Friday, August 26, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
At the writing desk with Paul
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?
Before breakfast on a beautiful day in Ephesus, Paul sat down to write. Three years earlier he visited the Greek city of Corinth and now, for the second time, he was writing to his friends there, including Priscilla and Aquila, who helped him found the Corinthian Christian Church.
Now just 20 or so years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, they all had stories to tell. God’s love and care did not protect them from pain and persecution, but out of it all they emerged to live again.
Paul wrote four times to his Corinthian friends, and much of what he wrote survived to be read to this day to Christians around the world. He loved the men and women who chose to follow Jesus. He resented those who caught onto their coattails for political or personal or pecuniary reasons. He desperately wanted all of them to leave the Corinthian habits of worshipping Apollo behind, along with the sexual mores of his temple, and imitate Jesus with their lives.
Situated on an isthmus fifty miles from Athens and fifty miles from Sparta, Corinthians often fell into living the loose life of sailors who visited and sometimes stayed. What was wrong with living that easy-going life in the Greek Margaritaville?
Upright is the word of the Lord, and all his works are trustworthy. He loves justice and right; of the kindness of the Lord the earth is full.
Their variegated history made the Corinthians proud of their heritage and their city-state.
But the Lord brings to nought the plan of nations; he foils the designs of peoples.
And Paul insisted they see themselves as Christians created by God to follow Jesus, not primarily as citizens or nationalists but as members of the Body of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel, and not with the wisdom of human eloquence. The cross of Christ must not be emptied of its meaning. For those of us being saved, it is the power of God.
What is this Cross of Christ? Paul struggled to explain it, as did all the apostles, but more than explain, they lived it out in their brief moments in time.
Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
How can we know our own forgiveness, and then out of it love each other instead of settling for self-protection and suspicion? Watch and see, then do likewise. Besides John, all the apostles were martyred one way or another. They spoke out for Jesus even when their lives were threatened, and then eventually they were killed. Paul told some of his own story, and Luke told more of it in the Book of Acts.
With his words and deeds, Jesus showed them how to be forgiven, then love one another. Â So they did the same, with their words and then their lives.
Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And love never fails.
Paul sat there with his pen in hand. He knew what he wanted to say. And he got started. The day was full of promise.
 (1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 33, Luke 21, Matthew 25)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
