"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009 | |||
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For Conscience' Sake | |||
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It feels like wading in way over my head to begin studying
this week's text,
I Corinthians 8:1-13. The scholarly writing on this passage and
others related to it (Romans 14, chapters 9 and 10 of I Corinthians) is
massive and viewpoints vary quite a bit. Scholars raise questions about the actual nature of idol-food practice in ancient Corinth, about the identity of the "weak" and "strong" parties in the church there, and about what Paul's advice actually boils down to. At least one book-long treatise argues that the "weak" point of view is actually a creation of Paul's and does not represent any actual persons in Corinth at the time. Instead, Paul created a hypothetical problem for eating meat offered to idols in order to bolster the prohibition against idol-meat stated more explicitly and directly in chapter 10. Yet Christians constantly experience the reality that our consciences differ on what is acceptable Christian practice in all sorts of areas. It seems highly likely to me that there were, in fact, Christians in Corinth, just as there are today, who had behavioral scruples that were more stringent than those of other Christians. The question of how we are to relate to each other in the face of those differences constantly confronts us. This text may or may not have something to say about these situations. Paul's corrective to overconfidence in one's own spiritual discernment regarding behavior is the end of verse 1, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." And a presumption in favor of loving actions cuts both directions. The "strong" need to take account of those who might be wounded by the performance of an action one deems acceptable but another deems wrong. But those who are merely legalistic cannot pretend to "weakness" and hold everyone else hostage to their own over-tuned scruples. That is also not love that builds up. The "weak" pictured here are those who might actually suffer some damage to faith (fall back into worship of idols) in the face of the "strong" person's behavior. It is *not* merely a matter of the "weak" being *offended* by such behavior. You can see that in verse 13 where the issue is not causing the weak to sin, to fall back into a way of life that is without Christ. We might need to limit the application of this text more than is typical. It may not really speak to situations where equally strong (in the faith) Christians disagree about behavior, teetotalers versus moderate drinkers, for instance. If a drinker merely offends a teetotaler and makes her question the drinker's own Christianity, then it's not clear to me that this text applies. It's only if the drinking does some spiritual damage to the teetotaler that it seems wrong given Paul's criterion here. In the case of alcohol, that might only be the case when Christians are careless about using it around others who have been redeemed into Christ out of alcoholism. The point is that eating idol meat had an intrinsically spiritual dimension to it by virtue of its connection with a false god. To find similar disputed Christian practices today we need to look for the things we do which might connect us in another Christian's mind with forces of evil and invite that Christian to suppose a connection with evil is acceptable. Perhaps viewing a R-rated film might make a weak Christian suppose that use of pornography in general is acceptable. Perhaps my expression of political loyalty could cause another Christian to suppose that there is a loyalty or lordship equal to or greater than the lordship of Christ. Perhaps my participation in the pseudo-religious rites of a fraternal order or the "spirituality" of a yoga class may lead a fellow believer to the false belief that there are various and differing paths to God, all equally good. It's a tough passage. I'm not quite sure I'm on the right track yet, but those are my thoughts for now. | |||
Tuesday, 20 January 2009 | |||
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Temporary | |||
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Nothing like hard economic times to help us really believe
what the Bible says about this world and our situation in it. In a
climate where many good, hard-working people are losing homes, businesses
and other possessions,
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 has a particular ring of relevance and
truth. For all the warnings the Lord gives us, we still mostly fail to develop the attitude Paul calls for here. I know I, at least, constantly feel and behave as if material possessions were of ultimate importance. Yet Paul also calls for this spiritual outlook of eternity even on relationships and emotions. Not only is the loss of a house not the end of one's life in God, not even the loss of a loved one is finally disastrous. It seems that just about *every* facet of our lives is included in the present form of this world said to be passing away, according to verse 31. In Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, Kierkegaard expounds on Paul's theme, arguing that true purity is to let all other desires and aims submit to "the Eternal." I can't merely let God have a place in my life, because that is to set Him (the Eternal, the Good, in Kierkegaard's language) as just one more thing alongside the other things of my life. I might suppose that I can give time to my family here, time to my job there, time to keeping up my house here, and time to God there. To which Kierkegaard says: "But the Eternal is that which is set over all. The Eternal will not have its time, but will fashion time to its own desire, and then give its consent that the temporal world should also be given its time." It's only after I have seen my life and all the people and things in it in the light of God's eternity that I can truly possess them in any good and true way. May you and I avail ourselves of the present opportunity to look at this world through the Eternal's lense. | |||
Tuesday, 13 January 2009 | |||
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My Temple or His Temple? | |||
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I never ceased to be amazed at how Christian imagery and
ideas permeate our western culture, forming an unconscious background for
everyone, believer or not. I am also constantly amazed at how Christian
concepts are distorted and repackaged by the secular mind. For instance,
I suggested to a Bible class yesterday that the theory of evolution could
only have arisen within a culture saturated in the biblical, linear view
of history (in contrast to the ancient pagan/oriental view of an eternal
recycling of events). But my concern this week is with the secular transformation of the Christian image of the human body presented in I Corinthians 6:12-20. In verse 19, Paul asks the well-known rhetorical question, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. . .?" (Please ignore the TNIV's pluralizing of the nouns and pronouns in this verse. It's silly fallout from its desire to achieve gender neutrality in verse 18.) I first became aware that the concept of the body as a temple remains in the general culture a few years ago. In a conversation with a young man living on the street, he told me that he did not smoke, "because my body is my temple." Since then I've become aware, and an Internet search confirms that, especially in new age circles, the description of the body as "my temple" is fairly common. Participants in yoga classes are encouraged to chant the phrase, "My body is my temple." You will, of course, immediately see the change from the biblical concept. Whereas Paul calls me to recognize my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, the repackaged notion is that my body is *my* temple. Thus the contemporary mind transforms the biblical idea that my flesh and blood are an arena in which to worship God into the thought that in my body, by caring for my body, I may worship *myself.* That the individual body of the believer is a temple for the Holy Spirit connects back to Paul's thought in I Corinthians 3:16, 17 that the Church as whole, the Body of Christ, is a temple for God's Spirit. His thoughts at the end of chapter 6 focus that idea down so as to take aim at individual morality. We are both corporately and individually a temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus both good relationships with each other and individual holiness are to be the outcome. My aim this week is to remind us of the moral dimension of the body-temple concept, that its focus is on the Spirit of God, not on ourselves. Thus, while there may be some validity in utilizing this text to promote good physical health and self-care (there is after all a moral dimension to taking care of one's body -- it is wrong to do oneself harm), the bigger focus for Paul is on restricting immoral behavior in order to be a pure dwelling place for God's Spirit. It would be nice if Christians could be careful to recognize the distortion of Scripture in the "my body my temple" concept and avoid that phrasing in favor of a body concept which centers on the worship of God through right living. Let's recognize that one could cultivate a "temple" extremely well in the contemporary sense (good diet, regular exercise, avoidance of substance abuse, etc.) and yet be an extremely poor temple for the Spirit in the biblical sense because of immoral behavior. And if Hollywood's denizens are any clue, I suspect it happens all the time. | |||
Tuesday, 06 January 2009 | |||
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Pleasing God | |||
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For the first Sunday in Epiphany, the lectionary cycle in
Mark's gospel doubles back on itself. We read Mark 1:1-8 on the second
Sunday in Advent, focused on John the Baptist's message of preparation
for Jesus. Now for this coming Sunday we read
Mark 1:4-11, repeating the description of John and his ministry in
verses 4-6 and his prophecy of Jesus in verses 7 and 8. But then we press
on to the actual arrival of Jesus on the scene in Mark's extremely terse
account of Jesus' baptism in verse 9-11. Yet Mark includes the two essential elements of the scene found in Matthew and Luke. After the baptism the Holy Spirit descends as a dove and God's voice from heaven declares Jesus, "my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." Focus for a moment on the humanity of Jesus. This is much of the point of His baptism. Though without sin of His own, Jesus identifies with us in a ritual of forgiveness and cleansing. Now imagine Jesus in His humanity in the days and months following that heavenly expression of God's pleasure in Him. What would it be like to have both the blessing and the pressure of living up to that kind of declaration about oneself? One of the things that keeps me more or less (maybe too often less) on the straight and narrow is the thought that others love and are pleased with me. My wife, my daughters, my mother when she was alive, all feel or felt I was someone special to them, and told me so. It makes me want to live in a way that will continue to bring them pleasure. I want to be the sort of person that pleases them. Feelings like that must have motivated Jesus to an even greater degree as He set about carrying out His Father's plan for Him. Perhaps the baptism of Jesus is a time for us to consider your own baptism and the fact that in those moments God must have been pleased with you, either delighting in a newly born infant or in a newly born believer. So part of remembering your own baptism is to seek live in such a way and to be such a person as will continue to please God, to give Him joy and pleasure in you as His child. As the new year unfolds, I hope that each of us might know the feeling of God's pleasure and be moved to want to experience that feeling more. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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