raises the issue in every forum and in very negative ways. Should the church put some limits on that person? If a person consistently takes advantage of the good nature and generosity of church members, should limits be placed on that persons interaction within the congregation? For the common good, limits and boundaries are sometimes needed, though great care needs to be taken whenever such limits are set.
Some challenged Paul’s very relationship to Christ, but he will not take a back seat to anyone on this count. “I am quite sure of my standing with Christ” (The Message). Some thought Paul appealed too much to his authority as an apostle to this congregation. Paul reminds them that his work has been the work of building them up and not tearing them down – he appeals for them to look once again at his work among them. Some pointed to the language of Paul’s letters and said that he was just trying to frighten the church, and they noted a contrast between his strong letters and his weaknesses in speech and presence. Apparently Paul was not a physically commanding person, nor, perhaps, was he a dynamic speaker. Nevertheless, Paul will be as strong as he needs to be in person in order to deal with the difficult issues at hand. He argues for his consistency and integrity.
In verse 12, there may be a note of sarcasm when Paul says he does not “dare” to compare himself to some of these troublemaking teachers. Their own comparisons between themselves do not really fit with Paul’s understanding of good sense and good ministry. Paul won’t play that game, but there is an underlying sense that if he did, he just might win.
Paul is willing to discuss his work, and believes he has followed his calling appropriately. He was the first one to reach out to the Corinthians with the Christian message of faith, with the good news of Christ. He has continued to work with this group of people, unlike some of his critics who are willing to move into territory where Paul has already done the work of establishing a Christian community. Paul says that he will not meddle in other Christian communities, and is disappointed that some have come along and messed with this community in Corinth. Paul’s hope is that things in Corinth will settle down enough (that their faith will be strong enough) so that he can, with their blessing and encouragement move on into other uncharted territories.
Paul’s final appeal in this chapter is to God. It is not simply what persons say about themselves that matters, but how consistently they live within God’s purposes for their lives.
II Corinthians 11:1-15: Paul’s tone again becomes somewhat sarcastic and caustic. Some have accused him of foolishness, of not being spiritually sophisticated enough, so he takes that pose and offers a “fool’s speech” about his work. The hidden message is that the kind of comparison he feels he needs to do here is the real foolishness, brought on by troublemaking spiritual teachers who have come along and created problems within the Corinthian community.
Paul says that he has promised this Christian community to Christ, like a bride for a husband. He is like a father “giving away” his daughter in marriage. So Paul feels a deep concern for them – “the passion of God burning inside me” (The Message). He is concerned that another suitor will come along and deceive the church, and he compares this to the role of the serpent in the Genesis story who leads Eve and Adam astray. He is concerned about people coming and proclaiming “another Jesus, a different spirit, a different gospel.” While there is a theological disagreement here that goes beyond what Paul considers acceptable, I am inclined to think that this is much more than theological. Paul himself uses a variety of images in trying to understand how God acted in Jesus as the Christ. The New Testament offers a variety of images for how God acted and acts in Jesus as the Christ. We will have theological differences in the church and need to be careful that we don’t quickly label those who differ from us as proclaiming “another Jesus.” I am inclined to think that proclaiming another Jesus is not just having a different theology, but having the kind of different theology that leads to a very different understanding of the meaning of living the Christian life. Knowing what we know about the Corinthians, perhaps the kind of teaching Paul is concerned about is a theology that leads to an elitist, spiritual Christianity, one where a few dominate by their spiritual superiority, evidenced by spectacular spiritual gifts. The Christian faith is not infinitely elastic. Not everything done in the name of Christ is as legitimately Christian as everything else. The Christianity of the Ku Klux Klan is not Christianity.
Some people apparently have come with a “different Jesus” and a “different gospel,” and the Corinthians have bought into it. But Paul asserts that he is not inferior to these new teachers, these “super-apostles.” While they may be more eloquent than Paul, he argues that they are no more wise. They apparently charged for their spiritual wisdom. Was Paul any less wise because he shared without price? Paul was being supported by other churches so that he could do his work in Corinth. That he did not receive financial support directly from the Corinthians was not in keeping with the social customs of the day, but Paul felt he needed to take that risk and make his own way financially. He seems deeply frustrated that they would hold this against him. Yet, he proclaims his on-going love for them, though some have accused him of being unloving.
Paul pulls no punches in the following verses, declaring the “super apostles” who have opposed him to be false, and deceitful. It is likely that these other teachers charged Paul with the same thing. He compares their deception with the ability of Satan (the personification of all that goes against God and God’s purposes) to appear as “an angel of light.” This is not the kind of language we would want to appeal to today, or at least only in the most unusual circumstances. “The language is severe. Later Christians should be extremely hesitant to imitate it.” (People’s New Testament Commentary). At the same time, the principle is valid, evil often masquerades as good. Adolf Hitler claimed to bring strength and pride back to the German people. Jim Jones claimed to establish a non-racial Christian utopia in South America. Joseph Stalin claimed to be following the equalitarian teachings of Karl Marx in leading the Soviet Union.
II Corinthians 11:16-33: Paul continues his strategy of offering the boast of fools, and makes some very sarcastic remarks about the Corinthians ability to take in “fools.” They are so wise as to follow spiritual teachers who make them slaves, who prey upon them, who slap them in the face. Paul has been too foolish and weak for this!
So Paul’s foolish boastful speech continues, and in it we find out a few things about Paul. In finding out about Paul, we seem to find out about the claims of some of his opponents. He is a Hebrew, and Israelite, a descendant of Abraham. He is a minister of Christ, and a better one (speaking as a fool he can say this!). But what does Paul bring for evidence that he is a better minister of Christ? He offers a list of difficulties and sufferings. For Paul, his suffering for his ministry is like the suffering of Christ himself. He is not above such earthy realities, perhaps unlike the super apostles who perhaps pointed out this resume of Paul’s as something that made his suspect. Paul’s response is to say, “If suffering makes me suspect, remember that Jesus suffered.” Suffering by itself should not be seen as a validation of ministry. Sometimes people bring some suffering on themselves by their obnoxiousness or by their unwillingness to improve performance in ministry. But when one has given one’s best in ministry for Christ, one may still experience hardship. Paul takes the hardship and anxiety of the churches into his own life.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
II Corinthians 8
The Collection: On Paul’s final journey through the east – Greece and Asia Minor, Paul “collected a substantial sum of money as an offering from the Gentile churches to aid the Jewish Christian churches in Jerusalem and Judea” (People’s New Testament Commentary). Luke was silent about this offering in the account he gives of Paul’s work in Acts, a rather puzzling omission. Chapters 8 and 9 have this offering as their subject. The Corinthian congregation had previously committed itself to participating in the offering. Then came the break with Paul. Now that harmonious relations have been restored, Paul sets about organizing the arrangements for completing the collection, which was a substantial amount. (People’s New Testament Commentary). The offering was probably needed by the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem as many of Jesus’ followers were from the lower economic classes, and some suffered economically for their faith. At the same time it seems as important to Paul that this offering be taken to symbolize the unity between the Gentile and Jewish Christian communities. Reading Romans 15:25-28 we saw that Paul thinks that the Gentile Christians have reaped a spiritual benefit from the church in Jerusalem
II Corinthians 8:1-15: Some argue that chapters 8 and 9 have been inserted here, and really belong to part of another letter Paul wrote. They argue that Paul would not talk about reconciling with the Corinthians and about the collection in the same letter. However, the conversation does continue about Macedonia, though Paul is changing the main subject significantly. Paul understands the opportunity to give as participation in the gracious work of God. He would also argue that God’s grace precedes all our giving, so that we give in response to God’s grace. “Grace” and “gratitude” are related theologically and linguistically. Giving is a matter of gratitude; it presupposes the grace of God…. Our gifts to others are in response to God’s gift to all. (People’s New Testament Commentary) The Macedonian Christians, who were themselves poor, wanted to participate in this act of grace. They gave joyfully and generously, even in a difficult time. If grace and gratitude go with giving, so, perhaps, should joy and generosity. These people gave of themselves to Christ and to others. Titus, who also had the assignment of dealing with Paul’s difficult letter among the Corinthians, is given the assignment of completing the offering among them as well. Managing conflict and taking up an offering – Titus had a challenging job description! The Corinthians had been proud of their spiritual excellences (faith, speech, knowledge), Paul wants them to excel in love and generosity, too.
Here Paul makes clear that he is not commanding their participation in the Jerusalem offering. He has shared a story about generosity, a theology about generosity (giving as a joyful response to God’s gracious generosity), and now encourages their generosity. He encourages, but does not command. We might all learn something from this approach. Yet his encouragement is strong – encouraging not simply a monetary gift, but genuine love. He reiterates his theology of giving, that it is a joyful response to the generosity of God as demonstrated in Jesus. They had begun the work of collecting the offering, and now Paul is encouraging them to finish it according to their means. They are invited to give as they have the ability to do so. Christian generosity is a joyful response to God’s lavish grace, but it is a proportionate response. One gives as one is able to give.
II Corinthians 8:16-24: The topic now shifts to focus on the person Paul is sending to help the Corinthians get their act together regarding this offering – Titus. Along with Titus will go a person “famous among all the churches for his proclaiming the good news,” and another who is “eager in many matters.” This project is obviously a very important one to Paul and to others in the early Christian community. That makes it even more puzzling that Luke does not include it in Acts. Paul asks the Corinthian Christians to welcome all these persons in love.
II Corinthians 9
II Corinthians 9:1-15: This chapter is again about the collection which Paul has been discussing. The opening verse can sound like Paul is introducing the topic again, and some have argued that the two chapters were written for different letters to the Corinthians. Paul may simply be reiterating in a slightly different way, what he has said, and then building on that.
Paul boasted to the Macedonians about what the Corinthians had begun, and we already know that the Macedonians responded generously, even though they were poorer than the Corinthians. Corinth was the capital of the province of Acachia. While Paul had boasted about the Corinthians, a rift in their relationship with Paul had stalled the collection, and now Paul is sending some “brothers” ahead of his own visit, so that they can complete the collection.
Paul uses a variety of encouragements to get the Corinthians to complete their offering for this collection for the church in Jerusalem. He now emphasizes that those who give of themselves sparingly will reap sparingly. There is certainly something of an obvious truth here. When one engages in a project half-heartedly, the results are often less than if one gives that project one’s all. This is not an axiomatic law in the universe, so that if one gives generously financially, one will reap a financial reward. One’s financial generosity involves self-giving, and one’s spiritual life often benefits through such generosity. But generosity should not be coerced – “God loves a cheerful giver.” “God loves it when the giver delights in the giving” (The Message). Paul then returns to earlier themes - that our giving is a joyful response to the abundant grace of God and that our giving has multiple benefits. People are helped, the person giving is enriched, God is glorified. God is to be thanked for all this.
The Collection: On Paul’s final journey through the east – Greece and Asia Minor, Paul “collected a substantial sum of money as an offering from the Gentile churches to aid the Jewish Christian churches in Jerusalem and Judea” (People’s New Testament Commentary). Luke was silent about this offering in the account he gives of Paul’s work in Acts, a rather puzzling omission. Chapters 8 and 9 have this offering as their subject. The Corinthian congregation had previously committed itself to participating in the offering. Then came the break with Paul. Now that harmonious relations have been restored, Paul sets about organizing the arrangements for completing the collection, which was a substantial amount. (People’s New Testament Commentary). The offering was probably needed by the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem as many of Jesus’ followers were from the lower economic classes, and some suffered economically for their faith. At the same time it seems as important to Paul that this offering be taken to symbolize the unity between the Gentile and Jewish Christian communities. Reading Romans 15:25-28 we saw that Paul thinks that the Gentile Christians have reaped a spiritual benefit from the church in Jerusalem
II Corinthians 8:1-15: Some argue that chapters 8 and 9 have been inserted here, and really belong to part of another letter Paul wrote. They argue that Paul would not talk about reconciling with the Corinthians and about the collection in the same letter. However, the conversation does continue about Macedonia, though Paul is changing the main subject significantly. Paul understands the opportunity to give as participation in the gracious work of God. He would also argue that God’s grace precedes all our giving, so that we give in response to God’s grace. “Grace” and “gratitude” are related theologically and linguistically. Giving is a matter of gratitude; it presupposes the grace of God…. Our gifts to others are in response to God’s gift to all. (People’s New Testament Commentary) The Macedonian Christians, who were themselves poor, wanted to participate in this act of grace. They gave joyfully and generously, even in a difficult time. If grace and gratitude go with giving, so, perhaps, should joy and generosity. These people gave of themselves to Christ and to others. Titus, who also had the assignment of dealing with Paul’s difficult letter among the Corinthians, is given the assignment of completing the offering among them as well. Managing conflict and taking up an offering – Titus had a challenging job description! The Corinthians had been proud of their spiritual excellences (faith, speech, knowledge), Paul wants them to excel in love and generosity, too.
Here Paul makes clear that he is not commanding their participation in the Jerusalem offering. He has shared a story about generosity, a theology about generosity (giving as a joyful response to God’s gracious generosity), and now encourages their generosity. He encourages, but does not command. We might all learn something from this approach. Yet his encouragement is strong – encouraging not simply a monetary gift, but genuine love. He reiterates his theology of giving, that it is a joyful response to the generosity of God as demonstrated in Jesus. They had begun the work of collecting the offering, and now Paul is encouraging them to finish it according to their means. They are invited to give as they have the ability to do so. Christian generosity is a joyful response to God’s lavish grace, but it is a proportionate response. One gives as one is able to give.
II Corinthians 8:16-24: The topic now shifts to focus on the person Paul is sending to help the Corinthians get their act together regarding this offering – Titus. Along with Titus will go a person “famous among all the churches for his proclaiming the good news,” and another who is “eager in many matters.” This project is obviously a very important one to Paul and to others in the early Christian community. That makes it even more puzzling that Luke does not include it in Acts. Paul asks the Corinthian Christians to welcome all these persons in love.
II Corinthians 9
II Corinthians 9:1-15: This chapter is again about the collection which Paul has been discussing. The opening verse can sound like Paul is introducing the topic again, and some have argued that the two chapters were written for different letters to the Corinthians. Paul may simply be reiterating in a slightly different way, what he has said, and then building on that.
Paul boasted to the Macedonians about what the Corinthians had begun, and we already know that the Macedonians responded generously, even though they were poorer than the Corinthians. Corinth was the capital of the province of Acachia. While Paul had boasted about the Corinthians, a rift in their relationship with Paul had stalled the collection, and now Paul is sending some “brothers” ahead of his own visit, so that they can complete the collection.
Paul uses a variety of encouragements to get the Corinthians to complete their offering for this collection for the church in Jerusalem. He now emphasizes that those who give of themselves sparingly will reap sparingly. There is certainly something of an obvious truth here. When one engages in a project half-heartedly, the results are often less than if one gives that project one’s all. This is not an axiomatic law in the universe, so that if one gives generously financially, one will reap a financial reward. One’s financial generosity involves self-giving, and one’s spiritual life often benefits through such generosity. But generosity should not be coerced – “God loves a cheerful giver.” “God loves it when the giver delights in the giving” (The Message). Paul then returns to earlier themes - that our giving is a joyful response to the abundant grace of God and that our giving has multiple benefits. People are helped, the person giving is enriched, God is glorified. God is to be thanked for all this.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
II Corinthians 7
II Corinthians 7:1: Paul’s comments about paying attention to the kinds of associations one makes with the surrounding culture end with this verse. To reiterate what I’ve already said, it is better, and more in keeping with Paul’s thought elsewhere, to think in terms of resisting elements of the surrounding culture that are inconsistent with Christian values, than to read these verses as encouraging our disassociation from other people. There may be times when that is necessary. Someone who has been addicted to alcohol sometimes has to disassociate, for a time, with former drinking partners in order to strengthen their sobriety. More often than not, however, we should not be engaged in disassociation, and need to take care that we not project a “holier-than-thou attitude.” Jesus seemed very critical of that kind of thing.
II Corinthians 7:2-4: With verse 2, we continue the thought Paul left in 6:13, where he encourages the Corinthian Christians to open their heart to him. Paul again defends his work with the people – “we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” Paul seems to have been accused of doing such things by others in Corinth. He asserts that this community is in his heart – “to die together and to live together.” Apparently this was a common proverb used for close friendship. Paul not only has them in his heart and considers them bound together in friendship, he often boasts about them.
II Corinthians 7:5-16: In chapter 2, verse 13, Paul had discussed going on to Macedonia from Troas. In Troas, he had not been able to receive a report from Titus about the Corinthian Church. Paul had been worried about how the community might have received a difficult letter he had sent them. These verses indicate that Paul received a report from Titus in Macedonia, and that what he heard was good news. Again, the flow of the letter seems very choppy. Paul invites the Corinthians to open their hearts to him in verse 2-4, and now we will hear about a good report he had received about the congregation. Is his defense of his ministry made in light of yet more news he has heard since the report from Titus, or are they a part of an on-going correspondence, and we have in the remainder of this chapter a report on how they responded to Paul’s defense of his work? What we can say is that Paul’s relationship with this Jesus community had its ups and downs, times when Paul was held in relatively high esteem and times when his ministry was under attack. Paul writes them words of encouragement and love, often reminding them of their common faith, but also defends himself and in places calls them into account for their words and actions.
When Paul went to Macedonia, he encountered difficulty – “disputes without and fears within.” Charles Wesley must have had this verse in mind when he penned the hymn “And Are We Yet Alive” (“fightings without and fears within since we assembled last”). In the midst of these difficulties, Paul receives news from Titus and he is deeply consoled by it. He had grieved the community with a letter calling them to change, to repent, holding them accountable for their actions, but they responded positively. They had felt a “godly grief” – “You were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God.” (The Message) Paul distinguishes between a kind of grief or distress that does good from a kind that does not – a wise distinction, one that the church has not always done very well with. Sometimes Christians have made “guilt” nearly sacramental! The issue at hand, the issue over which the Corinthians changed, was in their relationship to Paul and his ministry.
Paul not only was pleased by the news delivered by Titus, but by the joy Titus experienced in his interaction with the Corinthian community. Paul had bragged them up to Titus, they ended up welcoming Titus and coming around. Paul had sent Titus into a hostile situation with the delicate task of presenting and interpreting the harsh letter from Paul, participating in the soul-searching discussions it caused, leading the church back to the Pauline gospel, and reintroducing the touchy matter of the collection. The collection was an especially sensitive issue, since the Corinthians had been suspicious of Paul’s handling o money and his promotion of the offering for Jerusalem. The (re)conversion of the Corinthians may own as much to Titus’ pastoral skills as to Paul’s theology and harsh letter. (People’s New Testament Commentary) The next chapters take up the issue of the collection.
Conflict has been a part of the church from its beginnings, and conflict, when it is disagreement managed well, can be transforming. Conflict, when it becomes a battle over personalities or entrenched positions, can be poisonous to a community. How the church works with conflict will either lend credibility to its witness to the transforming power of God’s love in Jesus, or will detract from that witness.
II Corinthians 7:1: Paul’s comments about paying attention to the kinds of associations one makes with the surrounding culture end with this verse. To reiterate what I’ve already said, it is better, and more in keeping with Paul’s thought elsewhere, to think in terms of resisting elements of the surrounding culture that are inconsistent with Christian values, than to read these verses as encouraging our disassociation from other people. There may be times when that is necessary. Someone who has been addicted to alcohol sometimes has to disassociate, for a time, with former drinking partners in order to strengthen their sobriety. More often than not, however, we should not be engaged in disassociation, and need to take care that we not project a “holier-than-thou attitude.” Jesus seemed very critical of that kind of thing.
II Corinthians 7:2-4: With verse 2, we continue the thought Paul left in 6:13, where he encourages the Corinthian Christians to open their heart to him. Paul again defends his work with the people – “we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” Paul seems to have been accused of doing such things by others in Corinth. He asserts that this community is in his heart – “to die together and to live together.” Apparently this was a common proverb used for close friendship. Paul not only has them in his heart and considers them bound together in friendship, he often boasts about them.
II Corinthians 7:5-16: In chapter 2, verse 13, Paul had discussed going on to Macedonia from Troas. In Troas, he had not been able to receive a report from Titus about the Corinthian Church. Paul had been worried about how the community might have received a difficult letter he had sent them. These verses indicate that Paul received a report from Titus in Macedonia, and that what he heard was good news. Again, the flow of the letter seems very choppy. Paul invites the Corinthians to open their hearts to him in verse 2-4, and now we will hear about a good report he had received about the congregation. Is his defense of his ministry made in light of yet more news he has heard since the report from Titus, or are they a part of an on-going correspondence, and we have in the remainder of this chapter a report on how they responded to Paul’s defense of his work? What we can say is that Paul’s relationship with this Jesus community had its ups and downs, times when Paul was held in relatively high esteem and times when his ministry was under attack. Paul writes them words of encouragement and love, often reminding them of their common faith, but also defends himself and in places calls them into account for their words and actions.
When Paul went to Macedonia, he encountered difficulty – “disputes without and fears within.” Charles Wesley must have had this verse in mind when he penned the hymn “And Are We Yet Alive” (“fightings without and fears within since we assembled last”). In the midst of these difficulties, Paul receives news from Titus and he is deeply consoled by it. He had grieved the community with a letter calling them to change, to repent, holding them accountable for their actions, but they responded positively. They had felt a “godly grief” – “You were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God.” (The Message) Paul distinguishes between a kind of grief or distress that does good from a kind that does not – a wise distinction, one that the church has not always done very well with. Sometimes Christians have made “guilt” nearly sacramental! The issue at hand, the issue over which the Corinthians changed, was in their relationship to Paul and his ministry.
Paul not only was pleased by the news delivered by Titus, but by the joy Titus experienced in his interaction with the Corinthian community. Paul had bragged them up to Titus, they ended up welcoming Titus and coming around. Paul had sent Titus into a hostile situation with the delicate task of presenting and interpreting the harsh letter from Paul, participating in the soul-searching discussions it caused, leading the church back to the Pauline gospel, and reintroducing the touchy matter of the collection. The collection was an especially sensitive issue, since the Corinthians had been suspicious of Paul’s handling o money and his promotion of the offering for Jerusalem. The (re)conversion of the Corinthians may own as much to Titus’ pastoral skills as to Paul’s theology and harsh letter. (People’s New Testament Commentary) The next chapters take up the issue of the collection.
Conflict has been a part of the church from its beginnings, and conflict, when it is disagreement managed well, can be transforming. Conflict, when it becomes a battle over personalities or entrenched positions, can be poisonous to a community. How the church works with conflict will either lend credibility to its witness to the transforming power of God’s love in Jesus, or will detract from that witness.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
II Corinthians 5
II Corinthians 5:1-10: These verses conclude the sustained meditation Paul began in 4:7. Paul introduces another image that mixes strength and weakness. What matters most in ministry are those things that cannot be seen – growth in love, for instance. Here Paul uses the image of the body as a tent and trusts that when this “tent” is gone, there will be a new one – a building from God. Now, in this tent, we groan, longing for a better day. Paul is not primarily focusing on the afterlife here, though it is a part of his context. He is using these images to complete the thought of the previous section – that our lives and ministries have moments of groaning and weakness, but in the midst of that God continues to do God’s creative work. God’s Spirit is at work within us.
So in the midst of this mixture of weakness and strength, affliction and comfort, Paul remains confident. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” We cannot and should not ignore “measurable” elements of ministry effectiveness, but they never tell the entire story, and sometime miss the most important story, especially in the short-run. The goal is to keep walking, to keep on keeping on. If we do that, our lives will be judged faithful in the end.
II Corinthians 5:11-21: Paul takes seriously that he will be accountable to God for his life and ministry. He continues to work by persuasion, continues to try and move others into a deeper relationship with God in Jesus Christ and into a lifestyle consistent with God’s love and justice. Paul believes God knows of his work, and he hopes the Corinthians are also aware in their own consciences of his work. Once again, Paul doesn’t want the Corinthians to think that he is just boasting, but he is reminding them of his deep and real care. That has been questioned by some. We’re not saying this to make ourselves look good to you. We just thought it would make you feel good, even proud, that we’re on your side and not just nice to your face as so many people are. (The Message) The Cotton Patch Version renders part of the passage this way: “We are trying to give you some valid reason for having confidence in us.” Some may not only have questioned Paul’s care, but his “mental status” or his spirituality. He responds by saying that all his actions are either in the interest of deepening his relationship with God and/or for the benefit of the Corinthian Christians. “The love of Christ urges us on.” “His love has the first and last word in everything we do” (The Message). Paul again stakes a claim about his ministry and also joins he and the Corinthians together in a single Christian faith. Paul is motivated by the love of Christ, a love of Christ for them all. Paul sees the love of Christ in the way Jesus died. Jesus' death is one part of the center of Christian faith. We all need to grapple with this, though there may be some difference of opinion on the precise nature of the significance of that death.
Paul thinks one way to discuss the significance of the death of Christ is that we participate in it – through the love of God in Christ, we are able to die to deadly ways of living, and are made alive to life itself. We can live life in a way not bound by an excessively narrow sense of “self.” We can choose whether or not to orient our lives to the new world that has dawned in Christ, or to continue to live as though the old world were the only one…. To orient one’s life to the new world is to live unselfishly…. Concrete deeds of care for other people manifest the reality of the new world. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
This new life in Christ really is a new beginning, a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” Paul does a wonderful job, once again, of moving from defending his own ministry to focusing on the heart of their shared Christian faith. In this chapter we have movement “from a defense of Paul’s ministry to the message at the heart of the letter: the appeal for full reconciliation” (New Interpreters Study Bible). The phrase “in Christ” is found only in Paul and Pauline literature in the New Testament. Paul thinks of Christ as more than a mortal who once lived on earth and in now in heaven. Christ is a corporate, cosmic reality, a sphere of existence, a force field that determines one’s life. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
All this new life, new creation, comes from God. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Godself.” While there are many and various ways to talk about the heart of Christian faith, this is a powerful one. God acted in Christ. That is at the heart of Christian faith. God acted in Christ to make the way for new creation, new life. That is at the heart of Christian faith. At the center of this new life is reconciliation – reconciliation between God and human persons, reconciliation between persons, reconciliation between persons and the creation itself. Not only has God initiated reconciliation, but God has also given us the task of sharing in that work of reconciliation. God makes God’s outreach to the world through us. All this is at the heart of Christian faith, and Paul encourages the Christians to live it, to be reconciled to God. It will also lead him to encourage reconciliation between persons.
II Corinthians 6
II Corinthians 6:1-13: God’s people work together, and work with the Spirit of God. Paul encourages and urges the Corinthians not to “accept the grace of God in vain,” and now is the time to get on with it. Paul shifts back to discuss his own ministry, the way he has been working with the Spirit of God and not accepting the grace of God in vain. “To keep people from making accusations against our cause, we are mighty careful to give them no openings” (Cotton Patch Version). Paul believes his ministry has given the Corinthians every reason to trust him. He has endured afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. He has lived with purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and in the power of God. This second list is another place where Paul provides us a good list of the kind of qualities all Christians are invited to cultivate. Cotton Patch Version: Through it all we stand with sincerity, understanding, forbearance, kindness, a pure spirit, open-faced love, the truthful word and the power of God. The Message: with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we are telling the truth, and when God’s showing God’s power.
After sharing a list of both hardships and positive aspect of his ministry and of the Christian life, Paul now pairs difficulties he has encountered with claims for his ministry. He concludes with a powerful statement of his ministry. “We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you.” All Christian ministry, lay and ordained, should be about speaking lovingly and openly. Paul then drops the other shoe. While his heart has been wide open to them and his affection for them has no known bounds, theirs has been restricted, and he asks them to open their hearts, too.
Paul’s writing in these chapters has caused me to think about how one is open to legitimate criticism and how one responds when one feels that one’s position has been unfairly criticized. Paul seems masterful in focusing often on shared faith, but he is also not reticent to say “here’s what I’ve done, here is my attitude.” That is not an easy balance to achieve. How does one legitimately “defend” one’s integrity without becoming anxiously defensive?
II Corinthians 6:14-18: This paragraph (through 7:1) seems out of place. 7:2 easily continues the thought of 6:13. One could argue that this is a later assertion into the letter, though it appears here in the most ancient manuscripts. It may simply be a digression on Paul’s part, though what triggered it can be debated. The issue is the relationship between Christian believers and non-Christians. This was a live issue in the Corinth to which Paul was writing. Christians were a small minority in their society. Can a Christian work for a pagan boss or client who engages in idolatrous practices? What is the Christian member of a business partnership to do when the pagan partner proposes that a pagan priest bless the business in the name of a pagan god to ensure success? Can the Christian partner participate in business meetings held in an idol temple? Can Christians participate in pagan athletic, patriotic, and social events, i.e., can they participate in the life of their own community, or must they withdraw? (People’s New Testament Commentary)
The note Paul strikes here is one of very cautious engagement with non-Christians, and, in fact, strategic disengagement. Paul uses the image of our lives as temples of God, and argues the need to keep the temple pure. “How it applies in modern situations is a matter of critical discernment” (People’s New Testament Commentary). If read in the context of what comes before and after, even if this passage seems strikingly out of place, the implication may be that open-hearted reconciliation, which Paul has encouraged, is in keeping with Christian faith, and is distinct from some of what may have been current practice in the surrounding culture. Maybe the message is not to disengage from persons who are not Christian, but to be able to be separate from values in the surrounding culture that work against Christian virtues and values.
II Corinthians 5:1-10: These verses conclude the sustained meditation Paul began in 4:7. Paul introduces another image that mixes strength and weakness. What matters most in ministry are those things that cannot be seen – growth in love, for instance. Here Paul uses the image of the body as a tent and trusts that when this “tent” is gone, there will be a new one – a building from God. Now, in this tent, we groan, longing for a better day. Paul is not primarily focusing on the afterlife here, though it is a part of his context. He is using these images to complete the thought of the previous section – that our lives and ministries have moments of groaning and weakness, but in the midst of that God continues to do God’s creative work. God’s Spirit is at work within us.
So in the midst of this mixture of weakness and strength, affliction and comfort, Paul remains confident. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” We cannot and should not ignore “measurable” elements of ministry effectiveness, but they never tell the entire story, and sometime miss the most important story, especially in the short-run. The goal is to keep walking, to keep on keeping on. If we do that, our lives will be judged faithful in the end.
II Corinthians 5:11-21: Paul takes seriously that he will be accountable to God for his life and ministry. He continues to work by persuasion, continues to try and move others into a deeper relationship with God in Jesus Christ and into a lifestyle consistent with God’s love and justice. Paul believes God knows of his work, and he hopes the Corinthians are also aware in their own consciences of his work. Once again, Paul doesn’t want the Corinthians to think that he is just boasting, but he is reminding them of his deep and real care. That has been questioned by some. We’re not saying this to make ourselves look good to you. We just thought it would make you feel good, even proud, that we’re on your side and not just nice to your face as so many people are. (The Message) The Cotton Patch Version renders part of the passage this way: “We are trying to give you some valid reason for having confidence in us.” Some may not only have questioned Paul’s care, but his “mental status” or his spirituality. He responds by saying that all his actions are either in the interest of deepening his relationship with God and/or for the benefit of the Corinthian Christians. “The love of Christ urges us on.” “His love has the first and last word in everything we do” (The Message). Paul again stakes a claim about his ministry and also joins he and the Corinthians together in a single Christian faith. Paul is motivated by the love of Christ, a love of Christ for them all. Paul sees the love of Christ in the way Jesus died. Jesus' death is one part of the center of Christian faith. We all need to grapple with this, though there may be some difference of opinion on the precise nature of the significance of that death.
Paul thinks one way to discuss the significance of the death of Christ is that we participate in it – through the love of God in Christ, we are able to die to deadly ways of living, and are made alive to life itself. We can live life in a way not bound by an excessively narrow sense of “self.” We can choose whether or not to orient our lives to the new world that has dawned in Christ, or to continue to live as though the old world were the only one…. To orient one’s life to the new world is to live unselfishly…. Concrete deeds of care for other people manifest the reality of the new world. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
This new life in Christ really is a new beginning, a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” Paul does a wonderful job, once again, of moving from defending his own ministry to focusing on the heart of their shared Christian faith. In this chapter we have movement “from a defense of Paul’s ministry to the message at the heart of the letter: the appeal for full reconciliation” (New Interpreters Study Bible). The phrase “in Christ” is found only in Paul and Pauline literature in the New Testament. Paul thinks of Christ as more than a mortal who once lived on earth and in now in heaven. Christ is a corporate, cosmic reality, a sphere of existence, a force field that determines one’s life. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
All this new life, new creation, comes from God. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Godself.” While there are many and various ways to talk about the heart of Christian faith, this is a powerful one. God acted in Christ. That is at the heart of Christian faith. God acted in Christ to make the way for new creation, new life. That is at the heart of Christian faith. At the center of this new life is reconciliation – reconciliation between God and human persons, reconciliation between persons, reconciliation between persons and the creation itself. Not only has God initiated reconciliation, but God has also given us the task of sharing in that work of reconciliation. God makes God’s outreach to the world through us. All this is at the heart of Christian faith, and Paul encourages the Christians to live it, to be reconciled to God. It will also lead him to encourage reconciliation between persons.
II Corinthians 6
II Corinthians 6:1-13: God’s people work together, and work with the Spirit of God. Paul encourages and urges the Corinthians not to “accept the grace of God in vain,” and now is the time to get on with it. Paul shifts back to discuss his own ministry, the way he has been working with the Spirit of God and not accepting the grace of God in vain. “To keep people from making accusations against our cause, we are mighty careful to give them no openings” (Cotton Patch Version). Paul believes his ministry has given the Corinthians every reason to trust him. He has endured afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. He has lived with purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and in the power of God. This second list is another place where Paul provides us a good list of the kind of qualities all Christians are invited to cultivate. Cotton Patch Version: Through it all we stand with sincerity, understanding, forbearance, kindness, a pure spirit, open-faced love, the truthful word and the power of God. The Message: with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we are telling the truth, and when God’s showing God’s power.
After sharing a list of both hardships and positive aspect of his ministry and of the Christian life, Paul now pairs difficulties he has encountered with claims for his ministry. He concludes with a powerful statement of his ministry. “We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you.” All Christian ministry, lay and ordained, should be about speaking lovingly and openly. Paul then drops the other shoe. While his heart has been wide open to them and his affection for them has no known bounds, theirs has been restricted, and he asks them to open their hearts, too.
Paul’s writing in these chapters has caused me to think about how one is open to legitimate criticism and how one responds when one feels that one’s position has been unfairly criticized. Paul seems masterful in focusing often on shared faith, but he is also not reticent to say “here’s what I’ve done, here is my attitude.” That is not an easy balance to achieve. How does one legitimately “defend” one’s integrity without becoming anxiously defensive?
II Corinthians 6:14-18: This paragraph (through 7:1) seems out of place. 7:2 easily continues the thought of 6:13. One could argue that this is a later assertion into the letter, though it appears here in the most ancient manuscripts. It may simply be a digression on Paul’s part, though what triggered it can be debated. The issue is the relationship between Christian believers and non-Christians. This was a live issue in the Corinth to which Paul was writing. Christians were a small minority in their society. Can a Christian work for a pagan boss or client who engages in idolatrous practices? What is the Christian member of a business partnership to do when the pagan partner proposes that a pagan priest bless the business in the name of a pagan god to ensure success? Can the Christian partner participate in business meetings held in an idol temple? Can Christians participate in pagan athletic, patriotic, and social events, i.e., can they participate in the life of their own community, or must they withdraw? (People’s New Testament Commentary)
The note Paul strikes here is one of very cautious engagement with non-Christians, and, in fact, strategic disengagement. Paul uses the image of our lives as temples of God, and argues the need to keep the temple pure. “How it applies in modern situations is a matter of critical discernment” (People’s New Testament Commentary). If read in the context of what comes before and after, even if this passage seems strikingly out of place, the implication may be that open-hearted reconciliation, which Paul has encouraged, is in keeping with Christian faith, and is distinct from some of what may have been current practice in the surrounding culture. Maybe the message is not to disengage from persons who are not Christian, but to be able to be separate from values in the surrounding culture that work against Christian virtues and values.
Friday, January 4, 2008
II Corinthians 3
II Corinthians 3:1-18: At the end of the previous chapter, Paul has contrasted his ministry with those who simply peddle spirituality. He asserts that he has spoken as a person of sincerity, as a person sent from God, and as a person living in an on-going relationship with God.
The beginning here is confusing as Paul has not commended himself before. However, there seems to be an on-going dispute about Paul’s ministry with the Corinthians in relationship to the ministry others have brought and are bringing. Paul founded the congregation. He has tried to explain his change of plans. He has asserted his sincerity and spoken of his love for these people. That should be enough – no letters of recommendation should be needed, but if any are needed, Paul says, the Corinthians should look at their own hearts. That they are a church at all is because of the work of Paul and his co-workers. God’s Spirit has been at work in their hearts, that is all the credential Paul needs to continue his ministry to and with this congregation. If God has been at work in the lives of this church through Paul’s ministry, Paul wants to give the credit to God. God has made Paul competent in this work, and it is God who makes any competent to be “ministers of a new covenant.” In using this language, Paul is referring to God as a covenantal God, and God’s first covenant was with Israel. Paul is not here saying that the former covenant has been abrogated, but that God has also opened up a new way of life. The Law could be letter or spirit, but for Paul it had become only letter for many. In Christ, a new covenant of spirit has begun. It is life-giving. There always seems to be a danger in the religious life that something in it becomes life-killing letter rather than life-giving spirit. Faith is about practices, but the practices are not an end in themselves. I plan to write more about this (the pendulum of practice) in my other blog later this weekend (http://withfaithandwithfeathers.blogspot.com).
Paul now makes explicit reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, trying to draw from them lessons for the Corinthian Christians. Again, the point here is not to denigrate the value of God’s covenant with Israel, but to say something about Christian faith and life. What the Corinthians have in Christian faith is something full of the glory of God – something radiant and shining. Images of radiance are familiar in religious traditions, evoking enlightenment, closeness to the divine. Because we know something of this glory, radiance, brilliance – because we have such a shining hope, we “act with great boldness.” Paul’s meaning is a little unclear, here. He seems, in the remainder of the chapter, to be again celebrating shared faith and ministry with the Corinthian Jesus community. Paul acts with boldness toward them in his ministry, and they are invited to live boldly in hope. There is “no veil” in their relationship with God, as Paul suggests still exists for many in the Jewish community, though he does not seem to be making any statement about how permanent this veil might be.
Then Paul takes flight again in describing the Christian faith and life he and the Corinthian Christians share. “Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
The Message: And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
Cotton Patch Version: Now the Lord is spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit rules, so does freedom. And all of us, with our unmasked faces clearly reflecting the Lord’s loveliness, are at the same time being changed into his exact image by one glorious thing after another. Thus we take on the Lord’s Spirit.
Paul’s words here remind me a bit of the words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism who thought the Christian life was a life leading toward perfection. “By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words, and actions.” (January 27, 1767) The Christian life is a life of being transformed by love, in love, by the Spirit of the God who is love. Love shining out through every pore in our bodies - that seems to be the goal. Quite an adventure!
II Corinthians 4
II Corinthians 4:1-15: In the last chapter, Paul has reminded the Corinthian Jesus community of his ministry for and with them, and celebrated their common ministry and shared faith. He has reaffirmed his conviction that God is about transforming lives. Paul now shifts back to discussing the character of his ministry. Part of the challenge in reading these chapters, in addition to only hearing one part of a conversation (the Corinthian’s questions and situation being the parts we don’t have directly), is that it is sometimes unclear when Paul uses “we” to whom this refers. In places it seems to refer to Paul and the Corinthian Christians (and, indeed, to all persons of faith), and in other places it refers only to Paul and his co-workers in ministry. Here we begin with Paul discussing his ministry and the “we” is he and his co-workers. Through their reflections, however, we can reflect on our own lives as Christians and as people engaged in ministry for Jesus Christ (a ministry not limited to ordained persons).
Paul reiterates a point previously made, that his ministry is God’s work. “Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times” (The Message). Paul will not lose heart. He will continue to operate openly – “we refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes.” (The Message). Apparently Paul has been accused of doing some of these things by others who are also ministering in Corinth. He offers himself openly to the conscience of each person. He goes on to say that if anything is mysterious or veiled in his work it is only so to those who just don’t get it, who have been blinded to the truth. For Paul, being open to the good news of Jesus Christ is a decision, but he also believes there are forces at work in the world which stand in the way of people seeing the truth. That may be difficult for us, but one might say that sometimes the force of our own past decisions take on a life of their own making new directions more difficult.
Paul returns to images of light already used. Christ is the image of God, and to know this is to see the light. Paul says that his ministry is not about himself, but about Jesus Christ as Lord (a rather subversive phrase in imperial times). He even calls himself a “slave” to the Corinthians as he works in their midst. Even as a slave, Paul argues that it is the light of God that has been shining in his life, shining so that others might see it and come to see the light in Jesus the Christ themselves.
Paul continues to bring together images of weakness and strength. There is light, there is a treasure, but it is in held in clay jars. With verse 7, we begin an extended meditation, a response to some of the criticisms Paul has been receiving about his ministry. The argument extends through chapter 5, verse 10. The image of the clay jar is used to reiterate that the power of Paul’s ministry comes from God. Some have argued against Paul that he has not been powerful enough, not glamorous enough. He has been in prison. He can appear undignified. He does manual labor rather than take pay for his work. Paul responds by saying the treasure of God is to be found in clay jars. So, there are afflictions, perplexities, persecutions. The wonderful irony here is that clay jars are also fragile. Paul is saying that while God’s light is to be found in clay jars, they are very resilient and that resiliency is itself a testimony to God’s grace. He is afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Paul then makes the ultimate appeal about this strange mixture of strength and weakness to be found in his ministry – he appeals to Jesus. Wasn’t one possible rap against Jesus that he died an inglorious death, the death of a criminal? Yet he is alive. So in his ministry, Paul has known something of Jesus’ death, but only so his life might also be known. Paul wants the life of Jesus to be known especially in the lives of the Corinthian Christians.
But Paul has faith, and speaks out of that faith. Here he asserts himself more strongly. He trusts that the same power and person who raised Jesus from the dead will do the same for him, and for the Corinthian Christians. I don’t read this as simply a hope for an afterlife, I read it as an assertion on Paul’s part that resurrection power will raise up lives into newness of life even now. Paul wants his work to help God’s grace extend to more and more people.
II Corinthians 4:16-18: Again, Paul says that he will not lose heart, even though he is a bit beleaguered. There is both outer difficulty, but inner renewal. There is present affliction, but something wonderful is being created in the midst of it. All that can be seen may seem discouraging, but one cannot look simply at what one sees. Love and grace are difficult to measure.
This section will continue into the next chapter. Reading Paul’s words, I hear words for all our lives. For many of us, if not most or all of us, we experience times where we are beleaguered, when we feel afflicted, beaten down, confused. Christian life, though it is about being transformed in love does not promise that the road is always easy. Paul’s gospel is no “prosperity gospel.” The promise is that even in the midst of heartache and difficulty, God is with us and God’s transformative work continues. What can be especially discouraging, and what might have been particularly discouraging to Paul, was that much of his affliction was coming from within the church itself.
I also read these words as a clergy person, and as someone who supervised clergy when I was a district superintendent. I would always want clergy to be careful and use this passage sparingly. I know clergy who don’t do some of the things they should do to improve their own ministry, then make appeal to a passage like this about how their congregation may be afflicting them. I also know very good clergy who experience times of discouragement and perplexity. Sometimes we just don’t know why there is the low-level grumbling and criticism around us. Like Paul we have offered our best gifts sincerely, with open mind and heart, tried to listen well to concerns, and yet we remain afflicted, perplexed, beleaguered. There are deep words of comfort and care here, strong words of encouragement not to lose heart. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. (The Message)
II Corinthians 3:1-18: At the end of the previous chapter, Paul has contrasted his ministry with those who simply peddle spirituality. He asserts that he has spoken as a person of sincerity, as a person sent from God, and as a person living in an on-going relationship with God.
The beginning here is confusing as Paul has not commended himself before. However, there seems to be an on-going dispute about Paul’s ministry with the Corinthians in relationship to the ministry others have brought and are bringing. Paul founded the congregation. He has tried to explain his change of plans. He has asserted his sincerity and spoken of his love for these people. That should be enough – no letters of recommendation should be needed, but if any are needed, Paul says, the Corinthians should look at their own hearts. That they are a church at all is because of the work of Paul and his co-workers. God’s Spirit has been at work in their hearts, that is all the credential Paul needs to continue his ministry to and with this congregation. If God has been at work in the lives of this church through Paul’s ministry, Paul wants to give the credit to God. God has made Paul competent in this work, and it is God who makes any competent to be “ministers of a new covenant.” In using this language, Paul is referring to God as a covenantal God, and God’s first covenant was with Israel. Paul is not here saying that the former covenant has been abrogated, but that God has also opened up a new way of life. The Law could be letter or spirit, but for Paul it had become only letter for many. In Christ, a new covenant of spirit has begun. It is life-giving. There always seems to be a danger in the religious life that something in it becomes life-killing letter rather than life-giving spirit. Faith is about practices, but the practices are not an end in themselves. I plan to write more about this (the pendulum of practice) in my other blog later this weekend (http://withfaithandwithfeathers.blogspot.com).
Paul now makes explicit reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, trying to draw from them lessons for the Corinthian Christians. Again, the point here is not to denigrate the value of God’s covenant with Israel, but to say something about Christian faith and life. What the Corinthians have in Christian faith is something full of the glory of God – something radiant and shining. Images of radiance are familiar in religious traditions, evoking enlightenment, closeness to the divine. Because we know something of this glory, radiance, brilliance – because we have such a shining hope, we “act with great boldness.” Paul’s meaning is a little unclear, here. He seems, in the remainder of the chapter, to be again celebrating shared faith and ministry with the Corinthian Jesus community. Paul acts with boldness toward them in his ministry, and they are invited to live boldly in hope. There is “no veil” in their relationship with God, as Paul suggests still exists for many in the Jewish community, though he does not seem to be making any statement about how permanent this veil might be.
Then Paul takes flight again in describing the Christian faith and life he and the Corinthian Christians share. “Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
The Message: And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
Cotton Patch Version: Now the Lord is spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit rules, so does freedom. And all of us, with our unmasked faces clearly reflecting the Lord’s loveliness, are at the same time being changed into his exact image by one glorious thing after another. Thus we take on the Lord’s Spirit.
Paul’s words here remind me a bit of the words of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism who thought the Christian life was a life leading toward perfection. “By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words, and actions.” (January 27, 1767) The Christian life is a life of being transformed by love, in love, by the Spirit of the God who is love. Love shining out through every pore in our bodies - that seems to be the goal. Quite an adventure!
II Corinthians 4
II Corinthians 4:1-15: In the last chapter, Paul has reminded the Corinthian Jesus community of his ministry for and with them, and celebrated their common ministry and shared faith. He has reaffirmed his conviction that God is about transforming lives. Paul now shifts back to discussing the character of his ministry. Part of the challenge in reading these chapters, in addition to only hearing one part of a conversation (the Corinthian’s questions and situation being the parts we don’t have directly), is that it is sometimes unclear when Paul uses “we” to whom this refers. In places it seems to refer to Paul and the Corinthian Christians (and, indeed, to all persons of faith), and in other places it refers only to Paul and his co-workers in ministry. Here we begin with Paul discussing his ministry and the “we” is he and his co-workers. Through their reflections, however, we can reflect on our own lives as Christians and as people engaged in ministry for Jesus Christ (a ministry not limited to ordained persons).
Paul reiterates a point previously made, that his ministry is God’s work. “Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times” (The Message). Paul will not lose heart. He will continue to operate openly – “we refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes.” (The Message). Apparently Paul has been accused of doing some of these things by others who are also ministering in Corinth. He offers himself openly to the conscience of each person. He goes on to say that if anything is mysterious or veiled in his work it is only so to those who just don’t get it, who have been blinded to the truth. For Paul, being open to the good news of Jesus Christ is a decision, but he also believes there are forces at work in the world which stand in the way of people seeing the truth. That may be difficult for us, but one might say that sometimes the force of our own past decisions take on a life of their own making new directions more difficult.
Paul returns to images of light already used. Christ is the image of God, and to know this is to see the light. Paul says that his ministry is not about himself, but about Jesus Christ as Lord (a rather subversive phrase in imperial times). He even calls himself a “slave” to the Corinthians as he works in their midst. Even as a slave, Paul argues that it is the light of God that has been shining in his life, shining so that others might see it and come to see the light in Jesus the Christ themselves.
Paul continues to bring together images of weakness and strength. There is light, there is a treasure, but it is in held in clay jars. With verse 7, we begin an extended meditation, a response to some of the criticisms Paul has been receiving about his ministry. The argument extends through chapter 5, verse 10. The image of the clay jar is used to reiterate that the power of Paul’s ministry comes from God. Some have argued against Paul that he has not been powerful enough, not glamorous enough. He has been in prison. He can appear undignified. He does manual labor rather than take pay for his work. Paul responds by saying the treasure of God is to be found in clay jars. So, there are afflictions, perplexities, persecutions. The wonderful irony here is that clay jars are also fragile. Paul is saying that while God’s light is to be found in clay jars, they are very resilient and that resiliency is itself a testimony to God’s grace. He is afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Paul then makes the ultimate appeal about this strange mixture of strength and weakness to be found in his ministry – he appeals to Jesus. Wasn’t one possible rap against Jesus that he died an inglorious death, the death of a criminal? Yet he is alive. So in his ministry, Paul has known something of Jesus’ death, but only so his life might also be known. Paul wants the life of Jesus to be known especially in the lives of the Corinthian Christians.
But Paul has faith, and speaks out of that faith. Here he asserts himself more strongly. He trusts that the same power and person who raised Jesus from the dead will do the same for him, and for the Corinthian Christians. I don’t read this as simply a hope for an afterlife, I read it as an assertion on Paul’s part that resurrection power will raise up lives into newness of life even now. Paul wants his work to help God’s grace extend to more and more people.
II Corinthians 4:16-18: Again, Paul says that he will not lose heart, even though he is a bit beleaguered. There is both outer difficulty, but inner renewal. There is present affliction, but something wonderful is being created in the midst of it. All that can be seen may seem discouraging, but one cannot look simply at what one sees. Love and grace are difficult to measure.
This section will continue into the next chapter. Reading Paul’s words, I hear words for all our lives. For many of us, if not most or all of us, we experience times where we are beleaguered, when we feel afflicted, beaten down, confused. Christian life, though it is about being transformed in love does not promise that the road is always easy. Paul’s gospel is no “prosperity gospel.” The promise is that even in the midst of heartache and difficulty, God is with us and God’s transformative work continues. What can be especially discouraging, and what might have been particularly discouraging to Paul, was that much of his affliction was coming from within the church itself.
I also read these words as a clergy person, and as someone who supervised clergy when I was a district superintendent. I would always want clergy to be careful and use this passage sparingly. I know clergy who don’t do some of the things they should do to improve their own ministry, then make appeal to a passage like this about how their congregation may be afflicting them. I also know very good clergy who experience times of discouragement and perplexity. Sometimes we just don’t know why there is the low-level grumbling and criticism around us. Like Paul we have offered our best gifts sincerely, with open mind and heart, tried to listen well to concerns, and yet we remain afflicted, perplexed, beleaguered. There are deep words of comfort and care here, strong words of encouragement not to lose heart. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. (The Message)
II Corinthians
The letter we have as Second Corinthians is not as simple as the title suggests. We have already mentioned that Paul had written a letter to the Corinthian Christian community, the Corinthian Jesus community, prior to First Corinthians. First Corinthians, then, is Paul’s second letter to this church he had founded. Second Corinthians mentions yet another letter that Paul wrote, one that is now lost or only partially preserved in our current Second Corinthians. Second Corinthians itself appears to be a composite letter, splicing together pieces of other letters. There is disagreement about this, however, and no consensus on where pieces of the letter may have been spliced. No scholar seriously doubts that Paul is the author of the material in this book, however it is constructed. Most also date the material after First Corinthians. In the introduction to First Corinthians, I shared some details about the church and community. In the following paragraphs, I offer some assessments of the contents of the book we are now approaching.
[Second Corinthians] contains some of the strongest and most appealing themes of Pauline theology: e.g. consolation, reconciliation, theology of weakness. It also gives us the stuff of real life in the apostolic generation: e.g. painful conflicts between Paul and the community. In this letter, we see Paul figuratively with his back against the wall. The small cracks in the unity of the Corinthian community that were apparent in I Corinthians have here widened into large fissures, and the people’s animosity seems aimed not at one another but at Paul. (New Interpreters Study Bible).
While I Corinthians deals with issues of how the Christian relates to the world and culture outside the church, II Corinthians deals almost entirely with an internal issue – the meaning of apostleship. Some in the Corinthian church had challenged Paul’s standing as an authentic apostle. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
What caused Paul to write his second letter to the Corinthians was that they had attacked his leadership… attacked his character, questioned his motives, and wondered out loud what gave Paul the right to act like their leader…. So Paul was forced to defend his leadership. (The Message)
Grappling with the Corinthians was for [Paul] a harrowing struggle, one that makes for heady reading, even in the jumbled record it left behind (Gary Wills, What Paul Meant)
Are you ready to begin this next chapter in the written relationship between Paul and this early Jesus community?
II Corinthians 1:1-11: Paul brings greetings from he and Timothy and identifies himself as an apostle, “by the will of God” and wishes those to whom he writes grace and peace from God and from “the Lord Jesus Christ.” He goes on to say more about this God – a “Father of mercies” and “the God of all consolation.” God consoles us in our difficulties not simply so we can feel better (though God is not unconcerned with that), but so that we can continue to endure hardship that might come our way and so that we can offer consolation to others. Paul evokes the suffering of Jesus to describe something he has experienced as an apostle, and which the Corinthian Christians might also experience. Paul tells the church that his own sufferings and consolations work toward the good of the Corinthian Jesus community. He wants to encourage them in their sufferings.
Paul then gets more specific, sharing with the Corinthians that he suffered in Asia, and suffered in such a way that he was “utterly, unbearably crushed” and “despaired of life itself.” Paul may have been imprisoned in Ephesus during the time this letter was written and may have feared a death sentence. Whatever the exact nature of the trouble, Paul expressed confidence in God, and thanked the Corinthians for their prayers.
II Corinthians 1:12-23: Paul had made changes to plans to visit the Corinthian Christians, but those plans had to be changed. Some in Corinth did not take that well, and Paul feels he need to defend himself. He begins by claiming that, in good conscience, he has “behaved in the world with frankness and godly sincerity” by the grace of God. They should celebrate each other as people engaged in the shared ministry of Jesus Christ. God has put God’s Spirit into their hearts, and that, too, is cause for celebration and a point at which Paul and the Corinthian Christians should be united. God has said “Yes” in a big way to all of them. Paul is here playing on words as he tries to encourage an understanding of their shared identity in Jesus Christ while moving toward defending a change in his plans to visit.
Some are accusing Paul of not keeping his promises. Paul tells them that he had hoped to visit, but could not. “Are you now going to accuse me of being flip with my promises because it didn’t work out?” (The Message) Whatever the entire range of reasons Paul had for not visiting, here he asserts that a significant reason for his failure to visit was to avoid a painful visit.
II Corinthians 2:1-11: The language here implies that there has already been one “painful visit” and Paul changed further plans to avoid another painful visit. In response to some difficult encounter Paul had written what must have been a challenging letter, a letter written out of “much distress and anguish of heart, and with many tears.” He did not want his letter to cause pain but to reassure them of his “abundant love” for them. Loving a community can involve calling it to be more loving, and that is not always easy.
All of this is a little cryptic, and we wish we had more detail on all that has gone on between Paul and this community. We get a little more here. Some person had confronted Paul in a painful way on his last visit, but Paul sees the pain as the community's pain, not just his own. Apparently, then, this confrontational person was chastised by the majority of the community, and now Paul wants the community to forgive and console the person who caused all this trouble. All that stuff about love Paul wrote about in I Corinthians has a practical application here! Love and forgiveness are to be hallmarks of the community of Jesus Christ. This has never been an easy ideal to live with and live by. Paul uses strong language to describe the Jesus community that fails to try and live lovingly – they are trapped in the designs of Satan!
II Corinthians 2:12-17: Paul returns more directly to the reason he was not able to visit Corinth as planned – his ministry was successful in Troas, though he was anxious to get a report on Corinth from Titus. As Paul describes some of the changes in his plans, he writes a beautiful, poetic piece of praise to the God he sees at work even in the midst of changed plans and confusing events. “But thanks be to God, who, in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.” The image evokes the Temple worship wherein offerings were made that emitted fragrant smells. Now to some, this “fragrance” seemed foul smelling, but to those who understood about God’s love, this was the very perfume of life. There is a resonance here with other religious traditions. The scent of flowers – sandalwood, jasmine, rosebay – doesn’t go against the wind. But the scent of a virtuous person does travel against the wind; it spreads in all directions. The scent of virtue is unsurpassed even by sandalwood, rosebay, water lily, and jasmine. Slight is the scent of rosebay or sandalwood, but the scent of the virtuous is supreme, drifting even to the gods. (The Dhammapada, 54-56). Paul then asks who really is able to measure up to such a task, to be such a fragrance in the world? It is a rhetorical question, really, for Paul understands that while persons may not be “worthy” (that language is probably not even appropriate), this is exactly who he has been. He has been this fragrance of God, this aroma of Christ, because he has spoken as a person of sincerity, as a person sent from God and as one standing in God’s presence. He has not been a teacher who has expected money for his teaching – he has not been a peddler of God’s word, a “huckster” (Cotton Patch Version). Our lives are intended to be the perfume of God in the world as we share our gifts with sincere hearts, as we share out of our own relationship with God.
The letter we have as Second Corinthians is not as simple as the title suggests. We have already mentioned that Paul had written a letter to the Corinthian Christian community, the Corinthian Jesus community, prior to First Corinthians. First Corinthians, then, is Paul’s second letter to this church he had founded. Second Corinthians mentions yet another letter that Paul wrote, one that is now lost or only partially preserved in our current Second Corinthians. Second Corinthians itself appears to be a composite letter, splicing together pieces of other letters. There is disagreement about this, however, and no consensus on where pieces of the letter may have been spliced. No scholar seriously doubts that Paul is the author of the material in this book, however it is constructed. Most also date the material after First Corinthians. In the introduction to First Corinthians, I shared some details about the church and community. In the following paragraphs, I offer some assessments of the contents of the book we are now approaching.
[Second Corinthians] contains some of the strongest and most appealing themes of Pauline theology: e.g. consolation, reconciliation, theology of weakness. It also gives us the stuff of real life in the apostolic generation: e.g. painful conflicts between Paul and the community. In this letter, we see Paul figuratively with his back against the wall. The small cracks in the unity of the Corinthian community that were apparent in I Corinthians have here widened into large fissures, and the people’s animosity seems aimed not at one another but at Paul. (New Interpreters Study Bible).
While I Corinthians deals with issues of how the Christian relates to the world and culture outside the church, II Corinthians deals almost entirely with an internal issue – the meaning of apostleship. Some in the Corinthian church had challenged Paul’s standing as an authentic apostle. (People’s New Testament Commentary)
What caused Paul to write his second letter to the Corinthians was that they had attacked his leadership… attacked his character, questioned his motives, and wondered out loud what gave Paul the right to act like their leader…. So Paul was forced to defend his leadership. (The Message)
Grappling with the Corinthians was for [Paul] a harrowing struggle, one that makes for heady reading, even in the jumbled record it left behind (Gary Wills, What Paul Meant)
Are you ready to begin this next chapter in the written relationship between Paul and this early Jesus community?
II Corinthians 1:1-11: Paul brings greetings from he and Timothy and identifies himself as an apostle, “by the will of God” and wishes those to whom he writes grace and peace from God and from “the Lord Jesus Christ.” He goes on to say more about this God – a “Father of mercies” and “the God of all consolation.” God consoles us in our difficulties not simply so we can feel better (though God is not unconcerned with that), but so that we can continue to endure hardship that might come our way and so that we can offer consolation to others. Paul evokes the suffering of Jesus to describe something he has experienced as an apostle, and which the Corinthian Christians might also experience. Paul tells the church that his own sufferings and consolations work toward the good of the Corinthian Jesus community. He wants to encourage them in their sufferings.
Paul then gets more specific, sharing with the Corinthians that he suffered in Asia, and suffered in such a way that he was “utterly, unbearably crushed” and “despaired of life itself.” Paul may have been imprisoned in Ephesus during the time this letter was written and may have feared a death sentence. Whatever the exact nature of the trouble, Paul expressed confidence in God, and thanked the Corinthians for their prayers.
II Corinthians 1:12-23: Paul had made changes to plans to visit the Corinthian Christians, but those plans had to be changed. Some in Corinth did not take that well, and Paul feels he need to defend himself. He begins by claiming that, in good conscience, he has “behaved in the world with frankness and godly sincerity” by the grace of God. They should celebrate each other as people engaged in the shared ministry of Jesus Christ. God has put God’s Spirit into their hearts, and that, too, is cause for celebration and a point at which Paul and the Corinthian Christians should be united. God has said “Yes” in a big way to all of them. Paul is here playing on words as he tries to encourage an understanding of their shared identity in Jesus Christ while moving toward defending a change in his plans to visit.
Some are accusing Paul of not keeping his promises. Paul tells them that he had hoped to visit, but could not. “Are you now going to accuse me of being flip with my promises because it didn’t work out?” (The Message) Whatever the entire range of reasons Paul had for not visiting, here he asserts that a significant reason for his failure to visit was to avoid a painful visit.
II Corinthians 2:1-11: The language here implies that there has already been one “painful visit” and Paul changed further plans to avoid another painful visit. In response to some difficult encounter Paul had written what must have been a challenging letter, a letter written out of “much distress and anguish of heart, and with many tears.” He did not want his letter to cause pain but to reassure them of his “abundant love” for them. Loving a community can involve calling it to be more loving, and that is not always easy.
All of this is a little cryptic, and we wish we had more detail on all that has gone on between Paul and this community. We get a little more here. Some person had confronted Paul in a painful way on his last visit, but Paul sees the pain as the community's pain, not just his own. Apparently, then, this confrontational person was chastised by the majority of the community, and now Paul wants the community to forgive and console the person who caused all this trouble. All that stuff about love Paul wrote about in I Corinthians has a practical application here! Love and forgiveness are to be hallmarks of the community of Jesus Christ. This has never been an easy ideal to live with and live by. Paul uses strong language to describe the Jesus community that fails to try and live lovingly – they are trapped in the designs of Satan!
II Corinthians 2:12-17: Paul returns more directly to the reason he was not able to visit Corinth as planned – his ministry was successful in Troas, though he was anxious to get a report on Corinth from Titus. As Paul describes some of the changes in his plans, he writes a beautiful, poetic piece of praise to the God he sees at work even in the midst of changed plans and confusing events. “But thanks be to God, who, in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.” The image evokes the Temple worship wherein offerings were made that emitted fragrant smells. Now to some, this “fragrance” seemed foul smelling, but to those who understood about God’s love, this was the very perfume of life. There is a resonance here with other religious traditions. The scent of flowers – sandalwood, jasmine, rosebay – doesn’t go against the wind. But the scent of a virtuous person does travel against the wind; it spreads in all directions. The scent of virtue is unsurpassed even by sandalwood, rosebay, water lily, and jasmine. Slight is the scent of rosebay or sandalwood, but the scent of the virtuous is supreme, drifting even to the gods. (The Dhammapada, 54-56). Paul then asks who really is able to measure up to such a task, to be such a fragrance in the world? It is a rhetorical question, really, for Paul understands that while persons may not be “worthy” (that language is probably not even appropriate), this is exactly who he has been. He has been this fragrance of God, this aroma of Christ, because he has spoken as a person of sincerity, as a person sent from God and as one standing in God’s presence. He has not been a teacher who has expected money for his teaching – he has not been a peddler of God’s word, a “huckster” (Cotton Patch Version). Our lives are intended to be the perfume of God in the world as we share our gifts with sincere hearts, as we share out of our own relationship with God.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
I Corinthians 15
I Corinthians 15:1-11: Paul’s letter has ranged over a variety of topics, some the Corinthian Christians had asked him about, and some Paul wanted to address given what he was hearing about this church. Now Paul wants to get back to the bedrock of the faith. In one way he has already done that in chapter 13, where he proclaims the primacy of love for the Christian life. But why is love the standard for our lives? What grounds our deepest convictions about life? In this chapter Paul wants to remind the Corinthian Jesus community about the central convictions of the Christian faith.
The good news (gospel – basic Christian message) is one that Paul has proclaimed. The Corinthians have received it, stand in it, are being saved by it – if they hold firmly to it. That is to say, this good news only has the power to save, to make life whole, if we let it do so. There is not here any exclusive claim about Christian faith as the only saving way, only a claim that for Christian faith to be a saving way one must persist in it, and the “saving” is having one’s life formed by the Spirit of Christ in love.
Paul has received and has handed on this tradition: that Christ died, and that his death was meaningful for us as we were trapped in sin. This efficacious dying was “in accordance with the scriptures.” This is not to say that these events are the fulfillment of predictions, rather it is to say that the God known through the Jewish Scriptures has acted in a way consistent with that witness in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ died, Christ was buried (his death was a real death, this in contradiction to some who wanted to proclaim that the “God part” of Jesus did not participate in this dying or that the death was not a real death), Christ was raised on the third day “in accordance with the scriptures. It is crucial to see that this earliest summary of Christian faith does not portray the “life and teachings” of Jesus as a great hero to be emulated, but refers to his death (his truly human life) and his resurrection (God’s act, not an “accomplishment” of Jesus). The death and resurrection stand for the Christ event as a whole, the act of God for human salvation. (People’s New Testament Commentary). Clearly the life and teaching of Jesus were important, as four gospels were soon composed to share the life and teaching, but the point here is that for Christian faith Jesus is something more than a “good teacher.” For Christian faith, God was at work in a special way in Jesus, in a unique way. One need not claim that God never acts in any other tradition, but to be a Christian is to claim that God was at work in a special way in Jesus and because of that, life is different, because of that I can be different, because of that I can make a difference in the world.
“Christ died for our sins” is a phrase that can mean different things, as the history of Christian theology demonstrates. Let me reprint some of what I have previously written about the significance of Jesus’ death. The gospels also proclaim that this death was meaningful and significant. In that, they agree with Paul, who is writing before the gospel writers.
All of the gospels report that Jesus was executed by the Roman authorities. “There is no more certain fact in history that the execution of Jesus by the Roman occupational forces in Jerusalem at a Passover festival ca. 30 CE” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). It seems almost as sure that certain of the Jewish leaders at the time collaborated in his execution. There had been an uneasy peace established between Rome and Jerusalem, and some had a stake in maintaining that peace. If Jesus was seen as a threat to that, and he certainly seems to have been, then that threat needed to be taken care of. Historically, then, this is why Jesus died. But the Christian church and Christian faith has been almost unanimous in saying that the death of Jesus had a deeper meaning, a theological and religious significance. For Paul, this is a part of the gospel he was taught and has now handed down to the Corinthian Christians. What is this theological/religious significance?
“For all his followers, Jesus’ death was a terrible, unexpected surprise that shattered their hopes” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). But the death of Jesus was not the end of the story. They later experienced Jesus as alive and vindicated by God. Their later experience forced them to reevaluate and reinterpret Jesus’ death. Somehow even his death must be significant. Even here God must have been at work in some way. A variety of interpretations of the significance of Jesus death are offered in the New Testament and in the history of Christian theology (theologically these are referred to as “atonement theories”). “The meaning of Jesus’ death was understood in a variety of ways: as an expression of Jesus’/God’s love, as the means of God’s forgiveness, as an atoning sacrifice, as an act of sealing or eschatologically renewing God’s covenant with his people, as redemptive liberation from slavery or ransom from captivity, and in numerous other concepts and images that express the saving act of God in the death of Jesus” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). There are those in the Christian community of faith who argue that there is only one appropriate way to understand the theological/religious significance of the death of Jesus. It is probably fair to say that substitutionary atonement is the only way that many or even most contemporary Christians understand faith in the sacrificial and salvific death of Jesus…. It is not just that Jesus offered his life in atonement for sin, but that God demanded it as a condition for our forgiveness. (Crossan and Borg, The Last Week, 101). Crossan and Borg wonder if there are better metaphors for understanding God and thus for understanding the significance of the death of Jesus. Jesus may be said to have sacrificed his life “for his passion, namely, for his advocacy of the kingdom of God” (The Last Week, 154), but this is a different kind of sacrifice than one required by God so that God might forgive. Walter Wink, in his brilliant book on “the son of man” traditions in the Bible and particularly in the New Testament (The Human Being) writes perceptively about the significance of the death of Jesus and about the theories of his death in the history of Christian theology. Of most views of the significance of Jesus’ death, Wink writes, “All these views share the presupposition that God had Jesus killed in order to redeem the world. None of them makes realistic sense of the fact that Jesus was executed by the religious and political establishment.” (105) Wink then rehearses many of the traditional theories and ends up with the following: There is truth in most of these atonement theories…. The point is that no religious experience can be made normative for all people. God reaches out to us in love wherever we are and instigates what leads us to wholeness. Each response if divinely tailored to meet our situations…. The virtue of multiple images of the atonement in the New Testament is that each communicates some aspect of forgiveness and new life, without a single model being elevated as exclusively correct. Atonement theories are need-specific remedies for the spiritual afflictions that assail us. (110-111)
All of this is to say that the bottom line New Testament affirmation is that the death of Jesus, a brutal execution at the hands of legitimate authorities, has significance for our lives and our relationship to God. Just what that significance is is open to a rich variety of interpretations, and that is perhaps as it should be. Rather than argue that there is only one true way to understand the meaning of Jesus death for our lives we would do well to listen to others as they share their understandings. Such conversations have the potential to contribute a great deal to our own formation as disciples of Jesus – this Jesus who trusted God even when he felt God’s absence.
“He was raised on the third day… and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” This is the earliest account we have of the resurrection in the New Testament. Notice that Paul does not distinguish between his experience of the raised Jesus and the experience of the other apostles. While this telling of the resurrection story is meant to say that it was not merely a subjective experience – Jesus appeared to more than five hundred at once, it tells us little about the exact nature of that experience. Again, allow me to reprint some of what I have already written about the resurrection of Jesus.
The People’s New Testament Commentary notes that “the resurrection of Jesus, i.e., God’s act in raising up Jesus, is central to the Christian faith.” I would agree – but what does that mean? The commentary goes on to say that resurrection is God’s action and that it is “to be distinguished from resuscitation, i.e., the restoration of a dead person to this-worldly life…. Jesus was raised to a new order of being beyond this life.” Resurrection in first century Judaism was a concept that was meant to say something about the ultimate justice of God. In the end, God’s justice would prevail – thus resurrection is an “eschatological” concept and it was sign of the kingdom of God. Another way of saying this is that in the resurrection the Christian community affirms that just as God’s kingdom, God’s dream for the world was breaking into the world in Jesus teaching, healing and feeding, so it continues to break into the world through Jesus even though Jesus was crucified. “The resurrection faith of the earliest Christians was expressed and communicated in several forms: songs, creeds, sermons, and stories.” “The Gospel stories of the resurrection are thus not to be harmonized. They differ on such items as who went to the tomb and when, the nature of the resurrection body of Jesus, and the location and chronology of Jesus’ appearances.” To my mind the very variety in these stories indicates that we may be dealing with something more than an easily identifiable historical event.
Here are some comments from John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, from their book, The Last Week. So Easter is utterly central. But what was it?... When we think about Easter, we must consider several foundational questions. What kind of stories are the Easter stories? What kind of language are they told in, and how is that language being used? Are they intended as historical reports and thus to be understood as history remembered (whether correctly or incorrectly)? Or do they use the language of parable and metaphor to express truths that are much more than factual? Or some combination of the two? (190) We are convinced that an emphasis on the historical factuality of the Easter stories, as if they were reporting events that could have been photographed, gets in the way of understanding them…. Seeing the Easter stories as parable does not involve a denial of their factuality. It’s quite happy leaving the question open. What it does insist upon is that the importance of these stories lies in their meanings. (191, 193) Two themes run through these stories that sum up the central meanings of Easter. Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way…. God has vindicated Jesus. God has said “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers who executed him. In the words of the earliest and most widespread post-Easter affirmation about Jesus in the New Testament, ‘Jesus is Lord.” And if Jesus is Lord, the lords of this world are not. (204, 205, 206)
Marcus Borg, in his own work Jesus builds on some of the themes already presented in his work with Crossan. While Matthew is the first writing we have in the New Testament (and Mark follows Matthew but was written earlier), Paul’s letters are earlier. Paul provides the earliest witness to the resurrection, and in his writings (as we shall see) he bundles together his own experience of the risen Christ with those of others who experienced him. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that Paul thought of the appearances of the risen Jesus to others as also visions…. Some Christians are uncomfortable with the thought that the experiences of the risen Jesus were visions…. But not all visions are hallucinations…. Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus changed his life. (277-278) Borg goes on discuss other aspects of the resurrection. But I am aware that a historical question can still be asked: what happened? What I am confident of is this. The followers of Jesus had experiences of him after his death that convinced them that he continued to be a figure of the present. Almost certainly some of these experiences were visions; it would be surprising if there weren’t any…. I think there were nonvisionary experiences of the risen Jesus…. I think his followers felt the continuing presence of Jesus with them, recognized the same Spirit that they had known in him during his historical life continuing to be present, and knew the power they had known in Jesus continuing to operate – the power of healing, the power to change lives, the power to create new forms of community. And I think these kinds of experiences have continued among Christians ever since…. For me, the truth of the claim “God raised Jesus” is grounded in these kind of experiences…. And there is one more thing to say about the experiences that lie at the heart of Easter. They carried with them the conviction that God had vindicated Jesus…. There is a continuity between the post-Easter conviction that God has vindicated Jesus and the message of the pre-Easter Jesus. “Jesus is Lord” is the post-Easter equivalent of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. (287, 288, 289) What did Easter mean to the first followers of Jesus?... First, the followers of Jesus continued to experience him after his death. They continued to know him as a figure of the present, and not simply as a figure from the past…. Second, Easter meant that God had vindicated Jesus…. To put these two meanings as concisely as possible, Easter meant “Jesus lives,” and “Jesus is Lord.” (276)
Finally, before I add a few more words of my own, a few words from George Ricker (What You Don’t Have To Believe To Be A Christian). “Christians do not agree theologically, and they never have. The essence of Christianity is not in the literal truth of the story language of the faith. In all of this I am pleading that Christians not be divided over opinions about which obvious differences exist. Christians are united in the love of God revealed by Jesus, whom we call Christ, and not by our opinions.” (69-70) Ricker imagines what an experience of the risen Christ might have been like for the first disciples of Jesus. He pictures them together sharing a meal and in the midst of that sharing they experience Jesus as present. “By the inspiration of God, the intrusion of the Spirit, they suddenly realize that it was not all over. The Lord was with them…. Jesus is dead. Jesus has a new body. They tried to kill the Christ, the activity of God, they could not. The Christ is raised in a new body.” (72-73)
What am I trying to say with all these extended quotes? Am I trying to convince you that your view of the resurrection of Jesus is wrong if you disagree with Crossan or Borg or Ricker? No. With Ricker, I am asking that we give each other permission to ask questions about this important part of our Christian faith. I am asking that we allow that people of deep and genuine Christian faith can disagree about the exact nature of the experiences of the disciples as they proclaimed that God raised Jesus from the dead. I do think that Borg and Crossan are right when they say that the meaning of the resurrection, whatever its precise nature, is to be found in the statements “Jesus lives” and “Jesus is Lord.”
Since writing those words, I have discovered some others that I also find helpful. John Dominic Crossan in his book on Paul, written with Jonathan Reed. For Crossan and Reed, a basic concept in Paul’s theology is that resurrection transformation is a process, not a moment (In Search of Paul, 173). At the heart of Christian faith “was the proclamation that the general resurrection had already begun when God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead” (173). The general resurrection was seen “as the last act or grand finale by which God finally justifies (that is, makes just) this unjust earth” (174). To claim that God has already begun to transform this earth into a place of divine justice and peace demands that you can show something of that transformative activity here and now. To which Paul would have replied unabashedly: To see God’s transformation in process, come and see how we live (In Search of Paul, 174)
Jesus lives. Jesus is Lord. Because of God’s action in Jesus, lives are being transformed and we can be a part of that transformation. This is the heart of the gospel, the Christian good news. Paul witnessed the risen Christ, and though his experience was as one untimely born, it changed his life dramatically – “by the grace of God I am what I am.” And Paul sought diligently to live out that grace, to live resurrection transformation. He has shared this good news and one result is the very Corinthian Jesus community to which he writes.
I Corinthians 15:12-34: Paul rehearsal of the essentials of the faith are not just a reminder, but are now used to address some concerns present in the life and theology of the Corinthian Jesus community. Apparently some are having difficulty with the idea that Christ was raised from the dead. That seems very contemporary. For the Corinthians, there was little difficulty with the idea of a disembodied soul separating from the body at death – this idea was well ensconced in Greek philosophy. What they struggled with was a more holistic idea of resurrection, something that may have included the body in some way. I am not here retracting what I’ve said before about legitimate room for debate about the resurrection within Christian faith, but the tradition of the faith is that resurrection is not simply the survival past death of a disembodied soul. The resurrection may be something different from the resuscitation of a corpse, but for Christians it does not leave the body behind entirely. This discussion hearkens back to Paul’s earlier discussion about the body as temple of the Holy Spirit (chapter 6).
So for Paul this sense of “bodily” resurrection is important. It is important because of his idea that such resurrection was part of God bringing God’s dream for the world (God’s kingdom) into being. “The term resurrection meant one thing and only one thing at that time – it meant the general bodily resurrection as God finally began the great cleanup of the world’s mess” (Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343). The resurrection has to do with God’s transformative work in the world. For Paul, that began with God raising Jesus as the Christ from the dead, and if this is the beginning of the process, it make no sense to say that the process will not continue. We don’t know exactly what the Corinthians were arguing, but perhaps it was for a more individualistic understanding of resurrection, that their souls would be raised from the dead, as against the broader understanding that God was transforming the world, including their lives. This may have something to do with their lives after death, but more importantly it has to do with God’s transformative work in the world. God’s transformative work is of a piece – it happened in Jesus and it is happening in us. If it is not happening in us, did it really happen with Jesus, and if it didn’t start with Jesus what are we doing talking about it as if it did.
I find the terms of this debate a little muddled, as we don’t know to what Paul is responding. The bottom line for me is the Christian message of faith – God was acting in Christ for the transformation of human life and the world and that action was decisively demonstrated in the resurrection. That transforming action of God is at work in my life, if I open myself to it. I also like The Message rendering of parts of this passage. If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. The God who works to transform our lives is the God we know as the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I think we need to take care in interpreting this for our lives. Is Paul saying that unless there is an eternal life after death, our good living here really is in vain and that we should have been living more selfishly? The Message translates the verse: “If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.” Should we read this as saying that we should be willing to suffer and suffer in doing good in this life for a reward later on? I think the better understanding is to hear in Paul’s words a rhetorical flourish. No good deed is a waste. Nothing done in love is in vain. However, Paul is right in saying that goodness does not always “make sense” in the span of our lives. It helps to know that when we love, when we seek peace and justice, when we give of ourselves and our resources for others, when we work to heal others and the earth, we are acting in a way that conforms to God’s dream for the world. We are contributing to the long-term transformative project of God. Paul is “blowing our minds” open to the wider context for our lives, God’s on-going resurrection transformation.
Paul ends his “what if” section. He gets back to the basic message – Christ has been raised from the dead, and in that is the beginning of a new phase of God’s transformative work in the world. Christ’s resurrection is the first fruit – the beginning of the general resurrection, the beginning of the process of God setting the world right. Paul envisions a time when all that is unloving and unjust, all those powers that perpetuate hurt and harm, are overcome. God is about the work of re-creating the world and God won’t stop until there is a new heaven and a new earth. God won’t stop until God is all in all.
Verse 29 is a pure puzzle. We have no idea what Paul was referring to here. Did persons get baptized representing others who had already died? We just don’t know, and this again demonstrates that this is a letter, part of a two-way conversation. We only get to hear half of it.
It is because of the hope Paul has that his work is a part of God’s transformative work in the world that he has “fought with wild animals at Ephesus” – a rhetorical phrase indicating the intensity of some of Paul’s struggles for Christian faith. Paul’s rhetorical flourish continues. If Christian faith doesn’t matter, if God is not at work transforming the world, maybe we would do well to just eat and drink our short lives away. Or if God’s transforming work has noting to do with our bodily existence, maybe it does not matter what we do with our bodies – eat and drink. Some of the Corinthians apparently had been listening to spiritual teachers who encouraged this attitude. Paul ends this section with straightforward advice. “Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more.” “Think straight. Awaken to the holiness of life.”
I Corinthians 15:35-58: Just when you think Paul has covered all the ground he needs to cover about the resurrection, he anticipates another question – and it is a good one. How are our bodies going to participate in God’s transformative work? The question cannot be answered except metaphorically, and that is important to note. The language of faith is often, of necessity, the language of poetry and not the language of science. Some try and turn metaphor into precise scientific language, and that is not very helpful. Paul uses images from agriculture and astronomy to try and make the point that our future existence will not be as a disembodied spirit, but will involve a transformation of our bodily life. “We are no more capable of imagining what life in God’s new world is like than of projecting the image of a flower by looking at a seed” (People’s New Testament Commentary). Again, Paul is concerned to emphasize a holistic view of the human person – body-soul-mind-spirit all intertwined. At the same time, Paul makes a distinction between the body and mere physical existence (“flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”). Poetic language can contain ambiguity (“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself – I am large, I contain multitudes - - - Walt Whitman)
All of this is a mystery. It seems Paul expected that this final transformation might occur in relatively short order, before too long. The bottom line is that all will be changed. This is God’s victory over even death.
Again, Paul ends with an admonition: Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Paul is not a speculative theologian. His theology seems intended to shape the lives of those to whom he is writing. If chapter 15 is sometimes difficult and abstract, it should not be read apart from chapter 13. Love is what Christ was about and his resurrection is a vindication of the way of love. God is transforming the world in love so when we love it is a part of that transformative work in the world. It is never wasted effort. Finally, all our efforts for love will become a part of a transformed world. Keep the faith, keep loving.
I Corinthian 16
I Corinthians 16:1-4: Paul was working to collect money for the Christians in Jerusalem, to help relieve their poverty in a very difficult time there and to show solidarity between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. This is a concrete act of love in keeping with chapter 13. Apparently by this time, the Christians were meeting on the first day of the week (Sunday).
I Corinthians 16:5-12: These verses again highlight the personal nature of this communication. Paul shares his travel and ministry plans, and discusses the plans of others.
I Corinthian 16:13-22: Verses 13 and 14 offer some wonderful encouragement and direction – “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” “Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping” (The Message). “Let your every act be an expression of love” (Cotton Patch Version). Paul then suggests some particular people who should be shown love in concrete ways.
Paul apparently dictated his letter, but at this point he takes up the pen himself.
Greeting another with a kiss was a common first century greeting among friends and family. Paul’s words here indicate that in Christ, new friendships and a new family are being formed.
“Our Lord come” was an ancient Christian prayer, a prayer for God’s transformative work to be completed. It is a beautiful and simple prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom, and one that we might pray as we listen to news of war, poverty, violence, crime, assassination, inhumanity and the like. Oh that God’s dream for the world would be fulfilled quickly. We pray for this, but also work for this. Paul ends his letter offering them the grace of Christ, and his own love in Christ.
I Corinthians 15:1-11: Paul’s letter has ranged over a variety of topics, some the Corinthian Christians had asked him about, and some Paul wanted to address given what he was hearing about this church. Now Paul wants to get back to the bedrock of the faith. In one way he has already done that in chapter 13, where he proclaims the primacy of love for the Christian life. But why is love the standard for our lives? What grounds our deepest convictions about life? In this chapter Paul wants to remind the Corinthian Jesus community about the central convictions of the Christian faith.
The good news (gospel – basic Christian message) is one that Paul has proclaimed. The Corinthians have received it, stand in it, are being saved by it – if they hold firmly to it. That is to say, this good news only has the power to save, to make life whole, if we let it do so. There is not here any exclusive claim about Christian faith as the only saving way, only a claim that for Christian faith to be a saving way one must persist in it, and the “saving” is having one’s life formed by the Spirit of Christ in love.
Paul has received and has handed on this tradition: that Christ died, and that his death was meaningful for us as we were trapped in sin. This efficacious dying was “in accordance with the scriptures.” This is not to say that these events are the fulfillment of predictions, rather it is to say that the God known through the Jewish Scriptures has acted in a way consistent with that witness in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ died, Christ was buried (his death was a real death, this in contradiction to some who wanted to proclaim that the “God part” of Jesus did not participate in this dying or that the death was not a real death), Christ was raised on the third day “in accordance with the scriptures. It is crucial to see that this earliest summary of Christian faith does not portray the “life and teachings” of Jesus as a great hero to be emulated, but refers to his death (his truly human life) and his resurrection (God’s act, not an “accomplishment” of Jesus). The death and resurrection stand for the Christ event as a whole, the act of God for human salvation. (People’s New Testament Commentary). Clearly the life and teaching of Jesus were important, as four gospels were soon composed to share the life and teaching, but the point here is that for Christian faith Jesus is something more than a “good teacher.” For Christian faith, God was at work in a special way in Jesus, in a unique way. One need not claim that God never acts in any other tradition, but to be a Christian is to claim that God was at work in a special way in Jesus and because of that, life is different, because of that I can be different, because of that I can make a difference in the world.
“Christ died for our sins” is a phrase that can mean different things, as the history of Christian theology demonstrates. Let me reprint some of what I have previously written about the significance of Jesus’ death. The gospels also proclaim that this death was meaningful and significant. In that, they agree with Paul, who is writing before the gospel writers.
All of the gospels report that Jesus was executed by the Roman authorities. “There is no more certain fact in history that the execution of Jesus by the Roman occupational forces in Jerusalem at a Passover festival ca. 30 CE” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). It seems almost as sure that certain of the Jewish leaders at the time collaborated in his execution. There had been an uneasy peace established between Rome and Jerusalem, and some had a stake in maintaining that peace. If Jesus was seen as a threat to that, and he certainly seems to have been, then that threat needed to be taken care of. Historically, then, this is why Jesus died. But the Christian church and Christian faith has been almost unanimous in saying that the death of Jesus had a deeper meaning, a theological and religious significance. For Paul, this is a part of the gospel he was taught and has now handed down to the Corinthian Christians. What is this theological/religious significance?
“For all his followers, Jesus’ death was a terrible, unexpected surprise that shattered their hopes” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). But the death of Jesus was not the end of the story. They later experienced Jesus as alive and vindicated by God. Their later experience forced them to reevaluate and reinterpret Jesus’ death. Somehow even his death must be significant. Even here God must have been at work in some way. A variety of interpretations of the significance of Jesus death are offered in the New Testament and in the history of Christian theology (theologically these are referred to as “atonement theories”). “The meaning of Jesus’ death was understood in a variety of ways: as an expression of Jesus’/God’s love, as the means of God’s forgiveness, as an atoning sacrifice, as an act of sealing or eschatologically renewing God’s covenant with his people, as redemptive liberation from slavery or ransom from captivity, and in numerous other concepts and images that express the saving act of God in the death of Jesus” (The People’s New Testament Commentary, 164). There are those in the Christian community of faith who argue that there is only one appropriate way to understand the theological/religious significance of the death of Jesus. It is probably fair to say that substitutionary atonement is the only way that many or even most contemporary Christians understand faith in the sacrificial and salvific death of Jesus…. It is not just that Jesus offered his life in atonement for sin, but that God demanded it as a condition for our forgiveness. (Crossan and Borg, The Last Week, 101). Crossan and Borg wonder if there are better metaphors for understanding God and thus for understanding the significance of the death of Jesus. Jesus may be said to have sacrificed his life “for his passion, namely, for his advocacy of the kingdom of God” (The Last Week, 154), but this is a different kind of sacrifice than one required by God so that God might forgive. Walter Wink, in his brilliant book on “the son of man” traditions in the Bible and particularly in the New Testament (The Human Being) writes perceptively about the significance of the death of Jesus and about the theories of his death in the history of Christian theology. Of most views of the significance of Jesus’ death, Wink writes, “All these views share the presupposition that God had Jesus killed in order to redeem the world. None of them makes realistic sense of the fact that Jesus was executed by the religious and political establishment.” (105) Wink then rehearses many of the traditional theories and ends up with the following: There is truth in most of these atonement theories…. The point is that no religious experience can be made normative for all people. God reaches out to us in love wherever we are and instigates what leads us to wholeness. Each response if divinely tailored to meet our situations…. The virtue of multiple images of the atonement in the New Testament is that each communicates some aspect of forgiveness and new life, without a single model being elevated as exclusively correct. Atonement theories are need-specific remedies for the spiritual afflictions that assail us. (110-111)
All of this is to say that the bottom line New Testament affirmation is that the death of Jesus, a brutal execution at the hands of legitimate authorities, has significance for our lives and our relationship to God. Just what that significance is is open to a rich variety of interpretations, and that is perhaps as it should be. Rather than argue that there is only one true way to understand the meaning of Jesus death for our lives we would do well to listen to others as they share their understandings. Such conversations have the potential to contribute a great deal to our own formation as disciples of Jesus – this Jesus who trusted God even when he felt God’s absence.
“He was raised on the third day… and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” This is the earliest account we have of the resurrection in the New Testament. Notice that Paul does not distinguish between his experience of the raised Jesus and the experience of the other apostles. While this telling of the resurrection story is meant to say that it was not merely a subjective experience – Jesus appeared to more than five hundred at once, it tells us little about the exact nature of that experience. Again, allow me to reprint some of what I have already written about the resurrection of Jesus.
The People’s New Testament Commentary notes that “the resurrection of Jesus, i.e., God’s act in raising up Jesus, is central to the Christian faith.” I would agree – but what does that mean? The commentary goes on to say that resurrection is God’s action and that it is “to be distinguished from resuscitation, i.e., the restoration of a dead person to this-worldly life…. Jesus was raised to a new order of being beyond this life.” Resurrection in first century Judaism was a concept that was meant to say something about the ultimate justice of God. In the end, God’s justice would prevail – thus resurrection is an “eschatological” concept and it was sign of the kingdom of God. Another way of saying this is that in the resurrection the Christian community affirms that just as God’s kingdom, God’s dream for the world was breaking into the world in Jesus teaching, healing and feeding, so it continues to break into the world through Jesus even though Jesus was crucified. “The resurrection faith of the earliest Christians was expressed and communicated in several forms: songs, creeds, sermons, and stories.” “The Gospel stories of the resurrection are thus not to be harmonized. They differ on such items as who went to the tomb and when, the nature of the resurrection body of Jesus, and the location and chronology of Jesus’ appearances.” To my mind the very variety in these stories indicates that we may be dealing with something more than an easily identifiable historical event.
Here are some comments from John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, from their book, The Last Week. So Easter is utterly central. But what was it?... When we think about Easter, we must consider several foundational questions. What kind of stories are the Easter stories? What kind of language are they told in, and how is that language being used? Are they intended as historical reports and thus to be understood as history remembered (whether correctly or incorrectly)? Or do they use the language of parable and metaphor to express truths that are much more than factual? Or some combination of the two? (190) We are convinced that an emphasis on the historical factuality of the Easter stories, as if they were reporting events that could have been photographed, gets in the way of understanding them…. Seeing the Easter stories as parable does not involve a denial of their factuality. It’s quite happy leaving the question open. What it does insist upon is that the importance of these stories lies in their meanings. (191, 193) Two themes run through these stories that sum up the central meanings of Easter. Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way…. God has vindicated Jesus. God has said “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers who executed him. In the words of the earliest and most widespread post-Easter affirmation about Jesus in the New Testament, ‘Jesus is Lord.” And if Jesus is Lord, the lords of this world are not. (204, 205, 206)
Marcus Borg, in his own work Jesus builds on some of the themes already presented in his work with Crossan. While Matthew is the first writing we have in the New Testament (and Mark follows Matthew but was written earlier), Paul’s letters are earlier. Paul provides the earliest witness to the resurrection, and in his writings (as we shall see) he bundles together his own experience of the risen Christ with those of others who experienced him. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that Paul thought of the appearances of the risen Jesus to others as also visions…. Some Christians are uncomfortable with the thought that the experiences of the risen Jesus were visions…. But not all visions are hallucinations…. Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus changed his life. (277-278) Borg goes on discuss other aspects of the resurrection. But I am aware that a historical question can still be asked: what happened? What I am confident of is this. The followers of Jesus had experiences of him after his death that convinced them that he continued to be a figure of the present. Almost certainly some of these experiences were visions; it would be surprising if there weren’t any…. I think there were nonvisionary experiences of the risen Jesus…. I think his followers felt the continuing presence of Jesus with them, recognized the same Spirit that they had known in him during his historical life continuing to be present, and knew the power they had known in Jesus continuing to operate – the power of healing, the power to change lives, the power to create new forms of community. And I think these kinds of experiences have continued among Christians ever since…. For me, the truth of the claim “God raised Jesus” is grounded in these kind of experiences…. And there is one more thing to say about the experiences that lie at the heart of Easter. They carried with them the conviction that God had vindicated Jesus…. There is a continuity between the post-Easter conviction that God has vindicated Jesus and the message of the pre-Easter Jesus. “Jesus is Lord” is the post-Easter equivalent of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. (287, 288, 289) What did Easter mean to the first followers of Jesus?... First, the followers of Jesus continued to experience him after his death. They continued to know him as a figure of the present, and not simply as a figure from the past…. Second, Easter meant that God had vindicated Jesus…. To put these two meanings as concisely as possible, Easter meant “Jesus lives,” and “Jesus is Lord.” (276)
Finally, before I add a few more words of my own, a few words from George Ricker (What You Don’t Have To Believe To Be A Christian). “Christians do not agree theologically, and they never have. The essence of Christianity is not in the literal truth of the story language of the faith. In all of this I am pleading that Christians not be divided over opinions about which obvious differences exist. Christians are united in the love of God revealed by Jesus, whom we call Christ, and not by our opinions.” (69-70) Ricker imagines what an experience of the risen Christ might have been like for the first disciples of Jesus. He pictures them together sharing a meal and in the midst of that sharing they experience Jesus as present. “By the inspiration of God, the intrusion of the Spirit, they suddenly realize that it was not all over. The Lord was with them…. Jesus is dead. Jesus has a new body. They tried to kill the Christ, the activity of God, they could not. The Christ is raised in a new body.” (72-73)
What am I trying to say with all these extended quotes? Am I trying to convince you that your view of the resurrection of Jesus is wrong if you disagree with Crossan or Borg or Ricker? No. With Ricker, I am asking that we give each other permission to ask questions about this important part of our Christian faith. I am asking that we allow that people of deep and genuine Christian faith can disagree about the exact nature of the experiences of the disciples as they proclaimed that God raised Jesus from the dead. I do think that Borg and Crossan are right when they say that the meaning of the resurrection, whatever its precise nature, is to be found in the statements “Jesus lives” and “Jesus is Lord.”
Since writing those words, I have discovered some others that I also find helpful. John Dominic Crossan in his book on Paul, written with Jonathan Reed. For Crossan and Reed, a basic concept in Paul’s theology is that resurrection transformation is a process, not a moment (In Search of Paul, 173). At the heart of Christian faith “was the proclamation that the general resurrection had already begun when God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead” (173). The general resurrection was seen “as the last act or grand finale by which God finally justifies (that is, makes just) this unjust earth” (174). To claim that God has already begun to transform this earth into a place of divine justice and peace demands that you can show something of that transformative activity here and now. To which Paul would have replied unabashedly: To see God’s transformation in process, come and see how we live (In Search of Paul, 174)
Jesus lives. Jesus is Lord. Because of God’s action in Jesus, lives are being transformed and we can be a part of that transformation. This is the heart of the gospel, the Christian good news. Paul witnessed the risen Christ, and though his experience was as one untimely born, it changed his life dramatically – “by the grace of God I am what I am.” And Paul sought diligently to live out that grace, to live resurrection transformation. He has shared this good news and one result is the very Corinthian Jesus community to which he writes.
I Corinthians 15:12-34: Paul rehearsal of the essentials of the faith are not just a reminder, but are now used to address some concerns present in the life and theology of the Corinthian Jesus community. Apparently some are having difficulty with the idea that Christ was raised from the dead. That seems very contemporary. For the Corinthians, there was little difficulty with the idea of a disembodied soul separating from the body at death – this idea was well ensconced in Greek philosophy. What they struggled with was a more holistic idea of resurrection, something that may have included the body in some way. I am not here retracting what I’ve said before about legitimate room for debate about the resurrection within Christian faith, but the tradition of the faith is that resurrection is not simply the survival past death of a disembodied soul. The resurrection may be something different from the resuscitation of a corpse, but for Christians it does not leave the body behind entirely. This discussion hearkens back to Paul’s earlier discussion about the body as temple of the Holy Spirit (chapter 6).
So for Paul this sense of “bodily” resurrection is important. It is important because of his idea that such resurrection was part of God bringing God’s dream for the world (God’s kingdom) into being. “The term resurrection meant one thing and only one thing at that time – it meant the general bodily resurrection as God finally began the great cleanup of the world’s mess” (Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343). The resurrection has to do with God’s transformative work in the world. For Paul, that began with God raising Jesus as the Christ from the dead, and if this is the beginning of the process, it make no sense to say that the process will not continue. We don’t know exactly what the Corinthians were arguing, but perhaps it was for a more individualistic understanding of resurrection, that their souls would be raised from the dead, as against the broader understanding that God was transforming the world, including their lives. This may have something to do with their lives after death, but more importantly it has to do with God’s transformative work in the world. God’s transformative work is of a piece – it happened in Jesus and it is happening in us. If it is not happening in us, did it really happen with Jesus, and if it didn’t start with Jesus what are we doing talking about it as if it did.
I find the terms of this debate a little muddled, as we don’t know to what Paul is responding. The bottom line for me is the Christian message of faith – God was acting in Christ for the transformation of human life and the world and that action was decisively demonstrated in the resurrection. That transforming action of God is at work in my life, if I open myself to it. I also like The Message rendering of parts of this passage. If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. The God who works to transform our lives is the God we know as the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I think we need to take care in interpreting this for our lives. Is Paul saying that unless there is an eternal life after death, our good living here really is in vain and that we should have been living more selfishly? The Message translates the verse: “If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.” Should we read this as saying that we should be willing to suffer and suffer in doing good in this life for a reward later on? I think the better understanding is to hear in Paul’s words a rhetorical flourish. No good deed is a waste. Nothing done in love is in vain. However, Paul is right in saying that goodness does not always “make sense” in the span of our lives. It helps to know that when we love, when we seek peace and justice, when we give of ourselves and our resources for others, when we work to heal others and the earth, we are acting in a way that conforms to God’s dream for the world. We are contributing to the long-term transformative project of God. Paul is “blowing our minds” open to the wider context for our lives, God’s on-going resurrection transformation.
Paul ends his “what if” section. He gets back to the basic message – Christ has been raised from the dead, and in that is the beginning of a new phase of God’s transformative work in the world. Christ’s resurrection is the first fruit – the beginning of the general resurrection, the beginning of the process of God setting the world right. Paul envisions a time when all that is unloving and unjust, all those powers that perpetuate hurt and harm, are overcome. God is about the work of re-creating the world and God won’t stop until there is a new heaven and a new earth. God won’t stop until God is all in all.
Verse 29 is a pure puzzle. We have no idea what Paul was referring to here. Did persons get baptized representing others who had already died? We just don’t know, and this again demonstrates that this is a letter, part of a two-way conversation. We only get to hear half of it.
It is because of the hope Paul has that his work is a part of God’s transformative work in the world that he has “fought with wild animals at Ephesus” – a rhetorical phrase indicating the intensity of some of Paul’s struggles for Christian faith. Paul’s rhetorical flourish continues. If Christian faith doesn’t matter, if God is not at work transforming the world, maybe we would do well to just eat and drink our short lives away. Or if God’s transforming work has noting to do with our bodily existence, maybe it does not matter what we do with our bodies – eat and drink. Some of the Corinthians apparently had been listening to spiritual teachers who encouraged this attitude. Paul ends this section with straightforward advice. “Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more.” “Think straight. Awaken to the holiness of life.”
I Corinthians 15:35-58: Just when you think Paul has covered all the ground he needs to cover about the resurrection, he anticipates another question – and it is a good one. How are our bodies going to participate in God’s transformative work? The question cannot be answered except metaphorically, and that is important to note. The language of faith is often, of necessity, the language of poetry and not the language of science. Some try and turn metaphor into precise scientific language, and that is not very helpful. Paul uses images from agriculture and astronomy to try and make the point that our future existence will not be as a disembodied spirit, but will involve a transformation of our bodily life. “We are no more capable of imagining what life in God’s new world is like than of projecting the image of a flower by looking at a seed” (People’s New Testament Commentary). Again, Paul is concerned to emphasize a holistic view of the human person – body-soul-mind-spirit all intertwined. At the same time, Paul makes a distinction between the body and mere physical existence (“flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”). Poetic language can contain ambiguity (“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself – I am large, I contain multitudes - - - Walt Whitman)
All of this is a mystery. It seems Paul expected that this final transformation might occur in relatively short order, before too long. The bottom line is that all will be changed. This is God’s victory over even death.
Again, Paul ends with an admonition: Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Paul is not a speculative theologian. His theology seems intended to shape the lives of those to whom he is writing. If chapter 15 is sometimes difficult and abstract, it should not be read apart from chapter 13. Love is what Christ was about and his resurrection is a vindication of the way of love. God is transforming the world in love so when we love it is a part of that transformative work in the world. It is never wasted effort. Finally, all our efforts for love will become a part of a transformed world. Keep the faith, keep loving.
I Corinthian 16
I Corinthians 16:1-4: Paul was working to collect money for the Christians in Jerusalem, to help relieve their poverty in a very difficult time there and to show solidarity between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. This is a concrete act of love in keeping with chapter 13. Apparently by this time, the Christians were meeting on the first day of the week (Sunday).
I Corinthians 16:5-12: These verses again highlight the personal nature of this communication. Paul shares his travel and ministry plans, and discusses the plans of others.
I Corinthian 16:13-22: Verses 13 and 14 offer some wonderful encouragement and direction – “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” “Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping” (The Message). “Let your every act be an expression of love” (Cotton Patch Version). Paul then suggests some particular people who should be shown love in concrete ways.
Paul apparently dictated his letter, but at this point he takes up the pen himself.
Greeting another with a kiss was a common first century greeting among friends and family. Paul’s words here indicate that in Christ, new friendships and a new family are being formed.
“Our Lord come” was an ancient Christian prayer, a prayer for God’s transformative work to be completed. It is a beautiful and simple prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom, and one that we might pray as we listen to news of war, poverty, violence, crime, assassination, inhumanity and the like. Oh that God’s dream for the world would be fulfilled quickly. We pray for this, but also work for this. Paul ends his letter offering them the grace of Christ, and his own love in Christ.
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