Today’s Scripture Reading (January 2, 2018): 1 Corinthians 1
American Journalist Sydney J. Harris wrote
that “A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too
timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.” There might be a third category. The one rebukes from a position of
superiority. They too would number among the losers, and, unfortunately, it is
in this group that most seem to fall in
our current society. We rebuke because the other is stupid or beneath our
notice. Or we rebuke without any thought
of stressing the value of the other in our lives or our communities. We rebuke and walk away with no view toward a relationship.
If you do not agree with me, then you are not welcome where I am.
There is no question that Paul’s
First Letter to the Corinthians is a
letter of rebuke. There is division in
Corinth that Paul believes should not exist in a church that is following the
character of Christ. They have lost sight of the value of the other. They
struggle for positions of importance and superiority rather than following the
instructions of Jesus and merely serving
each other. At the climax of the letter,
we find Paul’s Ode to Love, a plea for the Corinthian Church to find ways to
love each other rather than see the
expression of their relationships in the power that they hold over each other.
For Paul, each of these signs was a symptom of a church that had become ill and
could no longer reflect the image of Christ.
And yet, Paul starts off his
letter with this amazing comment – “I always
thank God for you.” I want to confront some of the things that need to be fixed
in your midst, but I am thankful that you exist. It is a model that we seem to largely ignore in the church today. We rail
against those who do not agree with us. We react with anger over variances in
belief rather than with love. There would seem to be no room in the church for
those who believe differently, and no room in the world for those with whom we disagree. We are not too timid to rebuke, but
we are too petty to forgive.
I dream of a different church and
different world, one that is characterized by
love, acceptance, and forgiveness. We may disagree, even over essential issues, but first, we make sure that the one with whom we disagree knows that we love them. That even in the midst of our
disagreements, we are thankful that they are part of our community.
What would the world look like
if this was the way that we reacted to each other; if this kind of love
dominated our conversations? We fear that
evil would win, but I think Paul would disagree. Evil wins when we refuse to love those with whom we disagree. Evil wins when we lock ourselves into smaller and smaller
echo chambers that only includes those who agree with us, forever banning the
dissenting voices to some place beyond the soundproof
wall.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 2
No comments:
Post a Comment