Today’s Scripture Reading (February 10, 2018): 2 Corinthians 2
& 3
Some years ago I found out that a college
friend was living not far from where I lived. A mutual friend had passed on his
phone number, and one evening I decided
to give him a call just to say hi. Admittedly, I am not at ease with the telephone.
So much of our communication comes from visual cues, and the phone erases all
of that. I also understand that the phone can be intrusive. By its very nature,
we have no idea when the right moment might be to call. But I dialed the set of
numbers that I had received and waited for the party on the other end to
answer.
The conversation did not go as I had hoped. I
have no idea what was happening on the other side of the phone line in the
moments before I dialed the number, but my friend was not happy to hear from
me. He started off by questioning my motives for phoning him, and he never
really accepted that I just wanted to touch base with him and that I wanted absolutely nothing from him. The conversation
was stilted and painful. I closed by saying that I appreciated him and the time
that we had spent together and that maybe,
sometime down the road, I would try to phone again. And then I closed the
connection and sat in my chair wondering if I had done the right thing.
I didn’t phone him again, but a couple of
years later we did meet up in person. And I found out the rest of the story
that unfolded after we had had our phone conversation. After I closed the
connection and sat in my chair feeling defeated, but he sat in his chair with
an opposite feeling. He told his wife who I was and then commented, “He hasn’t
changed. He doesn’t seem to care to judge you for the negative that happens in
life. He accepts you as you are. I hope he phones me again.” Those words,
spoken a couple of years after the event, were some of the most encouraging words
that I had received, and they were words that I hoped were true. But the
reality was that in my defeat, and with my dislike of the phone, I had never
followed up on that first phone call and risked proving those words not to be
true.
Paul seems to have spent a significant amount
of time in Corinth, and most likely counts the Corinthians as friends. But the
result of the last trip was not a positive one. Instead of being a pleasant experience,
his last visit was filled with division
and conflict. So when he was planning another trip to the area, Paul had left
Corinth off of his itinerary. Unfortunately, that had given ammunition to his
detractors. They had begun to argue that Paul was ultimately untrustworthy, and
that if he was untrustworthy in one area, how could the Corinthians trust him
in any area. Paul’s teachings and writing should be discarded, and the apostle
should be forgotten.
As a result, Paul is on the defensive as he
begins this letter to the Corinthians. Paul admits that he did not want to be
the cause of any more pain in Corinth, but beyond that, the problems of the
Corinthians were making him uncomfortable. British Methodist theologian and
scholar Adam Clarke argues that “because of the scandals that were among them he [Paul] could not
see them [the Corinthians] comfortably; and
therefore he determined not to see them at all till he had reason to believe
that those evils were put away.” So Paul says that he had decided
not to come to Corinth this time, not because he did not care for them, but
because he did not want to increase the pain and division under which the
Corinthian Church was already suffering.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 4
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