1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16)
Epiphany 5 - Year A
Time and again we come to ask the question of - what's in it for me? And time and again we come to be asked – what's in it for others?
An awareness of the distinction between whether we are asking or being asked focuses us on whether or not we sense our sense or common sense or human wisdom is the chief measuring rod of life. If it is, we have seen evidence of our following prescribed rituals such as fasting and finding their limit in justifying what we are currently doing.
If our sense is that these ritual righteousnesses have their place but there is a mystery of more-life that takes place beyond them, then we may find another level of fasting and living. If this is the case, we have evidence that our actions can have a positive effect in the lives of others that echo in our own.
If fasting from anger doesn't loosen bonds we wrap around another, our fasting only makes us look tolerant.
If fasting from greed doesn't loosen a yoke we place around others to provide our well-being, our fasting only makes us look philanthropic.
If fasting from food doesn't loosen our hold on our bread, our fasting only makes us look sleek.
If fasting from sloth doesn't loosen our regard for privacy, our fasting only makes us look kingly in our castle.
If fasting from comfort doesn't loosen our closet locks, our fasting only makes us look the emperor in new clothes.
If fasting from jealousy doesn't loosen our remembrance of injuries done to us by those who love us, our fasting only makes us look justified.
Fasting for our benefit is one thing. Fasting for the benefit of another is another.
- - -
a cosmic aarrgghh
rumbles forth
I write of fasting
and take a break
for cheese and crackersfor but a bit of
lovely Wensleydale
how Wallace and Wesley
could go on and on
oblivious to anything but
honey-tinged Wensleydalehopefully with the help of
a faithful friend
we will muddle through
steady of heart
triumphant in the endpray all cosmic aarrgghhs
will come 'round right
to comic har-har-hars
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
15 - Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny.
This may well have been Paul's experience and claim for authority. For Paul and the plowing and seeding of a Church, he may have felt the need to set up a separation of spirit and flesh, grace and law (short-term effective, long-term problematic). This sort of clarity and either/or was probably helpful in his time and for his purposes, but 2,000+ years later - not so much.
The experience here is that the more spiritual we are the more worldly we must be. Barbara Brown Taylor's book An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith is an excellent source of this perspective. She notes, that currently church people seem to think that the only "more" available to them is more of the same.
Somewhere along the line we bought - or were sold - the idea that God is chiefly interested in religion. We believed that God's home was the church, that God's people knew who they were, and that the world was a barren place full of lost souls in need of all the help they could get. Plenty of us seized on those ideas because they offered us meaning. Believing them gave us purpose and worth. They gave us something noble to do in the midst of lives' that might otherwise be invisible. Plus, there really are large swaths of the world filled with people in deep need of saving.
The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do. What if the gravel of a parking lot looks as promising to God as the floorboard of a church? What if a lost soul strikes God as more reachable than a lifelong believer? What if God can drop a [Jacob's] ladder absolutely anywhere, with no regard for the religious standards developed by those who have made it their business to know the way to God?
Somehow we need to rebind the world to G*D and G*D to the world. Out of this encounter, sparks will fly.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/02/1-corinthians-21-12-13-16.html