1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Epiphany 6 - Year A
To choose or not to choose: that is the question.
On the one hand, everything depends upon this moment. What we decide will echo on forever. What we decide against is stillborn. All of life hangs in the balance - all of heaven holds it breath. What will they decide?
Here it might be good to listen again to that old hymn, "Once to Every Man and Nation" [written by James Russell Lowell in the Boston Courier, December 11, 1845. Lowell wrote these words as a poem protesting America's war with Mexico]. What decision is now needed regarding America's preemptive war against Iraq and impending one with Iran? Will you choose to choose it? What else has changed within and around us, leading to new choices.
Will you throw a first stone or a last stone or no stone at all? Does it make any difference whether the issue is personal or communal, spiritual or political (not that these pairs can be separated very well)?
On the other hand, a choice doesn't make the slightest difference. We are simply G*D's servants whether we find ourselves with Apollos or Paul or Amy or Janet or performing one function or another. As a simple servant of G*D, just how much choice does a milk-sucking child have?
Now, when to choose to choose or to choose not to choose, aye - that is a good question. When to say Yes! or No! is both imponderably confusing and intuitionally clear.
- - -
happy those
who are able to decide
after the fact
Monday-morning quarterback
after the fact
but happier still those
who decide
with an eye to the future
before the fact
that will become an after fact
to move toward a preferred tomorrow
before its factness
is highly satisfying here
decisions take on deep meaning
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
Without getting into the double use of "veil" that Paul uses for his own purposes, like pundits misportray and obfuscate with language in our day, we can still fruitfully pursue the matter of transformation by degree. While there are conversion moments, most of life comes through growth, a degree at a time.
Here are some matters that Paul indicates help us to move by degrees to get a degree in Transformation Arts. Refer to Chapter 4, verses 1 and 2.
First, an ever growing appreciation of having received mercy.
Second, persistence in passing on as much mercy as we have received (a mercy ministry).
Third, little by little coming to grips with our areas of shame that we might move pass them.
Fourth, to not falsify past experience of G*D for our own present purposes, especially not to literalize metaphoric material.
And, fifth, to live before others as if we were living with G*D (or, through parallelism, to live with others as if we were living before G*D).
Each of these five key arenas to a transformed life can be approached methodically, by degree. May this day find you a bit further along than you were yesterday. May this day also find you moving off any plateau you had come to in any of these. May you exercise this handful of issues to gain a stronger grip on a preferred future.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/02/1-corinthians-312-42.html
The realization that we are on differing paths and that those on the same path may be at differing locations on it reminds us that we are living growing beings. If we are going to have any flesh, it is flesh that changes and grows. If our spirit is in anyway tied to our flesh, it, too, will change and hopefully grow.
Perhaps there is a stage of growth we still need to go through to get back to the Garden of Eden relationship with G*D, presuming it is desirable to regress that far - not milk, or meat, but vegan. What might it be like to be fed with food directly from the earth? Might it make the adam - adamah or human - humus stronger after we learn our milk and meat lessons about connecting self - neighbor beyond differing source authorities.
Blessings on discerning a common purpose with friend and foe, alike.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/02/1-corinthians-31-9.html