1 Corinthians 8-16

Corinthians 8-16

We conclude the First Letter to the Corinthians this week by working our way finally to the two great climaxes I mentioned last week: the hymn to love in chapter 13 and the ode to the resurrection of all in chapter 15. But as in any good journey, getting there is half the fun! Recall that in the first half Paul has taken on controversies in this congregation over factions, sexual immorality, lawsuits, and marriage (good? or bad? in light of the impending end of the world). The first issue allowed Paul to establish his larger theme: the community should not be dividing into factions based on who baptized them or who taught them the faith, for we are all one in Christ. It's important to note here that, , this unity with each other in Christ is not earned by any process of our own, but rather recognized through faith. The freedom brought about by our belonging to Christ – freedom from having to earn God's love through keeping commandments that are both beyond our ultimate ability and do not bring about salvation, freedom given us by God's grace in the resurrection. How we treat ourselves and each other, for Paul, comes from our unity with and in Christ – and a response to the freedom that brings that leads us to look outside our own needs to focus on the needs of others.

Which brings us to the problem of meat. Chapters 8-10 wobble through a discussion about the propriety of eating meat that was previously sacrificed to the gods of other temples – to idols, in other words. These cults are understood by sophisticated Christians to be worshipping gods that are not real, not God – so meat sacrificed to them has no actual religious connotation. But, Paul says, other Christians do not yet grasp this perspective – so don't eat such meat in front of them and cause them to question their faith, think of them and their need of support rather than yourself and your enjoyment of freedom. This practical matter leads Paul into a discourse on the diversity of the members of the congregation, as diverse and necessary to each other as the parts of the human body, further clarifying our unity in Christ – which unity, he outlines in chapter 13, is based on love. This is not our love, it is God's love, the cosmic love that unites all things, in which our love participates and from which our love derives. The poetry here bears a closer look; we've all heard this too many times, yet it is not really as familiar as we think. And the result of this focus on the wonder of God's love finally leads Paul to the extraordinary exhortation on the resurrection in chapter 15: our understanding of God's love comes from the life, death and resurrection of Christ – in whom we too will live, and die, and rise again. This progression of points about the working of faith from concrete issues in our daily lives to its most magnificent claims about God and life is truly a joy to follow.

You'll note that I've skipped over chapter 11, the odd discussion about what is and is not appropriate on the heads of men and women. Scholars are truly at a loss to explain both what this discussion is doing here (why is Paul talking about this? what led him to this?) and what Paul is really trying to say, since he appears to contradict himself. Also the part about women being silent in church is very hard to read for me as a woman. I suspect it might be hard for you all too. I do always try to remember that the fact that Paul is talking about this issue suggests that women were in fact NOT silent at church during this time. That is a small consolation, I know. 

Finally that mention of the collection in chapter 16--how does that frame the reading of these final chapters? For me it helps a great deal, and I can't wait to tell you why when we gather together on Sunday. 

How to read the Bible

This is the hand out I passed around on Sunday afternoon at our first VBS day.

How to read the Bible
 

1. Pick up a Bible. Read it--I know it is not that simple! So here are a few pointers.

 
There are many different translations of the Bible. The Episcopal Church uses the NRSV, but you can certainly read another translation at home. In fact, sometimes reading more than one translation can help. A good resource for being able to read many different translations is the Oremus Bible Browser (http://bible.oremus.org/).  
 
Reading the Bible should be done carefully. It is sacred text so we shouldn't zoom and skim through it like we might a cheap mystery. Speed is one aspect of this careful reading, but I would encourage you to pay attention to words, think about other meanings they bring up, think of other times you've encountered them. Don't neglect your feelings either. This is not a purely academic exercise. Consider your feelings as you read.
 
When you don't understand a word or phrase I suggest turning to a Bible dictionary. That might be able to help you understand that sometimes even English words we recognize have a different meaning in their original language.
 
And finally, as you read remember that you are reading it in the summer of 2013.  Consider the events of your life, and the news around the world. How does the Spirit speak to us through the text today?

1 Corinthians 1-7

As you read Corinthians this week here are some things you might think about and pay attention to.

This letter was probably written in Ephesus to a community in Corinth that Paul knew well, and that he helped to found. Paul has a letter from the Corinthian group asking him questions, and has had visitors from Corinth who have given him information. His letter is a direct response to both of those sources of information. It addresses specific and concrete concerns and controversies. Paul's responses are developed from a perspective of faith, and therefore allow him to in turn expound upon that faith as the common elements to his responses become clearer. So we see here Paul's thoughts on the righteousness of God, the trustworthiness of God's promises, on faith alone leading to salvation, on the diversity of the body of Christ, on the freedom we attain in Christ, and on the centrality of the resurrection of Christ and it's implications for human life.

Here are some specifics to think about:

-On Sunday, Dr. Maia Kotrosits talked about how these letters would have been read at social meals of no more than 12 people. So picture the tiny groups reclining around a courtyard and reading this letter together.

- The almost immediate frustration that Paul has with the Corinthians--how does that color the entire letter? Keep that frustration in mind.

-What does Paul say about who they are? They are not wise, not powerful not noble. How would this have sounded to them?

-Paul's style is often to contrast one thing to another, for example the flesh vs. the spiritual. What does dividing up life and contrasting things do for Paul rhetorically? What does it do for us as readers?

-Paul defines who he is to the Corinthians (the planter,God's steward, like a father figure)--does this help us to understand who Paul might be for us today?

-Paul gets to some specifics: he doesn't like that a man is living with his father's wife and he doesn't like that one member of the community took another to court. What do both of these problems suggest about community? How do we read responses that are so directly to the Corinthians?

- The we get to a lot of things about human sexuality. Keep in mind the emphasis on fleshiness, and the way that Paul does not want sameness to be at the root of this community. He thinks they should be able to retain their flesh-y differences, and yet still be able to eat a meal together. And remember the importance of time: Paul really thinks the end of all things is near, and hopes that some people will be able to just hold off sex until the end comes.

-Finally in all this about sex, Paul says "I want you to be free from anxiety"--thinking back to how Paul understands himself as a father figure to the Corinthian community, what does it sound like to read this section as fatherly advice? And how then are we connected to it?

Details about Vacation Bible School For Adults

Join St. Ann & the Holy Trinity this summer for a Vacation Bible School For Adults: Paul’s Letters Home. We will be studying three letters, Corinthians, Romans and Galatians. Each week we will have reading assignments (see below), lectures on Sunday mornings after the 11:00 am service followed by q & a time. Lectures will be by Rev. Sarah and by Dr. Maia Kotrosits, a Biblical Scholar. There will also be weekly blog posts at revsarah.blogspot.com to help guide your reading.

The purpose of our Vacation Bible School is to increase our Biblical literacy, to read Paul’s letters as a community, and to hear God’s voice to us today through the reading and reflection on Holy Scripture.

Vacation Bible School Schedule:

Sunday, July 14: no assigned reading, introduction to Paul’s Letters Lecture by Dr. Maia Kotrosits

Sunday, July 21: Corinthians, ch 1-7

Sunday, July 28: Corinthians, ch 8-16

Sunday, August 4: Romans, ch 1-8, Lecture by Dr. Kotrosits

Sunday, August 11: Romans, ch 9-16

Sunday, August 18: Galatians

Want to know more about Dr. Kotrosits?

Maia Kotrosits received her Ph.D. in New Testament from Union Theological Seminary, and is a Visiting Lecturer at Amherst College. She co-authored the first English-language book on The Thunder: Perfect Mind, a poem from the Nag Hammadi codices, and has another book, entitled Re-reading the Gospel of Mark Amidst Loss and Trauma, due out this fall with Palgrave Macmillan. 

Lit Crit and Scripture

This week I've been reading Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind. It's a book of essays. To be fair, I should say that I am a bit of a Zadie Smith fan. I like her novels and her writing. So I am probably quick to embrace the things she says.

So with that in mind, I am interested in talking about something a little theoretical today. Are you ready to think about this with me? Okay great. Did you all take a lot of literary theory classes in college? Well, neither did I. But I suppose I did encounter some of this theory in Gender Studies classes. Anyway Smith's fourth chapter is called "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov." It begins with a quote from Barthes: "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" (pg. 42). Smith uses this quotation to talk about the way that this is a rather liberating thing for a reader. As the reader you don't have to think about what the author intended, or how it is related to their life, or what the writing meant in the context of it's time. Rather your experience as the reader is privileged.

I am wondering about what sacred texts bring to this conversation. It seems interesting to me to think about this Barthes quote when it comes to reading words that we believe are from God, and words that we understand to be a continuing revelation of God's relationship to humanity. First of all, of course, the author cannot be dead.

Smith writes that as she has gotten older she is less and less enamored with Barthes. She liked the idea of the freedom and power of the reader when she was younger. But she says things changed. "Still, I am glad I'm not the reader I was in college anymore, and I'll tell you why: it made me feel lonely. Back then I waned to tear down the icon of the author and abolish, too, the idea of a privileged reader--the text was to be a free, wild thing, open to everyone, belonging to no one, refusing an ultimate meaning. Which was a powerful feeling, but also rather isolating, because it jettisons the very idea of communication, of any possible genuine link between the person who writes and the person who reads" (pg. 57).

And this is why I think sacred texts, and those of us who read and study the Bible have something to say in this conversation about Literary Theory. We are people who read a book not only alone, but in community. We are in our nature not lonely readers. And we are readers who read with an understanding, and a desire to know better the link between the person who writes and the person who reads. In fact, we hope that by our reading, we are both solidifying and exploring that link. Very cool.

Nashville Thoughts

Last week I was away in Nashville with all of the Lilly Fellows from around the U.S. The 80-some odd of us represented a range of denominations and backgrounds, and work in a wide variety of Protestant Churches throughout the country. We were gathered together to discuss issues related to diversity in the Church. Our keynote speaker was Dr. Soong Chan Rah who challenged us to think about the declining attendance in mainline churches, and the increasing racial diversity of America. His solution to dying churches is to increase the diversity of churches. And he is not naive about what this might mean, nor does he think that ethnic-specific churches (for example an immigrant Korean Church) need to diversify. He understands the specific ministry those churches provide for ethnic communities. Dr. Rah's work has demonstrated the value of diversity--especially in churches with the neighborhood has changed around the church (for example a former Italian neighborhood becomes a more Latino/a neighborhood and begins a Spanish speaking congregation). 

Here on the corner of Clinton and Montague, I think we would all say we have a pretty diverse church. And by sociological methods, I think this is factually true (80% of one ethnic group, 20% of another). But it is important to think about what it means to be a part of the Episcopal Church which is almost 90% white. I wonder what we could do better to raise up leaders (lay and ordained) of color? And how having a more diverse leadership might lead to a more diverse church. 

So what is our job in all of this? And why is it important?

I believe that our job is to continue to be a diverse church, but to realize that this did not just happen by chance. We are a diverse church because we talk about diversity as a value we think is important. And we think it is important because it mirrors the heavenly kingdom. We live in to the hope of a more just and equitable society by trying to strive for what is not yet. We do not yet live in a society where people are treated equally; but more than treatment, we live in a country with plenty of systemic racisim. So our job is to talk about that, and to continue to talk about what our diversity means. 

Do Archbishops Matter?

At a clergy meeting at some point in the winter, the assembled clergy were asked to submit some questions for discussion. Among the questions was one, likely sparked by some recent books and articles was: do priests matter? A funny thing for a priest to ask, of course. And an important thing. Something which, when you think about it, you hope that they have an answer for.

Of course how do you answer the question do priests matter?

Here is how I would answer it this very lovely last day of April. They can matter.

I think a lot of this conversation is about how the role of the priest in society has shifted in recent years (or more ecumenically the role of the minister or religious leader). And it has. But the prominence of the religious leader in years past might have been given to them simply as a part of their ordination vows, we religious leaders now must work very hard to show our value, relevance.

And how might we do that? Well, I think one important way is by talking about things that matter.

An article in the New York Times today made me think of this whole conversation. It is about the new Archbishop of Canterbury criticizing the British banking establishment (find it here).

I don't want to talk about British banks, or the details of what the Archbishop is talking about, but I do want to say that he is talking about a relevant issue from a unique point of view (both as a former executive, and now as the leader of the Anglican Church) that informs his statement. The church, the priest is made relevant not by people miraculously finding the way in our doors, but by us, the Church, the priests talking about relevant topics from our perspective as people of faith, and by our actions as the Body of Christ in the world.