6th Sunday

6th Sunday

You can figure this out for yourselves

Actually, the lynch pin for these three readings is the middle one. The first and third deal with leprosy - but in those days any kind of skin disfigurement was considered to be leprosy. They didn't have a medical taxonomy. The problem with leprosy, of course, is contained in this thing from Leviticus: the leper shall live alone. In other words, the leper is to be ostracized and live outside the community. To cure for leprosy, of course, was not just to do a big favour to some unfortunate person. But, much more to the point, it was the restoration of that person to the human family. That's what we have over and over and over in all the cures or the exorcisms. It is taking somebody who has been put outside, and bringing them in with everybody else. Now, this, of course, is what Paul, in the centre reading, is about.

If you know the first letter to the Corinthians, you know that over and over and over, Paul questions the behaviour of these people. He refers to their speaking in tongues, which they used to show off and therefore distance themselves from everyone else. Remember that's the beginning of that great hymn to love... “If I were to speak with the tongues of men and angels but did not have love, then....” That's the whole context of that.

People can use anything to establish themselves as somehow superior to other beings and therefore distance themselves from other people. The Corinthians were expert at using every conceivable opportunity. You may remember that passage when Paul talks about their gathering together for the Eucharist in home churches of thirty or forty people. They had meals before they had the Lord's Supper, and the rich people would bring good food and feast in one corner and poor people would sit and salivate in another corner. Remember that astonishing line from Paul... You people who do that do not even recognize the Body of Christ. He plays off the metaphor that the Eucharist is the Body of Christ, and the community is the Body of Christ.

So, the whole letter is an injunction to see our interdependence and the fact that we belong to each other. That is, of course, what he is talking about in today’s reading because, in Corinth, if you were to eat meat it would necessarily have come from one of the pagan temples. That was the only meat supplier there was unless you lived out in the country. So, this is where he goes through this business of if you go... do it. But, then there are conditions that might keep you from doing it.

I want to talk about Paul's pastoral style and the implications of that for the Christian life. First, the wonderful thing about Paul, like Jesus, is his enormous clear sightedness. He is not trying to create hassles in people's lives. He's trying to suggest practical solutions to problems: if you go to a party and another Jesus follower is present and she or he points out that the meat they're serving comes from one of the temples, further, that you are aware that this is going to create obstacles for this other believer, even though you know that meat from a temple is not polluted or tainted. Paul advises that you not eat it. People whose faith is not large enough or mature enough to enable them to see that the origin of the meat doesn't make any difference are to be deferred to. But you notice, Paul doesn't harangue. If there is a real problem in this group, then a very practical common sense solution, and simply guidance on that line.

In other words, and you see Paul throughout the letters, his favourite pastoral injunction was this: judge for yourselves. If there's a problem, you don't know how to behave, you don't know whether it is a Christian thing to do. Paul lays out the problem, describes the elements and says...judge for yourselves. That's Paul the pastor. He didn’t go around knocking people on the head and demanding obedience to this or that. He treats these people as adults. “You can figure this out for yourselves once you see what is at stake.”

But the criterion for judgement, of course, is the free disposition of myself for the sake of the other. Paul will say over and over and over, that in Christ we have been made free. Freedom...Christ has made us free so that all these superstitions and encumbrances of life where we want to mystify religion, are to fall away. However, freedom is not some kind of declaration of independence. Freedom is only manifested in our capacity to freely choose to accommodate these tender hearted, or immature Christians. In other words, it is the freedom of love, and only that is freedom. As Paul says over and over...I try to please everyone in everything I do. Why? Because that's going to get him brownie points with God? No. Because that's going to have everyone standing in admiration? “Oh, what a wonderful human being.” No.

This is the beauty of this man. Rather, this is the choice I make for the sake of the other. Not seeking my own advantage but that of many. We have to be really careful, that we don't obscure Paul’s meaning as if he were addressing a CWL meeting were everybody's nice and they're all sitting around quilting or raising money for the missions. Corinth was no easy place to live and certainly no easy place to be a Christian. Certainly no easier than London, Ontario. (I don't think that London, Ontario is an easy place to be a Christian, for reasons that are the same and different. Because we too are all looking for the main chance. We're all looking for grabbing opportunities to promote ourselves ahead of somebody else. ) Okay. Paul says... in this rough and tumble, very competitive self-seeking world... no. That's not the way it is supposed to happen. And his style, his pastoral style is absolutely consonant with his own behaviour. That's the beauty of this man.