1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Epiphany 3 - Year A
Church quarrels go back to our very beginning. They are part of our DNA. We are still splitting ourselves into various constituencies.
Has Christ been divided or is that a necessary component of a Christ that engages this particular creation? We do tend to idealize our leaders, whether Paul, Apollos, Cephas, a particular Pope, Martin Luther, John Wesley, the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Mary, or yourself. What do you make of our ancient or contemporary quarrels? How many Saints were burned as Heretics and how many Heretics have been elevated to Sainthood? What is the half-life of a Creed? What is the cost/benefit ratio of any given Creed?
If Jesus told us to go and baptize and Paul explicitly says he was not sent to do so, what does that mean for you? How else might you join Paul in foolishness beyond a literalism of red letters?
Are you following Jesus and baptism, Paul and the cross, Kairos CoMotion and expansive love? One of these? Two? All three? Another? Blessings to you on following your call, even if not understood by the institutions (formal and informal) around you.
Has Christ been divided or is that a necessary component of a Christ that engages this particular creation? We do tend to idealize our leaders, whether Paul, Apollos, Cephas, a particular Pope, Martin Luther, John Wesley, the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Mary, or yourself. What do you make of our ancient or contemporary quarrels? How many Saints were burned as Heretics and how many Heretics have been elevated to Sainthood? What is the half-life of a Creed? What is the cost/benefit ratio of any given Creed?
If Jesus told us to go and baptize and Paul explicitly says he was not sent to do so, what does that mean for you? How else might you join Paul in foolishness beyond a literalism of red letters?
Are you following Jesus and baptism, Paul and the cross, Kairos CoMotion and expansive love? One of these? Two? All three? Another? Blessings to you on following your call, even if not understood by the institutions (formal and informal) around you.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Sounds like Paul wasn't much of an administrator. Would you care to be the next evangelist after Paul? How could you operate without a clear record of who is baptized?
Getting that detail right may not have been Paul's first concern, or even fourth. Can you proclaim the gospel without getting a count on the altar call, knowing how many gave themselves to Christ as a result of your revival meeting? Can the gospel be proclaimed without it ending up with an inventory of who's now in and who's now still out? What happens to gospel preaching when there is not a connection to traditional rites?
For Paul the issue is that of empowering people, not emptying them. (By "emptying" I mean having a sense of "once and done" or "So-And-So will care for it for me" or "magic talismans are the currency of choice".) The same is true of empowering symbols of life — from vision told and retold, manger and cradle births including those in the back of a cab, moments of insight and healing, deaths/endings/crosses, and new visions/horizon visions/resurrections. All too often these days everything is empty and so scoundrels can get away with anything as they define emptiness to their own benefit.
When we are full of meaning we are as threatening to the power structures as was Jesus. We dare not empty our own journey toward the clarifying of our values. Risk and death are two of the places where we see who we are. Facing our particular temptations to ease and comfort are other places. Let us be empowered, filling life, ours and others, not just get by.
Well? . . . You're right, it is foolish to live at that level. ... Nonetheless, Fools, arise!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/january2005.html
Again and again I run into people who are surprised at the amount of politics in a congregation and the number of subsets that are able to cause dissension. It is as though we have sold ourselves a false myth that having God on our side in the midst of other folks of the same tradition will mean that we will get along famously and work every difference out on the first try.
We wouldn't have the Pauline corpus were it not for the ongoing issues between people regardless of their faith in one expression of God or one party of a nation.
It may be that our quarrels are a better measure of our connection with one another than anything else. Are we quarreling well or not? Fighting fair or not? If we are doing either of those well we are well on the way to wellness. if we are not, we are not on that upward trail.
Quarrels that we might usually associate with a devolution of our common life can actually help us evolve. And, yes, you can apply that to the ongoing evolution of our understanding of evolution.
So here is an exercise to warm your heart and move you along to wellness — participate in one good quarrel this next week. By that we are not talking about ranting with like-minded folks, but elevating your relationship by getting down to the basics which will include differences. See if you don't feel much better about yourself and others if you can quarrel well
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/january2005.html
Great affirmations are tested by great questions.
The Lord is my light . . . seek his face/light. What is this distance between having and seeking that finds us living most of our lives between?
Go into all the world, baptizing . . . Christ did not send me to baptize. Here a distance between community and individual sets up another omnipresent environment where we adapt and are evolved.
Light has dawned . . . repent. Repent . . . good news. Given time and space and matter and energy it seems we cannot escape these outcomes that circle through our lives. A dawning light reveals a present darkness and recognizing the possibility of changing direction brings comfort enough to test our current orientation.
An Epiphany star reminds us of the found and lost and found again process of growing spirits to find a next immanence or incarnation of G*D illumined by the ordinary. Stars of any sort in our lives are a joy to behold and a source of yearning when lost in storm clouds.
Where are you, your friends/family, spiritual fellowship with a star this day?
__ It is in sight.
__ It has recently dimmed.
__ It peeks and hides.
__ It has been a long time gone.
__ It is a non-issue
- - -
a great light shines
great enough for us to rejoice for a moment
blinding us to flickery light twinks so small
they can be discarded with nary a squintupper lights glare until
lower lights are lost
so enamored of mercy received
we lose track of mercy extendedit seems the brighter the beam the deeper the sin seen
pray also for a faint of gleam that does not scare us
with such darkness as would swallow us whole
rejoice forever in a nearing humble light
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
Do you imagine staying with Jesus to be a unitive experience that automatically brings agreement/peace by dismissing disagreements? If so, the lives of the disciples have been disregarded.
Our same mind and purpose is larger than community rules and mediation principles, important as they be.
Note here that our unity is not in baptism, but in gospel proclamation (giving evidence in the depth of one's living space of G*D's presence and how mutually healing such becomes).
Baptism, in our experience, is over-personalized presence and under-valued empowerment of foolishness (living today through a lens of tomorrow).
Tomorrow is the place where Jesus stays/lives that he might take gospel/healing forays into today. After visiting tomorrow, we, too, are arced backward to today to lead it onward.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
Church quarrels go back to our very beginning. They are part of our DNA. We are still splitting ourselves into various constituencies.
Has Christ been divided or is that a necessary component of a Christ that engages this particular creation. We do tend to idealize our leaders, whether Paul, Apollos, Cephas, a particular Pope, Martin Luther, John Wesley, the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Mary, or yourself. What do you make of our ancient or contemporary quarrels? How many Saints were burned as Heretics and how many Heretics have been elevated to Sainthood. What is the half-life of a Creed? What is the cost/benefit ratio of any given Creed?
If Jesus told us to go and baptize and Paul explicitly says he was not sent to do so, what does that mean for you? How else might you join Paul in foolishness beyond a literalism of red letters?
Are you following Jesus and baptism, Paul and the cross, Kairos CoMotion and expansive love? One of these? Two? All three? Another? Blessings to you on following your call, even if not understood by the institutions (formal and informal) around you.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/01/1-corinthians-110-18.html
“United in the same purpose” is a rallying cry of prophets attempting to blow open a rigidified religion and of priests attempting to narrow faith to rules. It is no little thing, though, to ask about the purpose of unity.
A call for “unity” usually comes with a threat of “schism”. Those two are used in tandem to keep everyone off-balance. If you want a contemporary view of how these rallying cries are used, purchase and read a just released book that is already sold-out at Amazon: Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism. You can also get an autographed copy directly from the author R. W. (Obie) Holmen. Here you will find documentation about how the “gatekeepers” of the church alternately use “Unity” and “Schism” as propaganda tools to perpetuate the power of the past against resurrectional sightings leading us past the past. My review of this book is found here.
Now, back to the text. Christ can’t help but be divided if Christ is to minister to all the different realities in people’s lives and the life of the world. It is exactly this variation that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. So many saw the way Jesus treated others differently than they would that he was a universal affront. There was no way to control the power of a steadfastly loving G*D than to deny it and the ultimate denial we have available to us is death.
Do you want the cross to have power? Constraining or liberating?
The power of the cross turns out to be no power. The power is not in a cross but in a life lived in response to lives. The power is in a process of becoming wholier than our present wholeness, or “being saved” (not once and always saved). Remember back to the Matthew passage for this day and the processes of “proclaiming” and “healing”.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/01/1-corinthians-110-18.html